The Young Turks - TYT Extended Clip - August 17, 2020

Episode Date: August 18, 2020

Bernie Sanders speaking the truth on Trump's efforts to rig the election. 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, the young church, Jakey Granite is fair with you guys. We've got a series of fun announcements. We have a fascinating week ahead ahead. So first of all, the DNC starts tonight. Yes, it actually exists.

Yes, they will do speeches. No, it will not be in person. Yes, we will be covering it. Tonight, it's me and John doing it. Tomorrow it will be me and Ben Dixon, then Michael Shored, then Anna Kasparian. And guys, it starts at 9 o'clock Eastern. He's got about two hours of speeches.

And the reason I say fun in this context is because play-by-play is back. So we're going to get to do live play-by-play coverage of each of the speeches. I just looked at the schedule, if I didn't count wrong, the first four speeches in the Democratic National Convention are by Republicans. Now that says a lot about what's happening today, both in the Republican Party and the Democratic Party.

In fact, we have two odious characters from both parties agreeing with each other and being wrong later in the program, so you have that to look forward to. So we'll break down those speeches for you guys, the good, the bad, and ugly. And then also tonight, the guy, I'm sorry, the candidate, presidential candidate, you've all been waiting to hear from, obviously, Amy Klobuchar. But at the end, Bernie Sanders. I mean, kids are interested in that. That's tonight.

So John and I are going to do play by play. I think you'll love it. Stay right here, t.y.com slash live, okay? And remember if you're a member, you get all of our programming anytime you want it, even if you miss any of it, okay? So either t.y.t.com slash join or if you're watching on YouTube, hit that join button below. All right, another awesome programming note. Corey Bush is on tomorrow. I already did the interview, and you are going to love the part where she talks about why she'll stay true when she goes to Congress. You will believe her, and you will love her for it.

So it's tomorrow at 5.30 p.m. Eastern. Please don't forget. She has one of the greatest lines ever that I will quote from here on after the interview. So that's some more at 530. All right, last fun one is too fun to contain in this one segment. So I'll tell you at the top of the next segment. Whoa, okay, so good things are coming. Anna, you're on. All right.

Well, as we know, well, let's start with the cold open, actually. I guess that he thinks that a suppressed vote, a lower vote to turn out will work for him and that it will help him win the election. So this is a deliberate effort to defund and destroy the U.S. Postal Service so that people cannot engage in mail and ballots. That's not Bernie Sanders talking. That's what Donald Trump is telling the American people, and it is an outrage, Chuck. Well, that was Bernie Sanders calling out the Trump administration and the Trump campaign's efforts to essentially suppress the vote by dismantling the post office. Luckily, Democrats finally woke up and realized maybe now is not a great time to vacation, you know, go on recess.

So now they are launching an emergency effort to prevent Trump from rigging the election through dismantling the post office. So Pelosi, for instance, is calling for the House to return to Capitol Hill. That's likely to happen this coming weekend. And the Senate, some members of the Senate are also considering reconvening to figure out what to do about the fact that Trump is trying to essentially rig this election. So Democrats in the House Oversight Committee have also demanded that the new Postmaster General Louis DeJoy testify on August 24th to answer charges that his controversial new policy changes are intended to deliberately slow voting by mail. As we've mentioned before, DeJoy is a Trump

loyalist and has donated millions of dollars to Donald Trump. In a letter to DeJoy, oversight committee chair, Representative Carolyn Maloney said, quote, over the past several weeks, there have been startling new revelations about the scope and gravity of operational changes. You are implementing at hundreds of postal facilities without consulting adequately with Congress, the Postal Regulatory Commission or the Board of Governors. Your testimony is particularly urgent given the troubling influx of reports of widespread delays at postal facilities across the country, as well as President Trump's explicit admission last week that he has been blocking critical coronavirus funding for the Postal Service in order to impair mail-in voting efforts for the

upcoming elections in November. I also want to note that he has a great to testify before the House Oversight Committee. So there's some, you know, agreement there, luckily. But there are some members of Congress, particularly representatives Ted Lou and Hakeem Jeffries, who are saying that the FBI needs to investigate what's happening with the Postal Service. In their letter, they write, multiple media investigations show that Postmaster DeJoy and the Board of Governors have retarded the passage of mail. If they're intent in doing so was to affect mail and balloting or was motivated by personal financial reasons, then they likely committed crimes. And Jake, just to remind the audience, some of the

things that have already been done, as was mentioned earlier, slowed delivery times. They have removed high-speed mail sorters in some facilities. Those sorters are obviously going to be needed in order to process an influx of mail and ballots. And they've also issued a warning that mail and ballots will no longer be treated as priority mail, which is insane. And of course, they also start to take away the actual boxes in your neighborhood, the post office boxes. And so they now say because of the intest pressure that are being put on, okay, fine, we won't

take away any more of those drop boxes. until after the election. And we will not disassemble any more of the sorting machines until after the election. That's what Chief of Staff Mark Meadows said. But that's only because they put tremendous pressure on. Now, I want to give credit to the people who did that. Number one is, as you saw in the beginning here, Bernie Sanders. He immediately went on the war past. And that's partly because he's been trying to protect the post office for decades now. And so he has seen them attack it over and over again. So to him, this was not a surprise or something new. It was just the worst form of that assault, because it's also an assault on our democracy, as he clarified.

