The Young Turks - TYT Extended Clip - February 7th, 2020

Episode Date: February 8, 2020

Did Trump lie about the attack that almost started war with Iran? Ana Kasparian, Brian Unger, 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. If you like the Young Turks podcast, I think you'll love a lot of the podcasts on the TYT Network. Old school, it's one of my favorites, one of the favorites for a lot of the listeners. Please check that out, subscribe, share it, that makes a big difference, and give it a five-star rating. Thank you.

I just want to be clear, I hate dropping it, we just have to, and I have never dropped it where they didn't like pause for two seconds and then press the button, which makes me love it way more. No, but like you gotta, look, it's not their fault. You gotta get them morning. Yes, it was Skip's fall. I can see Skippy smiling me right now. That's transparent. You know I can see you, right? I feel like I just walked into a very bad fight.

Anyway. Brian Ungers walked into a big fight. You know, it is California. And I'm just noticing that I could have used a little powder or something. Okay, well, we're gonna get that in the first break. Excuse me, what's your name? Did you grab a little powder? Thanks so much.

What Brian doesn't know, because most guys don't, is that right now, is that right now in the world of cosmetics, the Dewey look is in. Is that what it is referred to? The Dewey Look. Oh, we're in. So you look great. If the Dewey Look is in, I'm leading the charge. You've moved to Damp.

But anyway, this is Brian Unger, host, actor, friend of the show. So great to be back. Oh, the only reason that I don't get here is because I live in France and driving from France on the 405. It's a lot. Otherwise, I would probably be stalking you guys all the time to be on the show. So thank you for having me. I want that world.

I do, me too. Hopefully someday. Anna, thank you for joining us on the first hour. I apologize. I am somehow still sick after like six weeks. But anyway, Jake is gonna be around later on. Yes, so we are of course going to provide special coverage of the Democratic debates tonight. So Jenk will be joining us for that.

He thinks that there's a possibility he'll be here for the second hour. I'm just going to go ahead and tell you that he won't be. There's a chance that the door might be locked if he is, actually. But anyway, look, we got a lot that we're going to be talking about through the first hour. At the close of the hour, I want to have a little bit of a sort of post-mortem on Iowa and what effect we think it had. I've combed through what data I've been able to find about how it's affected what people think about the race. We're going to have a little bit of an open conversation about that. But before that, we're going to talk about CPAC and what it's going to look like when you get a whole bunch of incredible.

incredibly frustrated and a horny young right wingers in a room together. We've got Hillary Clinton with more interviews, and that's always fun. And Mike Bloomberg, popular with the influencers, and we found out why. So we'll be breaking that down a little bit later too. But before all that, we're gonna jump into some serious news involving Iraq and Iran. So the incident that set the stage for us very nearly going to Iran, war with Iran, just about a month ago, turns out might not have been what we thought it was. all along.

So they had a belief that this Iranian-backed militia had attacked U.S. military assets, a contractor had lost his life as a result of that. That was the pretext for later escalations. The assassination of Qasem Soleimani, eventually missiles being launched at a U.S. base. There are a number of soldiers with brain injuries as a result of that. Obviously a passenger jet was shot down. More than 170 people lost their lives as a result of that. So the pretext for this seems pretty important.

because it was incredibly consequential. So let's talk a little bit about what was believed to be the case and what we now think might have actually been going on. So the United States blamed an Iraqi militia with close ties to Iran and bombed five of the group's bases. Angry Iraqis then stormed the American embassy. You probably remember the footage of that. The US then killed Iran's top general.

Iran then fired missiles at our forces and shot down that passenger jet. But Iraqi military intelligence officials have raised doubts about who fired the rockets that started the spiral of events saying that they believe that it's unlikely that the originally mentioned militia could have actually carried it out. So Iraqi officials acknowledge that they have no direct evidence tying the December 27th rocket attack to one group or another, literally to any particular group. American officials insist that they have solid evidence that Katayib Hezbollah carried out the attack, although they haven't made that evidence public.

That has been a stance in terms of the intelligence from the beginning up until now for everything having to do with this. But here are a few interesting facts. So the rockets were launched from a Sunni Muslim part of Kirkuk province, notorious for attacks by the Islamic State, a Sunni terrorist group, which would have made the area a hostile territory for a Shiite militia like Khatib Hezbollah. Katayib Hezbollah has not had a presence in Kirkuk since 2014. The Islamic State, however, had carried out three attacks relatively close to the base in

the 10 days before the attack. And the abandoned Kia pickup from which the racks of rocket launchers were deployed in that original attack was found less than 1,000 site from the site of an ISIS execution in September of five Shiite buffalo herders. And so I can't now transition to, and here's what is definitely true, we don't know. But what evidence has been presented to us implies that the original story doesn't really bear out, or there's not much reason to believe it at the very least. So the initial intelligence that the United States relied on in an effort to pin the death

of a U.S. contractor on Iran is not reliable. And it's crazy because usually the United States, when it comes to foreign policy, only acts if they know they have reliable intelligence. Because you don't want to kill innocent people, whenever there's any type of military aggression against a country abroad, usually there are civilians who lose their lives, there are lives on the line. Oftentimes, innocent lives when you're trying to take someone out. So you've got to make sure that that intelligence is foolproof and it's not faulty. And look, I'm being sarcastic. Obviously, the United States acts on faulty intelligence all the time, which is why we have all

