The Young Turks - Turning Tides

Episode Date: November 15, 2022

Republicans are protesting outside of Arizona’s elections offices after a Democratic win. The once loyal Mo Brooks is urging his party to abandon Donald Trump. President Biden says there will be no “New Cold War” after he speaks with China’s Xi. Police encounters declined after LAPD creates new boundaries on stopping drivers. Host: Ana Kasparian, Cenk Uygur Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. 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. Woo! It's up! All right, welcome to the Young Turks, Jake U Granite with you guys, amazing show ahead for you guys. You know how we're talking about Joe Biden became dark Brandon, right?

But weirdly America became light America after the midterm elections. With things have gotten better and better and better news as we go along, it's a little weird. It's a little unsettling. But don't worry, we still have some bad news. So we'll give you the good, the bad and ugly, as we usually do. So, Casper, take it away. Well, let's take a little trip to Arizona and start. with this.

This is just an embarrassment, and the people of Arizona are sick and tired of elections being run like we're in some banana republic. I have very little faith in some of the people that are operating that, that Maricopa County elections, I think they're incompetent. Carrie Lake is not happy with how the gubernatorial race in Arizona is going. She's the Republican candidate in that race, and it appears that her Democratic opponent, the current secretary of state of Arizona, Katie Hobbs, has a narrow lead in this election and appears to be poised to win, although let's be cautiously optimistic on that. Now, the race

is still too close to call, and there are still around 160,000 ballots that need to be counted. But the good news is Katie Hobbs is up by 26,000 votes. Now, most of the votes left to count are, in fact, in Maricopa County, where Lake is not doing well. Lake is losing Maricopa County 52 to 48% so far. There are still some ballots that need to be counted in that county. So I just want to give you some caution on that front. Hobbs also dominated in Pima County over the weekend. And that further offset some of Kerry Lakes wins in Maricopa County.

Now, you heard Lake begin the widespread voter fraud, you know, framing, just kind of set the tone as she gets closer and closer to outright losing this election. But Trump weighed in on the matter as well as he does. He says, quote, I assume everyone is watching Arizona as the Great Kerry Lake's easy election win is slowly, yet systematically being drained away from her and from the American people. This is a very sad thing to watch. Mail in ballots, long election counts, many day elections, machines that very few people understand, massive counting centers, and more are an American disaster. Our elections have become an unreliable joke and the whole world is watching. And that, of course, sparks some protests near the Maricopa County area. So many of those protesters showed up, about 100, actually, to be specific over the weekend.

Many in the group of protesters echoed Trump's unfounded claims that he lost the 2020 election due to voter fraud as they called for the military to intervene in Arizona's election. Some also made baseless claims that the Biden government was targeting Trump supporters with one unidentified man on a megaphone asking the group to pray for people who are being tortured in cages in D.C. right now, who were. tight, I'm sorry, who were right here with us two years ago, and of course he's referring to the Capitol Hill rioters who were later arrested because of the rioting they engaged in. Now, there has been some investigation into some of the issues in Arizona, and there have

been some issues. But based on what these investigations have shown, everyone who wanted to vote was able to vote and was able to cast their ballots. I'll give you the details on an analysis that the Washington posted on that in just a minute. But before I do, I want to turn to Bill Gates, who's the chairman of the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors. He is a Republican, and in regard to claims of voter fraud or irregularities or anything that would throw the election to Katie Hobbs' position, you know, position, he wants to dispel the notion that any of that is going on. Let's watch. I understand that Kerry Lake wants us to move quickly, and a lot of people do. But you know what's more important is that this has done.

accurately. That is the focus. And that, you know, like for all of these mail-in ballots, that those are signature verified. This is very important to me as an elected official that only eligible people, only eligible votes are counted. I would think that Carrie Lake would be interested in that as well. That's something that I ran on on the board of supervisors. I support ID at the polls. And all those things, they might take a little bit more time. But it ensures, that only those eligible people are voting. There are Republicans and Democratic eyes on everything through the process. And I actually know this from personal experience because before I was elected to the Board of

Supervisors, I actually used to be a Republican lawyer who would come down here and observe this. Back in the 2006 race, it was a close congressional race between J.D. Hayworth and Harry Mitchell. I was down here for days after Election Day. So there you have it. The Maricopa County Board of Supervisors Chair, Bill Gates, he is a Republican and he's saying there's nothing fishy going on. In fact, we're ensuring that everyone who's eligible to vote, who wants to vote, is able to vote. And, you know, he talks about the process there. But, you know, Kerry Lake is nominated, was chosen by Donald

Trump to run in this gubernatorial race. It doesn't surprise me that if she loses and as she's losing right now, she's going to throw around claims of election fraud. To which I say, of course. Of course she is. So the process of putting in all those chips through the 5G network has really added some weight to Bill Gates, but at least his eyesight obviously got better because he doesn't need the glasses anymore. So I just want to note that for the record. No, not that Bill Gates. Different Bill Gates. Oh, okay. All right, anyways, On to serious stuff. So Trump listed a bunch of things.

