The Young Turks - TYT Extended Clip - December 30th, 2019

Episode Date: December 31, 2019

Five were wounded in a knife attack at a rabbi's home in New York. Cenk Uygur 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

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All right, welcome the Young Turks, Jake, you or John Idera with you guys, lovely day in America. So we do have tragic news, of course, and unfortunately, but does happen quite often these days. And we have some, on the other hand, we have some amazing progressive candidates for you guys coming up in a third hour of the Young Turks. And furthermore, the Joe Biden story is the one that's got me most interested. So who is he going to pick for a VP? Buckle up, brace for impact. So lots of amazing stories in the news, as always. Okay, but behind the scenes, so we had our rundown set and I'm like off on producing

or whatever. And the Joe Biden thing came up on Twitter and I turned to Brent and I was like, I think Jenks gonna want that one. Oh yeah, definitely, okay, you're gonna want that one. Yeah, yeah. All right, I'm just throwing out a random plug for you guys because we're trying to get it by the end of the year, good luck to us. T.y.com slash climate, this is the reporter who

who's gonna track the money attached to climate, because that's the only thing that really affects the votes. If you want Green New Deal, if you want any of that, you've got to track the money. Our manager is Jonathan Larsen, I talked to him earlier today, and he's like, he's looking for those reporters, because we're on the precipice of being able to hire one to $200,000. It allows us enough of a budget to have the reporter supporting staff for a long enough time to finish this mission, okay? So anyway, he looked around and he's like, it turns out like really no one covers the connection

of money to climate change. Isn't that stunning? That's why we're doing this, right? Maybe the connection's not there. Ah, okay, that's a possibility. You never know. We might hire the reporter, a great investigative reporter, you might find out. No, no, the millions of dollars are not affecting the politicians at all.

They're impervious to it, it's fascinating. But it would be interesting to find out, so t.yt.com slash climate, if we get to 200, we can make that happen. All right, thank you guys. And we gotta do it as fast as possible, because especially inside of this primary, pretty much all the candidates are like, yes, 100%, I totally get it, I'm gonna do everything I need to do. But they don't all mean it, and so we need to be able to dig in and find who are their bundlers,

who are their donors, who's involved in all this stuff. It'd be so great to have that reporter. Okay, so let's try to make that happen, guys. All right, what's thanks. Okay, we're gonna start off on a little bit darker news though. Over this weekend at a Hanukkah celebration, there was yet another anti-Semitic attack In New York, this is a man who entered an Orthodox rabbi's home in Moncee, New York, and stabbed and wounded five people, then fled in a vehicle.

Victims of the attack in Moncee, which is about 35 miles from New York City, were all Hasidic Jews. The town has a large Hasidic Jewish population. Now, they did eventually track down a person they believe was them, and the evidence seems pretty strong. Authorities arrested the suspect after the rampage in a suburb north of New York City. They found him with blood on his clothes and two weapons, including a machete. A cell phone recovered from his car revealed recent searches for phrases like German Jewish temples near me and why did Hitler hate the Jews document state.

Although representatives for the suspects say that this was a simple case of mental illness and had nothing to do with anti-Semitic thoughts or hate crime or anything like that. And by the way, it's possible that it's both. Yeah, it makes sense. I would say that if you're violently anti-Semitic, you are mentally ill. Now, this is to just bear in mind, in just the last three weeks inside of just New York, this is the 13th anti-Semitic incident.

That's amazing. I mean, there's something deeply, deeply wrong here. So this attack was Saturday night. Mayor de Blasio had called for extra patrols in Brooklyn to protect Hasidic Jews there on Friday night, the night before this particularly vicious attack, because there's been so many attacks back to back to back. And by the way, the machete, one of the witnesses said that the guy had pulled a knife to size of a broomstick.

So that seems to match as well. And remember in Jersey City there was another attack that happened very recently. It's actually happened this month. Three people, two of them who were Orthodox Jews were killed at the market. That person also did it because of anti-Semitic beliefs, according to officials involved. Last month, an Orthodox Jewish man was stabbed just steps away from a local synagogue. They're not positive. That one was connected to anti-Semitism, but obviously the pattern doesn't look good.

And it goes unfortunately on and on and on in terms of these recent spate of attacks against Jewish Americans, particularly in the New York, New Jersey area. So look, I'm a little bit more perplexed by this than I am by others. Now, we've tracked this, I would argue, as well as any show in America, all going all the way back to when Trump started to rise in 2015. And now the, I guess, infamous David Duke interview where I brought him on because Trump was talking about him. And I thought he was going to rant about Latinos and Muslims and all the things that Trump was ranting about. He didn't. He spent 90% of the interview ranting against Jews.

And I've told you this in the past, whether it's Alex Jones, David Duke, or the alt-right, the one thing that seems to drive them the most is anti-Semitism, because they think when you go down the rabbit hole, their insane conspiracy theories and bigoted views, at the end, it always comes back to the same theory. The Jews control the world, okay? So that I understand better than almost anyone having covered it exhaustively. And then we warned people, oh my God, watch out anti-semitism is coming, and then Charlottesville, and then the synagogue attacks in Pittsburgh and other places, and now this.

So why am I perplexed? We've been covering this ad nauseum and it is sickening what's happening. Well, this guy was African American. So it didn't look particularly right wing. I could be wrong about that. It's new and it's just kind of happened and we're trying to figure out the details. But it doesn't look like they're all right wingers in the New York, New Jersey attacks yet. Again, we don't have anywhere near enough details.

So what's going on now? Jesus. And I don't, I'm not positive, John. There's a lot of anti-Semitism and not all of it is directly linked to the right wing. I mean, it goes back thousands of years, obviously. Of course. So there's a done. But remember, the thing that goes back thousands of years is the right wing hatred of, and

I don't mean that in like, oh, I knew who the political associations of the folks in Poland were when they were doing the pogroms. No, I mean, look, the most famous example. obviously is the Nazis. The Nazis are considered the most right wing, probably we've ever had in any political movement in the history of the world. And so when you have extreme right wingers, they do bigotry, they do racism, they do anti-Semitism, and they do it all across the world.

So in a sense, we understand that. So that's a horrible phenomenon we've been dealing with and fighting with for a long time. Is it possible to have anti-semitism on the left? Of course it's possible, right? Or in the center or in things that are not at all related to the political spectrum. All of that is enormously possible. It's just this rise is particularly quesotic. It's a bad word for it.

It's weird. What the hell is going on? Well look, and like we, because we've been covering this so much, for us, one of the shocking things is how accepted anti-Semitism is within the Republican Party that you can have Steve King. It's totally fine. He stole congressmen, everything can vote. And you know, like, you have all these people who are accepted into the party.

But the thing is, once they're in there, like, that stuff just becomes normalized. The retweets and the quotes and the speeches and all of that just goes out there and gets to everyone. And the thing about normalization is that it sort of pulls the center of gravity on this thing in a dangerous direction. Like not every, like so I personally believe that Republican elected politicians are moving farther and farther away from support. But if they're successful, it's not just going to be getting their own voters to question whether democracy is the way that a government should be organized. It's also causing other people to question it.