these drone strikes that take out all these civilians abroad. It happened under the Obama administration. The Trump administration has expanded that, and we're killing innocent civilians in Yemen every single day. We're still doing Saudi Arabia's bidding. So it doesn't surprise me that the United States wouldn't make sure that their intelligence is foolproof before acting. The thing that does shock me is that things haven't escalated further, that Iran did not escalate things further when the United States used this faulty information to eventually take out their top

military general. And that's not to say the top military general was a good guy, as we've said over and over again on this show, he was not. But in Donald Trump's abrupt decision to go after him and assassinate him, that led to a dangerous domino effect that luckily didn't escalate till full blown war with Iran. I wonder if the escalation is just in the works. It's always like, you know, when you attack an adversary like Iran, because we have such overwhelming military force, the attack is something that may come later, and it may come

in a way we don't expect. Right. That's what I worry about the most, and that's probably what will happen. But doesn't Congress have oversight about this kind of thing? They're supposed to. Wouldn't they then sort of want to look at the intelligence and examine its credibility? So Congress is supposed to be a check on the executive branch's power, especially when it comes to these types of decisions, like taking out a country's top military general.

But no one in Congress was informed about it. And if I remember correctly, the Trump administration cited the AUMF, which was only supposed to be about Iraq, you know, after 9-11, as their excuse for doing what they did without congressional approval. Yeah. Yeah, a thousand years from now, we're gonna be like landing Marines in Alpha Centauri and the UMF is going to be used as a pretext for it. And so they're supposed to be a check, in particular on the use of the war powers back 50 years

ago. They passed new legislation to reassert that they'd be able to do that. They've been unsuccessful up until the last couple of years and ever doing that, and only then because of the work of people like Rokana and Bernie Sanders. And they tried to pass limitations on, after all of this happened, they tried to pass limitations on the ability of Trump to unilaterally start a war with Iran, and obviously they didn't go anywhere in the Senate. But you did have, I believe even Matt Gates might have, is that, yeah, I believe it

was Matt Gates that might have signed on to it in the House. So it was successful there. Yeah, I know that we've moved on to other topics. Impeachment obviously was a big thing, we got the Iowa debacle and all that. But I still very much believe that between now and election day, it is going to come up again. Whether he honestly wants to go to war or if he's going to cynically use it to try to get perhaps the media to, you know, stifle some criticism of them, I honestly don't know.

But I don't think that this is the last we've heard from the Hawks when it comes to Iran. I don't think it's the last we've heard of Iran either before the election. I agree. And you know, in terms of congressional oversight and holding the executive branch accountable, apparently that is no longer a thing. And so I worry about that as well. It's probably going to be routine to just ignore congressional oversight and requests for intelligence and, you know, we're kind of screwed that way.

Yeah, and I think that's a great point. a lot of power has been concentrated in the executive branch since 9-11. This isn't something new. This is something that's slowly been happening since 9-11. And the way that this was sold to the American people was, well, we need to protect national security. So as a result, we need to give the executive branch, the president of the United States, all this power when it comes to keeping the country safe. And what, you know, Congress needs to understand is when you're signing legislation that gives

the president power to act without congressional, you know, approval, then if you're comfortable with the current president doing that, well, you've got to keep in mind that someone like Trump can get elected in the future. And if you believe in our system of government and you believe in checks and balances, then there shouldn't be any type of situation where the executive branch can just act without any type of check on power. Yeah, and let's bear in mind, we have what appears to be so far unsubstantiated original reasons for starting this conflict.

But then also, the killing of Qasem Soleimani, I mean, you probably remember the week of, like, laughable media appearances by Mike Pompeo and others, trying to imply that they had intelligence, but what that intelligence represented just kept retreating until it was basically the guy sucked, he was mean, and so we killed. him, that's the sort of thing that in the lead up to the war with Iraq, like, we took seriously, supposedly the intelligence, and some people's reputations after the fact were sort of destroyed because they spread bad intelligence, or it's believed that they manipulated what was there. But in the modern environment, like this story, like who's going to be talking about this

in two days? The fact that the intelligence around Qasem Soleimani specifically, there was obviously nothing there. It was like sort of a joke for a week, and then we moved on. And that's not just sad in hindsight going forward. Trump is not going to have to find a good prerequisite for war with Iran. He can come up with anything he wants knowing that there won't be any consequences if it turns out that it was exaggerated or entirely falsified.

And he, you know, look, he's like he wants an enemy state and Iran is that for him. And he's going to keep beating those war drums all the way up to the election. I think you're right. I just hope that the Pentagon has kind of learned its lesson and won't present a menu of like of really bad things. Now that they know that Trump will pick that one. The worst one. Yeah. They'll give them a few

like sort of lesser damaging ones. But how would the Pentagon know? How would they predict that Donald Trump would pick the worst option from their menu, right? I think we're all learning about his mental instability on a daily basis and probably those within the government and all those institutions are too. So I don't know.

God, he's like, he's like you brought someone to dinner and you say, you know what? I got this and he just looks for the highest price. You need to understand how this person works. I just want to read one or two of the comments because I saw some funny ones. So quid pro Cuomo, that's kind of funny, says we must invade Alpha Centauri to deal with the trisolar threat. If you get that reference, we can be friends.