So I love that he was on all the Sunday talk shows fighting for the post office and for our democracy. Secondly, Al Gore came out today as a helpful reminder of what happens when people steal elections and was super forceful and saying, under no circumstances, should the post office be trifled with in the middle of an election. So I love to see that. But I want to give credit to Ted Lew and Akeem Jeffries, probably the most. And if you follow the Young Turks really, really closer, you'll know that I'm not a giant fan of Akeem Jeffries. Out of the four of those guys, love three of them. Representative Jeffries, you know, has his issues. Now, but all we do on this show is we're honest with you guys and we're fair, okay? So credit where credit is due. I love that

Representative Jeffries is working with Ted Lou on this one. And they're exactly right. There are two provisions that they talk about here. One is 18 U.S.C. 1701 that makes it a crime to, quote, knowingly and willfully obstruct mail delivery. So if you're slowing down the mail on purpose, because remember, look, just the fact that they're slowing it down right in front of our own eyes that we can clearly see, and there's overwhelming evidence for, might not be enough to convict, believe it or not, because you got to go beyond a reasonable doubt. But if they wrote anything down, or if any witness says, yeah, we slowed down the mail on purpose, gone. That's a federal crime, and they should go to prison. Number two is 18 U.S.C. 595, which criminalizes

using the power of any federal agency to influence on election. If they have a witness or any memo or email written to that effect, gone, prison sentence. The joy should be locked away. Now, Only if he did it, only if he did it. We're not like the Trump people, just lock up our political opponents. No, if he's breaking the law in these super important ways, he should understand that there's going to be severe consequences. Now look, I love that they're fighting this way before the election so that we can make sure that everybody's mail and ballots are protected, including the Republican ones.

We want a fair election, and that actually tells us who won, right? But do I have any faith that Democrats will hold Republicans accountable even if they cheated after an election? No, I have no faith at all. None. But for now, good, great, and I'm super happy to give them credit. Yeah, I mean, look, I'm definitely happy that they're gonna go back to Capitol Hill. I mean, the fact that they were, they literally took recess was ridiculous to me.

But some of the messaging coming from the Trump administration is changing. I don't want anyone to think under any circumstance. or any circumstance that I trust Mark Meadows, for instance. But here's Chief of Staff Mark Meadows speaking over the weekend about changing course, the post office changing course when it came to some of the decisions that they've recently made. Let's take a look. Concerns about whether or not it's going to work, then it would seem that more funding would help as opposed to taking sorting machines off a line so that it will be more difficult

to do mailing. Well, there's no sorting machines that are going offline between now and the election. That's something that my Democrat friends are trying to stoke fear out there. That's not happening. Are you saying that sorting machines have not been taken offline and removed? Are you asserting that that did not happen? I'm saying that shorting machines between now and the election will not be taken offline. Listen, I had postal under my committee.

No, the ones that have been taken offline in the last couple months. No, no. So when you're looking at this, these postal machines, and the drawdown. That was a 2006 bill that has been implemented that I don't necessarily agree with, but that's not this postmaster general that did that. That was the previous postmaster general under Obama. That's just a lie. By the way, Obama wasn't president in 2006. What are you talking about? So he cites the year, too, like this was a plan that they had in place since 2006 when Obama was president. What?

No, they started decommissioning these mail sorting machines recently and at the same time let every single state know that the post office wouldn't have the capacity to process all of these ballots. And by the way, I mean, get a load of Mark Meadows trying to cover up for the fact that there is absolutely no evidence that mail-in voting or absentee voting has led to a prevalence of voter. fraud. Take a look at his messaging here. Do you realize how inaccurate the voter rules are with just people just moving around, not let alone the people that die off, but sending ballots out just based on a voter role registration any time you move, you'll change your driver's license. But you don't call up and say, hey, by the way, I'm re-regers. But there's no evidence of widespread voter fraud.