Let me just go through them real quick. He said long election counts. Well, I have personal experience with that. I have an excellent personal experience. I ran in an election now two and a half years ago. They're still counting it. Only 76% of the district reported. Okay, now, does that mean that the fix was in and I'm no way?

We don't accept it. We have a mini revolution in the 25th, now 27th district. District of California? Maybe. No, no. It depends on the situation. Now, how much did you lose by? Could you make up the votes?

Why is there a long count, et cetera? So you can have a terrible, like the, some states are great at counting. Funny enough, I mean, it's deeply ironic after 2000, but Florida is really good at counting, okay? They really are. Yeah. I mean, you know their results almost right away. Yeah, and that was true before Ronda Santis. In fact, his election, the first election, the first,

one where he barely won against Andrew Gillum was a very well run election. And I hate to say that because it was Republicans running it, but good on them. Great, wonderful. So we're fair and honest about it, etc. California takes forever and ever and is absurd with the longer election camps. But that doesn't mean that they're taking all that time to cheat. Right. That's a completely different thing.

And like with right wingers, their inability to like do nuances just stunning. So for example, a lot of people will say, oh yeah, how about Hillary Clinton? She was also a sore loser. No, no, those are two separate things. Hillary Clinton arguably was a sore loser, but she said, oh, the reason I lost is because of XYZ. She didn't say, I didn't lose. Trump is not really the president. I'm actually the president. And you should storm the capital and try to remove him by force. Right. Giant difference. It's not even really, you can't even almost call it nuance is such a big difference. But the Republican mind has. a difficult time grasping it.

They're like, what, it's the same thing, isn't it? No, it's not at all the same thing. So, and I was against Hillary Clinton, and I'm against Donald Trump. So I'm unbiased in that regard. And so now he says, machines that are hard to understand. Well, maybe for you. Exactly, that's exactly what I was going to say, because for Trump, everything's hard to understand.

He doesn't, as we're going to show you later in the show, he doesn't understand anything about the law, the Constitution. Who knew healthcare would be this complicated? He literally said that. Everyone knew except you, you moron. Anyway, and then finally, massive county centers, he says it's a problem. What does that mean? Yeah, do you want them to be smaller?

But then you'd have to have to have more of them because you have to count the votes no matter one. There's a lot of votes. So massive counting centers are a problem because of why? Why would that be a problem? He's just so honestly unintelligent. The fact that people take him seriously is one of the most depressing things about America. I just think these counting centers might be too big to fail, Jake. They're just too big to fail.

No, I know. He's he is reeling right now. The Republican Party has turned on him. Some of his closest allies have turned on him. We're gonna talk about Mo Brooks, who ran for Senate and had his endorsement taken away from Trump. Later on, he ended up losing that Senate race. But nonetheless, the party seems to be furious at the fact that they performed so poorly during the midterm elections, especially against a Democratic president who is not popular.

Let's just keep it real. So Trump doesn't like being blamed, even though he certainly deserves the blame. And we'll get to more details about all of that in just a bit. But I think it's also important to debunk one of the biggest lies that we're hearing from Cary Lake at all about how there were issues at some of these polling places. And these polling places tend to be in areas that are heavily Republican. So there's something fishy going on. But fact of the matter is the polling places that did have some issues are not overwhelmingly

Republican areas. And the Washington Post did an analysis on this that I think is telling. So let's talk about that. As they write, the voting locations that experience problems on election day in Maricopa County, home to more than half of Arizona's voters, do not skew overwhelmingly Republican. The finding undercuts claims by some Republicans, most notably Kerry Lake, the GOP nominee for governor, and former President Donald Trump, that GOP areas in the county were disproportionately affected by the problems, which involved a mishap with printers.

