The Young Turks - TYT Extended Clip - August 13, 2020

Episode Date: August 14, 2020

Report: Alex Morse's accuser had a yearlong plan to take down the progressive. 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. All right, well, I'm the young curious, janky or Anna Gospherian, I greatly amused myself right before the show by telling Anna. By the way, Anna, I'm going to do a big news story to beat it. Don't worry about it. It is what it is. I mean like.

Okay, guys, we got a fun show for you. We got a lot of fun shows for you, I see. Tonight, between me and Uyghur, well, if I was doing between me and Yugar, isn't that just between me and me? Anyway, Maas Gibrani is going to be on. Yay! Maas is awesome. He's a great actor, comedian. My kids are now big fans, so we'll have a great conversation tonight.

If you've seen any of those, by the way, Twitch.tv slash TYT. Okay. Do you see any of those? Those are super fun conversations. Yeah, I love Maas. I've been a big fan of Maas until he asked me if he asked me if he was. I'd be willing to go on his podcast and then I never heard from him again. So take that Maz Jabrani. Damn. So you should ask him about that tonight. He'd be like, what's up? You said you wanted

Anna on. Yeah. He hasn't been on yet. Okay, no, no, I think it ambush is the right way to go. I agree with you. I think so too. Okay, all right. So speaking of the conversation, that's another one of our shows. And tomorrow, don't miss this one, 5.30 p.m. Eastern, and And the conversation is always half an hour before the main show here at 6 o'clock Eastern. Alex Morse is going to be on for the whole conversation. He's going to give his point of view on the smear attacks against him. It's a really compelling interview. That's going to be tomorrow at 5.30 p.m. Eastern, don't miss that. And then last programming note, guys, is all next week, 6 o'clock Eastern, I'm sorry, 9 o'clock Eastern,

DC coverage. So we're going to have the speeches. We start with Bernie Sanders. First speech out of the gate, you got AOC, you got obviously Kamaharis Biden, etc. So Monday through Thursday, I'm there every day, Saturday for you guys. Monday it's John, then Benjamin Dixon, Michael Schurr, and then Anna. So all-star panels there. We're back to, speaking of also, we're back to play-by-play. So we will be doing live play-by-play coverage of those speeches. I think you will love that. So don't miss a minute of that. Okay, we got tons of show for you guys. Casper, go. All right. Well, we have an update on the Alex Moore story. College Democrats at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst were apparently plotting pretty openly to sync the campaign

of progressive candidate Alex Morris. He is running in Massachusetts's first congressional district and he's running against Richard Neal, the incumbent Democrat, who's the chair of the House Ways and Means Committee, someone who has a pretty powerful position. Now, their plot actually came to fruition in the form of a letter, which we've been talking about over the last several days. The letter, as the Intercept reports, sent three weeks before his primary challenge to Representative Richard Neal informed Morse that he was no longer welcome at college Democratic events, alleging he used such opportunities to socialize with students and later connect with them on social media in ways that made them feel uncomfortable.

Now, the way that this was reported made it seem as though he was engaging in some sort of predatory activity, going to like student organizations with the intention of picking people up. But that is not what happened. In fact, after he released his statement indicating that he had only attended one event. The college Democrats did release a statement on Wednesday following what Morse said. The statewide college Democrats chapter clarified that he had, in fact, only attended a single event during the course of his campaign. It was after that event in October of 2019 that the leadership of UMass Amherst, that chapter, began to talk about leaking a story damaging to Morse. So the intercept was able to obtain the

the chat logs and they published screenshots of some of those chat logs in their story. So please make sure you check that out in its full context context at the intercept, but I'll give you the highlights right now. So for instance, Timothy Ennis, we've talked about him before, the chief strategist for the UMass Amherst College Democrats admitted in the chat that he was a Neil Stan, which means like a hardcore fan of Richard Neal, and said he felt conflicted about involving the chapter of the college Democrats in a future attack on Morse. But then he said in the chats, but I need a job. Neil will give me an internship. I mean, how disgusting is that? It's just so unbelievably gross. And who, okay, this is a small point,

but I have to make it. What kind of person slash college student refers to themselves as a Richard Neal Stan, like what excites you about Richard Neal? The fact that he destroyed legislation that would end surprise medical billing, does that get you excited? What a terrible person. Anyway, go ahead, Jank. Yeah, so first of all, let me just double down on that. These are really pathetic courierists, and you can tell apparently from an early age, because Richard Neil takes more corporate pack money than anyone in Congress, not just any Democrat, any Republican. He makes Republicans look non-corrupt. And so if somebody sees that and they're like, oh my God, I am young and ambitious and idealist. And I think taking as much corporate

pack money as possible in serving corporations for the rest of your life as their water boy is so great. So I will try to ruin someone else's career by lying about them. with homophobic smears. If that's your goal, holy cow, wow. And by the way, look, man, you go to any establishment Democrat, you know, internship program. It is filled with people who are like, I can't wait to get into a good school. And then I'm going to serve whichever master tells me that I've got can improve my status and power. Status and power, mommy and daddy You told me that's what's really important. Okay, now, look, the biggest part of this story by far is now it's completely and utterly

debunked this story. And it is filled with homophobic references about how Morse was a predator, right? Of young boys. This is just disgusting, right? Yeah, it's absolutely tropes. And so number one, Richard Neal has encouraged this. I mean, look, he potentially bribed them to begin with. He gave $1,000 to this group, maybe $2,000 now according to the latest reporting.

