The Young Turks - TYT Extended Clip - April 13th, 2020

Episode Date: April 14, 2020

Trump has made the COVID-19 crisis in the US much worse than it needed to be. Ana Kasparian and Cenk Uygur discuss on The Young Turks. 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. The new BMO ViPorter MasterCard is your ticket to more. More perks. More points. More flights. More of all the things you want in a travel rewards card.

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grab an O. Henry bar to satisfy your hunger. With its delicious combination of big, crunchy, salty, Peanuts covered in creamy caramel and chewy fudge with a chocolatey coating. Swing by a gas station and get an O'Henry today. Oh hungry, oh Henry. What are the young church, Jake, Eugenic is fairing with you guys. Lovely Monday evening across America, or so we think, looking outside our windows as we stay home. So, all right, the whole world is quarantined, which is a trippy thing.

Like we just got used to it fairly quickly. And every once in a while I think, oh my God, the entire world is quarantined. Like that just happened. Yeah, it is pretty crazy to, especially like on a Saturday night, you know, I'm sure most people can relate to needing to just go outside or go for a drive just to like get out of the house. But it is crazy on a Saturday night to drive around, especially in a city as densely populated as L.A. and not see anyone outside at all. Yeah, although there's the irony that when you go for a jog, there are more people outside because they're going stir crazy. So they go outside

and walk around. Like the dogs are exhausted from getting walked. I got it. I got it. Really? we're walking again? Right. Funny story. I've had a bike for, I don't know, maybe five years now, and I have ridden that bike a handful of times until this whole social distancing thing happened. And I have used my bike at least like twice a week.

Like I'm bike riding. I'm going running. Like I'm doing everything I can just to like get out. But you're right. There's so many people out who are like trying to get some physical activity. So you got to cover up, cover that face. Yeah. Yeah.

Look, with me, it's a little tougher because it's such a shame, you know, to cover this face. But you got to do what you got to do. And so, look, I will save more of the personal stories for the postgame, t-y-t.com slash joy. Like, what happens to me on my jogs? Because people recognize me a decent amount when I jogs. So new funny stories about that. And this is not all a preview for the shirt I'm wearing, although it happens to coincidentally

be a nice lead into it. So our new shirts are out, quarantine, so I've got to stand up here. Oh, there you go. You see? With a TYT in the middle. Now, is that the correct spelling? Not remotely. We just threw a TYT in the middle, like, see what happens, right?

And you've seen it in the graphics, but immediately people start like this shirt. Any shirt that's got quarantine on in people like. Anyway, shop tyt.com. I'm not saying anything. shop, t-y-y-t.com. All right, we've got a massive show ahead for you guys. Stories on Trump, Biden, you know it. Casper, go. Over the weekend, the New York Times, over the weekend, the New York Times published a damning piece regarding all the different individuals who had warned Donald Trump about

the severity of the coronavirus as early as January. Now, we had already known that there were some warnings coming from various advisors within his administration, but the details that were reported by the Times indicate that there were far more warnings than even we knew about that Trump was exposed to and he just did not take any of these warnings seriously, mostly because he believed that these individuals were part of the so-called deep state and weren't actually interested in giving him accurate information because he thinks that he's constantly being sabotaged by the very people who surround him, people who are supposed to be helping him. So the Times reported throughout January, as Trump repeatedly played down the series,

seriousness of the virus, an array of figures inside his government, from top White House advisors to experts deep in the cabinet departments and intelligence agencies, identified the threat, sounded alarms, and made clear the need for aggressive action. And unfortunately, we didn't get that aggressive action until mid-March. Now, to give you some of the specific examples provided by the Times, the National Security Council, for instance, responsible for tracking pandemics, received intelligence intelligence reports in early January predicting the spread of the virus to the United States and within weeks was raising options like keeping Americans home from work and shutting down cities

the size of Chicago, Trump would, again, avoid such steps until March. Despite Trump's denial weeks later, he was told about the time, told at the time, about a January 29th memo produced by his trade advisor, Peter Navarro, which of course we detailed recently, laying out in striking detail the potential risks of a coronavirus pandemic, as many as half a million deaths and trillions of dollars in economic losses. And even after that, Trump did nothing. Again, he waited until mid-March. And then finally, here's some more new information. HHS secretary Alex Azar directly warned Trump of the possibility of a pandemic during a call on January 30th. This was the second warning he delivered to the president about the virus in two weeks.

in two weeks, Trump, who was on Air Force One while traveling for appearances in the Midwest, responded that Azar was being alarmist. So there's more. But I mean, it's example after example, after example of Donald Trump being warned about what's really going on and he doesn't take it seriously, partly because he thinks that there's this deep state that's conspiring against him, but also because he really wanted this pandemic to take a backseat to the trade negotiations that he was engaged in with China. Yeah. So there's two factors here.