So basically what happened with the printers was they were printing the ballots with ink that was too light to read. So individuals who were impacted by this were told of the problem and they were able to vote and fix the error. Now starting on election day printers at 70 of the county's 223 polling sites produced ballots with ink that was too light to be read by vote counting machines which caused ballots to be rejected. That forced voters to either wait in line, travel to another location or deposit their ballots in secure boxes that were transferred to downtown Phoenix and counted there. County officials say no one was denied the right to vote. And just to kind of break down the notion that these voting centers were in predominantly Republican parts of Maricopa

County, that's not true. The proportion of registered Republicans in affected precincts about 37% is virtually the same as the share of registered Republicans across the county, which stands at 35%. In fact, there were actually problems at locations and precincts that skew heavily Democratic. Of course. They included two elementary schools in East Phoenix and a health center in South Phoenix. All locations where the share of Democrats outnumber Republicans by about 40 percentage points. Yeah. Yeah. So look, the right is, and Kerry Lake and Donald Trump being the biggest problem here, most spectacular examples, they never bothered to give you real evidence or facts to back up what they're saying.

So for example, I don't think Secretary of State should oversee their own elections. So that means Katie Hobbs in this race should not have overseen the governor's race, in my opinion. Even though she's a Democrat, I think it's a bad idea. Okay? Now, I also think it's a bad idea when Republican Secretary of States oversee their own elections like Brian Kemp in Georgia. That's right. So we are pretty much the only show you'll ever find that's fair about that. Well, MSNBC will say, of course Katie Hobbs should do it, but Brian Kemp shouldn't. Fox News will say the exact opposite, right? So but then when you talk about why they shouldn't oversee their own elections, then you have to come with evidence as to the

problems. So for example, Brian Kemp did voter purchase. Not this time around, although he did do it this time around too, but it's pretty spectacularly the first time around when he want a razor thin victory over Cacey Abrams. And those voter purges probably very, very likely made the difference in his own victory. That's outrageous, right? Whereas with Katie Hobbs, they're just like, well, she's in place and she shouldn't be. And it looks like the Democratic districts were more discriminated against than the Republican districts, as always.

So we have no evidence, but we're just gonna yap anyway. Yeah. which is right wing 101. And then finally that gets to the other point that I wanted to make, which is that when you have the voter purchase like that Kemp did, the Democrats go justifiably going nuts and go, this is outrageous, right? But nothing ever comes of it. But when you have like the tiniest little issue in a Republican area,

oh my God, the toner cartridge was a little low. It didn't actually affect anybody's votes, right? Right. But it in came me is some Republicans. They're like, oh my God. And it's a federal case and everybody's like, should we do something? Should we not do something? It'll goes all the way up to the ex-president. And it becomes like this national issue. Should we address it? Whereas the voter purchase continue unabated. Nobody's ever done anything about it. And those are legitimate voters, not all of them, but a lot of them are legitimate voters that they're just dumping off the voter rules. And then when they go to vote, they can. Right. And not a peep about fixing that.

No, you're exactly right about that. And, you know, someone had responded to, like, over the weekend we learned that Democrats will continue to control the Senate. Slim majority, as always, but nonetheless, they still have control of the Senate. And there was some commenter on Twitter who was losing his mind about it, claiming that there was widespread voter fraud, of course. And someone responded to him with, I think, the best line that I wish all politicians would keep in mind when they feel the temptation to weigh. to weigh in on alleged election fraud that they have no proof of. Lose with dignity. Just lose with dignity, okay?

It's just, it's ridiculous that we're going to keep going through this process over and over again as Republicans lose. You know, the other thing that I want to kind of look into as the dust settles is, you know, a lot of these elections were very close. And I'm wondering how much of an impact people who die. from COVID has had on these races. I'm talking about specifically the close races. That is an excellent point.

That's a point we made before the elections, but I forgot about it. Yeah. And you're right. It could, guys, we've shown you some evidence before. We'll bring it back for you guys and probably do another story about it at a later time, where the number of people that died in red states that would not have died if they had the same policies as the blue states. And that number is significant. And so it's in the tens of thousands in some of these states.

It could make all the difference. That could make all the difference in Arizona. It could make the difference. It might have made the difference in the Nevada Senate seat. It could certainly have made the difference in Georgia. So their policies killed their own voters. And oops, now it might be affecting them. And the other thing I'll say is Republicans are their own.

worst enemy because I like voting by mail because I don't want to risk waiting till like election day and dealing with a length. I got to work, right? So if there's a super lengthy line, I don't know if I don't make it, I don't make it. So I don't risk it. I do my mail in ballot. Whereas Republican voters are told over and over again that there are all these issues of mail in ballots. Don't vote by mail. Make sure you show up on election day, vote in person. Okay, but that might actually end up discouraging people from voting because, for instance, in California, it was raining on election day as we so, you know, we shared with the audience that day. There are some people who don't want to go out to their voting place when it's raining. If there's a long line, they might be deterred by that.