But no question, he gave this group money. Why is a congressman giving college Democrats money? What a weird thing. Number two, when they came out, he's like, oh, I'm so concerned about their well-being. Now we see the text messages. They tried to get him to do something inappropriate. They failed. They failed.

And so then now Richard Neal, I'm sorry, Neil comes around and goes, oh my God, these poor abuse students, you know, hey look, so Rich is the Boston Globe, the press, are they going to ask? Will Richard Neal denounce this homophobic attack against Alex Morris, his Democratic opponent? Or is he comfortable with this homophobic attack? And so far, he looks super comfortable with it. Oh, he loves it. Yeah, absolutely.

I know that comes as a big shock. But press, do your job, everybody ran those articles on Alex Morse. So far, very, very few of them have retracted, even though it is clearly debunked now. I want to give you more details because these students actually went further. It gets worse. They try to engage in like this honeypot method of getting Morse to say inappropriate things via private messages. And Morse did not take the bait because Morse is a good person. Like you can tell, he goes to this college Democrats event. He participates on this panel. And one of the

students he was on a panel with starts messaging him. And so I want to get to those details in a second. First, let me just note though that Timothy Ennis, who is the Richard Neal Stan, was apparently in Richard Neal's class at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, where he teaches journalism. Yeah, hmm. Hmm. Okay, so let me give you more details. We're talking about journalism. And Richard Neal is teaching journalism. Yeah, I mean, it's the perfect. Why doesn't they teach an anti-corruption class on top just to complete the irony? I know. So as the intercept reports,

leaders of the college Democrats group went beyond merely plans to leak. They also explicitly discussed how they could find Morse's dating profiles and then lead him into saying something incriminating that would then damage his campaign. Okay. So the group's leaders did not get what they were looking for, but they thought, you know what, maybe we have enough. Maybe we have enough here. I don't think that they did. I think that this is ridiculous, but let me give you those details. On October 5th, Morse attended a college Democrats event at a local community college. Morse sat on a panel with Abramson. So that's Andrew Abramson.

He's one of the members of college Democrats. He's on this panel. After the event, Morse reached out to Abramson on Instagram to say it was a pleasure meeting. The two had previously matched on Tinder and has said in the chats, but had never met up. To match on Tinder means both parties must swipe in the same direction in order to begin a conversation. So as I had mentioned when we talked about this story earlier, it's a two-way street. You know, painting Morse as some sort of harasser who's going after students on dating profiles just doesn't make sense at all.

If you know how these dating profiles work, you'd know that it's a two-way street. Now let's take a look at the screenshot of the chat log where, you know, you can see exactly how it went down. So not overt, but it's very clear. He's not talking to me for no reason. Okay, so Alex Morris asks, like, or tells him it was a pleasure being on that panel. And Andrew responds with, thank you, good to see you too. And all he said was, how's the rest of your weekend? And, you know, the response from Abramson was pretty good. I went home last night to surprise my mom for her birthday. How about you? All right, that is like the most innocent conversation ever. But what I also thought was interesting was that Abramson in the chat to other college

Democrats was like, how do you like me, you know, also don't mind me totally leading him on. So that's what the student said to other students. And I think what he's referring to there is like the blushing emoji face. I don't know. Anyway, so the conversation, The conversation ends with Moore saying, oh, that's nice. How was that? I had an event to go to last night to speak, then had a wine tasting party at a friend's house. Now I'm in North Adams about to march in a parade. So Ennis thought, and he said this in the chats, this will sink his campaign. And that's what they plan to use against him. And here is a meme that Ennis was also sharing in this chat. So it's a screenshot from a Simpsons episode where a police, so-called horny police are arresting Krusty the Clown, me giving this story to Politico because they tried to get Politico to report on this initially. So Ennis in the chats quipped that perhaps he should leak the information by including it in a paper for Neal's class.