These things that seem so weird initially become normalized. Yeah, so guys, by the way, don't get me wrong, there's no indication that any of these attacks are from the left wing or the center or any of that. So it's just that it's so intense in a particular area and a particular time that I wonder if there's There's something layered on top of the normal bigotry anti-Semitism and horrific anti-Semitic attacks and violent attacks, something layered where is someone driving it in this particular instance, like in instigating, otherwise why that particular line of attack is so specifically in such a, in a narrow area, relatively speaking.

So there's just something extra weird about these attacks. And I feel like we haven't really solved it yet. Yeah, and we don't know much about the individual or certainly the other individual as well. But let me read a little bit more and we'll see what we know about this individual and try to figure something out based on that. Now, as I said, they've caught the suspect. The suspect is pleading not guilty. This was on Sunday to five charges of attempted murder and one count of burglary. His bail was set at $5 million.

It also faces five counts of obstructing the free exercise of religious beliefs by attempting to kill with a dangerous weapon and causing injuries. So, in terms of trying to find out what this person might believe, journals were discovered in the home, including anti-Semitic sentiments, and FBI officer writes in a federal complaint. Some writings refer to Adolf Hitler in Nazi culture, alongside drawings of a swastika and star of David. Others question, quote, why people mourned for anti-Semitism when there is Semitic genocide. It's always raving self lunatic's mind. What does that mean?

It doesn't mean anything. And of course, it's not so surprising that are incredibly different. strange and hateful guy, anti-Semitic and reading Nazi stuff, says nonsensical stuff. Yeah, and those searches on their browser, searches related to Nazis, the Jewish individuals and synagogues dates back to about November 9th, although it's possible it was cleared before that, so who knows? Yeah, John, to your point, look, this is what's so troubling about a culture of hate, because once it starts, you know, it unravels.

And we've opened up a Pandora's box of hate in this country. And when I say we, I mean Donald Trump, and I mean the right wing. I do, and that is where it springs from. Now it's springing to areas that you couldn't predict. And I don't, I have no, you know, maybe I'm too, the guy's African-American, so that's why I keep pausing, like, why is he a right-wing or Nazi? I don't, I haven't heard of too many African-American Nazis. I'm keeping it real, right?

It's not a common occurrence. Is there some anti-semitism in African-American community? Of course, there isn't every community. Right? So I get that phenomenon. And so anyway, bottom line is, I don't, I hope that this is not metastasizing and now getting to a tipping point. That's what I'm really, really worried about.

Where now people are attacking Jewish Americans left and right, not just, but remember, it happened in Charlottesville, it happened here, it happened in Pittsburgh, it happened in in Arizona. So now it's all over the country. And so- And outside of the country as well. Of course. Yeah, of course. And again, guys, it's been around forever and ever.

It's one of the oldest forms of bigotry there is on the planet in human history. But the fact that it has risen so much recently is deeply, deeply problematic. So why don't we go now to two reactions to this? One positive, one I would say less than positive, but the first coming from the governor. This is intolerance meets ignorance meets illegality. This is an intolerant time in this country. It is intolerant. It is ignorant, but it is also illegal.

And at the end of the day, it's not just about words, it's about action. And we have seen enough in New York. This is violence spurred by. I hate, it is mass violence, and I consider this an act of domestic terrorism. Let's call it what it is. These people are domestic terrorists, and the law should reflect that, and they should be punished as if it was an act of terrorism. So, I agree.

When right-wingers do these attacks, race attacks, anti-Semitic attacks, you name. We think it should be called an act of domestic terrorism because it is. So when Dylan Roof targets African Americans in a black church in South Carolina, he did it because they were African Americans and he wanted to start a race war. How is that not terrorism? It's a political agenda for a violent attack that killed people. Of course that's terrorism. So under the same exact logic, I don't see why this wouldn't be domestic terrorism.

I agree with Cuomo. Yeah, let's turn now to a less positive responses coming from acting deputy secretary of Homeland Security, Ken Cuccinelli, who had tweeted, eventually deleted it, you'll understand why, tweeted the attacker is the U.S. citizen son of an illegal alien who got amnesty under the 1986 amnesty law for illegal immigrants. Apparently American values did not take hold among this entire family, at least this one violent and apparently bigoted son. Because I mean, if you can't use an attack like this to push some xenophobic, you know,

be against immigrants. I mean, what's the point of it after all? And look, it's this attack in catching the perpetrators relatively recent, so we don't know that much about him. I don't know if- All the more reason not to tweet something like that, perhaps. So I don't know why Couchinelli is saying things that are not confirmed or even known to be true at all. Except you do.

Uh-huh, yeah, except-a-huh, because he's the Trump administration and he's there because he believes things like this. And the tweet was deleted, but Cucinelli wasn't deleted. He's still an incredibly powerful person inside of the U.S. government. who apparently responds in a knee-jerk emotional fashion to any attack and tries to spin it to his political agenda. Yeah, so he's acting deputy homeland security secretary. By the way, everyone's acting in the Donald Trump administration, more ways than one.

But he's fires and replaced people so quickly, they never get to finally actually take the role. I think Mick Mulvaney's still acting chief of staff after all this time. Anyway, so this guy has a very, very senior position, and instead of, at the Department of Homeland Security, an attack that might be a domestic terror attack, and he's like, hmm, as the second person in charge of Homeland Security, should I bother gathering all the facts? Nah, let me just go randomly blame immigrants, even though I'm not really sure it was an immigrant at all, nor do I have any idea whether that was connected to the crime in any way, shape, or form.

But at least it'll drive up hatred. Now, that's the final part, the irony. We just told you, the number one problem here is this climate of hatred that has been fostered in this country. And what does Cuccinelli do after an attack based on hatred? He further stirs up hatred. So, hey, now let's go target immigrants. And round and round we go.

And this is the poison of the Trump administration. Yeah, and I forget exactly who on Fox, but someone took a conversation about this and turned it into a conversation about how Christians are actually the most persecuted around the world, because again, this is like, you've got to use it to your own advantage. And I guess it's inconvenient in some way for them, but they want to focus you on the mission of thinking that secretly, even in the wake of this, Christians are the ones who really have it the worst. It's just sick.

Even Trump, I mean, not that it really matters, but when the attack happened, he waited like four or five hours to respond. He tweeted multiple times about the witch hunt against him before then. Definitely takes it super seriously, though, even though it took him five hours, Stephen care enough to tweet about it. The whole reaction is sick. Trump has this weird, like, gauge of whether to react and how late to react, right? So Charlottesville took him forever to condemn it, right?

And some of the synagogue attacks as well. But when Muslims were attacked in Canada, he never even bothered to respond. Yeah, that's fine, okay? And so, like, he's just a monster of monsters. And if you wanna deny it, I don't care, you're an irrational person. I have no interest in you. And then lastly, yeah, the Fox News thing, Jewish Americans were just attacked with a machete, okay?