So they keep shooting themselves in the foot with these terrible, terrible narratives that again, work against them when for some reason they think it's working to their favor. Last two things. One is it's not just red states versus blue states. In purple states, the ones that matter the most, Republicans did not get vaccinated at a much higher rate than Democrats. And they wound up dying at a higher percentage. And all these plagues were all started by Trump. So Trump didn't just cost them the election by being so radical and insane that some Republicans and independents didn't want to vote for people that were backing him. But he also caused him the election because of COVID and because of his. tirade against mail-in ballots. So he was just a perfect storm to totally screw over the Republican Party. But of course, that's not going to stop them from thinking about nominating him again for president. But that's why they're also going to have a giant civil war within the Republican Party to try to stop that. Because he's in essence a political suicide bomber. Listen, if that civil war happens within the Republican Party as opposed to among the American people,

I'm here for it. Do you booze? Do whatever you got to do. Just keep that whole civil war talk outside of the context of the entire country. Yeah, 100%. And in fact, Democrats, as we all know, are not very effective fighters. So if anybody's going to take down Donald Trump, it is likely other Republicans. So that's why we look forward to that in a couple of different ways and to save our democracy. We're going to take a break. When we come back, one Republican is speaking out against Donald Trump pretty aggressively, especially now that he's lost his bid for the United States Senate, we've got that story more coming right up. Of course, just join your awesome George forward.

All right. Well, following the Republicans' poor performance in the midterm elections, the nails come out, and Representative Mo Brooks, who did not win his bid for the United States Senate, is speaking out against Donald Trump, blaming him for the massive Republican losses. He told AL.com, quote, it would be a bad mistake for Republicans. to have Donald Trump as their nominee in 2024. Look, let's just pause for a second. Because there seems to be this disconnect among the Republican establishment,

meaning political leaders within the Republican Party, versus the Republican base, meaning the voters. It's not that the establishment gets to choose who the Republican nominee is. It's up to the voters to make that decision. So I just want to make that clear because it seems like the way Republican politicians have been talking about the possibility of Trump being a nominee in 2024 is like, we got to put a stop to it. Well, you can't. You can't put a stop to it. Let me give you the rest of his comment. He says, quote, Donald Trump has proven himself to be dishonest,

disloyal, incompetent, crude, and a lot of other things that alienate so many independents and Republicans. Even a candidate who campaigns from his basement can beat him, he claims. Now remember, Mo Brooks was a Trump loyalist. He gave a speech right before Trump's rally on January 6th. He repeated some of the election lies that Trump was spewing following the 2020 presidential election. But later, when Trump asked Mo Brooks to get more involved in overturning the results of the election, Brooks wanted the country to move on. That's when Trump, Trump kind of lost his love for Brooks, and at that point, Donald Trump decided to snatch his endorsement of Mo Brooks in his Senate bid away from him, and I don't know how much of a

difference it made, but as you can tell, Brooks has lost his bid for the United States Senate. Now, earlier this year, Brooks said Trump had been asking him to rescind the 2020 election result to remove Biden from office and return him to power, meaning returned Trump to power. Brooks said he told Trump that no provision in the Constitution would allow that. Trump threw a fit and withdrew his endorsement, claiming the far right lawmaker had gone woke. Okay. So Mo Brooks is a really interesting cat. Is he? So Lauren Windsor got taped one of his campaign stops where he explained in great detail,

and actually explained it perfectly, how corruption in D.C. works. And he explained how you have to have about a million dollars from a corporation to buy a chairmanship in the House and the Senate. And then you owe that corporation and you must give whatever they want. And he literally said it's a quit pro quo. I've never seen a better explanation of bribery and corruption in America than what Mo Brooks gave. But the funny thing about Mo Brooks is he's only honest when it's the last resort.

He gave that speech at a campaign event when Trump had already pulled. pulled his endorsement and Mo Brooks's numbers had then nose dived and it did make a difference. There's no question it made a difference. And Tommy Timberville had taken the lead. And then when Mo Brooks started being honest and giving speeches like that, he actually climbed back up and got competitive and barely lost, okay, without Trump, interestingly. And here, up until Trump asked him to rescind the election, which is not a thing, he was kissing Trump's ass 24-7.

Oh, Trump is the best. great, let's start a revolution for him, let's go to the Capitol, let's destroy democracy. Who cares? Let's burn it all down. And then all of a sudden, Trump asked him for a thing that he literally physically cannot do. It's impossible. And he says, I'm sorry that, Mr. President, I can't fly. I wish I could, but I have no wings. And Trump's like, that's it, you're awoke. And then at that point, Mo Brooks turns to honesty again and says, oh, he's crude, disloyal, dishonest, and incompetent. But Mo, you already knew all that. You were just lying about it before.

