The Young Turks - TYT Extended Clip - December 16th, 2019

Episode Date: December 17, 2019

Congressional candidate, Cenk Uygur, has been the target of a vicious smear campaign by the mainstream media. Ana Kasparian and John Iadarola, hosts of The Young Turks, break it down. 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. Hungry now. Now. What about now? Whenever it hits you, wherever you are, grab an O. Henry bar to satisfy your hunger. With its delicious combination of big, crunchy, salty peat.

Peanuts covered in creamy caramel and chewy fudge with a chocolatey coating. Swing by a gas station and get an O'Henry today. Oh, hungry, oh, Henry. Hey, guys, you've heard of the Young Turks podcast because you're listening to it right now. But make sure that you subscribe and give it a five-star rating if you like it. Thank you for listening. Welcome to the Young Turks. I'm Anna Kasparian. John Ida Rola joins in today.

Hello, everyone. And I'm in a rage, to say the least. Really? Yeah, yeah. I'm in a rage. So let me just say, I want to apologize to our audience because while the mainstream media has been critiqued on this show over and over and over again, those critiques usually come from the perspective of someone who has given the media the benefit of the doubt

and maybe thought, hey, this misreporting, this misinformation. It's not the product of malicious intent. It's just simply laziness or incompetence or whatever, you know, whatever. There is an actual malicious intent behind the inaccuracies that are reported about certain people or certain stories. But this last week has been an eye-opener for me and I'm gonna explain why in just a minute. But one thing that I'm grateful for is everything that we had, I guess, suspected about the way the media treats certain people, like Bernie Sanders, for instance, has been confirmed,

okay? We don't need to guess anymore. We don't need to speculate anymore. It's abundantly clear that mainstream media is just part of the corrupt political apparatus in this country, period. And there is malicious intent. For me, that's the big thing. Like, of course, you need to be skeptical of all reporting, right? Because human error exists. But no, it's not just human error. There is malicious intent and it's insane and it's thrown my entire world like upside down because I genuinely believed in journalism in this country. I genuinely believed in some of these, you know, long tradition, longstanding traditional media institutions and now I don't know what to believe and that's a scary place to be in.

And I know this is very vulnerable and this is very honest and we're going to get into the details of what I'm talking about in just a minute. But I just wanted to put that out there. It's the only way I can think of starting the show today. We are. So I wanted to give you guys a few updates on programming, and then we'll get to the stories. So there is a Democratic debate happening in Los Angeles this week, and as always, TYT will be providing special coverage of it.

So we'll be covering the Los Angeles Democratic primary debate Thursday, this Thursday, on December 19th at 10 p.m. Eastern Time, 7 p.m. Pacific. You can watch it live by going to t.yt.com slash live. And on the panel, we'll have John Ida Rola, Ida Rodriguez, Jank Yugar, and myself. So make sure you check that out. Just to confirm, though, we don't know 100% yet if it's happening. Yeah, good point. So the debate is supposed to take place at Loyola-Maramount University.

There's currently a strike happening at that campus, and several of the candidates have said that they are not going to cross the picket line. It's actually all of them now. All of them now? Okay, great. So it started off with Bernie Sanders and then Elizabeth Warren. and now it's all of the candidates. They're trying to make a principled stand, and I commend them for that.

So we'll see how this all plays out. But for the moment being, it appears that they're still planning on holding the debate. We'll just see if that actually goes through. Yeah. All right, so let's get started. A number of media outlets have been reporting smears on Jank Yugar, who is, of course, a candidate for California's 25th District. Now, Jank is not on the show today, he's not even in the story.

or in the building today, and even though we are allowed to talk about that race or cover that race as if it's any other race in the country, I've shied away from talking about it on this show. We do editorial content here, we share opinion and analysis, we're not strict news. However, I just wanted to kind of keep away from covering that race in order to keep my own personal biases out of the story. However, we're now put in this position where we literally have no choice, but to respond to the smears that are being put out there by the establishment, plain and simple.

They are going through 13 years of video that TYT has produced. They're cherry picking and taking things out of context in order to make it appear as though Jenk is supportive of all sorts of disgusting and egregious things. Now, of course, he had his blogs from nearly 20 years ago, which he has all right. already addressed over and over again, he's apologized for them, he wrote them at a different time in his life. However, one of the smears is so egregious that we had to talk about on the show and debunk it. So it actually comes in the form of a New York Times article that was written by a reporter

named Jennifer Medina. And so I want to show you the headline of the piece. It was in response to Bernie Sanders unendorsing Jank. Bernie Sanders retracts endorsement of Jank Yuga after criticism. And again, Jennifer Medina wrote this piece. And so in it, there's an excerpt that reads, quote, in one clip that's circulated on Twitter, David Duke ends an interview by saying, I am not what you call a racist, to which Yuga replies, no, of course not.

Now, when Jenks said, no, of course not, if you watch the full video, if you watch just that snippet of the video, it is abundantly clear that he's being dismissive and sarcastic toward David Duke. If you watch the entirety of that interview, you will see that he goes out. after David Duke pretty aggressively. In fact, we're going to show you a clip of that in just a minute. But this is how far Christy Smith, the establishment media, and the Democratic establishment will go to smear jank, plain and simple.