And yes, I did read the three body problem, so I do get that reference anyway. And let's see, Gabby Marita says, Donald Trump in his administration is the antithesis of reliable intelligence in every conceivable way. I mean, look, I made a reference to the Bush administration. There wasn't much oversight then, obviously, and they still got the war that they wanted. But now it's at best we get a punchline out of how little they care about convincing the American people that this is a serious threat that we need to face. Like we talked about the checks and balances in terms of war powers and the legislature

not being there. None of them are there. They don't even have to put on a good show anymore. And we know now coming out of this impeachment inquiry that he's not going to be removed for literally anything. Like, it doesn't matter if it's a war, like he could launch us into a war totally on his own specifically to benefit his own business interests, whatever, whatever hypothetical you can come up with, it doesn't matter.

If he gets another four years, he's going to spend them how he wants. Well, that's absolutely true, especially when you have Republican lawmakers who will make excuses for him or cover up for his crimes. So if Democrats want a strategy that's more effective, you go after the Republican lawmakers who have covered up for his criminality. I know it's not like a broken record. I've made this point a billion times on the show. But it's not just about Trump, it's about this entire political structure that's been taken

over by people who want to cover up his crimes. And so attack those vulnerable senators. There's at least six of them on the right that are facing tough reelection campaigns right now, go after them aggressively. You shouldn't just rely on the right wing, the Lincoln project, to put out vicious ads attacking them. These are the never-Trumpers who have a huge problem with Donald Trump and with the Republican lawmakers helping him out.

Why aren't Democrats doing that every single day, hit them and hit them hard? You know? Well, with that, we should probably take a first break, and lots more to get to, obviously. So we'll see you on the other side and read some of your member comments when we come back We need to talk about a relatively new show called Un-F-The-Republic, or UNFTR. As a Young Turks fan, you already know that the government, the media, and corporations are constantly peddling lies that serve the interests of the rich and powerful. But now there's a podcast dedicated to unraveling those lies, debunking the conventional wisdom.

In each episode of Un-F-The-Republic, or UNFTR, the host delves into a different historical episode or topic that's generally misunderstood or purposely obfuscated by the so-called powers that be. Featuring in-depth research, razor-sharp commentary, and just the right amount of vulgarity, the UNFTR podcast takes a sledgehammer to what you thought you knew about some of the nation's most sacred historical cows. But don't just take my word for it. The New York Times described UNFTR as consistently compelling and educational, aiming to challenge conventional wisdom and upend the history.

historical narratives that were taught in school. For as the great philosopher Yoda once put it, you must 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.

Welcome back to the first hour of The Young Turks with myself, Anna Kasparian and Brian Ungers here as well. Before we launch into the news, I wanted to read a few of these comments. We got some great hashtag TYT lives. Quantum guillotine wolf corrected me saying, John, not Marines, it will be Space Force landing on Alpha Centaurian, that is a good point. Yes. Let's see. Let's see, collecting miscellaneous says the Pentagon should have put a big Mac and Diet Coke

on the menu of options instead of assassining Soleimani. He would have totally gone for that instead. I like that. And Abraham says, my worst fear is that he now has the power to refuse to leave office if he is not reelected. I mean, my inclination is to say, well, come on, like he's not going to do that, but he has done literally everything that people said couldn't be done. So get ready for that exciting news cycle when he's like, no, I live here, I'm not leaving. No, I have faith in nothing.

Essentially, what he's doing is destroying faith, whether that be in literally religion or institutions or norms or anything. He's dismantling it sort of brick by brick. And so anything is possible. Yeah. It certainly makes it fun. Oh, my gosh. Fun, yes.

Yeah, I have fun conversations with my therapist all the time over what's happening. So, by the way, we're going to have an awesome first hour, a great second hour. But also, later on, there is the new hand. Democratic primary debate. It's going to be Jake Uger, Anna Kasparian, myself and Nando will be here as well to provide commentary. Tune in starting at 11 p.m. Eastern, 8 p.m. Pacific Time at TYT.com slash live. There will be a portion of extended coverage right afterward for members, and you can become a member

at TYT.com slash join. That's tonight. That is tonight. That's exciting. That's a good group. I'm watching that. Awesome. Yeah.

Awesome. Thank you. I'll be watching it too. And so with that, why don't we jump back in the news? Let's do it. Okay. Mike Bloomberg has the dollars. We know that he's gonna spend, you know, more money than God has. But he also needs at least like the idea that people are enthusiastic about him and support

him. And so he's put the best paid minds together and they've come up with something and we've got it here coming from reporting from the Daily Beast. The Bloomberg campaign has quietly begun a campaign on Tribe, a quote, branded content marketplace that connects social media influencers with the brands that want to, and advertised to their followers to pitch influencers on creating content highlighting why they love the former New York City mayor for a price. For a fixed $150 fee, the Bloomberg campaign is pitching micro influencers, someone who has

from 1,000 to 100,000 followers to create original content, quote, that tells us why Mike Bloomberg is the electable candidate who can rise above the fray, work across the aisle so all Americans feel heard and respected. That's what you get if you have the 1,000 to 100,000. If you have more followers in that, you can get paid a little bit better for saying why Mikey's the guy. Is this kind of like a fire festival strategy? Is that what that says? So you just put up a tile?