It's just so disgusting. Like this whole thing is gross. And there was a college student last night on Twitter who was like, you know, the thing that really bothers me about this is how quick people are to dismiss that some students felt uncomfortable. And my answer to that college student and any other college student who feels that way is, no, the problem is people weren't quick enough to dismiss it. They weren't quick enough. Okay, there is no, like the narcissistic nature of that statement, okay? If this particular student, I mean, they had some account under a pseudonym or whatever,

But if this particular student genuinely felt that Morse's behavior was so bad that it caused discomfort, that is that student's problem. There's no criminal activity happening here. There's no unethical activity happening here, nothing, nothing. Morse did nothing wrong. The only people who did anything wrong here were a group of students who decided to try to destroy someone's political campaign, but also overall reputation, just so they can increase their chances of political job prospects in the future. That's what happened. Those people are wrong.

I'm gonna go further. Look, if this is, I've never seen a clear case of a smear job. It's not about making the students on cover. What are you talking about? The student, it's debunked, it's uncovered. We just showed you the students were talking about trying to end his political career on things he did not do. I mean, you just saw the entirety of the conversation. I went, I'm at a parade and how's your mom is not flirting. If that's Alex Moore's flirting, he sucks at it. They tried to get him and they couldn't. And we have the messages of them saying this is a political attack against him.

How stupid. You know, look, guys, honestly, progressive, so-called progressives that go along with that are useful idiots for the establishment in the right wing. They do this against every progressive. On Cory Bush, they attacked her for, oh, she has three evictions, and she supported BDS, and whatever smears they could throw at her, et cetera, right? As if that was going to work in her district, they're so dumb. For Jamal Bowman, did you know he got arrested, leaving out that it was false arrests,

okay? For Shad Bhattar, by the way, same kind of like, oh my God, did you know that he wants to you know, fired someone who, or did not even fire, but to ask someone to do their job. Oh my God. He asked someone to do their job. Oh my God. And he goes on and on and on. Every time a very, very small group of stupid leftists step up and they're like, yeah, we should just immediately politically assassinate our own people to help Republicans and to help establishmen corporate Democrats. You are a useful idiot if you do that, especially in this case, when it's already, how much clearer do I have to be? Read the goddamn stories.

It's debunked. We are going to go on the opposition. When I say we in this case, I mean me and the pack I just started this week. It's called Rebellion Pack. Rebellion Pack.com. But here, first of all, you guys do it on your own. When we do these stories, we are unabashed. We tell you what our perspective is. And my perspective is I'm a progressive. So Alex Morse for Congress.com. My perspective is that I hate homophobic. attacks. My perspective is that corporate Democrats are corrupt, and this is an excellent example of their corruption. So Alex Morse for Congress.com, go contribute to them directly. Rebellion Pack, right now, we're now saying, I'm announcing right now, it's our first donation ever.

We're gonna max out to Alex Morse. So this is how we roll. While others are just, you know, oh my God, I wonder what we should do. Let's think about how helping Alex are defending, ending Alex against an obvious smear might affect our careers, right? No, that's the whole point of rebellion pack. We're not interested in any of that. We're interested in helping progressives no matter what. We're maxing out to Alex Morris and proudly so, okay? Now one more thing though that's important about the press aspect of this.

So these clowns took this non-story to a bunch of outlets including Politico who did not run it. So good, credit to them. I'm happy to give them credit. But as soon as the Daily Collegian ran it, they're like, oh, good enough. We wanted to smear them, and we just didn't want our fingerprints on it. And so as long as any rando blog or whoever runs it, good enough for Politico and everyone else, let's all smear Alex Morse all at the same time. Where's your retractions? Where's your follow-up articles saying Alex Morse was smeared? He didn't do it. His opponent is a scumbag who gave $1,000 to these kids. And apparently, by the way, look at the irony of that. They tried to pretend that Alex Morse was luring the kids in. In reality,

Richard Neal is luring the kids in with here's $1,000 and maybe an internship. And maybe you could help your career. Come here, kids. Come here. Now all you got to do is smear Alex Morris. And if Richard Neal does not agree that that's what happened, why don't you denounce these attacks? Why don't you denounce the homophobic attacks against your Democratic opponent? He doesn't do it because he loves it. He was part and parcel of it. Give money to Alex Morris, volunteer for Alex Morris, and whatever you do, you vote. It's only a couple of weeks away.

If you're in that district, get everybody in their uncle out there to vote for Alex Morse. Don't let them get away with these hatchet jobs. All right. Well, Trump is trying to rig the election. We have the details on that massive story when we come back from the break. We need to talk about a relatively new show called Un-F-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 Un-F-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 history. 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 Anna, Turch, Jake and Anna with you guys. I want to tell you about a couple of things. First, let me read a member comments because I love you guys. So Meg says, I randomly had a sad day today, so I'm going to have a pizza and TYT about it. I'm already feeling better.

Thank you, Meg. Look, I read one of the sweetest things I've ever read in my life last night. It was actually funny enough, ironically, a cancellation email. And so why was that sweet? Well, her husband had passed away and they used to watch Young Turks together and it made her too sad to keep watching. Boy do I understand that. And he had ALS and she said that we gave him hope in his dying days.