One is how much was he warned in saying is why didn't he act? So now what we knew in bits and pieces has been confirmed through this story and put out in great detail. So there are two dates that jumped out at me here. One was ended in January when it wasn't just Navarro's big memo. Several different government officials at the same time warned Trump and the White House, uh-oh, this thing's really bad. Okay, we got to start acting now.

Otherwise, as Navarro's memo pointed out, millions of lives are at stake and trillions of dollars to get Trump's attention, which is true. And as we found out, did happen, right? at least the trillions of dollars and we now have over a million cases worldwide, obviously. And in America, we're quickly approaching a million on our own. We're well above 500,000 cases as we speak. We now lead the world triple the second closest country and lead the world in deaths as well, partly because our leader did nothing.

Anyway, at the end of January, he gets all these different warnings. It turns out he was really mad at Navarro, who he really likes otherwise. not because Navarro warned him, but because he wrote it down. He's like, you schmuck, when you're doing criminal conspiracies, you don't write anything down because later the prosecutors will have evidence. Why did you write it down? Because he didn't want to act on it. So he knows at the time, so when he said earlier, oh, Navarro is a bad.

I never saw that. I never saw that, right? No, now we know he did see it, and he was mad at Navarro for writing it down so there'd be evidence, okay? That's how he views things. Now, people in government write things down so that others can read it and act on it. I know our president doesn't read. By the way, our president doesn't read past the page.

On that alone, he should be removed from office. Anyone who supports them should be embarrassed for the rest of their lives and we're an international laughing stock. Anyway, so the second big date is mid-February. When we are health officials find out without a shadow of a doubt that the virus is transmitted from people who are asymptomatic. They don't have symptoms and they were walking around seemingly perfectly healthy and spreading the virus.

They sound the alarm bells in a bigger way. But when they do, they were going to go take it to Trump and like they know you got to tell them in person. You gotta be really careful because he's an idiot and he could just, you know, go off at any time and do something crazy and insane. So they're like, all right, how do we, they came up with a strategy of how to talk to the man child. But then one official, while Trump was coming back from a trip from India, a health official

put out a statement saying, oh, it's, you know, this is a real issue. Country has to act on right now because people without symptoms can transmit the virus, et cetera. set everything into a panic, including the stock market. Stock market crashes, and then Trump goes, no, that's it. Now I'm not doing anything, okay? I hope you guys are happy. So I'm just going to sit around because now you made my beloved stock market crash. Okay, so I'm not going to listen to you health officials anymore. How am I supposed to get reelected without the stock market? Okay, so. Right. Yeah, so you're absolutely right, Jank. He was aboard Air Force One returning back to the United States from his trip to India when all of the

this happened. And you're right, he was way more concerned about the negative impact on the stock market than the pandemic. And again, this was in mid-February. He did not act until mid-March. So he waited another month to actually do anything of substance and take this seriously. And in the meantime, by the way, ever since, he's been saying, nobody could have known that this would have been so serious. This totally caught us off guard. But it did not catch him off guard. He has been warned about this since January, and all this time between late January to mid-March, this is the kind of commentary you heard from someone like Donald Trump publicly, with dates included. We think we have it very well under control.

We pretty much shut it down coming in from China. Now the virus that we're talking about having to do, you know, a lot of people think that goes away in April with the heat. So we're in very good shape. You know, I'm very well under control in our country. Because of all we've done, the risk to the American people remains very low. But we have it so well under control. And we only have 15 people and they're getting better.

Now the Democrats are politicizing the coronavirus. And this is their new hoax. You take a solid flu vaccine. You don't think that would have an impact or much of an impact on corona? No. If, you know, we have thousands or hundreds of thousands of people that get better, better just by sitting around and even going to work. Some of them go to work.

Have to be calm. It'll go away. We're doing very well and we've done a fantastic job with respect to that subject on the virus. I have a feeling that a lot of the numbers that are being said in some areas are just bigger than they're going to be. Okay. So we put the dates in there so you can see. All of those comments were after the end of January when you got significant warnings from several different people in his administration. And he was annoyed that they had warned him in writing. So he knew. And half of those are more, as you can go back and watch the clip, where after mid-February,

when they knew definitively, definitively, that it's wildly contagious and the government must act immediately. But that another month goes by as you see Trump going, no big deal, it'll disappear by April when the weather gets warm. We have it under control. He can just go to work. What's the big deal? It's all good. So why? Why did he do it? Anna mentioned a couple of reasons. He mistrust some of the officials.

Are they Hillary Clinton leftovers? Obama leftovers. Who cares? In this case, they're doctors and scientists. All the doctors are not on some sort of weirdo, like crusade to get you. They're in an understandable crusade against the virus, not against you. But everything's about me, me, me, me, me, me. Me, me, me, me, me, me, right?