There's no evidence that there's not either. That's the definition of fraud, Jake. No, that's also a lie. I mean, go ahead, Jen, take it away. Okay, that's not the definition of fraud. The definition of fraud is when you commit fraud, not I couldn't find any evidence of fraud, and that's the definition of fraud. That's the exact opposite of the definition. So, okay, let's use Mark Meadows logic. I don't agree with this, but this is Mark Meadows logic. Yeah, there's no evidence that Mark Meadows is a serial killer, but there's also no evidence that he isn't. I don't know, I mean, I think we should investigate

whether Mark Meadows is a serial. We got Ted Crude as Zodiac killer. I don't know, maybe, you know, previously Meadows was a killer clown a la John Wayne Gasey. I don't know. There isn't any evidence of it, but there's also no evidence that he didn't do it, that he didn't massacre many people. Come on, under any other context, it would be insane to say things like this. And it's insane in this context. Now, again, we're a fair show. So let me be bipartisan it in my critique. You know just a couple months ago, and as usual, Davis-Tor wrote about this, the Senate unanimously, that means all the Democrats as well, approved Mike Duncan to be the head of the board of governors of USPS, of the Postal Service. And Mike Duncan is among the people

who now gets to decide whether DeJoy stays or not as the Postmaster General. Mike Duncan is the head of the Senate Leadership Pack, the Senate Leadership Fund, that raises 100 million million dollars for Republican senators, Democrats, I mean, just there's no end to how stupid they are. Why would you put that guy as the chair of the board of the governors of the post office when you know the Republicans are trying to destroy the post office? And that guy raised $100 million for Senate Republicans. How stupid or complicit are you? So now finally, when it reaches their own power, wait, they might read the election using the post office. I don't have power anymore, wait, now all of a sudden Democrats are concerned.

Again, minus the exceptions of Bernie Sanders, who's been concerned and been on the war path for decades on this. And by the way, let me just, if you're wondering why, why did the Democrats let Mike Duncan be head of border governors? Why is DeJoy, who clearly has a giant conflict of interest in the head of the post office? Why did the Democrats allow any of this? And if you haven't heard our previous videos about it, as quickly as I can, DeJoy gave two million dollars to Trump or the Republican Party. That's just a bribe. Why did he bribe them? Because he wanted to be the head of the post office. Why? Because he has $30 to $75 million invested in competitors and contractors of the post office. The criminality is through the roof.

And the reason that, and so he might have just been trying to destroy the post office for his own financial gain. And then he's like, oh, no, it's in the middle of an election. Oh, I got caught for no reason because of Trump's clownishness. I'm just trying to make tens of millions of dollars through obvious bribery and corruption. And that's your answer for why the Democrats never held them accountable before, because they participate in that bribery and corruption. So that's why they never called it out. When DeJoy did it or Mike Duncan did it, they happily gave them those positions, which they now regret. And I wanted to also just respond to the ridiculous statement Meadows made about voter fraud

with giving you some actual evidence of how rare voter fraud really is. So Jank, this is a tweet by public citizen and it says the mail-in voter fraud rate is 0.006% over the last 20 years. So there has been research into this and voter fraud is not a problem. in this country. What Donald Trump is clearly trying to do, and it's so transparent, is disenfranchised voters and steal this election. So guys, I want to give you guys, you know, sometimes Trump says, well, what's the harm? Let's, you know, stop mail on voting just in case 0.06 do it, right? Well, the harm is you block a lot of people from being able to, in fact, millions of people

from being able to vote and participate in our democracy to chase after a non-existent problem. So maybe it's, I could put it in terms that Republicans will understand. If 0.006% of white males do mass shootings in this country, that's actually, the result of that is horrific, right? But if we said, all right, so since that happens at that rate, which it probably does it around that rate. Let's make sure no white males can ever leave their house again. He said, wait a minute, that doesn't make any sense at all. 99.999, 4% of white males do not do bad shootings. And it makes no sense to not let them out of their house. So just giving you an

example of why they're a thing of like, hey, it happened once in our lifetime is not a good reason to deny millions of people the right to vote, especially during coronavirus, where the voting block that is most heavily represented as senior citizens, and they're also the most vulnerable. So let's do one more story on mail in ballots before we go to break, because something interesting happened in North Carolina that you guys should know about. So, while Donald Trump claims that mailing in a ballot is dangerous and that it leads to voter fraud, in reality, he is sending, well, the Republican Party in the state of North Carolina is sending absentee ballot request form so Republicans in North Carolina can vote by mail if they choose to. This is what it looks like. It literally has a tweet from Donald Trump's Twitter account on the front. The tweet says absentee ballots are fine because you have to go through a precise process to get your voting privilege. And let me be clear, as we've stated before, and provided evidence, there is virtually no difference between mail and voting and absentee voting.

In some cases, in some states, they might ask you for a reason for why you want to vote by mail if you do absentee voting. But the process is virtually the same. Trump is trying to draw a distinction that doesn't exist. Now, the mailer was sent out by the North Carolina Republican Party to registered Republicans and individuals who the party deems to lean Republican. And that was told to CNN by Tim Wigington. That is the press secretary for Tim Wigington, and that's the head of the North Carolina Republican Party. Now, the state party has sent several statewide mailers to make it easier for interested voters to participate. The irony is very thick and definitely not lost on me. Trump has been saying mail-in ballots will bring fraud to the election,

but absentee ballots are legit, which is it? It can't be both ways. I laugh because if the campaign actually took information from other times they have reached out to me. They'd know I won't vote for Trump despite being a registered Republican. That's a statement given to CNN by Chandler Karazza, who posted about this on social media. He was mortified by the ballot, especially because it included some pro-Trump messaging. Now, if you open it, you will see the application to get a mail-in ballot. And then there's also a page dedicated to Trump, where it says, Are you going to let the Democrats silence you? It's just incredible.