I've got no love for Mo Brooks, obviously no love for Trump. I think they're both trash, just keeping it real. Mo Brooks had no problem enabling Donald Trump when he felt that it was suitable for him and his political career. And now that he's got nothing to lose, oh wow, look at Mo Brooks being super honest about what he really feels toward Donald Trump. It's gross. And remember, when Mo Brooks was campaigning, even after Trump snatched that endorsement from him,

he was pretending like Trump still endorsed him, right? Like they were still buddies. I mean, why were you so desperate to latch on to that endorsement to a guy that you just described as crude, as dishonest, disloyal, incompetent? I mean, it seemed like you wanted that endorsement from an incompetent buffoon so, so badly, Mo Brooks. And this is the problem I have with politicians, not just Republican politicians. I see this on both sides of the aisle.

Self-interested, narcissistic, egomaniacs who couldn't care less about their constituents, they only care about political power so they can enrich themselves. So I'm glad Mo Brooks lost. He deserved it. And I'm glad Donald Trump lost. He certainly deserved it. 100%. And the last thing is Trump's such a dumb dumb. There is no such thing as rescinding an election. It's not a thing that even exists. It's like, hey, you can say Mike Pence had a ceremonial role and so he can't actually say Donald Trump won like Donald Trump wanted him to. But at least he had a role where he gavled something in and he could have said a bunch of lies and confused people. So there was like a quarter of a process for that. For rescinding an election,

that's not in any law, it's not on the Constitution. Even if you wanted to, how would you do it? because it doesn't exist. But he's so stupid that he doesn't realize that. He doesn't realize you need a law to be able to do something like that. Guys, do you understand how pathetic that is? And then he gets mad at Mo Brooks and throws him under a bus, even though Mo Brooks was one of his top allies. He gave his speech on January 6th. He told people to go to the Capitol.

It doesn't get any more of an ally than Mo Brooks. And he's like, because you won't do a thing that doesn't exist. I'm going to call you woke now. I'm going to take back my endorsement. Just one of the dumbest people that has existed in the United States of America. My read on it's a little bit different, Jank. When has a law or a lack of law stopped him before? Right?

It's not about being stupid. He knows. No, no, it's both because he knows that what he's asking to do is wrong. No, he knows that. Right, because he remember he told Mike Pence, you're too honest. So he knows he's lying, et cetera. But Anna, if you wanted Mo Brooks and the others to put you back into the White House, despite the laws, despite the Constitution, et cetera, you'd have to come up with a plan.

You'd have to say do X, then Y, then Z. Maybe it's tanks, maybe it's this, maybe it's that. But you can't just say, like, put me back in and not tell them how, and it doesn't exist. And they get mad at them for doing a thing they literally cannot do. So he's like, it's like saying, hey, Mo Brooks, why don't you press the nuclear button? I know, I know, but he doesn't have access to the nuclear button. You're thinking about this from the mindset of someone who didn't have a silver spoon shoved down his throat his entire life. Okay, so he's used to telling people to do the impossible for him, they carry it out, and he's furious that for the first time in his life, people told him no.

And so that's the, that's the reaction that you're seeing from Trump when he has all this backlash toward people. have been loyalist to him since day one. All right, we got to move on. I want to do some international news here. Some potentially good news from China, believe it or not, let's do it. Do you believe China is preparing and intending to invade Taiwan at some point? And what warnings did you issue the President Xi if he would take such action? Well, to answer your first part of your question, I absolutely believe there may not be a new Cold War.

There you have it, you have President Joe Biden discussing his meeting with China's president Xi Jinping, and he has a simple yet important message for the American people, a message that I was hoping we would hear from Biden. I absolutely believe there is, there need not be a new cold war. Let me read that again. I absolutely believe there need not be a new cold war. Now, this was following a three hour long meeting that President Biden had with the president of China, and it was the first time they met in person since Biden was elected as president of the United States. Both presidents luckily stressed in their opening remarks the importance of face to face diplomacy. Yes, more of that, please, and expressed hope that they could get the U.S. China

relationship back on track in a more diplomatic way. Now, this was, again, the first time that they met. They've had five phone calls ever since Biden was elected. The last time they met in person was actually in 2017. Now, this message of diplomacy is certainly a well. welcome message, considering the brewing tensions between the two global powers. Biden said he did not believe a Chinese attack on Taiwan was imminent. While Xi had recently consolidated power in China, Biden said that, quote, I didn't find him more confrontational or conciliatory. I found him the way he's always been direct and straightforward. And we have a few more details from Biden in regard to his meeting with

China's president. Let's watch. It was clear. He was clear and I was clear. It will defend American interest and values, promote universal human rights and stand up for the international order and work in lockstep with our allies and partners. We're going to compete vigorously.