So that's part of it. Second part is, he's doing the China and trade deal, and he needs that deal so he can say, oh, you see that, I beat China and my tariffs work, and I got a great deal with them. We weren't winning, now we're winning, and he needs that for his election. But to me, the most important part was the stock market, and you can see it. For him, that's the end all, be all for his election, how's the economy doing? And for, and what Trump tried, which is what he always does, and to be fair to him, has worked the past because of the grotesque incompetence of the Democratic Party and the mealy-mouthed

neutrality of the mainstream media overall, which is I'm just going to market my way out of this. I'm just going to pretend it doesn't exist, and I'm going to call it fake news. And if I just, you know, say that everything's great, we have it under control enough times, we don't actually have to take any action, which might hurt my beloved stock market and my beloved reelection efforts. So I'm going to purposely ignore all the scientists and all the doctors so that I could market my way out of this. So, and it didn't work, because that's not how viruses work. So the, I thought that one of the most interesting revelations from this lengthy article

was the one person who actually did persuade him to take this all seriously, and it was Dr. Deborah Birx. So the Times writes in the end, Aid said, it was Dr. Deborah Berks, who helped to persuade Trump. soft-spoken and fond of the kind of charts and graphs Trump prefers. Dr. Berks did not have the rough edges that could irritate the president. He often told people he thought she was elegant. This man makes all of his decisions based on appearances, 100%. He likes that she's soft-spoken, she's not rough around the edges, whatever that means.

Because if you hit Trump with data that isn't in the form of some sort of visual, like a graph or a chart, and if you come at him, you know, in maybe a monotone voice, maybe you're not warm enough to him, he's just not going to take you seriously and he's going to write you off as part of the deep state. That's it. That's the kind of thinking we're dealing with here when it comes to leadership in the executive branch. She was elegant, elegant.

She is pretty elegant. But that has nothing to do with their qualifications, you know. No, no, no, no, no. It's disqualifying. He should be removed from office. You're going to listen to a doctor or a scientist based on whether they're elegant enough. Who would be that preposterously stupid? And apparently, the leader of the United States of America.

So look, if you didn't know things like that about Trump, and he's now done this a thousand times, He looked like he was out of central casting. I liked his look. That's why I picked him for Secretary of Defense. What? You picked someone based on their looks for Secretary of Defense? Okay. Anyway, if you didn't know that about him and you don't follow politics that much, I get

it. I mean, look, the literal word is you're ignorant. That's okay, but like, hey, I'm ignorant of physics. I get it, right? But it's not a great thing. Try to look into it. But if you're watching this video and you know this. And you still like Donald Trump, like, oh, yeah, whether you should listen to a scientist or not, in a worldwide pandemic that might kill millions of people is, of course, the first characteristic is she elegant or not?

Okay, well, then you're a stupid person. You're an incredibly stupid person, just like Donald Trump. So, congratulations, peas in a pod. And that's why we're not the leaders of the free world anymore, because people look at us and go, oh, my God, look at who they pay. Oh my God, that's their leader. Why do you think we're number one in number of coronavirus cases? Why do you think we're number one in deaths? Why do you think we're number one in all of those disastrous categories?

Because we have a moron in charge, who's also a narcissist and couldn't care less about your life. Look, last thing, Alex Azar, who was right about all this, mortal mistake politically. If you're right and Donald Trump is wrong and then people find out about it, you're a goner. So there's no good guys in this administration. Alex Azar was picked by Donald Trump. It's not, you won't agree with Alex Azar and anything else. We've criticized them a thousand times on other things, but apparently he was right about this.

And Trump will not stand for anyone being right. If there's someone who's correct and is going to embarrass Donald Trump, oh, he's going to get fired. Being right is the worst thing you could do in the Trump administration. So tick, tick, tick, you know, just a matter of time before Azar is fired. And God knows who else, you know, we'll talk later in the show about Dr. Fauci. He's also right. He might also be fired. This is the petty little man child that's in charge. And everyone in the government knows it. They all strategize about how to talk to the manchild

so you don't upset him near nap time. So when we come back from the break, we'll actually dive right into that Fauci's story. It's pretty terrifying considering he's one of the only adults in the room, but Trump seems to be displeased with him. So we'll have that story and more when we return. We need to talk about a relatively new show called Un-F-Ing the Republic, or UNFTR. As a young Turks fan, you already know that the government, the media, and corporations are constantly peddling lies that serve the interests of the rich and powerful. But now there's a podcast dedicated to unraveling those lies, debunking the conventional wisdom. In each episode of

of Un-B-The-Republic, or UNFTR, the host delves into a different historical episode or topic that's generally misunderstood or purposely obfuscated by the so-called powers that be. Featuring in-depth research, razor-sharp commentary, and just the right amount of vulgarity, the UNFTR podcast takes a sledgehammer to what you thought you knew

about some of the nation's most sacred historical cows. But don't just take my word for it. The New York Times described UNFTR as consistently compelling and educational, aiming to challenge conventional wisdom and upend the historical narratives that were taught in school. For as the great philosopher Yoda once put it, you must not learn what you have learned. And that's true whether you're in Jedi training or you're uprooting and exposing all the propaganda and disinformation you've been fed over the course of your lifetime.