The national press secretary, deputy national press secretary for Trump, said the following. The Trump campaign said the mailer shows how it is working to ensure voters in every state, know how their state sorting system works so that every eligible voter can cast their ballot and have their vote counted. So I want to be clear, these are real. This isn't like some campaign ad. This isn't just like spam mail or whatever. This is real.

If the voters fill it out, they will get their absentee ballot, which by the way, that's totally fine. But legal experts are questioning whether it is legal for the state's Republican Party to send this absentee ballot request form with all this pro-Trump propaganda included. Okay, so I wanna be clear about a couple of things here. Sending absentee ballot request forms to people, generally speaking, is not illegal. So it would be a rare legal action by the Republican Party. Now, having said that, number one, be super careful because...

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next chapter at checkout. Visit happy mammoth.com today and get your old self back naturally. Because they're not allowed to fill out any portion of the form that would be illegal. You have to make sure that it's the same form as the actual ballot request form in your state. And you have to make sure that it's going to the right address. So for now, when you have Republicans sending pro-Trump ones, that's not as concerning, in my opinion. That will get to the hypocrisy in a second. But what if they start sending ones that pretend to be Democratic ones, but are not real ballot request forms? So they've done this

in the past for decades. So the most common way that Republicans will do this is they'll send out flyers saying, hey, the election got moved to Wednesday, and they'll send it only to Democrats. So they've done this over and over yet. So they try to cheat in almost every election in almost every conceivable way. And then they'll turn around and go, can you believe the fraud in elections? Okay. But in this case, so far, sending it this way doesn't appear to be illegal to the best of our knowledge. Now, let's talk about the hypocrisy.

So Trump says, oh, mail and voting, so terrible, I can't believe it. And they're like, hey, everybody, make sure you remember you mail and voting with Trump's face on it. They just have no conscience. They don't care. One thing doesn't have to match the other, it doesn't matter at all. They're just trying to get their side to do mail-in voting and trying to block Democrats from doing mail-in voting in every imaginable way. Okay? And Trump also trying to make a distinction between absentee voting and mail-in voting.

First of all, this is mail-in voting. Second of all, there is no distinction, okay? Trump does mail-in voting. And now he's got his big fat face on. all these things saying, make sure you do mail-in voting. But of course, Mago will not be moved by any of that. I think they rather enjoy not making sense. Yeah, of course. I mean, they know what they're doing. I know you might disagree with that statement. But this is meant to disenfranchise specific types of voters. That's why Trump is trying to draw this fake distinction, a distinction

that doesn't exist between absentee voting and mail-in voting. And there's a reason why these ballot request forms are being sent to very specific people. Now, luckily, there are nonpartisan organizations within the state of North Carolina that are also sending out ballot request forms, and they're not doing it in a partisan way, which is, in my opinion, the right way to do it. But I mean, I just think that the Democratic Party and the various state Democratic parties need to be very aggressive in pushing out the right messaging so people feel comfortable voting by mail and voting early considering what's happening with the post office right now.

And you guys, yeah, since they're trying to slow down the mail, whatever you do, make sure that you get a ballot in the mail, I wouldn't risk going. So one of our members, Aquilat, is asking, do you guys plan on voting by mail or in person? Normally, I love voting in person, I think it's just a fun tradition. But I'm definitely going to do mail in voting this time, one, because of coronavirus, but two, because my voting area isn't a nursing home. No, I mean, really? That is crazy, that is crazy.

Yeah, that's not going to happen, that's insane, right? So make sure you get your request your ballots if you're living in a state where you have to request the ballot and then send it in as soon as you can to make sure they have plenty of time to process it. And don't listen to any of the lies of the Republicans. Make sure you're following the exact format in your state. By the way, whether you're a Democrat or Republican, there's no reason to believe that mail-in voting even favors Democrats. That's not why Trump is even saying it. He's saying it for two reasons. One, to have an excuse if he loses.

Oh, I would have won, but I told you there was going to be a historic fraud. How could you know there's going to be a sort of fraud before it happens? It's such an absurd thing. And by the way, credited Jake Tapper, who over the weekend did point out to Trump's chief of staff, well, if you were really concerned about voter fraud, wouldn't you give the post office more money rather than less money to combat it ahead of time? Of course, they're not concerned about that. They know it's not true.