That's hilarious. So the Jenner's are going to be very critical in this effort. Honestly, I would not be surprised. Like I wouldn't be surprised if you saw like a keeping up with the Kardashians episode. And a lot of gay shirtless guys are going to be very important in this whole strategy somehow. I just have that feeling. Yeah, I don't know, it's not quite Cambridge Analytica, but it is, it's buying people's endorsements.

That's essentially what it is in a society where people are struggling economically, right? And I know that people are under the impression that digital influencers are like rolling in the big bucks because they all take like fancy pictures and like fancy locations, but I guarantee you most of them are actually really struggling and a $150, you know, check just To say that you endorse some nonsense candidates. He's gonna tell you who to vote for. Yeah. He seems trustworthy for sure.

Yeah, and show you how to do deadlifts at the same time. Exactly. That's a great strategy. Yeah. But look, I think that it goes to a bigger issue. And that issue is that we have this like facade of democracy, right, with candidates who literally buy endorsements. That's what Bloomberg's doing here.

He's buying endorsements from influencers. And what I think is even more problem. problematic. This is a story that hasn't really gotten much attention to reporting yet. And I've confirmed it through one of my sources. Bloomberg is reaching out to mayors throughout the country and telling them, hey, I'm gonna pump money into your city if you endorse me. Yeah.

That is unacceptable. Yeah, it's also unwise. How many followers could those mayors possibly have on Twitter? Like you gotta target your money. Right. Yeah, it's so funny that like less than a week ago. Long-Bandie Twizzlers candy keeps the fun going. Keep the fun going.

SNBC had people fighting Nina Turner, like, how dare you say he's an oligarch? Like, in every way that you can use money as a shortcut, you know, past all that all that democracy stuff or like building an actual following. And like, so look, I went to tribe and I learned a couple of things. So one, they, the way that they pitch it all on the, I went to the section for creators, and it's all find sponsorship deals with the brands you already know and love. And so they're pitching it as you already love Mike Bloomberg. Now just make a video about it.

Come on. How many of these people are, no, they're taking the money and they're saying that they love him. And the second thing I learned was you can apparently make a good amount of money. So while I hate this, I might look into it a little bit. No, you won't. Not for Mike Bloomberg, but like for Sprite or whatever. Are you pairing Bloomberg with a product like Sprite then? Is that what you're doing?

I mean, the service can hook you up with people for flat tummy tea or for Mike Bloomberg. It really spans the entire thing. But what's the marriage of product and candidacy, I don't get it. So basically the candidacy is the product. So creators go on there. I like Cool Ranch Doritos, but I also like Mike Bloomberg. That could be a Mike Bloomberg ad. The two are amazing.

Have you been watching Mike Bloomberg's online ads? Online ads, no. What you just described makes more sense. There's an ad today, I'm not gonna play it for you. There's an ad, it's just Trump saying the word lie over and over again as cartoon gingerbread men dance on him. And they're like on fire for some reason. I'm not joking, that's one of his ads.

This thing makes more sense than his entire digital strategy. Yeah. Okay. So Dan Evans, who works with us, he's been on the panel, he does a lot of great production work for our special events, he made a really good point about how Bloomberg's just trying to like understand memes and use memes to get himself out there with young voters. But I mean, really, come on. TikTok is next, I'd like to see people doing.

I'm sure he's on there. Some songs and things about Mike. For $1,000? This is just about showing your proficiency at social media. Yeah, it's like my mom, she's 85. Yeah, I want to be on that Insta. What is it called again, honey? She wants to be on that.

And that's just what that is. I don't know how many persuasive, sort of, I don't know how persuasive that is. But I, you know. But again, like the entitlement. entitlement of this billionaire who doesn't believe in going through this in the democratic way, he doesn't believe in making the case for why voters should vote for him. I don't even know what his policies are, because this isn't a policy-based candidacy. This is a, hey, I'm wealthy, and I'm going to bribe individuals to endorse me. And what I also find problematic is that, again,

you have two people on rules committees within the DNC simultaneously working on Bloomberg's campaign. How is that okay? I don't know, but on the right, they're doing the same thing with Facebook and sort of paying for all of this like surreptitious advertising stuff and all these political action committees are flooding the whole, you know, zone with false stories and all this. I mean, you knew this would infect the whole system, this idea of like, you know, getting into social media memes and just constantly sending out stuff, messages, and aiming directly at certain demographics specifically.

So I'm not surprised he's doing. I just don't know what Mike Bloomberg stands for other than being rich. No one does. No one does. He's like, he personifies money. Right. And he's seeing a rise in the polls. That's the thing that I'm worried about.

It's one thing if you see like this clown who's not an issue-based candidate at all and he thinks he can just buy his way. We don't need any more. But if you were failing, then that's one thing. Then he's just a joke and you can laugh at it. But he's not. And so as he continues to see this rise in the polls, first of all, you see that there's a huge flaw in our whole process where someone with the money can just buy their way through

anything. And secondly, it takes candidates who have sat down. and thought about, hey, what do I want to do to make this country better? It puts them at this disadvantage because they're not playing this game where they have $60 billion and they can just buy everything. Well, and the other thing too is that this notion again about billionaire business people being really good at government. I think we've learned something over the past three and a half years.