So search for UNFDR in your podcast app today. and get ready to get informed, angered, and entertained, all at the same time. All right, back on a young Turks. Jake Hugarana is sparing with you guys. All right, you guys ready for some good news? Let's do some good news. All right. So, wonderful matching grant for t.com slash go our fundraising effort.

Wait, wait, wait, hold for it. How much? $50,000 from Joe from L.A. What? Yes. That's insane. I like that Anna didn't know. It took her by surprise. No, but I know there was an email about it, but like homegirls busy. You know what I'm saying? So here's the deal, guys. Here's the deal. So speaking of Anna not knowing, You guys might be able to figure out before she does who Joe from LA is, but savvy TYT viewers might be able to piece it together.

Anyway, it's a matching grant, and it's to get us to our goal in April. We're trying to get the $200,000 in April. So he's going to match every dollar that you guys put it, okay? So you put in a dollar, all of a sudden it's $100. I'm kidding. That would be great. If you put in a dollar, all of a sudden it's doubled and it's $2. You put in $10, it's $20, you put in $50, it's $100 because it's the $100 because it's the

matching grant. And hence, uh, the, uh, basically the slogan for this particular campaign is too strong as in the number two. Nobody saw that coming. That's a clever twist. And then there's two of us, Anna and me in the picture. Oh my God. This is going to work. Okay. TYT. Why just survive back to school when you can thrive by creating a space that does it all for you, no matter the size. Whether you're taking over your parents' basement, or moving to campus, IKEA has hundreds of design ideas

and affordable options to complement any budget. After all, you're in your small space era. It's time to own it. Shop now at IKEA.ca. Key.com slash go. Love it. Thank you, Joe, from L.A.

That's extraordinary. Really, really appreciate it. And let's check to see where the thermometer is right now. As we start this matching grant on this level, look at this. 95,853. I didn't know it was that high. I don't know how we got there. Okay, great. Awesome.

So perfect. With the matching grant, we'll all be almost a 200,000. And hopefully we'll finish that off by the end of the month. Let's go. Let's do it right now. So thank you guys and thank you, Joe. Okay. So now, let me give you guys a couple of quick comments. Lots of comments about the shirts. I like that. In fact, Lisa vibes. I can't read your whole thing. But she wants me to put on a collared shirt. And Saturday, she tuned in at 6 o'clock Eastern because she lost track of days. It's happening to all of us, Lisa. You're not alone. Okay. And then I think this is Lane. Lane writes in, I'm looking for a cofefe 19 shirt.

Clever. Okay, we're going to think about that next. I got a whole bunch of new shirts. But today's shirt, if you didn't see it in the beginning, is quarantined with TYT in the middle. ShopT.Y.T.com. Love it. And then here we go as quickly as I can't. Oh, theater goddess.

I wanted to get this in. It takes a woman to figure out that you need to talk to Trump like you would a child about having a meltdown. Yeah, I was going to make a comment like that too. Definitely. Definitely. And like, she does have a calming way of giving you bad news, right? Like she's said some things that I don't necessarily agree with.

But again, I mean, she's still a. medical professional and she has to tow this line between giving people accurate information that they need to, you know, survive this pandemic and avoiding, um, hurting Donald Trump's feelings with the truth. That's right. She looks like she's on central casting. I like her. Anyway, Michael Hilburn and Nicholas Caesar, thank you for using YouTube super chat. We really appreciate it. Let's give you more stories. Anna, what's next? All right. Let's do it. If we had right from the very beginning, shut everything down, it may have been a little bit different, but there was a a lot of pushback about shutting things down back then.

That one statement, that one statement by Anthony Fauci during his interview with Jake Tapper, um, has led to some concerns that Donald Trump is genuinely thinking about firing him because what he said apparently hurt his feeling so much. Now, what he said there was the truth. And it was based on, um, pretty detailed reporting regarding how Donald Trump was warned about the pandemic as early as January and he didn't take action. Had he taken action, clearly we would have been better prepared for the pandemic and we would have saved more lives. And so when Trump saw that exchange, he didn't like it. And apparently others didn't like it

either. But I want to give you more context. So let's take a look at more of the video and then I'll tell you what Trump recently did, which sort of hints that he's considering getting rid of Fauci. Take a look. Do you think lives could have been saved if social distance physical distancing, stay-at-home measures had started third week of February instead of mid-March? You know, Jake, again, it's the what would have, what could have. It's very difficult to go back and say that. I mean, obviously, you could logically say that if you had a process that was ongoing and you started mitigation earlier, you could have saved lives. Obviously, no one is going to deny that. But what goes into those kinds of decisions is complicated. But you're right. I mean, obviously. Obviously, if we had right from the very beginning shut everything down, it may have been a little bit different, but there was a lot of pushback about shutting things down back then. And if you look at the fuller context of that discussion, it's so clear that Fauci is doing his best to be careful, to not place any blame on the Trump administration, because there are two things that will get you fired by Donald Trump. Number one, if you agree with him too well and people think that you're better than Trump

or more popular than Trump and you take the shine away from Trump, you're going to get fired. And then of course, number two, if you disagree with Trump in any way, even slightly publicly, he'll try to get rid of you. So he retweeted, Trump did. Someone else's tweet where they use the hashtag fire Fauci, okay? The person who did the original tweet is Deanna Lorraine. He was a former congressional candidate. She ran against Nancy Pelosi.