And of course, the more nefarious reason we're all worried about is if, you're not is if Trump loses and he says, no, mail and ballots are filled with fraud and they don't count, I'm gonna stay in office. So it's not because he thinks it's necessarily a political advantage for him to actually win the election. It's just it allows for a couple of different tricks to try to cheat to steal the election. All right, when we'll come back from the break, we'll talk about Trump hinting that he might pardon Edward Snowden and how both Terrible Republicans and terrible Democrats are outraged by it. We'll be right back.

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and entertained all at the same time. All right, back on Young Turks, Jane Cue Granik is sparing with you guys. Before I read the comments, I got a fun announcement for you guys. All right, we are now revealing two strong coffee. Whoa, what is this? So this is a progressive coffee for progressive coffee drinkers and helps support progressive causes. So we're unveiling for the first time here.

There's two different basically roasts. One is the French roasts, rebel roast. Love it, hello, rebel roast, okay. Second is a breakfast blend, the uprising. Come on, how's that not fun? Okay, I'm gonna keep it real with you guys. I help pick the coffee, which does of course cause some concern. But so far, nine out of ten people that have tried it, that is not a real number, but it feels that way, have told us it's awesome.

One of them said, it's like butter. Two StrongCoffee.com slash TYT. Portion of the proceeds go to great causes like just Democrats, Wolfpack, Young Turks, And now Rebellion Pack as well. And if you buy three bags, you get a coffee mug included, too strong coffee. I've been drinking all coffee all day, so I'm wired. Okay, it went from uprising to a rebel roast all of a sudden. All right, so everybody check it out of too strong coffee.com slash tYT, too strong coffee.com

slash tYT. Oh, by the way, it's organic, it's fair trade, and it's hands. Handcrafted, whatever that means. They're working on the beans, they're working on the beans, okay? So it is as progressive as you can possibly imagine. And this time, coffee is for causers. Again, if you believe in progressive causes, causers. I got it, yeah, that's good.

All right, all right, let me read some viewer comments. I love you guys, let me read these. So t.y.com slash joan, obviously, do we get your comments read first? Stefan Wolf says, great to spend part of my 40 first birthday with all of you, especially during my favorite 90 minutes of the day. You're awesome, happy birthday. Stefan Wolf, effectos makes a great point. When working class people are getting evicted and unemployed at record numbers, Pelosi wants

to go home to eat ice cream. As soon as she realized that she could lose power of the post office is decimated, she rushes back to Capitol Hill. Gee, nice to know where your voters ranked Pelosi, thanks. Unfortunately, that's totally true. Debbie says they are reporting their mailbox has been removed in New Jersey today. No surprise. Okay, so Debbie will check in on that.

Thanks for letting us know about that in your neck of the woods. Hiroshi loves you, writes in on YouTube super chat. Hey, people in the United States, please guard your post boxes and ballot drop boxes 24-7 with people plus cameras or they'll be filled with, well, he says acid. I don't know about that. I don't know about that at all, and I haven't heard any of that. But he says, you have no idea what's coming. This ain't a real election, but the supremacist's final power grab. We are worried about the power grab.

We are worried about them removing the post office, the box drop boxes. So we should guard them no matter what. Robert V writes in, I thought it was Robert the fifth. Anyway, hi, Jake and Anna. Jake was wrong about vaccines. Many scientists think the vaccine could be only 70% effective, like the flu. This will reverse the pandemic if enough people are vaccinated, but won't provide an impenetrable shield. Robert, I hear you on that brother.

If I made it sound like, you know, it'll solve all of our problems. Of course, that's not exactly right. You're closer to right, and let's hope we get the vaccine, and then I'll report on the exact percentages according to the science and doctors of how effective it'll be, okay? And then last one here, no more pot for you, right? It's in my YouTube super chat. DeJore needs to go, I'm so damn tired of all the corruption. I say I would vote for a potato in brackets Biden, but I really miss Bernie.

Thank you for your commentary. Well, we appreciate it, guys, and we do this show with you so much love. And by the way, I'm looking forward to your reviews of the coffee. I'm curious if I'm right, I love this thing. So and I love that it's helping progressive causes too. Okay, so let write in and tell us about that to strong coffee.com slash t. All right, Anna, what's next? All right, there aren't many things that Democrats and Republicans agree on, but unfortunately

over the weekend, we were reminded that they do both seem to agree on crushing whistleblowers like Edward Snowden. We learned about that after Donald Trump made a wishy-washy statement about possibly pardoning Edward Snowden, who's currently living in Russia because Russia gave him asylum, but he's facing some serious charges and would probably be in prison right now if he were to return back to the United States. So what did Trump say over the weekend? Take a listen. Do you want to give Edward Snowden a pardon and bringing back? You want to suggest it. Well, I'm going to look at it. I mean, I'm not that aware of the Snowden situation,

but I'm going to start looking at it. There are many, many people. It seems to be a split decision. There many people think that he should be somehow treated differently. And other people think he did very bad things. And I'm going to take a very good look at it. Okay. I mean, I've seen people that are very conservative and very liberal and they agree on the same issue. They agree both ways. I'm going to take a look at that very strongly, Edward Snowden. Well, earlier he had actually told the New York Post something very similar, which is why the reporter had asked that question during the press conference. So Donald Trump told the New York Post, there are a lot of people that think that he is being treated unfairly.