I can't thank you guys enough for giving us that honor. You guys make this show possible and I love you for it. All right, let's go to some of the reactions to the Moore story. Stiff Upper Lib writes in, I'm in the Morris Neal District, Western Massachusetts. Still voting for Alex, as far as I'm concerned, he does not take corporate money and Neal does. End of story, I'm one vote, I do not control how others vote. Ecclecting miscellaneous says when it comes to progress, the Democrats will stop at nothing to go after them.

No dirty trick is too dirty for them. When it comes to going after Trump and the GOP, radio silence are at best sternly worded letter. And that's part of why we had to start the rebellion pact, because the Democrats aren't going to go after him. So the next ad we're going to have is going to be much harsher, let's put it that way. Next TYT reporter writes, and the worst part is that this hack job on Alex Moore actually worked. The DSA and Sunrise Movement both canceled his endorsements.

The just Democrats scolded Alex, this may have been a horrible smear job, but it worked. It did in the beginning, and that's why these folks who are filled with, I love them, but there's a lot of people who want to feel morally superior and they prefer to cancel their own than to actually fight back against corporate Democrats. Anyway, I'm not referring to just Democrats, just Democrats immediately turned back around. They are fully endorsing, supporting Alex as we speak. Okay, so yes, there was a little bit of a pause there. Yes, that was a mistake in my opinion, but they rebounded immediately. So great, wonderful. Rainbow Bright said the one thing I did

appreciate that many in the Yeh community stood with Alex and called us out, including by the way some more conservative, I don't mean Republican, but conservative within Democratic circles, gay groups, they immediately jumped in, and I'm giving them credit, saying, no, this is obviously a homophobic attack. We're with Alex Morse. So I love that. Credit where credit is to. Okay, we gotta go. Sorry, thank you to everybody who used YouTube super chat and gifted subs, et cetera, on Twitch. Anna, go ahead. What's next? Donald Trump has committed to blocking stimulus funding to the post office because he's opposed to mail-in voting. He believes that mail-in voting would give Democrats an advantage. And he sees

how poorly he's doing in the polls. And so he is single-handedly doing what he can to dismantle our democratic process and disenfranchise voters. Now, in an morning interview on Fox business, he was actually very transparent about it. Take a look. They want $3.5 billion for the mail-in votes. Okay, universal mail-in ballots. They want $25 billion. billion for the post office. Now, they need that money in order to have the post office work

so it can take all of these millions and millions of ballots. Now, in the meantime, they aren't getting there. By the way, those are just two items. But if they don't get those two items, that means you can't have universal mail-in voting. So as CNN accurately reported, Trump said that if the United States Postal Service does not receive the additional $25 billion funding request that Democrats included in the ongoing stimulus negotiations, then he believes the post office won't be able to handle the influx of mail-in ballots in the upcoming election. So where does the $25 billion figure come from? Is it something that Democrats unilaterally tried to include in the stimulus bill? Well, actually, no. Nancy Pelosi clarified that, quote, the legislation we have $25 billion,

in the legislation we have $25 billion, that is the number that is recommended. by the board of governors of the United States Postal Service, a bipartisan board of governors 100% appointed by Donald Trump. They recommended $25 billion. And, you know, right now on social media, Twitter in particular, there are images going around showing trucks picking up postal service drop boxes where people would be able to drop off their mail-in ballots. Now, I want to look into that a little further to make sure that that's actually something that's been directed by Donald Trump. But I will say this, back in June, the Trump administration sued the state of Pennsylvania because they expanded voters' ability to vote by mail. So he has been on a war

path when it comes to mail and voting. We've been talking about it from the beginning. So it is not far-fetched for the Trump administration to go even further when it comes to making. it difficult for people to vote, especially in the middle of a pandemic, when most people are probably going to feel uncomfortable voting in person. And if that isn't enough evidence for you, I do want to go to his chief economic advisor who didn't really hide the fact that they do not care about protecting our democracy. Take a look. So much of the Democratic asks are really liberal left wishlessness. We don't want to vote, you know, voting rights and aid to, aliens and so forth. That's not our game. And president can't accept that kind of deal.

And, Jake, as you know, Trump is doing what he can to dismantle the post office through who is now the new postmaster general, a man who has outside interest, moneyed interest, investments in other delivery services, for instance, and who has already taken actions in reshaping. shuffling employees at the Postal Service around, thus complicating the ability for the Postal Service to do its job when it comes to the general election. You know, the Trump administration continues to be amazing for saying the quiet things out loud. So let's start with Cudlow. He said voting rights, that's not our thing. It's amazing.