Now, has he made mistakes in his commentary in the past? Absolutely. Was he wrong in writing an op-ed when he was in college claiming that the Armenian genocide was not a genocide? Yes, we've talked about that on this show, we've debated this on the show. I have been able to speak out against that aggressively, both on this show and behind the scenes. And he not only rejects that op-ed he wrote when he was a stupid college student, he has acknowledged a genocide on this very program over and over and over again, right?

Which people conveniently forget. Right, they don't conveniently forget, right? They're just bad faith actors, and I'm sick of it. Because this isn't just about California's 25th district. This isn't about Jank. This is about what we can and can't believe in reporting, right? So for me, this is, this goes beyond TYT. It goes beyond Jank.

What can I trust from the New York Times if they brazenly publish this type of garbage? And then when there's a flood of people demanding your attraction and a correction, they refuse to do it. Jennifer Medina hasn't responded at all. The New York Times hasn't responded at all. They reported this as if Jank is agreeing with David Duke. in saying that he's not a bigot or he's not a racist. Let's show you what the interview actually look like.

Name me one anti-Semitic person. You can't. David, how could you think you're not anti-Semitic? How could you possibly think that you think the Jews control the world? That's anti-semitism 101. Kagan is on the Supreme Court, but so Sotomayor, and she's definitely not Jewish. She's Latina. I mean, Kagan made it onto the Supreme Court, but so is Sotomayor.

Those are two picks by Obama. Sotomayor are clearly not Jewish. In fact, what is it? I think seven out of the nine justices are Catholic. Oh my God, the Catholics have taken over the Supreme Court. Watch out, David. Watch out. It's the Catholics that are the problem.

But then you've got the Koch brothers who buy all these politicians. They're not Jewish. How does that fit into your conspiracy theory? So, I mean, you keep saying Goldman Sachs, but before blankfying the head of Goldman Sachs was Hank Paulson. Christian extraordinaire. The biggest political contributor in the country is not Sheldon Aedelson. It is David and Charles Koch. They are enormously Christian.

They're Christian. If you built everything, but somehow you don't have power anymore, you can't even get into the schools you built. Why are you guys such losers? That video to watch the interview to confirm what a Twitter troll is putting out there right now. And that Twitter troll, by the way, is. We'll get to her in just a minute, or him or they. I don't know, I don't know the identity of this specific person, but I can guarantee you this person is lying about their identity on Twitter and spending every waking moment

cherry picking, taking things out of context from decades of TYT content in an effort to smear jank. And it's disgusting that mainstream media outlets, including the New York Times, just take that at face value, print it, publish it, never correct it, right? shows you that there's malicious intent here. Go ahead. Yeah, I mean, look, so if I'm trying to play devil's advocate, it's either. I don't know if right now is a good time to play devil's advocate. I have no patience for it. But go ahead. Could you put down the pen, please, and the mug? Okay, so it's either malicious. This person watched the video, knows that it was

sarcasm, but doesn't want you to know that, and so leaves it out. Or complete laziness, doesn't even watch the snippet of the video, let alone the full video, and just believes, because I've seen other things that he's said that I don't like, I will trust that anything you tell me he said is the way that you say he said it. But in either case, once it becomes immediately apparent that it's not an accurate portrayal, it doesn't matter if it's laziness or if it's malicious. You have to take it out. It's your obligation as a reporter for the New York Times more than any other outlet,

literally on the planet. They're supposed to have the highest standards. And so you can have a problem. I've talked with people that say it doesn't matter if he was sarcastic. He had David Duke on. I don't want him to have David Duke on, which is fine. Write that in your article. But to say that he was agreeing with him that he's not racist was either initially malicious

or lazy, but it doesn't matter because we know it's not accurate. And so how dare you not take it out of the article? Well, because there's malicious intent. To me, that's what demonstrated that this isn't about reporting the facts. This isn't about telling the truth about what's happening in that district and what this race is about. Look, there's legitimate criticism regarding Jank running and his position as a candidate, the fact that he doesn't live in the district. Fine, people find that to be a problem. And so that is legitimate reporting.

That is something that you can include in your article as a legitimate critique. But to go out of your way to smear him like this, to take videos where he's obviously making a joke. They're trying to paint him as someone who's like pro-beastiality. I mean, the most egregious, ridiculous, pathetic smears you can imagine, they're just printing and they're taking it at face value from a Twitter troll. So let's get to the Twitter troll because I want to discuss this person. I have general thoughts, but let's do the troll first. Okay, so there is one person who is very dedicated in spending all of their time posting

nonsense videos that are taken out of context, all of these smears that we're talking about. By the way, Tom Watson, who's not hiding his identity, he's a political strategist, a democratic strategist, who is regurgitating a lot of this. In fact, he even went out of his way to make it appear as though I deny the Armenian genocide, which is disgusting, and it's very difficult to hold back from cursing on this show right now. Because that's my family, those are my ancestors, okay? to exploit them and pretend as if you care about the Armenian genocide to push your stupid political narrative and your stupid political agenda is so incredibly gross.

And I'm so sick of it. I'm sick of it from the right and I'm certainly sick of it from the left, pretending as if you care about the genocide. You care about the genocide? Why weren't you lobbying to get it recognized in Congress? You weren't, right? Because you don't care. It's nothing more than your little political tactic.