And hopefully whoever the nominee is, Bernie Sanders for instance, would be able to sort of tear that idea apart and somehow communicate that to swing voters in these like purple states that just because you're rich doesn't mean you're good at governing. Yeah. In fact, actually they suck at governing because being in government is a skill. You learn it. You learn it by being in it, just like being a carpenter who learns how to like do plumbing because they got certified because they did it for 10 years.

I mean, I think we gotta like dispel this notion. I just, Michael, just because you made a lot of money, I don't know, to me that just makes you really good at buying furniture. Yeah, and digital ad space. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I think we've seen what it's like when you run government like a business. I would like for the first time in my life to see it run like an actual government. Yeah. And we haven't seen that.

And I'll just remind you, we cover this not just because it's a spectacle, as you sort of alluded to, but because he is rising the polls. As a reminder, every week he's spending about as much as Perrault spent on his first run. And that was like a big story, so just bear that in mind. With that though, we should move on to the other story. I'm sure everyone out there is really going to enjoy this. Hillary Clinton is still being interviewed. I'm not, she's not in an upcoming movie, so I don't understand why she's on all of these

things, but she is all the time. And you'll be shocked to find out what she ended up talking about. Here it is. I feel like I have a pretty clear perspective about what it's going to take to win. And as I said earlier, that's what I think the key calculation for any voter has to be. You know, you've got to be responsible for what you say and what you say you're going to do. We need to rebuild trust in our fellow Americans and in our institutions. And if you promise the moon and you can't deliver the moon, then that's going to be one more indicator of how you know, we just can't trust each other. So it's not, it's not good theater, it's not

maybe good politics anymore. But I think you should tell people what you mean, mean what you say, and have some sense of responsibility for how you would get anything done that you talk about. So there's a lot to be frustrated about there. But the fundamental lack of her extending 1% goodwill over the last few years to not say that I have a difference of opinion about what is possible from Bernie Sanders, but that Bernie Sanders is, and she doesn't like identify him necessarily specifically there, but that's clearly who she's talking about. That she's saying, no, he knows he can't do it, but he's lying to you to get you to support him.

And that has been her position all the way through, and especially considering how she talks constantly about unity, even in that interview, constantly about unity. Bernie Sanders is the frontrunner right now for her to be imputing false motives that don't exist, even if they did exist, it would be damaging, but they don't. Is insane if you're gonna be supposedly the avatar for party unity. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, listen, she's, and she's like, she's like, she's like, she's like that guy who graduated from high school and is still hanging out in the parking lot and has the cool

car. What's that movie I'm talking about? I think there's a lot of stuff, I don't know. I mean, where, who, and everybody, arrow, yeah, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, like, to get a date and wants someone to ask her or him to the prom, but nobody, is this kind of, everybody feels sorry. And, I mean, she's still running. She's out there running for president still. It's so strange. And Donald Trump is, oddly, still running against her.

Right. So, we're in this very weird, like, constant throwback thing. Groundhog Day. It's a feedback loop of, like, criticism. I don't know, she, she lost the race. And actually her prescription there couldn't be like further from what is needed to win. I want to, I just want to. Though I am going to go with, if you promise the moon, give them the moon.

Is that it? I guess. I guess that's what she's playing. That's going to be my slogan if I ever left. I've got the moon. Here's the moon. Okay, got it. The opening statement was, I have a clear perspective on what it takes to win.

So just let that sink in for a second. She said that. Hillary Clinton, who lost to the dumbest, least qualified reality show host, says that she has a clear perspective on what it takes to win. Then why didn't you win? Now people will argue, inevitably, well, she got the popular vote, she got the popular vote, which by the way, impressive, 3 million more popular votes. But considering who she was up against, she should have blew it out of the vote.

the water when it came to the Electoral College and the popular vote. But she made all sorts of mistakes. I mean, we're talking about the person who decided not to go and campaign in critical battleground states in 2016. Once. Not once. She's telling us that she knows what it takes to win. Actually, she's not telling you.

She says, I think I know. But she's not really letting you look inside the behind the curtain. Well, I think importantly, she's not being specific about what she means there. I think there are two things she could mean. I have perspective on what it takes to win because I lost and have learned from that experience. Or I have perspective on what it takes to win because I was right and I was cheated. And we should do it exactly the same way. It's option too.

That's what she thinks based on the entirety of her statements and her interviews and everything she's done and said since the election. She has blamed everyone and anyone, she has blamed the Russians, she has blamed the country's sexism, she has blamed fake news, she has blamed everything. But she refuses to take responsibility for her own flaws. And the fact that her takeaway is, well, Bernie's promising too much and he can't accomplish anything. So a person who actually can win would tell the American people, right? That's what you gotta, Anna, that's what you gotta give them right.

You gotta give him the moon, right. And if you're gonna say, hey, here's the moon, you better, it better show up on your doorstep. Amazon better deliver that damn thing to you. I just want to give our team credit for being able to deliver the moon like that. That was incredible. By the way, there is an even better one. Oh my God. It's coming.

That's what Bernie is promising you, everybody. Do you really think that's gonna, you're gonna get that? I do. I'm getting scared. But isn't it, you guys, intellectually dishonest that she is essentially engaged in a dishonesty here, that she's just attacking Bernie Sanders and the other candidates for their health care policies. Right. Right.