That's amazing, it is. You're not supposed to say that out loud. He said, it's a liberal, left-wing wish list, including voting rights. No, voting rights is supposed to be for everybody. That's, we're proud to be the people in the country that brought you democracy. Now, look, and it's overinflated and it's a little bit of American, you know, hype, but you're at least supposed to pretend that you agree about the core founding principle of the country. They actively disliked democracy. And by the way, there's very good reason for this. And the mainstream media will never give you this analysis. Right now, the Republican Party is that it is nearly at an end demographically. They have almost no chance of winning national elections. The Trump

election was a minor miracle with one of the worst candidates in American history opposed to him. And he barely won by 78,000. I mean, he is getting clobbered right now in every category. And it's not just about Trump, demographically speaking, Republicans have almost no chance of winning in the future. That is why they are now just saying, no, voting rights is bad, voting is bad, democracy is bad. We might not leave office even if we lose. So, because if you're going to be a minority party, they're saying we value our power more than we value the country. It's literally the most un-American thing you to do. Now we go to Trump. And Trump just, again, he just says it.

He's like, well, now if I give them the money, they're going to have mail and voting. And I don't want mail and voting. Well, how the hell are we supposed to vote in the middle of coronavirus? And you know what they're going to do? They're going to have a huge number of ballots in Republican districts, voting boosts. And in Democratic districts, especially in the cities, they're going to pack everyone into tiny little rooms and say, oh, there's coronavirus, you can't go. Oh, we already eliminated your ability to do mail in voting.

ha ha, they're gonna try to cheat in every single way. And you have to aggressively call it out. And your allies in that effort are Cudlow and Trump, who just come out and say, yeah, we're against voting. We don't, we want to destroy the post office so that you can't safely vote. We want you to, if you do, remember that old slogan, voter die? It may never make any sense, but in this case, vote and die is what they're saying. And it's sick. It is sick.

And I just want to note, look, I think the Trump administration really does highlight how weak our system of checks and balances is. You know, over 100 Democrats wrote a strongly worded letter about this. Okay, great. I mean, whatever. What? What? I mean, we might be dealing with, you know, first of all, he's definitely an authoritarian.

And there's no question about it. He wants to just steal this election. And the response is we are going to investigate the post office. Maybe we'll do one of those like hearings that we're so great at. And we're going to write a strongly worded letter. Okay, great. And then what? That's not anything. So I think unfortunately we need to be prepared as voters, right? And I'm saying this for everyone. Because if you think this is only going to impact Democratic voters, you're wrong. Right. So if you're one of the hate watchers of TYT, I urge you. you to do this as well. If you can, vote early. Do what you can to cast your ballot as early as possible. I know it's not necessarily an available method all throughout the country, but we do know that when it comes to mail-in voting, California, Colorado, Hawaii, Nevada, Oregon, Utah, Vermont, Washington, and D.C. are automatically sending voters mail-in ballots. Other states do require voters to opt in to vote early or require an excuse to vote absentee. So depending on where you are in the country, please look at what your local laws are when it comes to casting your ballot and do what you can to vote early. I mean, that's really the most important action that you can take as an individual.

Because honestly, if we're sitting around waiting for Congress to do what it's supposed to do and be a real check on executive power, where I don't want to be pessimistic, but I feel like it's a giant waste of time at this point. Okay, two other really important things in this regard. If you're wondering, so why are they doing it, right, if it's going to affect everyone equally? Well, number one, in any state where they have a Republican governor, it is not going to affect everyone equally. They will have far more voting boosts in Republican areas, and they can control the mail to some degree. Once they get it, they can count it immediately, they can not count it immediately, etc. And so one of the One of the games that they could do, which is what happened in the year 2000, is if it looks

like, hey, if we delay the mail imbalance in Wisconsin, Michigan, et cetera, but we've got Republican governors in Ohio, Florida, we can make it seem like Trump has a slight lead and then say the election is over, and we shouldn't count anything else. That's literally what they did in the year 2000, it's not just Trump. Bush did it, Bush did it, the Supreme Court did it. And in 2000, as the journalist showed, if you'd counted all the vote ballots in Florida, Al Gore didn't just win the popular vote. He won the electoral college.

But they ended the election before they counted all the votes. So they already have a blueprint for how to do this. And so that's one of the things that they're contemplating for how to get away with it. And even if they can't get away with that, the other thing they want to do is de-legitimize the election. Oh, well, you know, they say Biden won, but it was mail-in ballots, so it doesn't really count. So either Trump will try to stay, even though he lost. Or even if he doesn't do that, he'll say for the rest of life, his life and the Republicans,

it's illegitimate, Biden's an illegitimate president. We're not going to let them pass any laws or do anything else like that. And they're going to use that propaganda for the rest of the time. And so this is the sick, sick Republican Party we're dealing with. For God's sake, media, do your job and call out the entire Republican Party for 100% participating in this obvious attempt to steal our democracy away from us. All right, moving on to some drama in the GOP, because that definitely exists. Donald Trump is secretly angry with one of his all-time stars when it comes to serving as a lackey.