But one of these trolls is Mendoza Ferrer, right, has changed the Twitter account several times. Oh, here's my new Twitter account. Now that I've sniped one political candidate I don't like, I'm going to go ahead and use a new account to snipe another one. I have reason to believe that that's not a real person, okay? So we're looking into it because I want to know, all right, is this like a paid political operative who is part of the Democratic establishment, trying to smear jank, trying to smear the young Turks, trying to smear everything that we do here, I want to know. And what's really

interesting is, in response to one of our viewers also questioning the identity of this person, I said, it's not her real name, already digging into this, they think we're stupid, okay? And what did she do? By the way, this person has blocked me, so I'm not able to respond to any of the smears that they post, none of them. I have no voice, right? Anyone who has actual evidence to provide a rebuttal to the smears that this person is putting out there, you're blocked, so you don't get an opportunity. But in response to that comment, this person wrote, if people could report Anna Casparian's tweet below as targeted harassment, I would appreciate it. Oh, that's rich, that's rich. You want to talk about targeted harassment?

That's not targeted harassment. All these reporters are relying on this person, posts on Twitter to do their reporting, right? We're not allowed to know what your identity is. Well, and the level it goes to is Jake Tapper just tweeted a thread to her thread. Yeah. So if she took like six seconds out of a video removes the contents and removes the fact that it was sarcasm, Jake Tapper believes, I just trust her. It's fine.

I don't need to go and find the videos myself. You can just trust this non-verified person that I didn't know up until earlier today. Run with that. That's fine. And so you're exactly right. If this is the source who is publicly posting smears on Jank and the young Turks, and the media is just taking it at face value, reprinting it, republishing it, regurgitating it, we don't have the right to know whether or not this person is a paid political operative.

Or is affiliated with the campaign? Or affiliated with the campaign? Exactly. But again, if they're affiliated with the campaign, political operative, we should know about it. So this Tom Watson guy, again, a Democratic strategist wrote, here's Anna from TYT digging into the real identity of the person posting videos of Jank's own words, out of context, by the way, right? And then he accuses me of ramping up to docks and expose. So this is what Democrats are about. Establishment Democrats, this is what they're about, right? By the way,

that wasn't Tom Watson, but Tom Watson tweeted something similar. Yeah. That was someone who's also going after Jank on Twitter. And might like Pete Buttigieg. It seems. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, dox has a definition. Yeah, it's exposing the personal information such that a person could go and find that person in the real world. It exposes someone to violence, possibly sexual or physical violence that could lead to them being killed. Simply identifying a name that goes along with a social media account that is not doxing a person. Yeah. By the way, as people who have literally been doxed, we appreciate the distinction between these things.

Oh, but they don't care about us getting dachs. Exactly. Right? They don't care about doxing in general. They don't care about anyone getting dached unless it's one of their own political. operatives that they're trying to protect, right? Because it would look real bad if we find out that this person is actually associated with a campaign or is part of the DNC. Or an industry or a lobby group or something. That would be a real problem. So let's go ahead and try to intimidate

Anna into accusing, by accusing her of trying to dox people. Yeah, let me just let you guys know something. Maybe you haven't watched the show much. I'm not easy to intimidate, okay? I've tried. And by the way, it's just a matter of time because over the past few days, this has been written about by the LA Times, Washington, New York Times, literally everyone, so many reporters, they're going to want to know who this person is. So let's take a look at what Jenk has to say about the Armenian genocide, because that's another smear that I'm seeing over and over again. Let's take a look. Did I write things about that when I was younger? Yes, so that part is true. So I did deny it earlier. I wrote in a column when I was in a column. about that. And so obviously a long time ago. Well, what's my position? I think I've stated it clearly a number of times, but I'm going to state it one more time here, okay? The Armenian genocide happened. It existed. It's true. Okay. I don't know how I could be any clearer

than that. So I know that some Turkish folks grew up believing in things that were taught to them, whether it was in Turkey or through other means. And I know because I live that, right? I'm a Turkish American and I grew up believing the things that I was taught. And looking back on it, some of it is absolutely absurd. And there's an Armenian genocide is incredibly serious issue. And they were targeted because they were Armenians. Whatever excuse you want to make about why, they didn't target Norwegians. They didn't target other people.

They target Armenians. They were driven out. They're not in Turkey now. And an enormous number died in massacres. It is a textbook definition of a genocide. And that's just one example of Jank talking about the Armenian genocide on this network. But it doesn't matter. They don't care about the truth.

They don't care about the facts. They're going out of their way to smear him. And once Bernie Sanders endorsed Jank, oh, let's kill two birds with one stone. Because it's not about Jank at that point. It's not about Jank. And it's look, this is the thing. You guys, we're not living in a true democracy. if you have the media serving as an extension of political agendas,

as nothing more than an apparatus utilized by corrupt politicians. We just don't have a democracy, period. We just don't. And we certainly don't have true journalism in this country, if we're going to allow stuff like this to pass. So I read a good number of the articles over the past few days, and the New York Times one really stands out as the one most willing to say something that they must have known was literally the opposite.

of the truth. The vast majority of the other articles, I mean, we expect that there would be negative press. Obviously, Jank knew that there would be negative press. He's a guy who has spoken more on camera than literally anyone else in the country, and he's never shied away from saying things that were then or now controversial. The thing about the entire episode that I have found to be depressing is the media's dereliction of their duty in this particular case. Not that they're going to cover the stuff that he said. Nobody thought that they were not going to do that sort of thing, before the Sanders thing, after the Sanders thing, I mean, obviously that was going to be a part of the race.