Two of them are in critical condition. Why are you turning it to like, oh no, I'm the victim. No, Christians are the victim. By the way, Christians are in some cases. And then we should talk about it when those things happen and condemn it full force all of us together, right? But no, Jews being attacked doesn't do as well on ratings. Let's turn it to like poor Christians, it's you're the victim.

And so that that does better, right? You guys like it? Okay, good, good ratings, ratings, everybody. Okay, let's just divert people from the anti-Semitism. Okay, look, why don't we take our first break? Then come back, we got some domestic news. We got a touch base with the Democratic primary. Yes, and that Biden's story that I love.

All right, we'll be right. We need to talk about a relatively new show called Un-Fing 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

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to get informed, angered, and entertained all at the same time. All right. Back out of Young Turks, Jank and John with you guys. The left fist writes in in the member section, Democrats. Bernie Sanders, not a Democrat. We support Biden, me. Biden would be willing to choose a Republican running mate. Democrats, Biden's a great unifier. Me, shake my damn head.

All right, we'll get to that in a second. Gavin Maria, half-ass wine cave, and blanket fort writes in. I'm not saying the rise in anti-Semitism is directly connected with Trump's political rise, but he did run some very blatantly anti-Semitic ads against the sheriff, against, with sheriff stars and dollar signs. That's right, he did do that and constantly talking about the globalists, which is another code word for Jews. And all conspiracy theories about the caravans and all that stuff.

And yeah, and by the way, if you're not saying it, I'm saying it, yeah, it's definitely related to the rise of Trump. So all right, now let me go to Twitter, black folks like Bernie too wrote in, hey, we black folks come in all stripes and we have some right wingers called HOTEPs, they are anti- Semetic. Okay, good info. And then this one's powerful from YouTube super chat, Ben Newmark writes in, I go to the Rottenberg Shul.

That was the one, Rottenberg was the rabbi that was attacked, and then he tried to break into the synagogue right next door, but they had it locked. Anyway, where the stabbing took place, Ben explains. Still a lot of police going door to door asking for information, when will these crimes stop? So Ben, man, that's tough to read, powerful to read, stay safe, brother, stay safe. And so think about it guys, and that's why I think it's really, really fair to call domestic terrorism. Because now think about what Jews in that community or in any community are thinking right now,

especially if you're visibly Jewish. And that's why a lot of times Muslims are attacked, Muslim women are attacked sometimes more than men are because they were the burqa, which makes them more visibly Muslim. 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 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 O'Henry Orthodox Jews are being attacked here and it might be because they are more visibly religious and Jewish because of their attire and etc. And so, and by the way, Sikhs get attacked all the time because people think they're Muslims because of the turbas that they wear. And so- Unfortunately, bigots turn out to be stupid mostly. Of course, of course. So if you're in that community, think about how scared you have to be right now. And that is the point of terrorism, it's to terrorize you. Yeah. So let's stay safe.

Let's also stay strong and united. Yes. All right, thank you for writing in, Ben. Okay, before we jump into the next story, I did have to let you know that tomorrow is the last day of 2020, and as you know, a big part of the switch over to new year is burning all of your old clothes. But you say, John, what will I wear? I've got a solution for you. Head to shop t-y-t.com. You can gear up for 2020 with a whole new wardrobe and get 25% off by using the code

New Year. Step into 2020 wearing exclusively our clothing. And we don't make pants, but it's going to be. an exciting year. What can I tell you? All right. Number one, this is across the whole site, so it's not just hoodies or winter clothes, so that's important. But again, no pants. Shop2.t.com. Secondly, I don't believe that it is an actual tradition to burn your clothes. No, it's actually wasteful. Okay, but I'm just saying if you were to do that. I think Hossomanaged just did an episode about people wasting clothes. So don't do that,

but get something nice for somebody, okay? All right. Sounds good. Okay, with that, let's jump back into the news. Andrew Yang recently released his health care proposal. And a lot of people have noticed that it is pretty different in some fundamental ways from his past comments about health care. We're going to go through his history in just a little bit. Before we get to that, he was just on ABC and he faced some hard questioning about the difference between his past rhetoric on health care and his current plan. I'm a little bit confused about where you stand. First, I want to play clips from two of your ads where you talk about health care. We need to move towards Medicare for All system where every American has access.

to quality and affordable services. His ideas are a blueprint for a new way forward, a health care system with Medicare for all. But I've looked at your health care plan. In fact, I've got it right here. And this plan does not call for Medicare for all. In fact, it doesn't even have a public option. So why the dissonance here?

We need to move towards universal health care that's high quality and nearly cost for Americans around the country, but reality is we have millions of Americans who are on private insurance right now, and taking those plans away from them very quickly would be untenable for many, many Americans. To me, the goal of the government has to be to demonstrate that we can out-compete private plans and then push them out of the market over time. So we have a little bit more on that in just a little bit, but it was pretty immediately apparent when he released his plan.

I understand he's releasing his plan months after other campaigns. candidates have. And after we've had, you know, whole news cycles, weeks of news about some of the candidates in the Democratic primary backing off of their past promises to do Medicare for all or to do it along a certain timeline. And he has, he has talked a lot, actually. So in that, they showed a few of his ads. I checked to see if he had specifically tweeted anything about Medicare for all.

And there's a lot. So we just got a couple. So he can bring this up. He says we need to provide high quality health care to all Americans. And a Medicare for all system is the most efficient way to accomplish that in July. He says, people are always asking, where are you going to get the money for health care? Which is completely incorrect. We're spending twice as much.

And you can see there in that tweet, Medicare for All will get a massive burden off of families and businesses. That was in May. August of the previous year, 70% of Americans are now for Medicare for All. Let's make health care a right of citizenship once and for all, which I love. But it is pretty far from, well, we need to eventually get there by out competing the government plans and then just naturally forcing them out because they can't compete. That's, I mean, that's not even like a four year rollout period. That's, hey, maybe it happens someday.

Yeah, so I'm known for liking outsiders, it's true, I do. I think that they have interesting new ideas like Andrew Yang does. I've mentioned democracy dollars, dozens, maybe hundreds of times, and how it's innovative and wonderful and that Andrew Yang has a lot of great ideas in a lot of different directions. I don't agree with all of them, but I think it's great that he's got those and it's different. And I think the current insider system sucks. And then here we have a snarky reporter from mainstream media, Jonathan Carl, being snarky to Andrew Yang.

So if I'm going to follow form, I will tell you Yang is right and Carl is wrong. Except I'm not going to do that because facts matter. And Carl is right and Yang is wrong, that's just the reality of it. And so if all we cared about was our political perspective, in this case, outsiders, I would just be biased and blindly tell you that Andrew Yang is right, but he isn't. Carl is right, the plan does not have Medicare for all, and Andrew Yang did support Medicare for all. In fact, he said it several times on the Young Turks.