I mean that. I hear that. But of course, Donald Trump is not someone to be trusted. Let's keep it 100. Trump has been vicious in his previous commentary about Edward Snowden. We'll go to that in just a second. But let me also just note that there might be political motivations for why Trump is now bringing up potentially pardoning Edward Snowden. So he also told the New York Post this. When you look at former FBI director James Comey and former FBI deputy director Andrew McCabe and former CIA director John Brennan, and excuse me, the man that sat at this desk, President Obama, got caught spying on my campaign with former Vice President Joe Biden, Biden and Obama, and they got caught spying on the campaign. They did not. They did not get caught spying on the campaign. That was a conspiracy theory floated by Donald Trump as he was being investigated for, Russian meddling. And let me also just note that if you look at some of the things that Trump had tweeted about Edward Snowden in the past, he was vicious. So here's one tweet from 2013 where he wrote Obamacare is a disaster and Snowden is a spy who should be executed. But if it, and he could

reveal Obama's records, I might become a major fan. And I also want to note that that isn't the only time he said some pretty negative things about Edward Snowden. Here's a tweet indicating that before toying with pardoning Snowden, as he did again today, Trump tweeted 35 times saying how he was a traitor who should be executed. Another quote, it was, isn't it sad the way Putin is toying with Obama regarding Snowden, we look weak and pathetic, could not happen with a strong leader. So Trump isn't being real, like he doesn't have any love for Snowden. But what this all revealed, and I think where the real story is here, is that on one hand, you have the Liz Cheney's of the world feeling outraged at the thought of a whistleblower getting pardoned. And I absolutely

think Edward Snowden absolutely should be pardoned. And then on top of that, you have someone on the quote unquote left, Susan Rice, who was the former national security advisor for the Obama administration, saying something very similar. So let's go to Susan Rice's tweet where she says, I just can't. Congratulations, GOP. This is who you are now. No, this is what liberals are now, right? I mean, Edward Snowden let us know that every single American was being spied on by the NSA indiscriminately. And he is being persecuted for that. What he did was heroic. And both Susan Rice and Liz Cheney agree that he's some sort of monster that deserves to be imprisoned. It's just absolutely disgusting. Okay, so first of all, is Donald Trump a wildly hypocritical on this? Yes, do I care? No, let him go, let him go.

We got a free Edward Snowden, he's an American patriot and a hero. I don't even care if it's Putin himself that told Trump, I'm tired of hosting this guy. Why don't you take him off my hands? As long as it leads to a pardon of his so-called crimes in this particular regard regarding the leaks, I'm thrilled with it. So I don't really care why Trump is changing in his mind. Oh, is it to talk about spying on his coming camera? Hey, I'm not that sophisticated, but I'm sophisticated enough that I can separate out those

two issues and say, hey, you know what, Edward Stone deserves a pardon, but that doesn't mean that Obama and Biden were spying in on your campaign. Those two issues are not at all connected. And I'll fight you all the way to the end on your campaign being spied on. That's BS, especially by Obama and Biden. They'd rather hug a Republican than investigate one. Are you insane? Have you ever met them?

Have you ever heard them? Constant talk about how much they love Republicans. Anyway. But unfortunately, Anna is 100% right on the most important part of this, which is establishment Republicans and establishment Democrats now are nearly indistinguishable. So how sad this, Susan Rice, who by the way, is very, very likely to have a very senior position in the Biden administration, probably secretary of state, but at a minimum national security advisor.

It agrees with Liz Cheney, Dick Cheney, George Bush, yeah, let's illegally spy on Americans, and let's make sure we punish anyone who tells the American people about our illegal activities. So it's just so embarrassing what's happened to the Democratic Party. Yeah, absolutely. And look, I just think that it's dangerous to trust Trump, especially on these types of issues. Because remember, Trump said some pretty favorable things about Julian Assange right before his Justice Department imprisoned him. So Trump has no love for whistleblowers.

He might use and abuse people for his own political purposes, but he shouldn't be trusted when it comes to people like Edward Snowden who absolutely should be pardoned, right? I just, you know, wouldn't put a lot of trust or weight behind anything Trump has to say about Snowden at any given moment. Because if he really had his way, he would have executed Snowden. I mean, he called for Snowden to be executed dozens of times. Yeah, well, to give Trump credit, it's a rare white person he says should be executed. Almost always he says it's black people who should be executed. But look, do I think he's definitely I'm not going to do it? Of course that. I have no idea. Nobody has any idea. Trump doesn't have any

idea. When he says, well, there's a lot of people on both sides. That means he talks to talk to four dudes at Marlago and two of them said he should pardon Snowden and two of them said they did. Who are they? Rando, relatively rich people. So that's the only people he talks to. So can he change his mind from execution to freeing him back to execution? Of course, because he has no mind to change. There's just two cells in there and they don't often meet. So I hope that on a good day, some Randall Rich person's whispers in his ear, let Stone go, and he lets him go. And then we're done with it.