But for any given Democratic congressional primary around the country, how many front page New York Times articles do you think will be written about it? None, probably. How many times will the LA Times write about a particular Democratic primary race, even in California? Maybe it'll get one, Washington Post, same thing, Politico, same thing. I don't know if there has been this cycle as much focus on one congressional primary on the Democratic side anywhere in the country.

And yet, after days of reading article after article after article, I could not tell you anything substantive about either of the candidates. I don't know where Jake stands on healthcare, income inequality, police brutality, climate change, anything. By reading those articles. By reading those articles, obviously I know because I'm here and I know him. Christy Smith, I have no idea. I've read- She doesn't stand for anything.

Well, perhaps. She doesn't even have a web page that has fully thought out policy proposals. And nothing. So that's the thing. This is what she has, smear attacks, smear campaigns. That's what Christy Smith has. Congratulations. So this is an incredibly important primary.

And by no means a slam dunk win for any Democrat who ends up getting it. This is a purple district. The Democratic candidate that you get is very important. And the idea that you would write thousands of words and never mention substantive information about what the stakes of the election are, what it means to choose one candidate over another, what their actual agenda is. Jank has said a lot of controversial things, a lot of offensive things over the years, but he's also said more about his political ideology than literally anyone else in the country. If you wanted to know what he thought about reproductive rights, trade policy, foreign policy, you have more on the books to quote from than anything.

Pete Buttigieg, every video of him speaking before two years ago goes viral because there's like three of them. We know almost nothing. With Jake, we know almost everything, but no interest. Jake Tapper's not going to have him on to say, I want to talk about this controversial stuff, but also what do you think about Medicare for all? That's a really important policy. What do you think about climate change? Seems kind of important. They're treating this entire election as if it is just about taking down jank. Christy Smith never has to say a thing about her agenda. She can just sort of coast by, probably if that's going to be your campaign strategy, lose next November to the Republican. It's so much more important than that. You're the New York Times. You're the Washington Post.

You're the L.A. Times. You have resources and expertise and training. And you can't say anything about what these people would actually do? Why do we think that so many voters have no clue what's going on in this country? Right. To put all of this focus onto a race and teach nothing except about the controversy, which we were always going to get. Nobody's surprised about that. But do that and then put something about so many issues that are so important to hundreds of millions of Americans. They don't care. And again, if the media were really supposed to fulfill the obligations and the responsibilities of true journalists, true journalism, right?

Then they wouldn't be so hyper-focused on these attacks. I mean, again, they're serving as an extension of political campaigns, really. And that's the part that's been heartbreaking for me personally. Now, of course, there's the personal aspect of it with Jank. But you guys, I wanted to be in media, I wanted to work in media since I was a kid. And I just believed things about journalism that aren't true at all. And that's a difficult thing to take in. Because look, again, we've criticized mainstream press.

But I always thought that when these mistakes were made, that they were mistakes. That it was because of incompetence. It was because there wasn't actually ill intent. Come on, guys, journalism is important. There isn't bad intent, especially with places like the New York Times. Like yes, yes, people are like, oh, you didn't know. I mean, come on, look what happened with the war in Iraq. Yes, I know, I know about those mistakes, believe me.

But I just didn't want to believe or buy into this idea that, you know, the journalists that write for the Times are bad people and that they're doing this maliciously or intentionally. And I was wrong. And it's a difficult thing to take in. Yeah. Well, at least in this one case, it would be very easy for this particular writer or the editor in charge of it or whatever to fix this.

issue a correction. Don't just take it out of your article. Issue correction saying, whether by malice or laziness, we gave an incredibly false impression of something that we reported on. We apologize for that, and we aim to do better in the future. Easiest thing in the world you would expect it from any outlet. Unless we can't independently verify things that have been reported by the New York Times, we will no longer use the New York Times as a source for any of our coverage, period. At least on the main show, I can't talk for the rest of the network. I can't trust them. And so while they might think that their job isn't serious and that they can just play games

and paddy cakes with politicians, I take this job seriously. And I actually care about making sure we get you guys the truth. So that's where we stand right now. 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-B-The-Republic or UNFTR, the host delves into a different historical episode or topic that's generally misunderstood or purposely obfuscated by the so-called powers that be.

Featuring in-depth research, razor-sharp commentary, and just the right amount of vulgarity, the UNFTRTR podcast takes a sledgehammer to what you thought you'd knew about some of the nation's most sacred historical cows. But don't just take my word for it. The New York Times described UNFTR as consistently compelling and educational, aiming to challenge conventional wisdom and upend the historical narratives that were taught in school. For as the great philosopher Yoda once put it, You must unlearn 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. Hey guys, welcome back to TYT, Anna and John with you. I wanted to read a few member comments and some TYT lives before we get to the rest of the news.

Stone Cold, Casparian Stunner writes in and says, Anna, I don't pay to watch CNN, MSNBC, Fox News. There is plenty of free content online to be had. I'm more than happy and honored to pay for my TYT membership because the truth is priceless. Thank you so much. And look, I was just saying during the break, it's sometimes it feels like we have no power because we don't have the money behind us. We don't have the resources that some of these major news outlets do, but having you guys behind us, both our members and also people who might not have the means to be members.