She's a Republican, clearly. And she wrote, Fauci is now saying that had Trump listened to the medical experts earlier, he could have saved more lives. Fauci was telling people on February 29th that there was nothing to worry about. And it posed no threat to the U.S. public at large, time to fire Fauci. Now, he did not say that. Of course, that's made up. But, of course, Donald Trump did retweet that with a quote saying, sorry, fake news.

It's all on tape. I banned China long before people spoke up. Thank you to own. So, Jank, jump in. Are you concerned that Fauci's a goner? Oh, of course I'm concerned. So now the White House is putting out statements saying, oh, God, it's fake news that we're firing Fauci. I don't know where anybody got that idea.

It's all the reporter's fault for trying to stir up controversy here. I don't know where we got that idea. I don't know, maybe when the president tweeted Fire Fauci. And look, to be extra fair, I looked at that tweet that Anna just read you. I found it as soon as the story broke. And I thought, well, let me see. Maybe Fire Fauci was like a little hashtag at the bottom, which it is. You see the hashtag at the bottom.

And then the rest of the message was about something else, and Trump missed it. Because he tweets like 70 tweets an hour, and he just, oh, yeah, retweet, retweet, and he missed it, right? No, the whole tweet was all about it's Fauci's fault, and we should fire Fauci. So if I retweeted something that said hashtag Fire Casparian, people would not like that. People would be very upset. They would reconsider supporting TYT very strongly. Okay. So first of all, obviously, I'd be decapitated.

But second of all, that's not a thing that you do, like, and go, oh, whatever. No, that that's really, really serious. And everybody would take it seriously. They'd be like, wow, wow. Why did Jenks say that? Is he thinking about doing that? That's crazy. You know, of course he's thinking about it.

That's why he retweeted it. See, I feel like we constantly have conversations with, like, somebody who just escaped from a mental asylum. You're like, we're having a conversation about it because you said it. No, I didn't. You're fake. Okay, I mean, so- It's crazy.

We're all being gaslit 24-7. By the way, by both sides, but certainly by the Trump administration. 100%. So, and Dr. Fauci did say one thing wrong in that Jake Tapper interview. He said, look, could we have done more and saved more lives? I don't think anybody would dispute that. Are you nuts? Of course, there's one guy who would dispute it.

His name is Donald J. Trump. He disputes it every single day. No, I take no responsibility at all. We've handled this amazing. That's why our country doesn't have that many cases. That's what he used to say all the time. Now we lead the world in number of cases and number of deaths. And he's still saying, I wouldn't have done anything differently. No, he's a total moron. Of course he disputes that he did anything wrong because the narcissist in chief would never, ever admit to doing something wrong. Look, no. Man, man is. in charge, and soon if Fauci continues to be correct like this, of course his job is in danger.

Yeah, I'm terrified because Fauci is, I think Dr. Deborah Burks has done a fine job, but I think that Fauci is less willing to, you know, side- Like, so Dr. Berks, there were a few times where I feel like she tried to help Trump cover things up. I don't have the specific examples in front of me. We've talked about them on the show previously. But Dr. Anthony Fauci never does that. I haven't seen a single instance of him doing that. He's very fact-based, he gets to the point.

He gets put in awkward situations where people are trying to possibly instigate and they're asking about Trump's failures. And Fauci, again, has to tow that line. But he's never, as far as I've seen, he hasn't misrepresented anything. The one area of disagreement where Fauci was wrong and Trump was right was early on when Trump actually wanted to implement the travel ban on China specifically. Now health experts, not just Fauci, believe that that would not actually help in stopping the spread of the virus because, for instance, when people hear that there might be some sort

of travel ban, they might flee the country or, you know, try to travel before that ban is implemented and it causes more problems. But in the end, it would have actually been smart to do that. And Fauci came around. But after that, I mean, everything that he said is factual. And we desperately do need that adult in the room who clearly states that it is too soon to lift any guidelines on social distancing. It's something that Trump's been flirting with, nonstop.

And I'm worried that without the Fauci's in the room, Trump is going to give into, you know, his worst instincts and encourage people to go out and work and expose themselves to this virus. So look, let's combine two stories from today into one. So the New York Times earlier story that explained that eventually trumped that ban on people coming in from China, that was pushed by the hawks inside the administration, partly as a shot at China like, ha ha, we banned you. Now, world's worst reason to do a ban, as it turned out, that was okay.

