The Young Turks - Trump's Shrinking Economy - April 30, 2025

Episode Date: May 1, 2025

Trump blames Biden 'overhang' after GDP shrinks in first quarter, says growth will 'take a while'. Five ways MAGA media are spinning Trump’s poll collapse. Trump insists Kilmar Abrego Garcia actually had “MS-13” tattooed on his hands. Judge orders Columbia student Mohsen Mahdawi to be released. Lindsey Graham endorses Trump as the next pope. Hosts: Jordan Uhl & Brett Erlich SUBSCRIBE on YOUTUBE ☞  https://www.youtube.com/@TheYoungTurks FOLLOW US ON: FACEBOOK  ☞   https://www.facebook.com/theyoungturks TWITTER  ☞       https://twitter.com/TheYoungTurks INSTAGRAM  ☞  https://www.instagram.com/theyoungturks TIKTOK  ☞          https://www.tiktok.com/@theyoungturks 👕MERCH  ☞      https:/www.shoptyt.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

You're listening to The Young Turks, the online news show. Make sure to follow and rate our show with not one, not two, not three, not four, but five stars. You're awesome. Thank you. Welcome to The Young Turks. I'm Jordan Yule, filling in for Jank Yugar tonight. And my beautiful co-host tonight is none other than Brett Ehrlich. Brett, how are you? I'm so glad I got my eyelashes done and that you noticed it and you called me beautiful.

I'm doing all right. How are you? Great, it's always great to be here with you. The certified bad boys of TYT is what people are calling us. More and more people are saying it. Many people. We embrace the title. True.

Well, Brett, we've got a lot to get into, including some major economic news. So let's just jump right into it. I can't wait to get your thoughts on this. Trump's big, beautiful economy shrunk this quarter. The GDP contracted by 0.3%. The first time it shrank in three years. But immediately, Trump began to shift the blame, writing on truth social. This is Biden's stock market, not Trump's.

I didn't take over until January 20th. Tariffs will soon start kicking in and companies are starting to move into the USA in record numbers. Our country will boom, but we have to get rid of the Biden, quote, overhang. This will take a while, has nothing to do with tariffs, only that he left us with bad numbers. But when the boom begins, it will be like no other. Be patient. But as we all know, it has a lot to do with tariffs. Growth was dragged down in part by a surge of imports as businesses and consumers raced to stock up before Trump's sweeping tariffs took effect in early April. Imports are a net negative for GDP. Government spending was also down. To most rational economists, tariffs

in the trade war, and the economic uncertainty, those created are a direct contributor to the GDP contraction. As a result of the tariffs, prices will increase. But to Trump, that's good, because people are buying things that they don't need. Take a look. with Biden selling this stuff, much of it we don't need. You know, somebody said, oh, the shelves are going to be open. Well, maybe the children will have two dolls instead of $30, you know. And maybe the two dolls will cost a couple of bucks more than they would normally. But we're not talking about something that we have to go out of our way.

They have ships that are loaded up with stuff, much of which, not all of it, but much of which we don't need. Sure, we can just follow. Trump's lead. We need to embrace a minimalistic and anti-material lifestyle. I think that's good advice for all of us and who better to lead on that front. But Trump's trade advisor, Peter Navarro, went a step further, saying that this is actually good news. Take a look. I got to say just one thing about today's news, that's the best negative print I have ever seen in my life. And the markets need to like look beneath the surface of that. We had a 22% increase in domestic investment. That is

off the charts. When you strip out inventories and the negative effects of the surge in imports because of the tariffs, you have 3% growth. So we really like where we're at now. Now as a consequence of Trump's economic policies, the dollar has also plummeted. The dollar has fallen nearly 10% in President Trump's first 100 days. The steepest drop for a new administration this century. The U.S. dollar index in Trump's first 100 days fell 9.5% compared to a 2.1% drop in the first 100 days of his first term. The value of the greenback increased 4.5% in George W. Bush's first 100 days when the country was headed into a recession. It also rose slightly for both Barack Obama and Joe Biden. But is this spin working? Overall, how do people feel about Trump's

handling of the economy? Well, let's look to the polling. President Trump's approval rating on the economy is now at its lowest point of either of his White House terms, according to a survey published Wednesday. The Reuters Ipsos poll found Trump's approval on the economy dropped by one point to 36%, the lowest figure on the issue in either Trump administration. His disapproval went up by five points to 56%. So Brett, what do you make of this contracting, shrinking economy? Do you think this is a big deal? And do you think that this spin that Trump, Peter Navarro, and others in their circle are trying to convince people that it's actually good? Is this working. Well, so we have too many dolls, Jordan. I don't think you just glossed right over that and

moved on. We have too many dolls. The kids, you know, how kids have too many dolls and they're too cheap the dolls. Anyone who shops at Christmas time for dolls, which we all do, I'm sure Donald Trump went, you know, jingle all the way style into KB toys for Ivanka and didn't have just some person who's raising his kids instead of him, buy them a bunch of, of toys. It's the dolls, Jordan. It's so ridiculous. Like, ask to sum up the first hundred days, I would just say, like, it didn't have to happen this way is the answer.