So I think this is a disastrous step for him. And I think that they probably got, they've spent too much time in politics. I've seen polling that shows now that universal healthcare polls better than Medicare for all. So now all of a sudden Andrew's talking about universal health care and backing away from Medicare for all. Oh, don't do that, don't do that. And so that's not why you're interesting.

That's not why people are excited about you. Nobody's, nobody, there's a yang gang, there's no Biden gang, there's no Biden gang because He does the same polling and goes with focus groups and the donors and all that stuff. That's, wow, so this is a really bad turn. I wish he hadn't taken. Yeah, and look, maybe he'll come back on the Young Turks and he can talk about it. Yeah, look, I looked to see if since yesterday, if he had talked at all about this. I couldn't see any sort of clarification or anything like that.

And I understand for some people who are supporters of his, he left like enough of a, well, I care about the spirit of Medicare for all and someday we're gonna get there that you can hypothetically say he's not backing off. But I mean, you've been around for this primary, like when Elizabeth Warren started changing some of what she was saying about the timeline, that was a huge issue. Buttigieg, like how much did we go over his past tweets about Medicare for all and how his current plan isn't the same? And Buttigieg's plan is more Medicare for all than Yang's plan as of right now. So although I like Yang, I've interviewed Yang, he seems like a really nice guy, I love

that he's in the race, he does have a lot of good ideas, we're not gonna pretend that this is a good one, it's not at all. It is, as far as I can tell right now, and there are certainly there are details about cost cutting, you can look at this plan, it does have some good stuff, but a lot of it is in those other plans which also get to Medicare for All. It appears to be basically the most conservative healthcare plan that has been offered in the Democratic primary. Yeah.

And if you're gonna be last, you shouldn't, you're supposed to be first or best or whatever, but he's last and not best, not by a long shot. Not in this. Yeah, I don't know what's happening in these presidential candidates or Tulsi-C comes in as a progressive, winds up as the most centrist or conservative candidate. What the hell happened there, right? And now Andrew Yang comes in as the biggest outsider anti-establishment guy for Medicare for all all throughout.

Now he has the most conservative plan on healthcare. That doesn't make any sense at all. Stop listening to posters and consultants, okay? Okay, that's my guess, I don't know what happened internally, but look, there's a second part of this interview and it doesn't get any better, let's watch. Your ad is explicit. Your ad says Medicare for all, your plan is not Medicare for all. It's not even Medicare for some because in your plan there's not even a public option.

Our plan is to expand a universal healthcare system to all Americans. Medicare for all is not the name of a bill. Medicare for all is universal health care for all Americans. But Medicare for all is Medicare for all, right? I mean. Well, our health care plan would be would be based. on Medicare and expanding it over time. And just to clarify, Medicare for all is in Bernie, it's in the title for Bernie's bill.

It is expanding Medicare so that everyone gets it. Look, universal healthcare, that's fine. We have a conversation about that, but they're not interchangeable. They are different things. So Yang is wrong in three different parts there. So first of all, there is a bill called Medicare for all, it's Bernie's bill, it's in the title. So just flat out wrong. Number two, there is a thing called Medicare for all, a phenomenon.

an idea that is not ubiquitous. So this is the same thing Klobuchar says, well, I kind of like Obamacare. Does I count? Yeah, I'm for Medicare for All. No, no, that doesn't count. That's not Medicare for All. So that leads to point number three, which is why isn't it Medicare for All? Why is it important that Medicare for All means something rather than just vague,

well, I'd like to get more people in health care eventually, right? Because Medicare for All removes premiums, copays, and deductibles completely changes the system. If you have a public option, which Yang doesn't even have, but if you had a public option that a lot of the corporate Democrats want, it doesn't remove co-pays premiums deductions. You still have to pay that to the government. So it doesn't really change the system. All it does is it creates the government as another insurance provider with all of the same problems of co-pays, premiums, deductibles, bankrupting you, and if you don't, can't pay those things

and you get cancer, you die. So it doesn't fundamentally change the system. for all fundamentally changes the system and there is no like, well, I mean, if I increase Medicare a little bit or I lower the retirement age a little bit or I have a kind of a public option somewhere, that doesn't get you on the road to Medicare for all. It just doesn't. That's just a giant lie that the conservative Democrats and the corporate media has been saying all along and they obscure the details so you don't realize that it's a lie.

So when I see an outsider like Andrew Yang now aiding and abetting that, oh, don't do that. For God's sake, we like you, don't do that. It's not correct, and it's a wrong path for a campaign like the one he was running. Yeah, well, we got a lot of other stories, so why don't we move on to some other news. Okay. New York Times recently published a piece looking into some new details in terms of the timeline and communications surrounding the hold of military aid to Ukraine. What's interesting about this new article is that it gets into the involvement of some

figures in the Trump administration who have avoided testifying, have avoided talking much about this. In some cases have implied that they knew nothing about what was going on, and we're now finding out that that's not necessarily the case. So we're going to talk about a few here. The first is Mick Mulvaney. At one point, about a week after Trump had initially decided or communicated that he wanted the aid to be held, he had sent an email saying, I'm just trying to tie up some loose ends. Did we ever find out about the money for Ukraine and whether we can hold it back. So he has been involved since June in that effort. Just bear that in mind as the president says that in the House, they never had people first-hand information, but

also stopped Mick Mulvaney from testifying. And Mick Mulvaney, the guy who sort of like publicly outed Trump about this scandal when he admitted that it was a quid pro quo on national TV, he doesn't want to come and testify before the Senate either. And it looks like there's quite a bit that he could probably reveal. Now, the reply to that email from Mick Volvaney was from an aide, Robert Blair, who replied that it would be possible but not pretty, quote, expect Congress to become unhinged if the White House tried to counterman spending passed by the House and Senate. Andy wrote, it might further fuel the narrative that Mr. Trump was pro-Russia.

So from the very beginning, when they were trying to set up this scheme, some inside of the administration were saying that, like, look, I'm with you, but this is going to be really bad. And they did start to develop a legal argument from their point of view that because Trump is the commander in chief, he can effectively override anything Congress wants to do, which is a bold position. Probably they'll apply to some other stuff eventually. And we have more on other people, but this is Mick Mulvaney initially, implying before that he didn't have much involvement in this, and apparently he was involved from the first week. Yeah, and then he had a second round of excuses, which is, I mean, I was involved in holding

up the aid, but I didn't know that it was because Trump wanted the investigation. Later you find out in the details, he absolutely knew, and he was the one enforcing it. So, but there is, the fact that Mulvaney's trying to distance himself away from the Biden investigations is an interesting escape hatch, because then he can go to investigators and go, let's, I mean, I didn't know, but now I know, okay, here's evidence, okay, Mulvaney flipping is everything if he flips, but that's a giant, giant if. He's shown some indication that he does want to flip and that he has insurance like Julie Ljani talked about, and as to why Trump should not throw him under the bus.