So, you know, I guess with the benefit of hindsight, I probably would have done it too. But medical experts are really split on whether those were. That's the least important part. The most important part is huge amounts of testing. That's how they contained it in South Korea. That's every scientist agrees. Because if you have a lot of testing, then you know who's got it as quickly as possible. You'll isolate them.

You find out who they were in contact with and try to make sure that they stay at home. That's a much more efficient way to get control of the virus. What Trump did instead was, all right, I ban people from coming from China. It's now taken care of. No, it's not taking care of, you idiot. You can't just say, oh, okay, if they can't come here from China, then obviously it can't come here. It was already here by the time he did that.

The first case was on January 21st, and he did the ban at the end of January. It's so it's the least effective way of mitigating. In fact, it's not a mitigation technique, it's an attempt at containment and it doesn't work. So it's not a bad thing to try, but it's like the first step. You have to do the other steps that are much more important. So the reason I tell you all that is one, because it's important for you to know and how to combat this, but two, so when you hear Trump talking about, no, no, I did a travel ban on China. So I did everything I needed to.

That's not remotely true. He should have ordered the test. He should have ordered the test. We still don't have enough tests. We have 583,000 confirmed cases of COVID-19 in America. And we barely tested anyone. Imagine how many cases we'd have and how much better we could contain if we actually and mitigate if we actually had the tests.

They should be everywhere. And by the way, we could reopen America more efficiently if you have more tests, because then we can contain the people who have the virus and let others go outside. But the schmuck keeps thinking, if you ignore the problem, it'll go away. That's why we shouldn't have a schmuck as a president. Well, let's talk a little bit about how the post office has been affected by COVID-19 and how Trump is using this to his advantage. So there's been a lot less mail being delivered by the post office, which means the post office

is bringing in a lot less revenue. Now, this makes sense considering the stay-at-home orders throughout the country. People are staying at home, they're not going to work, they're not sending out as much mail. And so the economic crisis that's been connected to this pandemic has really hit the post office hard. And so the question is, will the federal government assist this government agency in remaining alive? And keep in mind that the post office is treated very differently from all other government agencies.

They are expected to provide or pay for health insurance for their employees 75 years in advance, which is, again, a standard that you don't see anywhere else, especially when it comes to government agencies. And it is expected to be like profitable, which is not expected of any other government agency. So I'll get into details about that context in just a minute, but let me tell you what the the Trump administration did when it came to the stimulus package to help the post office. The American prospect reports that when the time came to put together a $2.2 trillion rescue package for the American economy, Democrats attempted to add $25 billion to shore up the

United States Postal Service less than the $29 billion in grants, the airlines ended up getting. Remember, the airlines got $29 billion in grants. Donald Trump saw that and was a like, no, non-starter. He told them, quote, or he actually told the Washington Post, we told them very clearly that the president was not going to sign the bill if money for the postal service was in it. So eventually, luckily, negotiators decided to allow the USPS to borrow $10 billion from the Treasury Department, but it needs to be paid back. So it is a loan. A committee aide said Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin told lawmakers during negotiations, quote, you can have a loan or you can have nothing at all.

So I was wondering, Jenk, like, what is it about the post office that makes Donald Trump so angry? Like, why is he trying to retaliate against the post office? And it turns out that he's obviously a child who's very envious of anyone who has real success or real money. And so Jeff Bezos and Amazon rely heavily on the U.S. Postal Service in order to deliver many of their packages. And so Donald Trump is angry at that because he's jealous of Jeff Bezos.

And so apparently he's gone after the Postal Service for providing cheap shipping for Amazon in the past. And he's been harping on that since the beginning of his administration. So now he gets to take advantage of their economic decline or financial decline as a result of the coronavirus. So, look, I'm not positive that that's the only reason why there's like a toxic stew of insecurity and old grudges stirring around in Donald Trump's expansive head because there isn't much in there.

So there's a lot of room to bounce around. And so it might be like an old stereotype. He has all these stereotypes. Oh, the Puerto Ricans, they responded to the hurricane badly because they're lazy. America is in Central Park Five, well, they must have done something anyway, because that's how African Americans are. I mean, I can go on and on, right? Republican Jewish leaders, they like to renegotiate deals because they squelch on deals.