That's what, yeah, I mean, that's one of the issues. If we go too far to the left, they're gonna punish us for it. So we better retreat now. Yeah. Right? Why don't we go to, she has a little bit more on health care. So why don't we watch that? Oh, good.

Does she dance too on the show or no? Probably. Like health care, let's take health care, for example. Look, I want quality affordable health care for everybody. And I've been fighting for it for more than 25 years. I've been burned an effigy over it, all of that. I want to get there. But let's remember what's at stake.

We have a current president who's trying to take away fundamental health care rights. So we can have a big argument about ideally what kind of health care we should want for everybody because I'm on the front lines on that battle. But let's remember, if we don't win, people will lose what they have right now. So I just want everybody to understand how high the stakes are. She's delusional. Like, she's so delusional. The fact that she thinks she's on the front lines of the health care.

No, I mean, at one point, you know, in the 1990s when her husband was president, yes, she was fighting for universal health care. She has moved away from that. She's in a completely different world. And look, I just want to make a point about these establishment Democrats who keep claiming, like, no, we can't give you anything better because we got to protect the Affordable Care Act. It's under attack by these Republicans, we got to protect it. Okay, fine. Then why did Nancy Pelosi repeal a portion of the Affordable Care Act that was supposed to keep it sustainable, specifically certain taxes that the private health care industry was supposed to pay as part of the Affordable Care Act?

She repealed that just a month ago. Nancy Pelosi did, a Democrat, okay? Read into it, if you don't believe me. Like, they're so disingenuous. Everything that they say is meant to make Americans afraid of losing the, like, meager scraps that they've been given, right? When in reality, behind the scenes, they're the ones who are like, yeah, we don't really care about this, bro, let's repeal it.

Come on. But you know what, and we were discussing this briefly before we went on the air, If you're on the front lines of something, which you just mentioned, you're actually in states and in districts where it matters, where the issues matter most. Right. Where, like, if you're standing up for reproductive rights and you're on the front lines, you're actually outside of abortion clinics, and you're actually defending a woman's right to choose whatever she wants to do.

If you're on the front lines of health care, wouldn't you be out there trying to, like, swing those districts where senators are basically or staunchly in combating? like some kind of, any kind of increased coverage for people in health care. Right, right. That's what you would do. You would have a strategy, and you would have your own organization and you'd be out there pounding the pavement. Definitely.

You wouldn't be on Ellen saying I'm on the front line. Or go on Ellen and attack Joe Manchin. Attack some of the Democrats that are going to be obstacles. Because that's the only way healthcare is going to get done anyway. I agree. To keep on track, we do have to go to our break though, but come back because we've got some plans coming from CPAC, right-wing art, so that should be fun. And we're going to give you a bit of a post-mortem on the Iowa caucus coming up.

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while supporting independent media, become a member at t-y-t.com slash join today. In the meantime, enjoy this free segment. Well, that was a beautiful. break. Welcome back, everybody. A couple more stories to talk about. Before that, I did want to let you know that there is still time if you're interested in potentially flying out to L.A., staying in a hotel, and arguably the best part of the experience having a meal with Anna Kusperi and Jank Ugar and myself. The Aspirations Sweepstakes is going on. Oh, I want to do this. Well, then you got it. Well, I'm going to tell you how you can register.

We have 1,345 registered participants, and it's not too late to register. You can head to t.com in L.A. for more information. All you have to do is sign up for a free aspiration, spend and save account, register for the sweepstakes. And then every time you swipe your card, that is going to be an entry into the sweepstakes. So the more you swipe, the better. Can I ask a question? Yes. First of all, how long is the dinner? Uh, 25 minutes. Depends on how much we like the person who wins the sweepstakes. Could be hours. My mom might call me within 15 minutes and then I have to go because there's an emergency. I'm just kidding. Jake and I will stay.

Exactly. Where are you going to dinner? I don't know. I'm going to pick the restaurant. You are? I don't care what anyone says. I want to pick. Yeah.

It's going to be something nice and super expensive. Oh, okay. So all the more reason to sign up. And now you have a little bit more competition. I'll come too. Can I come? Yeah, feel free. Feel free.

Suddenly no one wants to be in the thing. Are you kidding me? Yeah. You might be wrong because some of our member comments actually talk about you. So Tandis is the, Gianforte of the left says, Holy Biscuits, Brian Unger, yay. And Trundle the Great says, I think I get the reference there. Yay, Brian Unger, I'm a huge, always sunny fan, hence my screen name.

That's awesome. Although I'm, I just have to tell you, I'm a bigger, always sunny fan. So get in line, buddy, get in line. And your character, I know I say this every time I see you, your character's awesome. I think they're having trouble rewriting me into the new season because I only have one eye. That's true. The last one bird pecked my eye out, so they're probably like, how are we going to, what

are we going to do with Unger? You can't see out of one of his eyes. So I don't know. I forgot about that, actually. That's right, I know. I haven't. Oh, geez. Okay, so, you know, look forward in future seasons, you might see some of what's left

of Brian Unger. And for all those people who don't watch, it's always funny, I'm sorry. Exactly. Okay, with that, why don't we launch back in the news? CPAC is coming up. It's the yearly time where right-wingers, young activists for what passes for them, and right-wing politicians get together to, like, yell at the left. I don't know what they do, but I know one thing they're going to do this year, they're

going to have their first ever play. It's FBI Lovebirds Undercovers, it's been billed as the Hamilton for the Maga crowd, And wait until you see the trailer. I think they nailed it there. Here's a bit of what you can expect if you go to CPAC this year. This is absolutely good. I have heard that you are regarded as the number one counterintelligence agent in the world. Comment on that?