And that's Governor Ron DeSantis from Florida, which means that this is a perfect opportunity for as the White House turns. Made some very big mistakes. I asked for his resignation. I'm disappointed in the attorney general. Anytime Gabriel Sherman publishes, I read because he's got all the hot goss. And the latest gossip has to do with Donald Trump feeling angry with Florida governor Ron DeSantis, because Ron DeSantis has mismanaged the pandemic to such an extreme extent that Trump isn't able to hold any of his presidential rallies in the state. So again, writing in Vanity Fair,

Sherman writes that Trump has been fuming to AIDS about the coronavirus surge, lately blaming Florida Governor Ron DeSantis for the exploding numbers. He thinks Ron has made it a lot worse, said a Republican who spoke to Trump about the Sunshine State. According to a campaign advisor, Trump is pushing the campaign to figure out a way for him to hold rallies. In fact, one person told Sherman, Trump has told the campaign he only wants to do one or two events a week. They keep put on July 18th, get excited. This is big. For the summer's biggest adventure. I think I just smurf my pants. That's a little too excited. Sorry. Smurfs. Only dinners July 18th. and he's telling them no. A Republican close to the campaign told me. One Republican close to

the West Wing speculated that Trump doesn't like doing small events like factory visits because they promote other people's companies. He thinks, why should I do that? The Republican said. God, he's just such a bad person. And mind you, I mean, Ron DeSantis follows Donald Trump's lead. There's no question. I mean, Donald Trump doesn't take the pandemic seriously. The The United States is failing miserably when it comes to our response to coronavirus. And so Ron DeSantis is just an extension of Trump's incompetence and lack of empathy, lack of leadership. Ron DeSantis is a Donald Trump mini-mee.

So it is rich to see Donald Trump get upset and angry at Ron DeSantis for doing exactly what Donald Trump has done on a national scale. So we cover this story a couple of years ago, one of the high level executives of the Trump organization. She worked there for a long time, and she said, this is Trump 101. What he'll do is he'll get you to do something he doesn't want his fingerprints on. In this case, he kept yelling at Ron DeSantis, open up Florida, open up Florida, open up all the business in Florida.

So DeSantis did, like a good little water boy. And then afterwards, if it goes well, then Trump takes it. He makes credit for it. I'm switching you so you open to Florida, right? And if it goes poorly, he then blames you for it, and throws you under the bus, because idiot Ron DeSantis opened up Florida too early. Now Florida's got problems with all coronavirus, and I can't do my rallies there. I get rid of Ron DeSantis. That's the kind of vile person he is. In that case, he's being vile to another dirtbag Republican, so I'm thrilled about it. Ron DeSantis, go pounce sand and eat the dirt and keep licking his boots and see how you like it.

It couldn't happen to a better guy. Keep licking, keep licking, Ron, all the boots are not polished yet. But in terms of if you're a Republican and you think what Trump's going to be nice to you, or you know that he's going to kick you in the nads later, and you're like, oh, I like them, I like serving the big master. God, you guys are all so pathetic. And you know, Trump has been hinting that he's displeased with Ron DeSantis. One of the examples was actually fairly recent.

On July 21st, he went against some of the narrative that Ron DeSantis was putting out there in terms of how Florida was handling the pandemic. So Forbes reported that President Trump said that Florida is a state with a tough coronavirus problem in a sharp contrast with Governor DeSantis, a Republican who continued to paint a rosy picture of the state's coronavirus crisis saying Florida is, quote, going in a good direction. Now keep in mind, like put it all in context, because while he's calling out Florida specifically, he's also simultaneously minimizing the pandemic and spreading all sorts of misinformation and also trying to paint a rosy picture of how this country is doing with the pandemic as well.

But the one state that he decided to single out in criticizing was Florida. And now we have an idea as to why he did that. It's because he was thinking about his own personal interests. He likes being able to rally in Florida. He sees a lot of his fans and supporters living in Florida. And he hates the fact that he can't basically exploit that state right now for his own political aspirations. And by the way, let me just note that as of today, Florida has already had more than 551,000 confirmed cases of coronavirus and nearly 9,000 deaths.

deaths. So that state is not doing well. It hasn't been doing well. And all Donald Trump can think about is, why couldn't Ron DeSantis figure this out so I can go out there and campaign? That's where I like to do my campaigning. Hey, Donald Trump, you moron or morons, what did you figure out? Over 165,000 dead all across the country. What did you figure out? You haven't figured on anything. We're literally the worst in the world in handling coronavirus cases. The worst deaths in the entire planet, name any country, they've done better than us. So in Florida, they've had the equivalent of three 9-11s in deaths in just Florida. So why does Donald Trump care so much about Florida?