All these, so is there some old stereotype in the back of his head about the post office? Like, oh, the government sucks. I was, is it possible that he once sent a love letter and never got a return from the post office and he's held that grudge for like 60 years? It's totally possible, right? he's a man child. Who knows why he thinks anything. I immediately thought are FedEx and UPS big political contributors. I don't know, right? They are. They are, actually. Oh, is that right? What do you got on? Yeah. So I'm going to give you like general numbers, especially when it comes to

party. So UPS, for instance, has a pack. It's known as the UPS pack, makes sense. And they've contributed millions of dollars in each election cycle. So in 2016, for instance, they spent over $2 million on political contributions, 68% of which went to Republicans, 2018, yep, midterm elections, nearly $2.5 million, 66% of that went to Republicans in 2020. They spent over $1,100,000, and 58% of that went to Republicans. And you see very similar numbers when it comes to FedEx. Actually, FedEx spends way more on Republicans as opposed to Democrats. In 2016, for instance, 70% of their campaign contributions went to Republicans. 2018, 67% went to Republicans. And in 2020, 54% went to Republicans so far. I'm sure those

numbers will be updated later. But yeah, it seems like these private delivery services also have some interest, some incentive in helping to do. destroy the postal service. So, and it might be that so-called business leaders or other connected groups who talk to Donald Trump, called them and said, oh, man, a post office, I hear it's filled with deep state because they're getting contributions from FedEx and UPS. So they tell Trump, and he's like, oh, yeah, totally, man, the post office is the word, right? So, look, those charts that we just show you of UPS and FedEx donations perfectly describe

the American political system, where private interests buy off our politicians, and they give about two-thirds of the money to Republicans, and the Republicans are the ones that push to kill the post office, and they give enough to Democrats so they can get enough Democrats to go along with it and be the party that goes, oh, there was nothing we could do. I mean, what could we do? I know what you could do. You could fight back and you could out them and say, hey, look at this. Why are they putting an extra $9 billion a year in obligations to the post office that no other

government branch has? And if you're wondering why FedEx and UPS might want to kill the post office, because the post office delivers things for $0.55. And the cheapest thing that FedEx and UPS deliver for is about $25. bucks. So you know how much mail the post office delivers? 142 billion pieces. And they're mandated to deliver all over the country. So they deliver in rural areas where FedEx and UPS might be less willing to do shipments. So take $142 billion times it by $25. And that's the profit incentive that FedEx and UPS have for killing a person.

post office. They then bribed Republican politicians to kill the post office. And among the ways they do that is saddle them with this absurd pension request of people who haven't even been born yet. That's how insane that is. And they then demanded the government office make a profit, also weird. They then say in the middle of an emergency where the post office is elected, no, we're not going to give you the money. In fact, we'll kill the whole recovery bill to make sure the post office doesn't get money. The core of the problem, as usual, legalized bribery. Let's take a quick break, and we'll be right back.

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Back on a young church, Jank and Anna with you guys. So we've got a massive post game for you today, including the answer to E. Kowaja's YouTube super chat question. Thank you all. of you for using YouTube super chat. But in the post game, we'll discuss why Bernie endorsed Biden so quickly, as you say. So t.com slash join to get membership or click the join button underneath the video on YouTube. We're also going to make more fun of Dave Rubin and his thoughts on the post office. So don't miss that. That's going to be a lot of fun. And a billionaire

brags about how quickly he fired people on Fox News. So a massive. of post game for you guys today. Also, old schools back. Lots of reason to be a member. And I want to see if by next, by tomorrow when we come back, if we've gotten over 100,000 on t.com slash go. Last we checked, it was 95,000. Remember, every dollar you put in now will be matched up to 50,000. But we got to get to 50,000. Otherwise, it'd be an absolute shame to not utilize all that money. All right, Anna, go ahead on the next story. All right. So after a complete radio silence on the very detailed and serious sexual assault allegations made by a former Biden staffer against Joe Biden, the New York Times has finally

decided to cover the details of those allegations. We've talked about those allegations on TYT for weeks now. Tara Reid is the former Senate staffer who's brought these accusations forward. And she has now officially filed a formal police report on the incident. She did so last week. And luckily, the Times did report on it. Now, we'll get into the details and discussion as to whether or not the Times did a fair job in covering those allegations. But before we do so, there's one story that ended up developing from the Times coverage. And it has to do with what they had put out on Twitter to promote their reporting. So there was a tweet that they put up. they later deleted it. And I'm going to read it to you, and you can probably tell why they ended

up deleting it. No other allegation about sexual assault surfaced in the course of our reporting, nor did any former Biden staff corroborate reads allegation. We find no pattern or found no pattern of sexual misconduct by Biden beyond the hugs, kisses, and touching that women previously said made them uncomfortable. So they later deleted that tweet and replaced it with a friend said Sarah Reid told her the details of the allegation at the time. And another friend and a brother of Reid said she told them over the years about the traumatic sexual incident involving Biden. And they also included one other tweet explaining why they deleted the initial tweet saying we've deleted a tweet in this thread that had some imprecise language that has been changed

in the story. And we'll get to the details of the story in just a minute. But Jake, I wanted to get your thoughts on the now deleted tweet? I can't tell if they deleted that tweet because it was embarrassing to say, there's no pattern of sexual misconduct except for all the other women that he hugged, kissed without permission, et cetera, right? Or if the Biden camp complained, hey, you know what? If you put the hugging and kissing it next to the sexual misconduct, it'll seem like those seven other cases are sexual misconduct, so don't do that.