Donald Trump is a bad businessman. He's not really a businessman at all. Every time he tried to start a business that, that was not based on just real estate, like it failed, tangibly failed. can't do this. Importing, exporting, Trump stakes, it's not good. And he doesn't understand tariffs. So that's why he's utterly wrong about that first graphic that you sent. Like, dude, you have a better chance of arguing that you're not affecting the stock market? If it wasn't the case that the day you put all these tariffs on, the stock market ate of fatty. Like, it is your stock

market because as soon as you started doing stuff, it started tanking. And when he's like, he's been obsessed with tariffs for a very long time since he was like talking to Oprah about them in the 90s. But in all of the time he had before becoming president to this second time, he never took the time to learn what they are useful for. And like I watched much of a rally that he had, like his 100 day rally. And I would love to live in that Trump America that he's talking about, because in it, eggs are free. And the stock market is just a temporary paid. But the fact is, all the crazy chaos that he himself started, that he then rolled back, didn't have to happen. None of the first moves that he made triggered a response in any other country that could

tangibly motivate some big win moving forward. It was him messing up so spectacularly, then realizing he messed up, then backpedaling on pretty much all of it. And now we're in a position where maybe we can make some kinds of deals with other countries on importing. But his fundamental lack of understanding on all of this, and if you find, if you do some reading and find out what everyone around Donald Trump and Peter Navarro think of the guys. It's not that the plan is bad. It's that these guys aren't smart enough to come up with an actual plan. They just yell tariffs and hope that it rains cash. Yeah. No, no, what do you think of all of it? Well, I mean, yeah, the biggest takeaway here is that he primarily does not

know what he's doing. And you can see him get exposed in this trade war. The comments from Trump about his alleged, we'll say alleged, because it doesn't seem like there was any communication with Xi in China. And then Scott Besant going out saying, well, it's on China to de-escalate this trade war. You started it. You all started this. And China can recognize that the U.S. does not have a sufficiently robust manufacturing sector that they don't need to do anything, go ahead, make your prices higher in your country and then deal with ramifications. What incentives does China have to negotiate with Trump or Bacent or anyone in this administration knowing they need China more than China needs us? And also, there isn't an overnight magical solution

that Trump seems to think there is on manufacturing. All of his tariff language has been about, Oh, all these companies are coming back to the United States. It's going to happen really quick. Watch. Then we're going to be fine. Then these tariffs will be okay. That's not, you can't just magically and instantly create a robust manufacturing sector here. It's going to take time.

They're going to have to build facilities or move facilities back to the United States. That could be a several year process for some companies. So it's just, it's naive, it's short-sighted, and ultimately misguided. We're all paying the price for all of this. Yeah, and I feel bad for all the people that like work in sectors that would benefit from targeted tariffs and protectionist trade policy that, you know, if handled correctly, could potentially save their industries and bring manufacturing, blue collar actual like shower after work, jobs back to America. It's just that like Donald Trump is the guy in charge. Who's, you know, in the words of Little John and the animated Robin Hood feature from the whatever it was 40s, who's driving this flying umbrella? That is, that's what the economy. That's what the nation has felt like since he got into office.

And it's like other people have been protectionists in their trade policy in the past. But when done so ham-handedly, it does two things. Like it creates utter chaos now. And because of how much chaos it causes now, and Trump is never going to change, he's exactly who he was, you know, when he first started getting famous in the 80s and got crazy and stayed crazy that whole time. But like, China is the rising superpower. And China literally has a hundred year plan. Like, their initiative is a hundred year vision for steadily growing, creating infrastructure, ways to do business together.

And, you know, as much as people are, this is my other favorite little fact is like, oh, these lefties are such godless communists. And if we follow them, we'll lose to China. Like, China is the godless communists. And they're cleaning your clock right now because you just. just don't know how to play this game. And everyone else really is looking at all the destabilization done by Donald Trump and saying like I feel like possibly I'd have a better chance with the people who have

sketched out what they're going to do for the next hundred years. It just might take. Yeah. So one other thing, we saw the spin attempts by Peter Navarro and by Trump. And you'll see a large cohort of right wing influencers and media figures try to spin this. They'll just do the same thing in Navarro's doing. Oh, actually, this is really good. And you saw that after what Brett alluded to earlier, the stock market plummeting after Trump started to announce these tariffs. They did the same thing. What really is down in the

market? Like, there's some sort of meta question about it. But you can look to the Wall Street Journal editorial board today, and they're drawing a straight through line crystal clear. The economy shrank because of tariffs and a pretty scathing editorial today talking about these numbers, talking about this data, and linking it directly to Trump's trade policies. Because for them, they don't really care about partisan loyalty. While it is a conservative news outlet, and that is certainly a conservative editorial board, they care about the wealthy. And for the wealthy, for Wall Street, for corporations, for investors, this isn't a robust and healthy market. and it's not a safe place for them to invest. So they're concerned about the wealthy. They don't need to defend Trump's trade policies. And I think that's the best indication

of how bad this actually is and how worrying this all actually is. Brett, any final thoughts before we get into our next story? I don't know. I just, I hope he just like figures it out, but he's not going to. That's the problem. And it sucks like he just keeps, lying to people. We should be better at the game. We should be better at economy, just to use like his framing. We should be good at economy. We should be good at jobs.