He has said that publicly, I'm paraphrasing the word insurance, but basically said, I got too much information for anyone to throw me under a bus. So he knows, see, there's no question. He not only knew what they did, he knew it was wrong, and he knows that he can turn on Trump with that evidence. And so there's guilt all over this. There's a thousand angles that I want to discuss here, but there's just one more on what John already mentioned, the law that they're violating in this particular case is the

impoundment control act. So when Congress puts aside money to be spent on a country, as they did with Ukraine, you cannot stop that money. And if you do, it violates the impoundment control act. And so the internal White House lawyers, just department lawyers, office of management and budget lawyers all got together and they're like, okay, how do we break this law while having an excuse that we're not breaking the law. So the best thing they had was, well, we could say it's in the president's constitutional

powers to break that law. There's no such thing, okay? That's why they took a long time trying to come up with a thing that doesn't exist. You can understand why they would think Trump would like that when he's previously said there's a thing, Article 2, that lets me do whatever I want to do. Yeah, that's not remotely true. That is not in our constitutional system. There is no clause of the Constitution that says, yes, it's true Congress writes the laws,

but the president can ignore them at his leisure. It doesn't exist. The president must follow the laws, period. Ideally, I guess. Yes. Okay, so in terms of there's a lot of like kill to go around. And also, like I mentioned, that people have been trying to caution Trump away from this path. You had that aid, but you have some higher up as well.

In late August, defense secretary Mark Esper joined Secretary Mike Pompeo and John Bolton, the National Security Advisor at that time for a previously undisclosed Oval Office meeting with the president where they tried but failed to convince him that releasing the aid was in the interests of the United States. That's a couple of months into this at that point. And so, again, those are a couple of people that we haven't heard much from. It would be great to have Pompeo and Bolton testify, but they've either opted not to or been blocked from doing so, which is totally the mark of an innocent person.

And it's sort of interestingly too, in terms of what Mick Mulvaney knew and when he knew it at all this, I thought this is really interesting. Mr. Mulvaney is said by associates to have stepped out of the room whenever Mr. Trump would talk with Mr. Giuliani to preserve Mr. Trump's attorney client privilege, leaving him with limited knowledge about their efforts regarding Ukraine. Or like the fact that he apparently just leaves the room whenever Rudy comes in might have a simpler explanation. Rudy's a weird.

But yeah, apparently he was trying to limit his exposure to information. that he would have to later deny having access to. But there's no question as you find out later that he in fact did know it was connected to the Bidens and in fact pushed that along. But the very fact that he's trying to set up that excuse of, hey, when Giuliani came in the room, I always left, attorney client privilege, means I know I realize I might get caught and what we did was clearly illegal, okay? So now to the point that John made about the big meeting, Defense Secretary Esper, Secretary

of State Mike Pompeo, very, very loyal to Donald Trump. and John Bolton, national security advisor, all say to Donald Trump, you cannot hold this money. It's a really terrible idea. Do not hold up Ukraine's aid. It's not going to work out well with Congress. They're going to come down on you anyway. It's against our national security interests, et cetera. Trump's like, yeah, I know, but on the other hand, it would help the Russians, and I would get to investigate my political opponent.

I don't, man, this seems like an easy question. I don't give it, God damn, about the law. What are you guys stupid? Why would I care about the law? Now, did I make up the part that Donald Trump just spoke? Yes, okay? But after, but I, but the parts that the three advisors said is true, okay? So putting the kidding aside, those three top loyalists to Donald Trump come and tell him,

do not do this. It's an immensely bad idea. It goes, I don't care. That didn't affect him at all. Yeah. And look, again, putting the kidding aside, there are two different. parts of this. One is, he wants to investigate his political opponent and doesn't care what laws he's breaking. The other is Russia loves this. It's because it's all military equipment going

to Ukraine. They're in the middle of that fight at that point. In fact, right then is when Ukraine had seized the Russian tanker. Okay, so then all of a sudden Donald Trump blocks military aid to Ukraine. Again, Putin celebrating in the streets, we're told by people who don't believe in overwhelming evidence that that continues to be a coincidence. So yet another coincidence where Putin is happy about something Trump has done. Yeah, so look, I found this article will be interesting. It puts a little bit more context to what some of these incredibly powerful and not all, but some still well-connected members of the Trump administration were thinking and doing at the time.

I don't expect that it's probably going to change many people's minds. But no, look, so let's talk about things that could be interesting if a trial ever occurs in the Senate. Because it wasn't just his own administration officials, lower level, mid level, and higher level. It was also Republican senators. So both Rob Portman and Ron Johnson went and talked to Donald Trump near the end of this whole process. And they're like, what are you doing? No, we appropriated the funds.

You can't, you can't do this. He said, go, I don't like the corruption in Ukraine. So Rob Portman says, yeah, but quote, but we should not hold that against Ukraine. We need to release these funds. So here are Republicans coming in. And that was on September 11th, when Trump finally concedes and releases it. Two Republican senators saying, President Trump, you must, you must release those funds. So of course, the other enormously important data point here is a couple of days before that,

Donald Trump had found out about the whistleblower complaint. Yeah, so they finally tell him. So he released the funds on September 11th. And in the last two days before that, two things happened. He finds out there's a whistleblower complaint and he might get caught and two Republican senators come in and say, you're in a world of trouble, man, if you don't release those funds. And we're not Democrats or Republicans. So it is indisputable that he released the funds because he got caught, not because he wanted

to. One other thing happened too, I wasn't going to read this initially, but yeah, in that timeline, the day before he finally changes after months of holding the aid, pushing for it to be held, he changes his mind and take a look at this. This is amazing. Remember, his argument is that, yes, for a time it was being held, but not because of White House trip or investigation, anything like that, it's just over the corruption. So on September 10th, the day before he changed his mind and finally stopped at the hold, a political

appointee at the budget office, Michael Duffy, wrote a lengthy email to the Pentagon's top budget official. He asserted that the Defense Department had the authority to do more to ensure that the aid could be released to Ukraine by the congressionally mandated deadline at the end of that month, suggesting that any responsibility for any failure should not rest with the White House. 43 minutes later, the Pentagon official, Elaine McCusker, hit send on a brief but stinging reply, you can't be serious, I am speechless. Because think about this, Trump had been holding it for months. They find out about the whistleblower, the Republicans come, and he says, okay, let's do it.

And you, what's been taking you guys so long? You could be expediting this, get this done, get this done. If it's not done in time, it's not about us. It has nothing to do with the White House, it's all on you guys, you guys are responsible. Now, is that consistent with, well, we've been holding it, but it's over, it's over, you know, corruption concerns. We're really concerned about the corruption there. Yeah. That they're suddenly trying to dump blame on anyone they can.

When the Pentagon originally asked, why are you holding up the funds? The Office of Management and Budget would not give them a reason. They're like, we're going to get back to you on that. Because there is no legitimate reason. And at the end, right before they reverse their decision, they say, oh, it's the Pentagon's fault for holding up the funds. That's why she writes, you can't be serious. We're the ones who wanted you to release the funds from day one. Now you're going to turn around and blame us.