But I'm not looking for conflict. I'm looking to manage this competition and responsible. And I want to make sure, make sure that every country abide by the international rules of the road. We discussed that. One China policy, our one China policy has not changed, has not changed. We oppose unilateral changing the status quo by either side and were committed to maintaining

the peace and stability in Taiwan states. It was also clear that China and the United States should be able to work together where we can to solve global challenges and require every nation to do its part. So just two more statements, one from Biden, the other from President Xi, Biden says, the world expects, I believe, the United States and China to play a key role in global challenges from climate change to food insecurity and for us to be able to work together, the United States stands ready to do just that. Now, I'm going to explain why I believe this message of diplomacy is sprouting from the

meeting that he had with the president of China. But first, here's a statement from President Xi. He says, China-U.S. relations currently face a situation that is not in the interest of the two countries. their peoples or the expectations of the international community. As the leaders of China and the United States, we must take the helm and steer the bilateral relationship in the right direction. So what is the motivating factor behind this diplomacy? Honestly, I think it's because of the investments U.S. business interests have made in China.

I'll give you more details into that in just a moment. But nonetheless, I think the message of diplomacy is a good one and a welcome one, Jank. I actually think Joe Biden's done a pretty good job with foreign policy, maybe even excellent. So he withdrew from Afghanistan, despite the entire establishment not wanting to leave. They pummeled him for withdrawing, but that was definitely the right move. No one gives him credit for that. They should give him a ton of credit for it. Number two, the Ukraine war so far has been handled brilliantly, in my opinion.

He's gathered up all the allies. They're on our side. Russia's reeling, yet we have not had too many downside suit other than what was inevitable with the gas prices going up. That was just the nature of the war, and he had nothing to do with it. In this case with Xi, I think he's striking the right tone. He's not being overly conciliatory, but at the same time, he is not needlessly antagonistic. Pelosi did not do a good job. And when she went to Taiwan, it wound up creating more

hostility. And Biden is now bringing that down, which is the exact right thing. And we need to be able to be firm with China while still facilitating trade. And the more trade that we do, the less likely we are to have a physical conflict because that will stop the trade and hurt both economies. And China knows that. So so far, I would say really good work by Biden on this Yeah, I think this meeting was an important one, and I'm happy with the Biden's messaging following the meeting, right? The thing with Biden is sometimes when he speaks off the cuff, without thinking ahead of time, without thinking before he speaks, he says things that could actually lead to more

tensions, and that has happened with China before, where he made it seem like we were could invade China if it invaded Taiwan, for instance. In this case, he is being conciliatory while also noting that the United States is against the one China policy, which of course China wants to have control over Taiwan and the United States is against that. But I think a lot of this diplomatic talk does stem from the fact that we are still, like our economies are intertwined, we still rely heavily on China for trade, as you mentioned earlier. And Janet Yellen, who's the secretary of the treasury, actually just gave the whole

game away, in my opinion, with her comment. So let me give you her statement. She says this. The meeting today is intended to stabilize the relationship between the United States and China and to create a more certain atmosphere for U.S. businesses so they understand what to expect. And then she says later, quote, we want a more secure and more resilient supply chain, But certainly over a wide range of commercial activities and U.S. firms doing business in China, that's certainly not something that we are intending to hamper, right? So I think, again, U.S. business interests being heavily invested in China has a lot to do with the more diplomatic tone following this meeting, but I don't care.

Like, diplomacy is the way to go. We don't want another Cold War. And I think it's important for Biden to say that. And he did say that clearly. So last thing on this is, look, Joe Biden serves the corporate world pretty much 100%. So that's our issue with him. So you heard me giving him credit on foreign policy, on domestic policy. That's why he never passed anything that really winds up helping you guys.

If it does, the first giant corporations get the money and then maybe it trickles down to you. That's neoliberal policies 101. So, but in this case, it's terrible when they let the corporations write our trade agreements and outsource all of our jobs. And Biden is in favor of that, but we're not doing that right now. That was done earlier, unfortunately. But the corporate world, the one upside is they want stability in the world so they could do more business. Because violence and war winds up preventing business and costing them money. Now it doesn't cost every industry money.

And ironically, we now have a battle, not between countries anymore, but between companies. So the oil companies and the defense contractors want more war because they make money from more war. But all the other businesses lose money in wars so they don't want war. So they're kind of battling to bribe U.S. politicians more amongst each other. And this shows you that all the other corporations are now beating the defense contractors and the oil companies and saying to Biden and other establishment Democrats, bring it down. Okay, let's not have any further conflict and talk of conflict. Let's stabilize things so that the markets can go back up. Trading can go back up.