We should be good at making. We should be good at leading. But he is not doing really any of that, nor has he ever in his life. He's just a game show host. Let's get into our next story, take a look at this. Over the weekend, and this is suspect, five polls coming out on the same day, one of them worse than the one before. These are propaganda polls. That's what they are. They're trying to lie to the American. American people, they're trying to sway public opinion.

President Trump has finished his first 100 days with historically low polling numbers. And now conservative media is trying to explain away Trump's approval numbers. You just watched Jim McLaughlin and Rob Finnerty do their best on newsmax. Let's watch some more of these right wing takes trying to spin for Trump. He's not in free fall, he's had a little bit of slippage because he's doing doing a lot, he's breaking a lot of eggs to make it on with. But he is not dropping in any significant way. I can guarantee you. All day, Mitchell, they're going to be bombarding us in the 100th day that Trump is the most unpopular, is the most unpopular president in 100 years.

What you see this April, it looks like it's going to be the second highest month of all of Google polling history or Google's data history of searches for Trump approval. So that's how I know it's a Psiop, people are getting these stories shove down their throats. They're going on Google. They're trying to check it out themselves. The mainstream media is going to information gatekeep and shove a Quinnipiac poll in their face that says negative 12. The problem with the 100 days and looking at the polls is that this format and his agenda is not built for a 100 days. That's right. This is this he's he's redoing the he's for in his language. He's redoing the base. He's framing out the house. A lot of it was rotted. And now he's replacing it. There's not a lot

of glory in framing out a house. And last night, Trump went even further than what you just saw in that compilation. Here's what he had to say about his polling. This is all done in a hundred days. But when you watch the fake news, you see fake polls. Again, they poll more Democrats than Republican. Democrats aren't going to say, I'm going to vote for Trump. And we still got 45, 44%.

But on the legitimate polls, I think we're in the 60s. I really, I think we're in the 60s or 70s or something. Brett, I want to bring you in here. Trump's saying they could be in the 60s or 70s in legitimate polls. But I think if we really evaluate those numbers, he could be as high as a 90, 100, 100 and 10% approval rating. Am I wrong? That's a really good point because why stop at 100%? Because some people love him double.

There might be a Siamese twin contingent that goes underreported in most polls. There's two L's in polls. Why should you not get two votes in polls? It's so ridiculous. I love, like, okay, so I like to play out, like, plot out the field here. Newsmax, Fox News, all right? Those are two different levels of legitimacy.

Just ask the people who work for them. All the people on Newsmax really want to work on Fox News, period, end of story. And the people who work at Newsmax and real American real America news and all of that stuff, they are clinging on to the last rung on the way down out of the job that they've always wanted to have or in the past have had. And what they do is we all know this is true. Algorithms and right wing media sphere, they know exactly what they need to do to keep their jobs. And their job, they keep it, they just need to say that

Donald Trump is always right, has never done wrong, and anyone who contradicts them is a liar and fake news. Now, what's troubling, that one guy saying like, oh, there's so many people searching for the, you know, Donald Trump approval ratings, that means that like your viewers probably don't believe you. If you're getting that kind of a bump, they're like, I'm gonna go search and do my own research myself. And what they'll find is people don't like his economic policy. They like that he's doing something on immigration. They don't like pretty much everything else that

he's doing. They don't like what he's doing on taxes. They don't like what he's doing on the economy. They don't like what he's doing with tariffs. They hate it. Why? Because it's bad. And then Brian Kilmead has a point and doesn't have a point, right? The part of his statement that has a point is Donald Trump does not have a hundred days plan. It's not just that his plan is 100 days. What he has kind of said he's doing would take a long time if you wanted to break things down and build them up. Here's the one catch for what Brian Kilmead said. He's undone all the stuff that he did originally because it failed so spectacularly. Everyone out there in the international sphere that we do business with has essentially stood there and watched Donald Trump say,

I'm going to tariff you. And they're like, wait, what? This guy's going to tariff me? That sucks. And he's like, yeah. And then all of America and all of the world was like, that's a horrible idea. And then Donald Trump was like, psych. And he untariffs them. That is if your plan is to just totally face plant and get up and pretend nothing happened? Like, why did that need to be step one? Other than he thought it would work so well, but he undid it. This is not like a built-in pivot. This is a guy who's trying to like save face. And the reason that he might pull it off is because of what that we just saw in that montage, people from Fox News and Newsmax, whose job is to lick around his undercarriage, period.