Like you guys are the ones that keep us going, viewers in general. Like we would not be able to have any influence, any sway, nothing without you guys. So thank you. Terry Teeter, a teeter taught her German teacher says. I think they're just trolling us with these names now. I don't think that's their real name. No, of course it's not their real names. I mean they're real online names.

I know it's not on their birth certificate. Of course, there are journalists who are willing to knowingly spread lies. It only, if only because journalists are not paid much, and life in New York is expensive. Mondo Libre says, I was disheartened as a journalism major during the Reagan era. Anna, you're absolutely correct in your assessment. I know, and it's incredibly depressing. And a few TYT lives, and we'll move on. I rinse in McConnell's neck bag sweat, says, Anna is near flames.

Someone be on standby with a bucket of water and a joint. I'll take the joint. Or are you guys going to use that against me now, huh? Christy Smith, huh? I like pot. I like to smoke pot. That's what she does. Okay, that's what I do.

Anyway, move on. But keep the water near, everybody. Right, because my throat gets dry a lot of the time, after pot, okay? The young Turks partake in marijuana consumption. Yeah, and I'm not joking, I really do get dry mouth though. Yeah, most people do. Okay, good. All right, so let's move on to non-California politics stuff.

So Donald Trump's impeachment continues, and it is of course going to now move to the Senate where Trump will stand trial and senators will decide whether or not to convict him of the articles of impeachment, which include abuse of power and, of course, construction of Congress. Construction of Congress, exactly. Now, obstructs, I say construction. Sorry about that, obstruction of Congress. There's only one thing he wants to construct and it ain't Congress. Right. So now with that said, I find this latest story about what Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer is doing because no one's going to listen to him. He sent a letter to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell with a few demands. And the demands include testimony from former national security

advisor John Bolton and also White House Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney. Also Schumer wrote that other witnesses should be called as well, should they be identified by the Trump administration or members of the House who have been designated as impeachment managers. Other requested Witnesses include Robert Blair, Mulvaney's senior advisor, and Michael Duffy, associate director for national security at the Office of Management and Budget. Schumer also called for the Senate to subpoena documents from the White House, State Department and OMB regarding the delay of military assistance to Ukraine. Now it's, these are all things that make sense.

I mean, testimony from the individuals that Schumer is asking for makes all the sense in the world. The question is, what type of games are Republicans gonna play, particularly someone like Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell who has been guilty of obstruction himself, like not in the criminal sense, but when it comes to something like, I don't know, confirming a Supreme Court nominee, he's pretty aggressive in preventing those types of things from actually coming to fruition. Yeah, well, I mean, we have some idea, I mean, they've talked about some of the witnesses

as they would like to see there. The idea that they're gonna get Joe Biden or Hunter Biden as part of, like, it's depressing the lack of seriousness with which they've not just dealt with his trial. They're almost certainly not, none of are gonna vote for it, I get that. But the entire thing, that they can't even, like they would have, in the 90s, they would have had to pretend to care about a foreign power getting involved in our election or someone trying to get them involved in our election. You know, they would still support the president probably.

We were still incredibly partisan, people think that's a new thing, we were partisan then. But they would have pretended, there's no obligation to pretend anymore to imply that democracy is important or that your vote should count. And so the fact that Trump, like Giuliani's investigation was based on absolutely nothing, the conspiracy theories about like crowd strike and all that, they're just going to amplify those as part of the trial. Because Donald Trump wanted, he wanted the investigations, sort of, but what he wanted was the narrative to be about investigations.

So why not get that anyway just by bringing it up as part of the trial? It really accomplishes the corrupt goal he was pushing for. You're right. I mean, look, we knew that there would be issues once this gets to the Senate. And so this could be disastrous, not only for the current political state that we're in, but what it means for the future. Because if he is, if Trump is acquitted in the Senate, as we're all expecting that to happen, right?

Now there's the upside of getting all of these Republican lawmakers on the record, enabling Trump's criminal activity, but then there's the giant downside of now setting a precedent that says, no, no, it's okay to ask foreign governments to meddle in our elections, because that is what Trump did. Again, there's a lot of evidence that bears that out. And we've had over a dozen people, both within the Trump administration, and no longer with the Trump administration, testify against him during these House committee hearings. Yeah, and look, very often in between elections, we will say this should be an ad.

But it is a slam dunk that once you get them all to vote, and let's assume that all of them do, just start running ads. Donald Trump thought he could take your tax dollars and manipulate a foreign power and investigating his political rivals. And so-and-so a senator said it was fine. Like, you've got to run those sorts of ads. We know that especially in the last few election cycles, corruption is a huge motivator to come out and vote. No one has been as obvious with their corruption as Donald Trump.

And if these Republican senators want to sign off on that, good, do that. And then link them to his corruption. That's how you want to win the Senate, that's how you do it. And especially Mitch McConnell. He thinks he's clever and he's cute and he's playing games and stuff like that. He is already polling really poorly. It's by no means a guarantee that he's going to lose. Certainly not. But if he is going to be the premier defender of Donald Trump and his corruption, then you've got to hang that around Mitch McConnell's neck. Well, one thing I'm also really curious about is how Republicans plan to respond to the actual substance of the testimony during this trial, right?