And they responded to that request from a powerful camp. So it could be either. Well, yeah. I mean, look, just based on the reaction that the original tweet led to, I would argue that it's because of the language that makes it appear as though there was never any pattern of any sexual misconduct. There clearly is a pattern because seven other women have accused. Biden of touching them in ways that made them incredibly uncomfortable, including, you

know, Lucy Flores was one of the first to come forward. She talked about how Biden touched the back of her neck and gave her a kiss on the back of her head, obviously without permission. And so there are other examples like that. And then you get to like the actual reporting. And I'm going to be honest here and just say that my expectations, especially after this last 12 months for the New York Times has been so low that I thought it was just going to be a total hit piece on Tara Reid.

I thought they were going to trash her, smear her, and try to paint her as someone who's not credible at all. And I was actually surprised to find that that was not what they did. So this was reported by Lisa Lairer and Sidney Ember. There were issues, in my opinion, with the way that the article was written. But I think overall, they did a decent job in talking to both. camps, and more importantly, they were honest in talking to some of Tara Reid's friends who she had informed at the time of that sexual misconduct.

So they verified that Tara Reid had spoken to them at the time. They reported that, and I was happy about that. But in the middle of the article, there were three paragraphs dedicated specifically to the sexual assault allegations against Donald Trump, even though Donald Trump really has nothing to do with this story. And the reason why they did that is because they wanted to, in my opinion, downplay the allegations that Tara Reid was making relative to what Donald Trump has been accused of. Okay. So I have a little bit different view on the article than you do, Anna. Mine is more mixed. I think there was some value in the article. First of all, I'm glad

they wrote it instead of just ignoring it because it was against their beloved Joe Biden. But, okay, let's note the interesting coincidence in the timing, Bernie Sanders exits the race. Okay, finally, we can write about Terry. Oh, we've been working on it all along. So the Washington Post media critic then asked me on Twitter, like, are you suggesting that they did that on purpose? Yeah, well, that's why I said it ahead of time. I said they would cover the story as soon as Bernie Sanders got out of the race, and that's

exactly what they did. And so we're going to talk more about that in the postgame. We're going to show you evidence on that. TYT.com slash join to become a member and get the post game. So we'll have enough time then to discuss that. So the timing is interesting. And when you read the story, yes, they present both sides in a sense. And that's good.

I want them to do that, not because both sides are equal, but because I want them to explore all angles. Because I'm genuinely curious, did it happen or did it not happen? And I would hope that they would be, you know, they have resources we don't have in being able to talk to so many other people about the context. And they actually did add one thing to the story, which is important. She said that she was in charge of the intern program and then they took her off that program when she complained.

Well, it turns out the Nero Times did confirm that she was abruptly taken off the intern program. That's interesting. And that adds new evidence to this story. Now, the rest of it, I got to be honest, if I was a Joe Biden PR person, this is exactly how I would write it. I would wait till Bernie Sanders is another race, but I would do it super early in the general election, so it affects the general election the least. I would write it so, hey, look, I'm being fair.

I looked at Tara reads this and that, and I gave the allegations, but I would write it in a context, which is what this article is. I mean, but Biden is a good guy, man. Everybody that worked with him says he's a wonderful guy. And, you know, I guess some people say she did say it at the time. But anyway, back to how wonderful Biden is and how everybody else vouches for him. And remember, Trump's a much worse guy. When you put Trump's a much worse guy into that story, which is absolutely true, by the way, right?

But it seems like, again, I'm not saying that they definitely did not coordinate their way too sophisticated to do anything ham-handed like that. And they wouldn't. They literally wouldn't do that. But it's group think. So if I'm the PR person for Biden and I read that article, I think, nailed it. This is exactly how I would want it covered. Yeah, I mean, look, that's an interesting take.

I think the timing of the article is something worthy of discussion and we'll do that in the post game. But I will say that anyone who reads this and thinks of this story in an objective way, just the objective facts, the truth is the only people who are denying this are people who are incredibly close to Joe Biden and stand to lose quite a bit if Joe Biden loses the general election. Of course, these are people who are going to deny the accusations and stick up for Biden, right? Again, they're Biden's friends. And in one case, Tara Reid said that she brought this up to the staff and that they didn't do anything about it. And so the Times went and

spoke to one of the women who was allegedly informed about this. And she said that she doesn't remember it and that she, like, you know, she would have remembered it and this didn't happen. But again, if someone accuses me of that, Jank, I'm not going to want to fess up to it when the times comes to me and asks me, hey, is it true that you buried a sexual assault allegation? We got to go. Let's continue the conversation in the postgame. TYT.com slash join to become a member. Everyone else, have a great night.

We'll see you soon. Thanks for listening to the full episode of the Young Turks. listen ad free access members only bonus content and more by subscribing to apple podcasts at apple dot co slash t yt i'm your host jank huger and i'll see you soon