Trump and his fans have also argued that pollsters cannot be trusted when it comes to his 100-day polling because they have traditionally underestimated his support in presidential elections. This morning, Harrington broke down why the numbers don't support that argument. Let's watch. A lot of Trump advocates, including Trump himself, has argued that because the polls were off in 24, quote unquote. You can't trust the polls now. That is a line of BS. That is a scientific term for it is BS. What am I talking about here? Well, let's just talk about Trump's average net approval rating. I average across five recent national polls among registered voters,

so we're talking voters here, not adults. Currently he's averaging, get this. Minus 12 points, way underwater. But okay, let's say the polls are off like they were in 2024. What would his net approval rating be? Well, it's pretty gosh darn similar. It's minus 10 points. He's still way underwater, historically low for a president, only basically matching himself last time around, way below where Joe Biden was, way below where Barack Obama was, way below where George W. Bush was at this point in their presidency. And that is because the national polls, although they underestimated Trump in 2024, they only underestimated his margin by about two points. So we give him the two points here, and he's still swung with the fissures, way underwater, no matter what way you put it,

at least if we apply the polls being off like they were in 2024. Brett, before I bring you back in here, I want to go over one more poll that PBS released yesterday. 45% of U.S. adults rated Trump's return to the overall Oval Office and F, including 80% of Democrats and 49% of independence. At the other extreme, 23% of Americans, including 54% of Republicans, gave the president an A. About half of U.S. adults say Trump's second term has had a mostly negative effect on their line. and a majority believe he is rushing to make changes without considering the effects of his actions. Rushing to make changes without considering the effects, Brett. That doesn't sound like Donald Trump.

This is so difficult, right? Because, like, obviously that's what he's doing. But there is this thing about America where after, like, the way I would describe it is, like, we want someone to do something, but we also don't want anyone to do anything. I, oh, this people in there right now, it's just like a general dynamic. Ah, the bums we got in Washington, they don't do anything. And we need someone who's an outsider come in and do something. And no matter who it is, the new regime comes in.

And as soon as they start doing anything, and frift, you know, often before they do anything, people are like, ah, these guys are bums too. So there's always that. And that presents itself in such ways as, you know, If the incoming party, if the incoming president has a majority in Congress, odds are by the end of the second year, when they have the midterm elections, they'll lose seats. That's just how it happens. Because it's easier to run against someone who's in office when it's a, you know, they just give you more, like throw this person out in a swing district, basically. That's just kind of how it ends up working. But like, what's a difficult part for me is like when you're when you're fighting against it in the internet's like we are right now, there's people that might just luck into like a position where it seems like they were right even though they didn't do anything. Like if you like in the wake of Trump's win, you go in there, you're like, I just want to find out what people that support Trump were thinking and there's always going to be a downslash.

And there's people on the other side who are like, Trump was an idiot this whole time and he's evil and sucks. And those people like maybe they're, they didn't get through to anybody, but they're right that Trump is getting punched in the face. And like I'm trying to figure out why people would still hang around with Trump and read the tea leaves on this. But like in the meantime,

he is absolutely screwing himself over by making such horrible decisions. I know there was a lot. I hope it made sense. It did. It all made sense. But what doesn't make sense is Trump's insistence that Kilmar, Grego Garcia's finger tattoos are real. So we were going to talk about that after the break. Stick around. You won't want to miss it.

Welcome back. Young Turks. I'm Jordan Yule, joined by the gorgeous Brett Ehrlich. Let's get into our next story. It's a doozy. Take a look at this. When we ask about one man and one court order, Kilmar Abrago Garcia. You'll pick out one man, but even the man that you picked out, he's got a key said he wasn't a member of a gang. And then they looked and on his knuckles, he had MS-13. There's a dispute. But wait a minute, wait a minute, he had MS-13 on his knuckles tattoo. He had some tattoos that are interpreted that way. But let's move on.

Wait a minute. Hey, Terry, Terry. Terry. He did not have the letter MS-1-3. It says MS-13. That was Photoshop. During an interview with ABC's Terry Moran last night, Donald Trump repeatedly insisted that wrongfully deported Kilmar Obrigo-Garcia

literally had MS-13 tattooed on his fingers. We're going to show you more of him doubling and even tripling down during that exchange. But for context, he was referring to a a very clearly, digitally altered photograph of Abrago Garcia's hand. He posted this photo to his social media accounts weeks ago. You can see that someone has photoshopped MS1 and 3 above the man's actual tattoos of marijuana, a smiley face, a cross, and a skull. Whether his real tattoos have any significance or ties to MS-13 has been debated.

But what's not debated is the photo that Trump posted was photoshopped. At least, it wasn't debated by anybody until last night when Trump went on ABC and made that case. Take a look. It says MS-1-3. That was Photoshop. So let me- That was Photoshop. Terry, you can't do that.