Woo! Did you get laid yesterday? I didn't. I'm concerned that someone forgot to valid. my time or something. Oh, that's funny, paid, not laid. There's no way he gets elected, Dash. But I'm afraid we can't take that risk.

It's like an insurance policy. Please don't ever text me again. Okay, so really fast, if that didn't make any sense to you, that's because it really doesn't. They're literally reading the text messages between Lisa Strach and Paige, you know, like from like three years ago that like they've been obsessed about, they're just reading them on stage. Why can't they just at least in the bare minimum memorize them?

Like bare minimum, bare minimum. They're not actors. And I'm gonna fall back here on my daily show pedigree, if I might. And I know as narcissistic as that sounds. One, that's not funny. Not even close. At all. Yeah.

Like that's just, as based on the merits of comedy, that was really bad. Two, any time that we undertook a notion like, let's read transcripts from something and make that a piece, like this, that never, it sounds great in the room. Oh, I love that idea. It'll be really funny. In execution, it's really, it never works. And I refer you to Lenny Bruce when he got really unfunny. He started reading from books and law books and things in clubs.

And he would rifle through the pages. And it's when it didn't get funny anymore. It got kind of pathetic. And then lastly, I'll just refer you to the fact that the only, The only thing that that play lacks is Trump sitting in like a throne where there's like fanning him with like palm fronds and he's like holding out a glass for more wine, laughing at how funny this. The gestures. Yeah, the gestures. And that's what they are.

They're gestures in his court. And they think they're being funny. And it's not. So, good night, everyone. The funniest thing I've seen. Back to the daily show. I don't know, the funniest thing I've seen in regard to this whole situation was Aaron Rupar tweeting about it and just saying, there's no bottom. Because there really is no bottom with the right wing at this point.

Like, they banned Mitt Romney. They disinvited him or uninvited him after he decided to vote to convict Donald Trump on one article of impeachment abuse of power. And I think they did him a favor. I wouldn't want to be associated with that. That's embarrassing. Yeah. Yeah, why would you want that? And like, you know, we know that there's a lot of people that watch a show like every

day and they'll watch for long periods of time. But there's always like a few random people that's like this is the first video you're watching. So if this is the first video you're watching and you don't pay attention to American politics, I want to reassure you, it is weird that all of the right are obsessed with the text messages of a couple of FBI agents that nobody should have ever even known. existed, and that they have been talking about the details of their relationship for literally years now. And so I will ask you, how sexually frustrated do you have to be for that to have been your

life over the past few years? And then to want to see Dean Cain sit awkwardly, doing literally the best acting I've ever seen him do, as that woman is like bumping and grinding. It's just so sad. And I know that we say all the time that the right fundamentally has never seemed to understand what comedy is or why it exists. How did you agree to do this, girl? How did you agree to do this?

Aren't you not embarrassed? How joyless is that side of the political spectrum? Oh, yeah, it's pathetic, it's sad, babies. It's not winning. Is the quote, is it the Hamilton for the Maga crowd? Yes, is that a real quote? I don't know. Just in and of itself.

I'm assuming it's from the, so there were a whole bunch of tweets mocking this and And the person who wrote it retweeted all of them. So he seems to like that, like it's like, oh no, it's so bad it's good. But like sometimes it's just bad, I don't know, maybe he's in on the jokes. But anyway, I don't go to CPAC, it seems like a waste of time. Okay, with that, why don't we launch back into a little bit more serious news to close out the hour. We're in the closing hours of one of the worst weeks of Democratic political news, I can remember.

started off the week and then was there the whole week, just one series of messes after another. And maybe you are like me and you've been wondering, so what comes out of this? We were speculating as it was happening on Monday, how this might affect the eventual winners, the eventual losers. You want to have a clean win in Iowa and obviously no one has been able to get that. And so I have been trying to go and look, what's the actual data? What are people actually think coming out of this? And so one thing that I think is important is when you ask Democratic primary voters, who

are you more or less likely to vote for as a result of what you've witnessed? And when you look at that, I know there's a lot here, but at the top, Bernie Sanders got the most, much more likely and also a lot of somewhat more likely as well. Biden, even though he did horrendously, people are pretty interested in him. And then it goes down from there, where Tom Steyer, actually at the bottom there is, it's Klobuchar Steyer and Gabbard, feeling the worst effects coming out of this. You have beat Buttigieg, who might have won or gotten second. Oh, wow.

He's right there in the middle. Like, it does not seem to have boosted him in general, maybe in New Hampshire, and some of the polls look pretty good for him in the last few days there. But nationally, Bernie Sanders and Biden, despite one winning and one coming in fourth, they are getting the most momentum coming out of this. So that's a poll for people who weren't paying attention? Apparently. It seems like it.

So that's kind of what your perception of the Iowa caucus is. Is that it? No, it's not who you think is going to win or anything. It's like you've seen all this. Now, what do you think about these candidates? Has this made you more or less like- Or you're gonna support them? Support them.