And in that rare case, that is a net positive. So we'll take it. All right, we got to take a quick break. When we come back, the LAPD implemented one reform that I think is worth looking into. There are some promising results so far. We'll give you the details on that story and more coming right up. a reform within the Los Angeles Police Department I wanted to discuss, although I think there needs to be more data to see how this is playing out.

But so far, preliminary data looks promising. So let's discuss. The Los Angeles Police Department has implemented a reform, and the preliminary data regarding the outcome of this reform looks promising, although it's only been in place for several months, and we need more details, more data to kind of see if you're going to this is working out. But so far looks promising and we should be pushing for a lot more police reform. So let's discuss what this is about. It's about what's referred to as pretextual stops, where a cop will see someone with a broken taillight, for instance, and then stop them in an effort

to fish for other things. So as the Los Angeles Times puts it, police officers will pull over a driver for a minor infraction such as broken taillight. use something vaguely suspicious, a shaking hand, a whiff of pot to justify a search, hope to find drugs or weapons. So this is what they do, right? They're hoping that they'll stop the person for some issue with their vehicle, maybe some tints, dark tints in the front windows. And then they'll use that as an excuse to search the vehicle.

They'll ask for consent, of course, because they have to ask for consent. But oftentimes when they pull someone over, a lot of people, don't know what their rights are, so they'll give consent, even though they don't need to. And again, it leads to like a fishing expedition. Now, while the tactic is in fact legal and has led to plenty of seizures in the past, LAPD chief Michael Moore and the civilian oversight commission realized that, oh, look, this is disproportionately impacting minorities in Los Angeles, predominantly, or disproportionately, I should say, black individuals who are being stopped for these minor issues with

vehicles. One widely cited study of nearly 100 million traffic stops by researchers from Stanford University and New York University found that black drivers were searched one and a half to two times more often than white motorists, even though whites were more likely to be in possession of drugs, guns, or other contraband. Now that analysis was looking at data nationwide, not just Los Angeles, but Los Angeles has similar findings. A policy approved in March, though, officers now must have a reason to suspect a more serious

crime is afoot before initiating these types of stops. And they're required to record their reasoning on body cameras before the stops. They have to clearly state what they're stopping the individual for and why they suspect that there's a bigger crime taking place. Now let's look at the results, right? Because again, this was implemented in March of this year. We have some data. some preliminary data showing how this is working out, and it does appear to be promising. So let's take a look at this graph. It shows LAPD stops for minor violations, and it shows that those stops have actually fallen sharply. Insignificant non-moving and equipment violations, which include a wide array of offenses such as expired registration or an air freshener hanging from

a rearview mirror, accounted for 12% of all traffic and pedestrian stops from 8,000. through the end of August of this year. Now, if you look at the same period of time last year, before the policy went into effect, these types of stops made up 21% of all stops. So it went from 21% all the way down to 12%. Now, officers are much less likely to rely on consent from the drivers because now they have more probable cause to actually search their vehicles. There's more purpose behind these stops than just fishing, right? Now, police found something illegal in 26% of the searches conducted during the recent stops for minor violations. And that's a slight increase compared with their success rate before the new policy.

But I got to be honest, 26% success rate, not so great, but they have stopped doing as many of these pretextual stops, which I think is important because you want to build trust between the cops and the community. And it's impossible to build that trust if the community or members of the community feel like they're constantly being harassed by the police. Okay, so this is actually a balancing act. And I think L.A. shockingly, is beginning to get that balance, correct. So there are people on the left who say, no, they need to go further. I'm going to explain that position in a second.

But first, I want to point out two things here. When we did hundreds of stories against racial profiling here at TYT, we would tell you that it's not just immoral, it's ineffective. And that study from Stanford shows it brilliant. I've never seen a study that has a hundred million data points, the largest studies I've ever seen in my life. And it shows you unquestionably that bases the percentage of the people that they pulled over, whites had more contraband. Yet they pulled over minorities at one and a half to two times more. That's unbelievable. That's just, and it shows you not only are you targeting the wrong people, not only are you doing racism and then dividing the country because of that, but it's also not working, right?

And so in this case, they then you put it into implementation and say, hey, stop doing that and have a good reason for stopping people. And boom, the amount of contraband that's seized goes up, not down. So as a percentage is certainly. And so that's great. That means they're becoming more effective at finding the actual bad guys. So guys, some on the left say no, including someone who was actually a guest on this show, say no, we should have no pretext stops at all. Okay, but wait a minute, pretext doesn't mean just nonsense things like, oh, you had an air freshener and technically that's illegal.