Trump 101. And again, if you're a Republican and you think Trump's going to be on your side, no, he's not. He's going to throw you on the bus the minute he can. Last thing, guys, the other thing that happened in the last two days was the chairman of three House committees announced that they were opening investigations. So, Democrats are opening investigations. The Pentagon says you have to release the budget anyway, the money anyway. He finds out there's a whistleblower complaint and he got caught.

And two Republican senators come and yell at him and say, you're gonna have to release the funds anyway. What are you doing? You're gonna get caught by everyone. So that's why he releases the funds, no and zips or buts. If you live out on a different planet, okay, sure, whatever. In your planet, there is no logic, there are no facts. On this planet, Trump definitely held it illegally and only released it because of this pressure. Last thing is, hey, I would call Ron Johnson and Rob Portman to the stand in the Senate

trial. You guys are Republican senators, you talk to Donald Trump right before he released aid. It looks like he released the aid because of you guys. So what did you tell him? And why did you tell him that? And were you concerned that he was doing something illegal? You obviously went to yell at him. You obviously went to disagree with him.

You obviously went to tell Trump, you are doing something wrong. So why did you think he was doing something wrong? I would love to see that. Well, why don't we transition out to something you don't love to see coming from Joe Biden. We're going to have to be a little bit brief with this, but I know it's one of your favorite stories of the day. Joe Biden recently was at a gathering and who's asked a question to which he gave an interesting response. So there was a woman who said, our 21-year-old son said the other night, I wonder if Joe Biden would consider choosing a Republican as a running mate.

Biden replied, the answer is I would, but I can't think of one now. Let me explain that. You know, there's some really decent Republicans that are out there still, but here's the problem right now. They've got to step up. Okay, no. First of all, there are really decent Republicans out there. Really?

Name one. He can't even name one. He wants to, he's desperate to say, oh, I love Republicans. I'm working with the Republicans. He said it a thousand times. Considering it for the VP, Joe Biden is in his late 70s. So that's, and I'm not biased here, Bernie Sanders also in his late 70s. I care deeply who Bernie Sanders is going to pick as his VP, and I would lose it if he picked

an establishment Democrat, okay? No, you cannot endanger the Republic like that. Bindsaying a Republican? No, no, no, no. I mean, the word disqualifying is thrown around a lot, okay? But that is disqualifying. I mean, you really, you're gonna vote for a Democrat who's, nah, maybe it's a Republican, maybe it's not for a VP.

If I don't know who his VP is picked is now, if you don't know, I mean, I wasn't gonna vote for him anyway. But if you- Really? So we're honest, we're honest, okay? But if you're out there and you were considering Biden, don't you want to know if, like, before you vote for him, if after you vote for him, he's gonna turn around and go, you know what? I kinda like, look, not McConnell, McConnell's too much, but Cornyn. John Cornyn seems like an interesting guy, not Matt Gates, a bit too much.

Let's go with Louis Gohmert. Okay. I mean, he's considering a goddamn Republican. That's insanity. And so, but that's one part of it. The other thing is this nonstop idiocy, and yes, if you're asking if I'm calling Joe Biden stupid, I definitely am. This Republican has to step up.

This Republican who's a good guy, there's a lot of Republicans who are good guys. Yeah, I'm giving him Trump hands. But they gotta step up, step up, do what, what are you talking about? You don't live in today's America. You live in the 1970s or whatever you work with Trump Thurman and you're related about that. In today's America, there's no Republican who's gonna step up and do the right thing. What do you, who?

Who? He can't name it either. Step. Look, it misunderstands American politics. The idea that Biden has is Republicans are wonderful people and Republican politicians are great. They're just under a cloud and the spell's gonna break and they're gonna have courage and they're gonna step up and do the right thing. If that is your true belief about the current political system, you are an idiot.

Whether you're an establishment Democrat or you're a mainstream media reporter, there is no stepping up in courage and all that nonsense. There's donor money, there's polling in your home state, and that's it. There's no ideas, there's no principles, there's no courage. Look, the exception proves the role. One guy did it. What is his name? Justin Amash.

And what did they do to him? They kicked him out of the party, they're tard and feather him. And I don't want Justin Amash's VP either. The guy's a massive right winger. As a massive right winger, he had one moment of courage. and what I commend him for. And what did the Republican Party do? They destroyed him.

So- What about Mitt Romney? He wants disagreed a little bit with Trump briefly. No, but by the way, I'm not kidding, guys. Biden might pick somebody like Jeff Flake. Oh, hell no, hell no, Jeff Flake voted with Trump like 90% of the time. But once or twice, he said something on TV. Get the out of here. Okay, and then two more things that I'm not done with him.

He also is at different times and said, well, you know, you know, he's, you know, he's, you know, You know, I consider somebody a person of color, a woman, somebody different gender than me, different race than me. Okay, good, you're interesting, fine, great, right? I thought, okay, who would meet all three of Joe Biden's qualifications for VP? A person of color, a woman, and potentially a Republican? Connoisse Rice. Or me a love?

Yeah. Okay, you got two choices. What is it? He said Candace Owens. Candice Owens. Oh God, damn. I don't think Joe Biden is online enough to know. Oh, you know what?

No, no, no, I got one. Who's got, who's had enough courage to speak out against Trump? Amorosa. That's true. So like, there's a lot of issues here. And look, I'm sure by tomorrow or later today, spokesperson is going to come out and say, oh, he was just being diplomatic, you know, you're misunderstanding, just like when Biden said that the spell's going to break and everything's going to go back to normal after Trump

is not elected. And that you were misunderstanding, even though we keep saying things to that. effect, but also, like, they never ask the Republicans, oh, are you going to choose a Democrat for unity? What about in 2016, when they again lose the popular vote, well, you know what? You did win through the electoral college, but clearly the American people are split. I mean, more were against you. You should really boot Mike Pence and make Chuck Schumer your vice president.

That would be a good move for unity since you guys keep losing the popular vote. Nobody said that, and if they did, they wouldn't do it. See, the Democrats are forced to consider it every time. Look, I like Al Gore a lot for a lot of different reasons, but he's also more progressive than people realized. But having said that, he picked a Republican for a BP. Joe Lieberman. He did.

He's a Democrat named only, massive right winger, single-handedly killed a public option under the Affordable Care Act. Didn't meet a war he didn't want to make love to. So Lieberman has no absolute positive right-winger, extreme right-winger, especially on foreign policy. So the Republicans are constantly reaching out to Republicans and constantly losing. It's a stupid strategy, it is not practical, it is not pragmatic, it is a strategy for losers, okay? The Republicans on the other hand go, oh, I got a massive right winger who's the top of

the ticket. So you know what, the BP pick should be even more right wing. Sarah Palin. Mike Pence. Paul Ryan, much more right wing than Mitt Romney. Mike Pence, more evangelical than Donald Trump, more extreme in terms of domestic policy than Donald Trump. Yeah, Dick Cheney is a conservative AI created a think tank.