Hey, they're giving you the big break of a lifetime. You know, you're doing the interview. I picked you because, frankly, I never heard of you, but that's okay. I picked you, Terry, but you're not being very nice. He had MS-13 tattoos. We'll agree to disagree. I want to move on to something else. Kerry, do you want to show you the picture?

I saw the picture. And you think it was Photoshop. Here we go, here we go. Don't Photoshop it. Go look at his hand. He had M.S. 13. He did have tattoos that can be interpreted that way. I'm not an expert on them.

I want to turn to Ukraine. Okay, we're turning to Ukraine. Let's see. No, no. No, no. He had M.S. As clear as you can be, not in terms. can be not interpreted this is why people no longer believe well the news because when he was

photographed in el salvador they aren't there but let's just go they aren't there when he's in oh oh they weren't there now right no but they're in your picture terry ukraine sir he's got ms 13 on his knuckles all right okay we'll take a look it's you do such a disservice we'll take a look why don't you just say it yes he does and you know go on to something else it's contested But it's a good way to wrap up that conversation, but it's not really contested. Photos of Kilmar with his family, as well as photos taken in El Salvador with Senator Chris Van Hollen show there is no MS-13 on his fingers. Brett, oh my God. It's just like, it's a train wreck.

You just wanted to end. Just like, I don't even like the guy, but I wanted to end on his behalf. Presidents of United States, does it know? Like, I looked at that photo and was like, why would this guy get a beautiful skull tattoo and a really cool smiley face and the most photorealistic marijuana leaf on his knuckles possible? And then go get the Tahoma standard sans serif font MS-13 over top of it. Look at anyone else with MS-13 tattoos in the thoroughly terrifying videos that they play. Not because these guys are terrifying, although I'm sure many of them are. But like Trump at his rally the other day played this video where they were all just getting dog walked and shave it.

And the MS-13 is huge. Not a lot of code going on if you're an MS-13. You put like whatever Salvatrucha, you write the whole thing on your entire body. Donald Trump is like this is a, this thing that he posted, which was photoshopped. He thinks it's real. But of course he would. This is a guy who looks at an actual photo of a crowd size and sees that his is smaller than Barack Obama's, but then goes, nope, there's more people in this photo with fewer people in it.

This is a guy who was wrong about the path of a hurricane and pulled out a Sharpie to draw a fake path of a hurricane and clings to it to this day. He's so delusional and that's where it's like, I can't, how can anyone trust this guy? Even his defenders will look you dead in the eye and essentially tell you, listen, he's just lying. Don't, don't hate him. You should support him more because he's just like, Terry gave him an out, Jordan. Terry was like, let me do you a favor, sir. Let's move on to Ukraine, which you theoretically were supposed to fix 99 days ago. But he still was like, let's talk about this.

I wonder what's happening right now in the White House in the wake of this. Like, whose head is he tearing off? What was your take? I mean, it's just, it's incredible. Like, I didn't even think it was real. It was so embarrassing. Like, there's nobody in his circle. Nobody took the time to explain to him.

No, Mr. President, those aren't real. That's just showing you what is alleged about those tattoos and their meaning. And he sees labels and he's like, oh, wow, this guy, he's just, he's proclaiming it. He's leaning into it. And the conviction in his comments, like, no, you're, you're doing such a disservice. Admit it, like, good Lord, he doesn't even, after multiple attempts of this guy trying, like you're saying, give him an out, he still doesn't pick up on it. And look, you saw at the Correspondent Center this weekend, Alex Thompson, this isn't

a criticism about Alex Thompson at Politico or Axios wherever he is now, talking about how, look, the media dropped the ball. on Biden and his and his cognitive decline. They dropped the ball on that story. And people are pointing out, hey, if you want to make sure you don't do that again, now's your chance. And this is the perfect example of a type of incident that should raise red flags about somebody's cognitive ability. Because for all of us, everyone watching this, even people on the right, they knew that that was just Photoshopped so people could go in there so they could show, oh, well, this tattoo stands for the M, this tattoo stands for the S.

And it seems like the only person who thought that those were tattoos was Donald Trump. He's not well. I don't think this is delving into hysterics or some sort of like Trump derangement syndrome, whatever they want to call it on the right. Nobody should be, nobody in their right mind sees that and thinks that is a real tattoo. It's deeply troubling and fully alarming. I don't think he's in cognitive decline. I think he's an idiot. Like, he's stupid. Like, that is stupid. Like, and even if you see, like, I saw that thing. And I was like, oh, I guess it says MS-13.

Let me look. I don't trust Trump because he lies. Like, at his ride, his 100-day rally, he said, like, five, he basically said eggs were free. And, like, he won Michigan. Like, all three times he ran. He literally says that to this day. He's a liar. And he lies to, to serve his own purposes. I saw that first photo when he had that when it said MS-13 on his on his knuckles. And I did what everyone else did. I went and it was like, oh, are there any other photos this guy? Because that looks real weird. It looks so weird that like the M is not warped with his skin and the contours of his skin. And how come it's not centered with the rest of it?