Yes, rallies. But also remember, he wanted to hold his acceptance speech in Jacksonville. Now that's ruined. And also remember, there's a lot of senior citizens in Florida that vote Republican. And now they're going to be afraid to go out and vote, and that also hurts Trump's chances. But finally, and most importantly, as you can tell with his obsession of, whose business am I helping? I only want to help my own business, right? You pathetic little man.

His businesses are down in Florida, including Mar-a-Lago, his beloved Mar-a-Lago. And he's losing money because people aren't going. So he's like, does Santis, make it magically go away? Inject yourself to bleach or something. I'll fix it. My business is, my business is. That's what you get for being an idiot, Donald Trump. Steward it.

When we come back from the break, we will discuss the latest birtherism conspiracy theory directed at, unsurprisingly, Kamala Harris. We'll be right back. At TYT, we frequently talk about all the ways that big tech companies are taking control of our online lives, constantly monitoring us and storing and selling our data. But that doesn't mean we have to let them. It's possible to stay anonymous online and hide your data from the prying eyes of big tech. And one of the best ways is with ExpressVPN. ExpressVPN hides your IP address, making your active ID more difficult to trace and sell

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They actually save you a ton of money on not just gas, but also parking, which is awesome. They're eco-friendly, obviously, and you could win these by signing up for an aspiration account or if you already have one, referring a friend. So in order to participate, go to t.y.t.com slash green summer. T.y.t.com slash green summer, don't forget, I've got between me and Yugar tonight on on Twitch.TV slash TYT. I'm talking to Maz Jabrani, so I think you guys will love that. Vote UV says in the member section, DeJoy will destroy the post office regardless of how much funding is allocated to it. They are literally removing sorting machines now. Unreal.

Now stiff upper lib writes in, hey, Jay, I want you to know something. Just before you mentioned my comment, I heard you say somehow how someone canceled their membership because their husband passed away and they used to watch TYT. Her husband died from ALS. My mother died on June 1st. She also died from ALS. Any chance I could pay for one more year of her having TYT membership, we need to stick together right now. We're on the right side of history. My mother was from the Netherlands and lived through World War II as a young girl. She had memories. She also had a father who refused to help Nazis round up local Jewish people. So the Nazis put him in jail. Let me know. God, that's an amazing story. When I hear about that kind of bravery,

Nothing we do today compares to that. So guys, let's go mount up, help fellow progressives. These are a relatively easy time to be an activist. In terms of your question, I love you for it. You could do t.t.com slash gift. You could do t.y.t.com slash upgrade. But you could also just do t.y.t.com slash join and get her a year membership or anyone you want a year membership.

I hope that helped, but no matter what, I love the sentiment, so thank you. And on YouTube super chat, Noxasem writes, I miss my Republican Party in the way it used to be. And for those of you who are young, you might not know of any other Republican Party other than this vicious one that currently exists. But I used to be a Republican too. There used to be a more liberal Republican Party. It just doesn't exist anymore. It's been eviscerated by the monsters that are in office now.

Last thing is from Twitch, Moline 14 re-subbed for their second month with Prime. Quote, Jen, glad to have you back. Love your ranch. You and Anna, our national treasurers stay strong. We appreciate that. And guys, obviously, last thing, you all know, TYT.com slash go to help support us and be strong progressive light in this darkness. All right, Anna, what's next? Newsweek is catching heat for publishing a nonsense op-ed that was written by a conservative named John Eastman, who basically tried to use a birther-like argument to question whether Kamala Harris. Harris, you know, has the ability to constitutionally serve as VP. Now, his argument is absolute nonsense. It was flat out rejected by everyone who is an honest actor. I'll read you a few portions of what he had to say. And then I'll tell you why he is a figure who is not to be trusted,

especially when it comes to any type of analysis or commentary on Kamala Harris. So he writes in Newsweek, the fact that Senator Kamala Harris has just been named the vice presidential running mate for presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, Joe Biden, has some questioning her eligibility for the position. Oh, really? Who are those some? Like, how about you name some specific people? What do you mean some people? Are you talking about yourself? That's what he's talking about, one person, right? So he floats this birther-like theory, and let me give you the details. Kamala Harris's father was and is a Jamaican national. Her mother was from India and neither was a naturalized U.S. citizen at the time of Harris's birth in 1964. By the way,

she was born in Oakland, California. That according to these commentators makes her, and by way, he never specifies who the commentators are. That according to these commentators makes her not a natural born citizen and therefore ineligible for the office of the president and hence ineligible for the office of the vice president. Really? Like, and so he gets into like this weird interpretation of what the Constitution says, where Harris's parents lawful, were Harris's parents lawful permanent residents at the time of her birth? If so, then under the actual holding of Wang Kim Ark, and that's a previous Supreme Court ruling, which I'll get to in just a second. She should be deemed a citizen at birth that is a natural born citizen and hence eligible.