And Susan Rice and Joe Biden and Dick Cheney and Liz Cheney can all cry about it for the next 20 years. Oh, no, no, we can't do things that are illegal. Now good patriots are going to expose us. Good. I'm glad they're going to expose you. And if you try to do it in the Biden administration, I hope there's another Edward Stone that is courageous enough. to expose you again.

Let's take a break, and when we come back, we'll talk about how Trump actually wants to cut military spending, but specifically military spending that would help soldiers with their health care expenses. 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 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.

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They're awesome and great to the environment. and save money on parking and gas. So you go to tyt.com slash green summer, sign up for an aspiration account or for a friend for an aspiration account. You can get entered to win the e-scooter. It's awesome. So make sure you do it before we run out of time on that. ty.t.com slash green summer. Don't forget tonight we're covering the DNC, John Iarola and myself, we'll be doing live play by play. Bernie Sanders tonight, Michelle Obama's tonight. Obviously everybody's been looking forward to Amy Klobuchar tonight. But the DNC, yes, you did not hear wrong, is you're going to start with four Republicans

speaking first. That is a sign of our times. So we'll do play-by-play coverage on that. Now let me go to the viewers. Meg says, I don't care how we get there. Snowden deserves a pardon. Here, hear, agreed. Speaking of agreeing, Naudius Maximus says, I just tuned in as Jenk was talking about too strong

TYT coffee, holy smokes, coffee just got 100% better and 100 times stronger. Can't wait to try it. I love you for it, brother. That's awesome. If you get three bags, you get this mug, too, two strong coffee mug. Ricky Pazicki writes, and speaking of coffee, will old school TYT mug black with white letters make a comeback out shop TYT? I'll ask the thugs at shop TYT if they'll do that. But like I said, this mug gets you get with three bags of coffee. If you didn't hear earlier, it's too strong coffee.com slash TYT, two strong coffee.com slash TYT. All right. And last The last one is, Vicki says, didn't know what a dad joke was until I started watching

Jenk. No problem. You're welcome. Stick around. Stick around. You'll be an expert on dad jokes. I'm here to deliver. Okay. I want to answer a question by one of our viewers, because I mentioned that the Trump administration was pretty vicious to Julian Assange, which is why I don't trust him when it comes to pardoning whistleblowers. So he is imprisoned in the UK right now, but that doesn't mean that the United States hasn't been pursuing Julian Assange. That includes the Trump administration and the DOJ under the Trump administration, which released a press release on May 23rd, 2019, indicating that a federal grand jury returned an 18-count superseding indictment charging Julian Assange, the founder of WikiLeaks, with offenses that relate to Assange's alleged role

in one of the largest compromises of classified information. So while Trump might say polite things, publicly, in reality, his administration has gone after Assange very aggressively. And we talked about that when that story originally broke. Absolutely. Last couple of years from YouTube super chat, Christopher Mailer Pop says, Just bought the coffee, thank you. Also, I'm in North Carolina, and I received a neutral mail-in ballot application from the county without asking. Not all bad. Okay, great. I love to see you guys reporting that. We do the show together. Speaking of which on Twitch, Loris in Darkness, re-sub for our third month.

Bubblebee, Tuna gifted a sub to the channel, which is great. I love when you guys do that for each other. And Burning Fortress sub with Prime and Iron Man 42 donated 1,320 bits. Love you guys. Keep it going. All right, Anna, what's next? All right. The Trump administration is eyeing billions of dollars in cuts to the bloated military budget.

The only problem is the cuts would do away with funding for health care for troops and veterans. So this is pretty pathetic and devastating, especially when you consider that Congress just approved an increase in the military budget. So to see the Trump administration now turn around and threaten to cut funding for health care for the troops and for vets gives you a sense of where their priorities really are. Pentagon officials working on Defense Secretary Mark Esper's cost-cutting review of the department have proposed slashing military health care by $2.2 billion, roughly 9.5 million active duty personnel, military retirees, and their dependents rely on the military health system, which is the military sprawling government-run healthcare framework that operates hundreds of facilities around the world. The military health system also provides care through TRICARE, which enables

military personnel and their families to obtain civilian health care outside of military networks. Now, what they're trying to do here, and I think it's pretty clear, is cut funding so members of the military and veterans and their family members would have to rely on TRICARE, which is, in a lot of cases, going to, you know, out of network privatized healthcare. And that's what Trump's been wanting to do since the beginning. He's been wanting to privatize this system. And this might be one of the strategies that he's implementing. Asper rolled out the results of the first iteration of the defense-wide review in February, revealing $5.7 billion in cost savings that he said would be put toward preparing the Pentagon to better compete with Russia and China, including

research into hypersonic weapons, artificial intelligence, missile defense, and more. Now again, let me just be clear. Congress just increased the military budget in the latest National Defense Authorization Act, okay? So I want to just fast forward real quick and give you those numbers. If you look at the numbers, the, give me one second. Okay. So the previous year, Congress approved $716 billion, which was the fifth year straight of military budget increases. But recently, they increased that number to $740.5 billion for the upcoming year. So every year the number goes up.