Dick Cheney for God's sake, right? So what is the phenomenon that's the most important about that? The Republicans understand that appealing to your base wins elections. Democrats hate their own base, and they use the corporate media to attack their own base and go towards the right wing. Why? Why would you do that? It doesn't make any sense.

You've lost countless elections because of it. You do it because of the goddamn donors. They have the same donors from the same industries. They want the same results as the Republicans, they're just looking for an excuse for it. That is why the entire political spectrum in DC is shifted massively right wing when the country is progressive on every issue according to the polls. Final, final thing, Joe Biden has in this campaign has said about a VP pick, we can disagree on tactic, but strategically we'd have to be in the exact.

exact same page. So apparently, he thinks that there are Republicans that are on the exact same page as him strategically. If that's not disqualifying in a democratic contest for president, for leader of the Democratic party and leader of the country, I don't know what is. There's a significant number of people who hate Bernie who are like, I'm not going to vote for him because he's not a Democrat, I'm gonna vote for Joe Biden and hope that he picks a Republican running mate.

Bernie is not a Democrat because he's to the left of the Democrats if you're in that school of thought. And Biden is so far right wing that he'd pick a Republican and somehow you think he represents Democratic values better? No, no, look, there are people like that and they are genuine. And I just, they're not in my camp, they're not my teammates, they're not my colleagues, okay? So people who think, all I care about is, does the person have a deal? on their helmet, because I got my pom-poms, and I'm ready for them, okay?

Those, I don't care what their values are. I don't care what their policies are. I just want him to be a Democrat. Like, Jeff Van Drew, two weeks ago, he was such a great Democrat. I love Jeff Andrew. I don't care how much he votes for the Republicans and how much he loves Trump. He's got a D on his helmet. I love Jeff Van Drew.

And then he turns out and he puts an R in his helmet. They're like, what a traitor. He's the same guy. The same guy with the same exact policies and the same exact votes. Right, Quayr votes with Trump 70% of the time. Oh no, we can't have Jessica Sisteros. No, no, no, no, no, no. Quayr has a Dian's helmet.

What effing difference doesn't make? Do you care about policy at all? And if you don't, and you call it, you're so proud to be a Democrat, who doesn't give a damn about any policies or anything that affects the American people? I have no use for you. And I'm looking forward to defeating you as well in these presidential primaries, because If you get your way, not only will we have no change in this country, but we'll also lose the Republicans.

Given a choice between a Republican and a Republican light, the country always picks a Republican. Let's give him a different choice, someone who's actually going to be a strong Democrat. All right, we gotta take it, Kirkway. We'll be right back. Corpop was a bad dude. 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.

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Lots of comments here. I'll go as quickly as I can obviously bright early because joined us. Hey, Brett. Hey, nice to be here. Okay, whatever. Let's move on. I agree. All right, co-host, Jan Cougar says, well, yes, the person's handle. While I love the anti-establishment voices and progressive policies in the primary from outsiders, the pivot that each candidate but Bernie has done has left a miserable taste in my mouth, people constantly backtracking and flip-flopping.

That is true. And then Aquilad joins in and says, backing away from Medicare for All, sank Kamala's campaign, and Warren took a huge hit in the polls. How does anyone think it's a good idea at this point? I agree with you 100% except every idiot consultant polls were like, oh, no, it's the insurance companies have spent a lot of money and they should drop it at the polls. Yes, but you're in a Democratic primary. Did you also not see the poll where 81% of Democratic voters want Medicare for all?

So these guys, they think they're so smart, they're idiots. Here, in fact, I'll go to Twitter here. Bernie is not too all rights in, are all the damn candidates conspiring to make Bernie look good? It does, it feels like they're all committing political Harry Carey, like, you know what? Oh, she was against Medicare for All and then it killed her campaign. Yeah, me too. Here, somebody handed me the sword politically.

Right? At first I thought you were talking about the Cubs guy. No, no, no. Don't you see I'm loco, right, Sid? Okay, Andrew Yang can get ready to drop on the polls, bye Felicia. So Andrew was a terrible idea, last one from these guys, Chicken Foot says, back in the member section. Dang, Yang, wrong answer.

That $1,000 a month you promised, all gone, poof, healthcare premiums will eat that right up. I want to read that to you guys because it's so true, I mean, do the math, if you will. The average family of four pays more than $12,000 a year on health care costs. UBI is that Yang is proposing is $1,000 a month, that's $12,000. Oops, there goes all your money, okay? Yeah. It has to go to health care.

And really, just super, like we shouldn't have to give a caveat like this, but it bothers me fundamentally I know that some people who are supporters of him, just in that we're covering it and being willing to criticize him when he's clearly wrong on this policy, are gonna like hate us for it because like the big thing is you're supposed to pretend that all these candidates are great and you're not supposed to criticize them because if they have a strong fan base, you're supposed to try to just get them, hug them close to you and try to get their money. We're not gonna do that. Like we criticize all the other people and they backed off on literally this exact same thing.

We have to be honest about it. I know. It won't. You gotta wonder why. They're a small minority. Look, he's gonna lose, Yang's gonna lose a lot of supporters over this, is my guess. All right, in YouTube's super chat, thank you for supporting the show guys. Constant Chaos says, as a healthcare provider, I condemn Yang's Medicare for All, which is not Medicare for all.

Second Line Studio says Bernie Sanders has not wavered on Medicare for all at all. And look at that, he's rising in the polls. Perhaps it's not a coincidence. It turns out none of the other candidates can actually do math. All right, and speaking of math, we gotta get to 200,000. And you guys, I should have told you, do you have the thermometer? TiT.com slash climate. Oh, look it out, 172, almost 173.

Love it. Wonderful, guys, wonderful. Let's keep that going. TYT.com slash climate, we gotta get to 200,000 and we'll hire a team that's gonna look into how money in politics and the fossil fuel companies are buying off our politicians and preventing action on climate change. It's just the future of our civilization, it's not that big. No big deal.

All right, Brett. Quick story before we go. You know when Ashkenazi Jews is trending on Twitter. Twitter, you're in for a treat. And this is all thanks to Brett Stevens, who and the New York Times editorial board, when Brett wrote a article, Brett with one T, by the way, there's a difference, called the Secret of Jewish Genius. And it caught a lot of flag.

We'll explain it all. But in this op-ed, he writes, Sarah Bernhardt and Franz Kafka, Albert Einstein, and Rosalind Franklin, Benjamin Disraeli and Cy, Carl Marx. How is it that people, meaning Ashkenazi Jews, who never amounted to even one-third of 1% of the world's population, contributed so seminally to so many of its most path-breaking ideas and innovations? Now, there's a write-up of the controversy that emerged from it, because it centers around who he cited in this.