So what he's referring to was a Supreme Court case, you know, that back in 1898, it was the case of the United States versus Wong Kim Ark. And the question had to do with whether Wong Kim Ark was a U.S. citizen. And the Supreme Court said that since this individual was born in the United States, this individual was a naturalized U.S. citizen, okay? But what Eastman is trying to say is, if Kamala Harris was born on U.S. soil at a time when both of her parents were not U.S. citizens, then she's not a natural born U.S. citizen. I mean, it's just absolute nonsense.

And look, even Eric Erickson said that it's nonsense. Get ready for a whole new round of birtherism and it'll be as stupid as the first time. A lot of other people had similar thoughts, but later Newsweek had to update the article, the op-ed, with this admission. The biographical note has been added to include that Eastman ran for attorney general in the Republican primary in 2010. He was defeated by Cooley, who was then defeated by Harris. So maybe a little salt there. And it's also It's also important, Jank, to point out that in 2016, the same individual, Eastman, wrote an op-ed for the National Review.

And what was the title of that national review? Well, it had to do with Senator Ted Cruz, who was born on Canadian soil. Senator Ted Cruz is eligible to be president. Let me give you a few pieces of that, and I want to hear your thoughts, Jen. So he writes, the latest charge against Senator Ted Cruz, first pushed by Donald Trump, is that because Senator Cruz was born in Canada, he is not a natural-born citizen, and therefore, eligible for the office of president. No serious constitutional scholar adheres to the view that the meaning of the natural born citizen requirement contained in Article 2, Section 1, Clause 5

of the Constitution applies only to people born on American soil. So I'm going to skip ahead and go to the two last graphics here. Under that widespread and longstanding interpretation, Senator Cruz is clearly a natural born citizen and therefore eligible for the presidency. His mother was born a U.S. citizen, born in Delaware, as well as a longtime resident of the United States who happened to be living in Canada when Ted was born while her husband was temporarily employed there. So let's move on from this particular silliness and get back to the business of choosing a president from among the broad slate of well-qualified and fully eligible candidates before us. Again, that was written in 2016 in regard to a president.

candidate who was born not on U.S. soil, but on Canadian soil. All right, so let's review a number of things. First, Ted Cruz not born in America, but a natural born citizen, according to Eastman. Kamahires, born in America, but not a natural born citizen, according to Eastman. I mean, you could end it right there. It's absurdity on top of absurdity. But let's continue for a second. He says in defending Ted Cruz, who by the way, cannot run for president according to if people care about these so called precedents, right? I actually think everybody can run and the 14th Amendment has vitiated all of this, but they say, but Ted Cruz is not only born in Canada, his parents were voting in Canada

at the time. There's no question, they were not U.S. citizens. They were Canadian citizens voting in Canadian elections. In fact, according to Eastman and the Kamala Harris story, he says, she's not even allowed to be a senator because she never became a citizen. That's also true at Cruz. So we should immediately make sure that Ted Cruz is removed from office. That's not also true. That's only true of Ted Cruz. Kamala Harris was actually born here. Ted Cruz wasn't. And what is Eastman's argument for Ted Cruz being a citizen? Well, maybe his parents weren't citizens at the time, but his mom was born in Delaware. Wait, I thought you said that being being born here doesn't matter. But all of a sudden, when it's Ted Cruz, his mom being born

here matters and is this positive. They're such unbelievable liars and hypocrites. So I'm not doing anything until Ted Cruz stops being a senator, because that guy's not a citizen at all. He never became a citizen. He's not my opinion, it's conservative Eastman's opinion. Is this racist? Of course it is. They never bring it up against white people, including white Democrats. Nobody ever question of Bill Clinton was a citizen. The minute there's someone of a person of color every time, like clockwork. The one other thing I want to just quickly mention is look at the kinds of disgusting tricks Republicans have to resort to because they know that their ideas are not popular and that they're

not winning. So they have to accuse Kamala Harris of this racist nonsense. sense, you know, you have Donald Trump trying to dismantle the post office and destroy, you know, any expansion of mail in voting. You have all of these dirty games happening, right? Because they can't win on the ideas. They know their ideas are unpopular. Polling indicates that. Donald Trump as a presidential candidate is even less popular. So, you know, you have to be careful of people like this because they don't have any ethics when they're doing what they're doing. They don't care about hurting anybody. They don't have any morals. All they think about is doing what it takes to win, even if it means resorting to destroying someone's life or putting outright

lies out there about people. It's just, it's sad. By the way, one of the editors in Newsweek that published that, conservatives cheered when he was selected as editor of Newsweek. Now we know why. Okay, postgame coming up, t.com slash join or just hit the join button below, AOC versus Trump and the ghost of Herman King when we return. Thanks for listening to the full episode of the Young Turks. Support our work, listen to 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, Jank Huger, and I'll see you soon.