Let me go find other photos. And there are other photos of him without that stuff going on. Like, and you don't even have to listen to me because if you listen to the Supreme Court, they said whether that's true or not. And for me, it's like, the guy might be in MS-13. I don't know. But what I do know is that the Supreme Court of the United States, one third of which was appointed by Donald Trump and has no reason, and has gone along with it, no reason to contradict him for any personal vendetta, and has gone along with him on some pretty horrible stuff. they nine to nothing were like, oh yeah, you got to bring that guy back.

Yeah, well, but Terry Moran, yeah, Terry Moran also pressed Donald Trump on the issue of due process when it comes to deportations. And Trump's answer made it clear he really couldn't care less about it. Take a look. Do you acknowledge that under our law, every single person who gets deported gets a hearing first to make their case? Well, are we talking about people that are citizens of our country or not? No, you're deporting citizens at this point. Well, let me ask you, did they get hearings when Biden allowed 21 million, because I think the number is 21, 20 million people to flow into our country.

They came from all over the world. They came from the Congo. They came from south. The law requires that every single person who is going to be deported gets a hearing first. Well, I'll have to ask the lawyers about that. If people come into our country illegally, there's a deal. different standard. These are illegal. They came in illegally. But they get due process. Well, they get a process where we have to get them out. Yeah.

Brett, does Donald Trump know what due process is? No. I was like, I was on Dr. Phil's channel yesterday because one of their shows is during this one. So I'm the only one who's like available to do it. And they had a guy who's like a Newsweek editor at large. And his entire approach to this is due process is just something people made up recently. And, you know, we really do need to rely. His friend was like, we need to rely on the Congress of the United States to help Donald Trump out here in a situation where the, the judiciary has lost its mind and has gotten a little uppity, essentially, which is crazy, because those are co-equal branches. And they will do everything possible. They will use a lot of words very

fast and try to shame you into thinking that you don't know what you don't even need to know because the Supreme Court told them that they need to bring this guy back because the Constitution protects us. In protecting them, it protects us. Because like all you're saying is like no one, there's very few people in America who are like, if someone comes in illegally, let them kill my family and take my job, take my job, please. God, take my job. No one's like that, right? And so what we want is a system where people like laws, it's fine. We'll follow them, a system that makes sure that the person you're sending to a Salvador in prison is actually in MS-13 or has actually done things that would, by the law,

mandate that they get remanded to that custody, especially at a time when there's a video the president of the United States sitting with the president of El Salvador and saying, hey, maybe you should build five more prisons so we can send the homegrown ones there, implying he has a plan to send people who are American citizens to El Salvador. Now, he lies about a lot of stuff, but he also has done some crazy stuff that has lost retirees much of their 401K, and he is setting his sights on Social Security. There are horrible things that he has done will do as overturned rovers. versus Wade. So I don't like being called unhinged and Trump deranged when I'm just playing it

the way I have to play it because this guy actually does, believe it or not, some of the stuff that he says. Yeah, it's a mess. And just one more thing on those tattoos, it's just for the the Photoshop. It's really remarkable that he is so susceptible to believing something like that. And it makes you wonder what else he might fall for. And when you're in a position like that, that's really dangerous. So if there are any Nigerian princes out there, here's your guy. Go. Go get up. We'll be back after this. We've got a good news story at a Columbia University. You won't want to miss it. Up here, and it's called memory. Everything's a computer.

All right, welcome back to the Young Turks. I'm Jordan Yule with the stunning Brett Erlich by my side. We've got some great news from Columbia University. Let's get into it. Take a look at this. I've always learned that home is where you feel safe and loved. And those who surround you there are your people and you are my people. For once, we actually have a good update. This morning, a judge ordered the release of Columbia University student motion Madawi after he was detained by ICE agents earlier this month for his involvement in pro-Palestinians. protests. On April 14th, Adawi, a legal resident in green cardholder, was arrested by immigration

officials during a scheduled appearance at an immigration office in Vermont for a naturalization interview. Secretary of State Marco Rubio justified his detention, saying his presence and activities in the United States would have serious adverse foreign policy consequences and would compromise a compelling U.S. foreign policy interest, according to the DHS notice. for Madawi to appear. In the government's opposition to releasing Madawi, it said that law enforcement records indicated that Madawi has admitted to being involved in and supporting anti-Semitic acts of violence and an interest in and facility with firearms for that purpose, according

to court documents reviewed by NBC News. Madawi helped lead the pro-Palestine movement at Columbia until last spring, which is when he shifted gears and started to focus on building bridges with Jewish and Israeli communities at the university. He's passionately spoken out against anti-Semitism in the past. During an interview, he was 60 minutes. He recalled that during a walkout on November 9th, one person was yelling death to Jews, and this is how he responded.