Because you're going to have testimony. Witnesses are going to be called by the Democrats, and they're going to say much of what we've already heard during these public hearings in the House. And so- Do you remember Kavanaugh hearings? Do you remember Lindsey Graham's and Passion Rant? I remember that, but look, it's a little different, right? Because the accusations against Kavanaugh are incredibly difficult to prove because Christine

Blasey Ford, Dr. Ford, was really the only person in that room when Brett Kavanaugh allegedly did what he did, okay? And so with the impeachment trial, you have witnesses who all corroborate the same thing. And so there's way more evidence here, which is why originally Republicans were scared of what to do. They attack the process of impeachment, but they wouldn't attack the actual substance of what the witnesses would say. They would attack, let's say, the character of the witnesses, even though many of them

were appointed by Donald Trump. They would say that they're never Trumpers, that they have a political agenda. But I don't think that that really goes, I don't think that works, I don't think that's effective. Yeah, I don't know how or if they're going to respond at all. I think Mitch McConnell is going to rush through it as fast as he possibly can. I think that every action that Republicans, in particular Republicans in the Senate are taking, is predicated on one belief, and that is there are enough white conservatives to get them reelected. And I don't think that they are going to change in any fundamental way until it has proven

to them that that is not true. And they need to expand beyond that incredibly significant but shrinking base. Well, let's talk a little bit about public opinion on the impeachment process because there's a new Fox poll out that's just fascinating and kind of surprising. So, Fox News has published its latest poll on Donald Trump's approval ratings and also how the public feels about the impeachment and removal process. And this is a poll that Trump isn't very happy about. In fact, he raged about it on Twitter. We'll share that in just a minute. But first, let me give you some of the results.

According to Fox News, 45% of voters approve of the job Trump's doing. That's actually up from 42% in late October. It's kind of shocking. Over half, 53% disapprove. That lands the president almost exactly where he started the year as 43% approved and 54% disapproved in January. Now let's get to how people feel about the impeachment. The same poll finds that 50% want Trump impeached and removed. from office, 4% say impeached but not removed and 41% oppose impeaching him altogether.

That means that 54% of voters think that Donald Trump should be impeached, right? So a majority think he should be, he think he should be impeached. And so he didn't like that. He had a salty tweet about it over the weekend. He said the Fox News poll, always inaccurate, are heavily weighted toward Dems, so More ridiculous, same thing happened in 2016, they got it all wrong, get a new pollster. So I have more results from this poll, but it's just amazing how easily, and look, he can easily brush things off as fake news because fake news does exist, right? I mean, there are, as we know, from recent news stories that we've covered on this show, there are bad faith actors, dishonest actors who put fake information out there.

They knowingly, intentionally, maliciously post things, publish things that are false because they have a political agenda. So they're helping someone like Donald Trump brush things off as fake news. Yes, I am not as terrified about the number of that as you. I still think most people are good if flawed and biased and come at things from a particular point of view. Oh, your day will come, John. Oh, I'm sure it's coming.

But yeah, the heavily weighted towards Dems, first of all, no it's not, and second of all, Why would it be, why would Fox, why would you watch Fox 14 hours a day? Why would they do that? What would be the objective of that? To produce polls that are biased against him that the vast majority of their hosts are never going to reference on air anyway, what would be the point of doing that? And by the way, if I could teach everyone one thing, it's that when you see the results of the poll, do you know that you could get more information if you want to?

you can get the actual exact questions, the exact data. You can get the cross tabs on it. You can get information on exactly how it was weighted. You don't have to trust Donald Trump on that. You can see exactly how it was weighted. Yeah, exactly. But nobody does that. Nobody does that.

Well, one person who should probably look into it is Kilmead, who is also shocked by these poll results. Let's take a look. According to the latest Fox News poll's support for impeachment is holding steady, with 50% of respondents saying they favor impeaching and removing President Trump from office. And just keep in mind, too, the Fox poll came out, and I was stunned by this. It says 50% of the country want the president impeached. I was stunned to see that that's the number because I thought the things were trending away,

although the president's approval rating did take up in the same poll. So it's almost like a split personality. So this, look, can I just- Why did you believe it was trending away because the president tweeted it? Fox News comes out with polls every week. You can probably get them emailed automatically to you when they're done. Why did you believe that crazy, crazy thing? So look, I, famously you and I disagree about the importance of polls, right?

Like you seem to like polls more than I do. And part of the reason why I don't like polls is because there are inconsistencies in polls all the time and oftentimes the polls that get the most attention tend to be like the results are within the margin of error. So you don't really learn anything from it anyway, it could go both ways. You learn it's close. Okay, sure, whatever. be useful information.

Yes. So look, one other thing I want to say about the poll though, is so it's holding steady. I think everyone should be frustrated by that because all of the information coming out, all of the witnesses coming out, whichever way it was gonna move it should have moved in some direction as a result of that, but it didn't, and that scares me about the way people go to the news and their willingness to be affected by it. But more importantly, it's that 41% that say he shouldn't be impeached at all. Because honestly, they're like if the crime that he is alleged to have committed, what percentage of Americans don't think that someone doing that should be impeached?

If it's your political opponent who did that, should it be impeached? That's got to be above 90%. Well, okay, so here's one other result from the poll that I thought was pretty interesting. So again, this is the same Fox News poll. By a 60 to 24% margin, voters say it is generally, wrong for Trump to ask leaders of a foreign country or foreign countries to investigate political rivals. So the majority of Americans find this problematic, yet a smaller portion of the country thinks that Donald Trump should be impeached and removed for doing this. Yeah, well yeah, you could think it's wrong but not to the level.