What LA is doing in this case is saying, yeah, don't do that anymore, okay? And you have to justify it based on real reasons. One way of explaining that is behavior profiling versus racial profiling, right? And so if you have real reasons driving erratically, there was a nearby burglary, with the same make of vehicles, same color, et cetera. Well, that's behavior profiling. I think that makes perfect sense. Racial profiling, again, is not only immoral, but doesn't make sense.

It doesn't actually keep the public safe because you're focusing on, you know, certain individuals based on your own biases as opposed to focusing on behaviors that would indicate that, you know, someone might be engaging in some sort of criminality, right? It's not just that you're wasting resources by stopping the wrong people, but you're also letting the bad guys get away because you're busy stopping people based on the fact that they're black or Latino, as opposed to stopping them for behavioral issues. Yes. So I do not agree with the part of the left that says, no, don't stop them at all.

I don't think that makes any sense for my way of thinking. But I also certainly don't agree with the right, and we have been clear about that for 20 years straight, where they're like, ah, well, they're black. I don't know, stop them more. I mean, I just, that's insane. That's an insane point. Well, the right wing won't say that, but they will say, oh, well, there are cultural issues with black people. They're more likely to commit crime, so that's why you're seeing these stops. But then you look at the data and you see that these people who are being harassed, right?

Like in the case of Los Angeles, black Angelinos are being harassed by these cops. And vast majority of cases are not turning up any contraband or drugs, illegal guns, nothing like that. Even with the new policy, by the way, only 26% of the time they're able to, you know, find what they're looking for. So just real quick on that, I know the right wing always disguises their racism or they used to disguise their racism with a very thin veil. Right. Oh, it's cultural issues. No, you're still saying the same thing. You're saying black people are more violent or more likely to commit crimes.

It's the definition of racism. But remember, guys, it's not a theoretical or hypothetical point. The right-wing racist policy is what is in place throughout the whole country. That's why black people get stopped at twice the rate, even though they have less contraband. The current status quo, an overwhelming majority of country, is the racist right-wing position. One final data point that I wanted to bring up. But I think that there are some issues with this data, which is why I want to bring it up. So I mentioned that now with these pretextual stops, there's a higher percentage of illegal materials found in the vehicles, right?

However, overall, police made 2,990 fewer seizures of illegal items from April to August this year, compared with the same period last year. That decrease includes 374 fewer firearms and 1,693 fewer seizures of drugs, the analysis shows. Okay, I care more about the firearms issue than someone being in possession of drugs. By the way, I mean, right now you can see people literally doing illegal drugs on the streets with nothing happening, right? So the drug part, let's just take that out. The legal guns, I find that to be a huge issue because there's increased gun violence, not just in Los Angeles, but all across the country. We know that. Now, the thing is, I don't think it's fair to say, well, there's fewer seizures

overall, because there's also fewer deputies right now. There's like a huge shortage of deputies, not just in Los Angeles, but all across the country. So I think that could be having an impact on the lower number of seizures, not this reform policy, which I think so far looks pretty good. And I want to see how it plays out as we gather more data. Yeah. And some reform policies work, some don't. But this one looks like a win-win. So it you're ending or you're going a long way towards ending the racism. And as a percentage, you're getting much better policing so that the community is safer. It has not gotten to the point where it has affected the culture as the Los Angeles Times explains folks that live in minority areas still feel both things, by the way. They still feel that the, they're more heavily targeted than white areas, but it's only been in a place for for about half a year so far. So you have to give it more time to do that. But by the way, they're also worried that there's less policing in their areas. So, and it's not necessarily

related to this. It's more related to the issue that Anna brought up, which is that in LA, there's just way less cops these days because of all the turnover issues, et cetera. And so you've got to be able to do policing while at the same time being fared it. And it takes a long time to build trust with the community after decades and decades of, you know, high profile stories of the police using excessive force and brutalizing, you know, members of the black community, Latino community. It's going to take some time, but we got to start somewhere. And again, it looks like this particular reform is already showing some promising results.

All right, we got to take a quick break. That does it for our first hour. When we come back for the second hour, we'll talk about how Trump, appears to have succeeded in getting the IRS to do these pretty nasty audits of his political enemies and rivals. Later in the show, we'll also discuss Elon Musk at war with Bernie Sanders. That and more coming right up. Stick around. Thanks for listening to the full episode of the Young Turks. Support our work, listen ad-free, access members-only bonus content, and more

by subscribing to Apple Podcasts at apple.com slash t-y-t. I'm your host, Shank Huger, and I'll see you soon.