I was shocked. And I walked directly to that person and I told him, you don't represent us because this is not something that we agree with. And I took the megaphone and I gave a speech and I said, we hear are conscious, educated students and we know how to separate right from wrong. What this guy has said is clearly anti-Semitic against Jews. To be anti-Semitic is unjust. And the fight for the freedom of Palestine and the fight against anti-Semitism go hand in hand, because injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. But the Trump administration is still claiming he's anti-Semitic. The government included two exhibits with their filing, which have been

filed under seal. One of the exhibits, which NBC News has reviewed, is a 2015 report from the Windsor Police Department in Vermont, where a gun shop owner told officers that Madawi, supposedly told the owner that he used to build machine guns to kill Jews while he was in Palestine. Madawi recalled visiting the gun shop, but stated in his declaration, I am absolutely certain that I had never expressed the words the report falsely attributes to me in that exchange or ever. I am a peaceful person and would never express wanting to harm or kill anyone. I am heartbroken to have such appalling words which stand in complete contrast to my philosophy on life and spiritual beliefs misattributed to me. And the judge, thankfully, saw that. In his ruling, Judge Joffrey Crawford cited his extensive ties to the community.

He noted that the court had received more than 90 submissions from community members, academic experts, and professors who know Mr. Madawi. many of them Jewish, attesting to his character and consistently describing him as peaceful. Judge Crawford found Madawi did not pose a danger to the public and was not a flight risk, so he was released on bail. This isn't the end of the fight, as the immigration case against him will continue, but Madawi can fight it from outside the detention center. He is also allowed to attend Columbia's graduation next month. following his release,

Adelwe sent a message to the Trump administration from outside the courthouse. I'm saying it clear and loud to President Trump and its cabinet, I am not afraid of you. What we are witnessing now and what we're understanding is exactly what Dr. Martin Luther King has said before. Injustice anywhere

is a threat to justice everywhere. Keep in mind that, yes, you might think I am free, but my freedom is interlinked to the freedom of many other students, including Rameza, Oz Turk, and Mahmoud Khalil. We must stand up for humanity because the rest of the world, not only Palestine, is watching us. And what is going to happen in America is going to affect the rest of the world. So Brett, what do you make of his release? And I guess

some of these claims that the government is making, can we believe Rubio and the State Department on some of these claims? Well, regardless of whether you can believe, Ruby or not, there is a massive contingent of Trump acceptors, if not supporters, who are abandoning him over this issue. Period. There was this one amazing moment. I forget what it was specifically, but like the Joe Rogan and that crew are looking at this and being like, that's weird. I thought we were all like vaguely libertarian, free speech absolutist here. And you're arresting someone who protested, but like in a way that's way over the top. And the video doesn't look good. And the folks that are just like kind of casually observing this

are like, why would you do that? I thought the best ideas won. The counter argument that they make from the Trump side that I've seen that's pretty hilarious is like let's say that there was someone here on who's a legal resident green card holder and they started saying stuff like black lives don't matter and we should like kill all black people. The answer is like well, it's still a free speech thing. Like some of my favorite people to listen to are neo-Nazis because they're hilarious and they're horrible. And I think if they do something bad that's actually legally actionable, we should act on that. But if they're just being stupid. in public, like let them speak, they'll give you enough rope to hang themselves with.

And then also generally, like with protests, the smartest thing to do if you're the powerful group is to let them do it. Because protesters are loud and it's in the middle of a plaza and everybody kind of hates that because they got to walk through the plaza. And they're like, all right, enough with this, wrap it up and stop with the megaphone thing. Someone do something about this. But you end up typically hating the protester. But one thing that is, you know, that you shouldn't do, if you're Marco Rubio, is start arresting people in this way and making statements in this way. Even if you arrest them, you should write your statement and be like, all right, this is not, this is not what I thought it was. You're going in, it becomes public,

just how tenuous your claims are against someone and how widely refuted they are by people that that aren't one gun shop owner who apparently it seems wasn't accurate in his characterization of this person when you juxtapose that against people who actually knew the guy and have no identitarian reason to contradict him. Yeah, it is so blatantly unconstitutional the way they're going about this because any sort of limits on speech must be content neutral. And now you have them invoking national security, a bogus national security claim. What threat to national security does a college student having a protest on campus? Like what, what threat does that pose? What threat does Ms. Oztirk at Tufts University co-authoring an

op-ed a couple years ago? What threat does that pose to national security? And it's all a lie. As we talked about in other stories this hour, they're willing to lie about anything. But we, there's nothing about what they're claiming that we should believe or trust, because it is so patently bogus. And while this is a good development, his immigration status is still ultimately in jeopardy. And they may still try to deport him. It's good that he is not in a holding cell somewhere, but Mahmoud Khalil missed the birth of his child because of these policies. And like you're saying, Brett, even some of his biggest and most loud and prominent supporters can't even stomach this kind of stuff. And shockingly, on immigration at large or deportations at large, you're even