And there's a lot of problems we'll probably all get into, into just the entire motivation potentially behind this and the messaging within it. But as Tracy Connor writes for the Daily Beast, he said that Jews, quote, are or tend to be smart and then cited a 2005 paper Natural History of Ashkenazi Intelligence by Gregory Cochran, Jason Hardy, and Henry Harpending, which declares that Ashkenazi Jews have the highest average IQ of any ethnic group. It was quickly pointed out on social media that Harpending, who died in 2016, was listed as an extremist by the Southern Poverty Law Center, which listed his ideology as a white nationalist. So they took it out.

They took out the reference to this study, which pretty eugenicsy, if you ask me, said after the publication, according to the editors note that they added on the New York Times editorial, after publication, Mr. Stevens and his editors learned that one of the paper's authors, Oh, no, moving on to the next one. Oh, yeah, after publication, Mr. Stevens and his editors learned that one of the paper's authors who died in 2016 promoted racist views. Mr. Stevens was not endorsing the study's authors' views, but it was a mistake to cite it uncritically.

The effect was to leave an impression with many readers that Mr. Stevens was arguing that Jews are genetically superior. That was not his intent. It's always good when your article needs fall up like that. But if you, like I understand that there's a common thing where, where it's like retweets do not equal endorsements. But like if you're writing an op-ed or an editorial and you put in a study, how can it be said that you're not endorsing it?

He wasn't attacking it, he wasn't criticizing, he wasn't saying it was wrong. So what was it just like a list of his favorite things? No, you're endorsing it by referencing it while talking about the subject. You know, we did a 23 and me in the fam and my dad is 100% Ashkenazi Jew. I should be proud technically because this says we're super duper smart. But if you've studied any bit of the history of the Jewish people, you don't want to see things like the secret of Jewish genius. Because even though it sounds like a compliment, it's like the Jews are often secret being

geniuses and being all manipulative and cunning and all that crap. Right. Like a lot of people make the mistake of thinking, oh, stereotypes about African Americans and their body types, et cetera, that might seem positive. No, they were used to describe them as animals and then let the lynchings. So there's a reason why these stereotypes and tropes are very, very dangerous. But on a lighter note, what's wrong with Sephardic Jews? Yeah, right?

Why is he leaving them out? What a random discrimination against half the Jews in the world, right? Like, they're like, Ashkenazi Jews, brilliant, Sephardic, no, no, no, right? Yeah. What? Yeah. And let's be fair to Gregory Cochran, who's also a monster, who's another one of the authors. I don't think New York Times really mentioned him at all in their retraction.

But Cochran has a history of homophobia. He wrote a paper called An Evolutionary Look at Human's Homosexuality. And he wrote that homosexuality from a biological perspective is, quote, surely a disease. it a bug and that the brain has been damaged if you're gay, okay? So look, look, there's two parts of this story. Yeah. One is he shouldn't obviously, obviously, obviously, obviously should not have included that paper. And I hope, I think, I hope that if he knew this stuff, that he would not have included

it because at a bare minimum, he's got to know that's gonna get him a lot of trouble, even if he meant it. So I don't think he's stupid enough to have known that. So I'm gonna chalk it up to laziness and maybe I'm being way too kind. I don't know. I think it's way too kind because like, it's just a, no culture should have, no media framing should be like this. It should not even dabble in the genetic predisposition for intelligence, the genetic

predisposition for anything. It tries to say that the, it's fine to say that like, oh, in Passover we ask questions. He tries to say that they teach you how to think in Judaism and the culture is more critical. But it's then to connect it and pick like eight people and say these eight people symbolize the entire group of people. That alone, whether it's eight successful people saying that these people are successful or eight unsuccessful people represent all the people. These people do not represent all the people. And that's something that if you're writing, if you're the New York Times, editorial board, you should say, I will get the next one.

Here, take this one back, work on it a bit. Yeah, and as we've alluded to, like, there are a lot of, like, clever racists that have sort of discovered that if you stereotype a group with something positive, you can use that, not just to still other them, like this group is, oh, they tend to be smarter, they're just smarty pants, that's what they are, they're not like full diverse people like us, they're just that thing, but also to use that as a weapon against other groups that don't live up to this fake standard that you're setting out by supposedly praising one group. And the thing is, I'm not saying anything about Brett Stevens, motivations, I don't know.

But it's possible that someone else could read this article and take it as, well, then why aren't other groups that are small percentage of the population doing really well? This seems like an indictment of them. And if you don't understand how someone can have a sort of casual reading of something and not really understand it, you should because you cited that study that you apparently had no idea about the authors. Yeah, look guys, what John saying is really important. Because if you posit that certain group is smarter than other folks, then you have to, by definition,

say that other groups are not as smart. That's a really, really dangerous road to go down. And Brett Stevens should know that. And the last thing on the study is when he sees the title, natural history of Ashkenazi intelligence, that has got to give you a pause and go, hey, you know what? Before I put that in the New York Times, maybe I should look at a little bit more as to what the paper says. Because someone gives you the paper, the next thing is like, could you bend over here and I can measure the size of your cranium? Yeah, I know, right?

Like that's eugenics stuff. So now, but getting past the paper, the second half of the story, which is the core of the story, I think is equally unacceptable. So this idea of him assuming that Ashkenazi Jews are smarter and then the only eugenic argument he makes is these weirdos and bigots, et cetera, right? I don't, that's crazy talk to begin with, even if you didn't cite a crazy paper, right? For the reasons both Brett and John mentioned, but on top of that, he has all of these assumptions and and it leads to the discussion that seems to center around genetics, which is a terrible idea. I know he mentioned culture, and I know the New York Times says, no, no, no, it wasn't

about genetics. And as Brett said, if you wanted to make a really narrow point about, hey, he's not, you you know what, maybe an era that fosters education and questioning and curiosity and a culture that does that could produce better results. And I've got overwhelming evidence to that effect. Well, that's a really interesting conversation about culture, right? And that's a conversation I would want to have, but that's not what this piece was. Just talk about like, oh, Passover makes the little kids question stuff.

That's a cool thing. Let's learn about Passover and extrapolate the lessons of Passover to how everybody's life could be better, and not the secret genius of the Ashkenazi, good Lord. That's right, no. And I would have, look, you could talk about other people's cultures and go, hey, look, that's a great part of this culture, that's a not great part of this culture, or whatever. I know that's forbidden these days, et cetera.

But that would be an interesting intellectual conversation. But when you're talking about the secret genius of Jews, that is a disaster through and through, even if he didn't cite this bad paper. And I think that people are losing track and they're just thinking it's about that bad paper. No, the whole article is wrong. And it's on a wrong premise and a dangerous premise. All right, guys. We've got to take a break here.

Thank you, Brett and John. We've got more news for you guys. Bad news, unfortunately, about one of the great leaders in this country. We'll get to that when we return. Thanks for listening to the full episode of the Young Turks. Support our work. Listen to ad-free. Access members, only bonus content, and more by subscribing to apps.

Apple Podcasts at apple.com. I'm your host, Shank Huger, and I'll see you soon.