Every year they spend more and more money on weapons and artificial intelligence. But now they're proposing to spend even less money on health care for our soldiers and veterans. No, they're a joke. And so Mark asked for some people say, like, oh, you know, if Trump loses, he might not go along with a plot to do a coup against the American people in the Constitution. He might be on the side of removing Trump. So he's such a good guy. Jesus Christ, man. First of all, that's the lowest bar literally in American history. And you're not even sure he's going to clear it. And now look at what he does. at his day job. So they have a budget as annexed by you is $740 billion. Now, they increased it $24 billion in just the last year. By the way, Democrats went along with that. So they're like, oh, no, no, we're going to be fiscally responsible and we're going to cut $5.7 billion in waste. First of all, 5.7 out of 740 is nothing. It's about, it's not even a quarter of the

increase that you just got, but then they have the audacity to say of that 5.7, more than a third, 2.2 billion is going to come from healthcare to the troops. So no, no, no, defense contractors that bribe politicians, and that is what it is. There's no Lockheed Martin giving money to a politician for their health or for charity. They give it to purchase them. They bribe politicians. So the politicians, Republicans and Democrats, return the favor give them $740 billion. So they're like, who are we going to take it out of? The troops. Who cares about the troops? Let's just take it out of their hide. Make sure if they come back with missing limbs, so what? Don't give them health care. Nobody cares about the troops. That's the kind of

sick state that our democracy is in. If I see one more bumper sticker that says support the troops on a car, I just want to ask them, do you actually support the troops? Or are you part of the vicious Republican Party that steals health care away from our veterans when they come home and gives all the money to the defense contractors that bribed you. Right, exactly. And so I want to go to this next video because this is the kind of messaging that we heard from Trump over and over again, both when he was campaigning and after he won the election. But I want to decode it when we come back.

My administration will spare no effort or resource to support the men and the women who defend our nation? I'll never forgive him for what he did to our United States military by not funding it properly. So I'm here for our military. I'm here to support our great, great

and very powerful military. Like our military was depleted. Our military was depleted. It was very depleted, as you know. It was depleted. You know that? When I came in, our military was depleted. It was depleted.

It was depleted. And as you know, it's been depleted. Stockpile was very depleted. like everything else. Stockpile was very depleted like everything else. We are completely rebuilding our military.

Our military is more powerful right now than ever before. I've rebuilt the military. It is being rebuilt to a level that we have never seen before. Our military was in very bad shape. We've rebuilt the military. Now we have a brand new military. Oh, we have the most beautiful

fighter jets in the world being delivered now every day. every day. We've got new planes, we've got new rockets, new missiles, we've got new everything. The equipment was old, the planes were old. We have a lot of things that will soon be coming, planes, missiles, rockets, lots of things. We've secured over $2.1 trillion in funding to completely rebuild American military. I'm in the process of spending tremendous amounts of money. We spend $1.5 trillion.

$2.5 trillion in new investments. Our military is now stronger. Think of that, $2.1 trillion, 2.1, not billion, you know, it used to be million. And then about 10 years ago, you started hearing billion. And now you're starting to hear trillion, right? So I don't know if that's a good thing or a bad thing, but it's good when we're spending $2.1 trillion in funding on our military. So, I mean, look, I don't really have to do much decoding. It's very, very clear that Trump's priorities are to increase the military budget to spend more money on weapons. Doesn't care about the livelihoods of our soldiers or veterans and does not care about their health either.

Yeah, the thing that galls me the most is after spending trillions of dollars on the Defense Department, they then turn around and say, we don't have money for the troops. It's not just their health care. You know that incoming troops, you know that troops, you are get on average about $19,000 a year. $19,000 a year, and now they're going to take you where they're health care. You want to talk about depleted, that's depleted. They don't care about our troops at all. Okay, guys, an amazing postgame, including four news stories you're going to love.

Hit the join button below to get it or t.yt.com slash join. We'll see you there just in a minute. Thanks for listening to the full episode of the Young Turks. Support our work, listen ad-free, access members-only bonus content, and more by subscribing to Apple Podcasts at apple.com slash t-y-t. I'm your host, Shank Huger, and I'll see you soon.