seeing people like Alex Jones who would defend anything Trump did. Watch him wrinkle his nose and his stomach turn over the potential deportation of citizens to El Salvador. These people are so brazen with what they're doing that some of these people can't even defend him anymore. And that to me is shocking. Yeah. And the optics are just so creepy. Like watching Trump's 100 days rally in Michigan, it was like a six-minute video of people getting their heads shaved because they were deported for, quote, being at MS-13, even though we have essentially the Supreme Court saying, like, bro, you just, you jump the gun on a lot of this. And it's really creepy that they want you to be like, look at these people that look different from me. We should

arrest them all and round them up and kick them out, put them on a train somewhere. Like, those are the scary things. Oh, this person disagrees with the powers that be. Let's lock him up and put him on a train somewhere. Like that stuff's horrifying. The only upside is it is America. We don't really have very fast trains. So you can probably catch it and get them back. Now, let's get into our last story. It's a, it's a funny one. Take a look at this. How would you like to see as Pope? As Pope? I'd like to be Pope. That would be my number one choice.

I don't know, I have no preference. I must say we have a Cardinal that happens to be out of a place called New York who's very good. Now, of course, Trump was probably joking about one. wanting to be Pope. And while we wouldn't put it past him, Senator Lindsey Graham weighed in, urging the Cardinals to put the con in conclave. In response to that video, thank you. In response of that video, Graham posted on X, I was excited to hear that President Trump is open to the idea of being the next pope. This would truly be a dark horse candidate, but I would ask the papal conclave and Catholic faithful to keep an open mind about this possibility. The first pope, hyphen U.S. President combination has many upsides, watching for white smoke.

Graham, too, in fairness, may have been joking, but that didn't stop people from taking shots at him for his typical Trump bootlicking. DNC Vice Chair Malcolm Kenyatta said, can we send a rescue party? I've never seen a person so far up someone's. Another person on X posted, I legitimately do not understand. of some kind of humiliation kink, how you could possibly type those words. Do you not have an ounce of pride? Brett, is Lindsey Graham joking? And what do you want to see Pope slash President Trump do during his first 100 days in the Vatican? Oh my God. Well, I would say that Trump in his first

100 days of the Vatican should root out sex traffickers, but then again, he did just import some from Romania. I'm glad I can't remember that guy's name. What's his name? The fighter guy? Andrew Tate. Andrew Tate. Speaking of Taint, Lindsey Graham, riding Trumps. They, neither of you could be Pope, you baptists, you non-denominational Christian. You're not in that, cut of the Venn diagram where you get to be one because you have to be Catholic. There are rules. Donald, there are rules. You got to be, you got to support Cathal. Trump himself used to be Presbyterian, now is non-denominational Christian. According to the quick Wikipedia search I did on South Carolidian Lindsay Graham, he is Baptist.

But I don't think anyone's serious here, but like the default setting of Trump is like, why not say that you want to do it? And if they give it to you, then you were serious. And if they don't give it to you, then you were joking. But I think the one thing, whether Lindsey Graham was kidding or not. And I do think he's kidding. The one truth is he's not funny. And that is sad. He's like, I'm right on, buddy. Right on Bucco. And the only thing that's true about this story is that Lindsay Graham absolutely has a humiliation kink. Are you kidding me? What do you think? If it was like most other Republicans, it would be clear and obvious that it's just a joke. And while I do think that this was a joke from Lindsey Graham, it fits so perfectly

with how he responds to anything else that Trump does, it does raise like. a flat like he's I'm not a hundred percent sure only because it's him and it's so typical of how no stop stop stop John does this too stop that's a joke stop it's a joke it's a joke but everything else holds true like we we sound weird when we're like Trump put his hat in the ring to be Pope of the United Catholics he did not do that. Lindsay Graham, oh, is he kidding? I don't know. The answer is very simply. He was absolutely kidding. But you're right to point. I agree with you to point out the like, he's always like dominant strategying this thing to be like, I'm I can say I'm definitely kidding, but I know this

also makes Donald feel good and maybe he'll rub my belly a little bit. And he won't hate me after I said that all the horrible stuff I said about him, that he has not earned the right to have me go back on my promise, on my calling Trump like an evil villain or whatever he called him. The only reason that Lindsey Graham has said anything nice about Trump literally ever is because Lindsay got cucked into submission, so to speak. Yeah. Well, despite all the bootlicking, despite all the ass kissing, Lindsay Graham seemingly has never gotten anything in return from Trump, which really feeds into the humiliation kink accusation. Just, For what? What is this all for? He doesn't love you. He doesn't love you back, man. It's just,

I'll never understand it. Right. But if he hates you, then your life's hell. That's the answer. I guess. And he's not going to do, right, he's not going to do anything good for you. But he can be like, we need a new senator in this great state of South Carolina, one with a wife or some weird crap like that. we're going further i mean trump would say something like that he's sure obviously never mind continue brett thank you so much for joining me today we've got a great second hour uh john and yaz are here stick around you don't want to miss it as i see some young very good looking children