I think that that's wrong. It totally jeopardizes our democratic process. Like it's the one of the worst things you can do, right? I mean, you're- In terms of a precedent. that the president is allowed to set. If you care about the validity of future elections, this should scare you more than other. I mean, we can disagree about whether other things he's done are more immoral or damaging to human rights, civil rights, things like that.

But in terms of democratic norms and confidence that you can have in future presidential elections, this is just about the worst thing that he's done. Yeah. Yeah. All right, well, we gotta take a break. But before we get to that break, I wanted to give you a little information about a video we're gonna toss to during the break. So, for our members, we like to put together a lot of special, exclusive members-only content.

And so this year was the second year where we did hostmates. It's a fun game show. And this year we did the OGs versus the newbies, a lot of fun to shoot. And by the way, she never gets any credit for this. Judith is the person who worked on this from beginning to end. And of course, everybody included their own work, whether it's editing, actually being part of it as host, whatever, like everyone put in a lot of hard work, but this is really Judith's project that she's thought of and produced and done such a good job on.

And so, she did a crazy amount of work. I will also say, like, it was when we shot it, super late night for everyone. So the crew was here until super late. But they were here the night before doing the run-through at least as long if not longer. Yeah, so yes, I mean, the tech work that it took for this to come together is incredible. So everyone in the company really worked hard on this. But anyway, I'm giving you that context. But I want you to know that if you're a member, you can actually watch hostmates on December 27th.

And so it'll be ready to stream. You just go to either our app or our website. It'll be ready for you. Again, December 27th. If you're not a member and you're interested in checking this out, you can always join by going to tyt.com slash join. We really do go out of our way to give our members exclusive content both on, you know, debate night. elections nights, and also fun content like this. So check that out.

Again, go to tyt.com slash join members, keep us afloat. You guys help us keep doing what we're doing. We would be nothing without you. 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.

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That's E-X-P-R-E-S-S-V-P-N dot com slash T-YT. Check it out today. So thank you. We hope you're enjoying this free clip from the Young Turks. If you want to get the whole show and more exclusive content while supporting independent media, become a member at t-y-t.com slash join today. In the meantime, enjoy. Enjoy this free second. Welcome back to TYT, Anna and John with you. A few member comments and then we'll move on.

So Naomi Ridley says, Anna, you guys have power. I was brought up in a conservative household with a fully conservative extended family. TYT was really the main thing that completely upturned all of what they told me and brought me to the light. Keep going. Thank you so much. I mean, I wouldn't be here. Huh?

I wouldn't be in this career field at all. That's true. If not for you guys. That's true. I'm sorry. Yeah. I would be like seven novels in. Thanks, Anna.

You were working on your PhD and then we snatched you out of your college education program. I don't think I was going to finish that either way. But probably for the best. All right. So Monica writes in and says, Anna, you're among the strongest women I know. You are a shining example to women everywhere. Thank you. It's super sweet.

You hold on to your principles where others cave. That is something that cannot be bought. Love you, Anna. Thank you. Love you guys. All right, let me, there's a lot of love. Thank you guys. I feel awkward reading love about myself out loud.

So I'm going to move on to some TYT lives. Focus on the ones about me then. All right, there are. I don't think there are. A bucket of squirrels is ammo against logic says, with the new progressives, we are constructing Congress. That's not related to me only. And then Kat Baylon on Twitter says, I think Anna Casparian and John I'd rolla definitely

fall on the top 10 list of people I want to smoke with before I die. Okay, fun. I mostly get sleepy. You don't want to use a spot on me. I don't. I get super chatty. I get laughy. There's this sketch comedy show on Netflix.

I almost died watching that. It was really dangerous. That guy, he owes me an apology, okay? All right. Well, let's get to the rest of the news because there's a lot going on today. So, six staffers that used to work for New Jersey representative, Jeff Van Drew, have quit following news that he intends on switching parties from Democrat to Republican. Now, among the staffers who quit were Van Drew's legislative director, communications director, and his scheduler. And they actually put out a statement explaining why they've made this decision.

We greatly appreciate the opportunities that the congressman has given us and we're proud of the work we've done together on behalf of the people of New Jersey's second congressional district. Sadly, Congressman Van Drew's decision to join the ranks of the Republican Party led by President Donald Trump does not align with the values we brought to this job when we joined his office. I love that it's implied that they did not write the word president in there. It's a little note. It's hilarious. But I mean, I get it. So the reason why Van Drew is switching parties is because he is against Donald Trump's impeachment. And is he really against Donald Trump's impeachment based on principle?

I would speculate, no, that's not what this is about. He's worried about getting reelected, so he's worried about his political career. If he were to vote in favor of impeaching Donald Trump, he believes that it will hurt his chances of getting reelected. That's really at the heart of his decision here. And so we have a bunch of spineless, cowardly members of Congress running around, who have no interest in representing us, who have no interest in doing the right thing, who have no interest in being principled.