Okay, okay. And the thing too is, in terms of not paying attention, like there are plenty of people who are gonna end up voting in the Democratic primary that we're not paying much attention to Iowa. Right, right. That's a good point. Do you think that the results in Iowa matter to the people that it should matter? I don't know, that's what I'm trying to discover.

Well, I think the results in Iowa or what happened in Iowa did unfortunately, because look, the whole point of Iowa, the only thing that's like super relevant about Iowa is that it kicks off the primaries, right? And so the news coverage that the winner receives can really help them with momentum. And so this little game that Buttigieg played and this little stunt that he unfortunately pulled off, according to some polling in New Hampshire, I think Monmouth is one of the polls, shows an 8% rise in his performance, I guess, like more people are willing to consider him in New Hampshire.

Okay. Now, the frontrunner in New Hampshire continues to be Bernie Sanders, but because of the way the media covered Iowa, and the way that they kind of carried Buttigieg's, like, a declaration that he won, unfortunately helped him. And it's ridiculous because as we know, there were all sorts of problems and inconsistencies. And at this point, he's not the winner. He's not the clear winner because everything's been inaccurate, there's been all sorts of issues.

So for him to claim that he's the winner is ridiculous. But anyway, put that aside, the way the media helped him is the real issue because he experienced that rise in the polls in New Hampshire. I don't know how much they actually helped him. I mean, if nothing bad had happened, if it had just been the way it should have been, it's likely that Bernie would have won, Buttigieg would have gotten second, and he would have seen a bit of a rise in the polls. So we can look at, you know, and again, nationally it doesn't seem to be helping him much, at least yet. In New Hampshire, it has helped him, but it might have helped him anyway if there hadn't been any of this.

I mean, we've known for six weeks now that he was going to finish very well in Iowa. He's spent, you know, millions upon millions of dollars. He's been polling very well there for a couple of months. talked about the shape of our democracy while he was there? He did? And you know, I like, I want, like, democracy is vague, but what's its shape? Like, I want candidates to talk about that. I agree.

I think. Parallelogram. Not since the music man was written, has there been so much damage inflicted on Iowa? This is horrible. And I hope that there is some sort of intervention to help Iowans through this post-C caucus stress disorder thing they've had. because they're, everyone in Iowa's got to be embarrassed. They should be, you know. They absolutely should be.

Because the Iowa Democratic Party should be embarrassed. Tom Perez, the head of the DNC, should absolutely step down. Absolutely. What's happening right now is even if you, you know, aren't invested in a particular candidate, again, the damage that this does in, in people's trust in the process is. And Trump was on record today saying, I don't know what's happening. happening over there and all it does is feed. It's a drug for the susceptible to this, you know what I'm talking about.

Folks who are just so into this conspiratorial notion that it's all fake and that votes are fake and it's, I think the damage is just done. I do worry that if you're in a future caucus site, your odds of going, like, it's got to have hurt that at least a little bit. Like the idea that you could potentially be stuck there, like going to a caucus is a long process no matter what. But if this is what you believe could happen, and obviously it's different state parties and all that, they're not gonna be using the app in Nevada.

But I could see some people being driven away from the process because of it. That was certainly the goal of Republicans coming out of it, all of them, Trump and his sons and Republican officials were trying in every one of their social media posts to try to get Democratic voters to check out of the system. Because they want turnout to be low. They want some unqualified candidate to make it through. They want to be able to win in November. And so they were working towards that.

I'm amazed that, look, we have an app where you can touch a button and like a big Mac will show up at your house. Yeah, yeah. I love those apps. Those are the best apps. Or a car will come to you and take you somewhere. And you can actually see the car coming toward you. They couldn't have an app that counted stuff.

Not when Bernie Sanders is the frontrunner. Like a calculator? Like a fancy calculator. You know what I'm saying? That's all it is. They blew it. Like a Wi-Fi-enabled T-I-89, could have gotten the job done. You could play Doom on those.

Did you just reference to Texas Instruments? I remember those days. That was a machine. Those days were terrible. That was a 10-God, like a $100 calculator, my immigrant parents were like, what is these? What? So do you even like this math class? And you only used like 10 buttons on the lower right.

I don't know what any of those did. I don't know anything. Totally. But it spelled hell upside down and that was cool. It did. Among other things, I'm not going to spoil it, but play around a little bit. With the keyboard, people. Anyway, you know what?

Actually, why don't we end on that note? Brian, Iger, always great to have you here. Thank you for having you. Let's make it a little bit more comment. Thank you so much for having me, everyone here. I love the Young Turks, and I've been a big fan forever. So it's lovely in your back. I'd like to see you on one of our either debate panels or primary and caucus panels sometimes.

If the traffic breaks on the 405, I'm here. Awesome. So we'll never see you again. And Anna, thank you as well. You're gonna be leading the second hour. Yes, it's gonna be great. Yeah, definitely. So we're actually gonna continue with the discussion on Iowa.

I'm gonna give you some of where we're at right now when it comes to the results. We're also gonna make fun of Pete Buttigieg a lot. And talk about the shape of our democracy, the literal shape of our democracy. What shape is it, by the way? You gotta watch this second hour to find out. I hosted a show called How Our States Got Their Shapes, and I never did figure out the shape of the democracy. Who knew? It's amorphous.

Yeah. All that and more. After this. 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. . I'm your host, Jank Huger, and I'll see you soon.