They just care about their political futures. They care about their political careers. That's all it is, 100%. And this is what happens when you vote. Weak Democrats into office, they will turn their backs on you and they will not represent you. And that's what Van Drew did here. And he's a coward and he's only interested in himself. Well, if it makes you feel any better in the past decade or so, almost all of the congressmen

who've changed their parties have lost in the next election. Or in the primary, by the way, because we talked about this on the damage report this morning. I will just say about Van Drew, like, I don't know what kind of debt. was in the first place, if you can make the switch over the Republican Party, I guess you are the literal stereotype of a politician that's there to get tax cuts, maybe cut a little bit from Social Security, and that's it. That's all that you have. You have no actual values, nothing approaching any sort of leftist position on anything social or anything like that if you could switch over this party. But by the way, like, you still have the stink

of having been a Democrat when it comes to the Republicans in your district. You don't think that every ambitious Republican politician in that district is like, I am going to take this guy down. Bingo. A guy that can switch to your party can switch back the next day. Does he really support Donald Trump or is this just about him? They are gonna take him down. But also think about what this political system that we have set up does in disenfranchising people who would be awesome leaders, right? So there's the whole money in politics issue where If you're not wealthy, or if you don't have the resources to run, you don't have the financial backing to run, well, then you have no shot.

If you happen to be a fighter, usually fighters have something in their record that can be taken out of context and used against them, right? Because if you're going to be a fighter and you're going to challenge the establishment, when I say establishment, I mean Democratic and Republican establishment, they're going to come to get you. And they will take you out of context, they will smear you, they'll do everything and everything to destroy you. The system is set up to elect spineless, self-interested ghouls.

And that's what we have here. And it's so sad and so pathetic. Yeah, whose only talent is telling the right people that they'll do whatever they want so that they'll hand over money. Yeah. And by the way, stop electing people who literally have nothing, nothing to fall back on. No ambitions outside of a life in politics or whatever. Like I think like a favorite person in Congress, AOC.

I don't think she's gonna lose re-election anytime soon, but if she did, you know what she'd do? good things. She would go back to being an activist or an organizer. She'd do something local. She's not like willing to betray everything inside of her just to keep her grip on power for one second longer. But some people, this is all that they are. They didn't really come from anything authentic that had to do with our country or their values. They just thought, I'm going to get into politics. And that's what I'm going to do. And I will be whoever I need to be. And five years from now, I'll be someone else. If that's who I have to be to win this congressional race. I want to get to the head of the DNC, it's.

some point. I want to be the guy that's chosen to be the next senator or whatever. When there's nothing authentic to you, this is what it produces. 100%. So the governor of New Jersey has a statement about this. And so let's take a look at what he had to say. What's your reaction to the news about Jeff Andrew? And what do you think is really his motivation here for switching, if that is what he does? Listen, I think assuming he does what everyone is signaling, he's putting politics over the Constitution. I think it's that simple. He's putting sort of cuteness over courage. This is a guy who's reading some set of tea leaves where he thinks if he is going to have to take the positions he's taking, he can't find his way toward re-election. I think it's ridiculous. I was asked last week

before I heard this news what my reaction was and I said, boy, he's got a lot to answer to his constituents and to the county chairs in his district, I think they're going to be extremely upset. And I think they're going to rise up and say, wait a minute, this isn't what we bargain for. And it takes courage to deal with a constitutional crisis like the one before us. And it doesn't take somebody who cuts and runs. And I think voters will be very tough on him for that. And I think on the other hand, they'll stand up on behalf of a true Democrat. So that was New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy. And he's actually, Absolutely right, but my response would be, well, the Democratic establishment should start

supporting strong leaders who wish to run as opposed to smearing them and doing away with them in an effort to elect these so-called moderates who will cut and run, who will turn their backs on the very voters who elected them to represent them. So. Yeah, you know who's not going to switch over someday to the Republican Party? a true progressive running on a platform of the Green New Deal, Medicare for all of those sorts of things. Like when you say, we are going to win this district, we're going to find the 50% line, and we're going to find the person that's the closest plausible thing to it.

They're by their very nature the closest to becoming a Republican at any given day. Exactly. All right. So we have a quick update on a story that we did earlier. So let's go to that. Earlier on today's show, we talked about how the New York Times had published a flat-out lie about Jank Yugar, he's running for California's 25th District. In a story published by Jennifer Medina at the New York Times, it was alleged that during

an interview with David Duke, Jank agreed that David Duke is not racist. Now if you go back and you watch that video, it's clear that Jank was being sarcastic. And so after an outpour of backlash, lots of people who have been contacting the New York Times to get a correction on this. Finally, they did issue a correction that I want to read to you. An earlier version of this article referenced, I'm sorry, an earlier version of this article referred imprecisely to a remark by Jank Yugar, a radio host, we're not on the radio, running for Congress.

When David Duke appeared on his show and denied being a racist, Mr. Yugar was sarcastic when he replied, no, of course not. I mean, they can't even get their correction right, it's amazing, but at least they corrected the heart of the issue. Am I being petty when I say that I think they know that he's not a radio host? You're not being petty and I agree with you. I think they know that too. Add one extra quote.

He also referred to David Duke as the definition of an anti-Semite. That seems like a significant thing to add rather than, eh, it was imprecise. I guess that's the best that we're gonna get. Intentional, intentional and malicious, okay? It's better than nothing. Intentional and malicious, it's better than nothing. I'm going to repeat, intentional and malicious, okay? So that's what we're dealing with here, and it's disgusting.

Moving on. All right, we actually have to break, so let's do that. We'll be right back. 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.