The Young Turks - TYT Extended Clip - January 27th, 2020

Episode Date: January 28, 2020

Leaks from John Bolton's book have Trump defenders "shaken". John Iadarola, Jayar Jackson, and Nando Vila 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. Hey, guys, you've heard of the Young Turks podcast because you're listening to it right now. But make sure that you subscribe and give it a five star rating if you like it. Thank you for listening. Hey, everybody, welcome to the first hour of the Young Turks with the legendary J.R. Jackson. Oh, I was wondering which one was going to get that.

Come on. As he said legendary, I was like, oh man, man, he better not go the wrong way. Yeah, I thought it was a legendary John Yaderoa. And the beyond legendary, indeed the demi-god himself, Nandovila's here as well. Host a producer, not generic at all, honestly. No, no, no. No, very excited to have you both here because it's kind of a bonkers news day. Yeah.

And you want to have the right people to break it down with. We're never going to have that. Obviously, there's all the Bolton stuff. You know who likes talking about John Bolton? I don't know. There's got to be somebody. I don't, but he's in the news. So we're going to cover it.

We also have the New York Times decided to dispense with the just occasional attacks against Bernie Sanders supporter. It's just front page news now. Yeah. Front page, somebody who's mean to me, front page news. So we're going to break that down as well. And we have other stuff too. Oh, the Lev Parnas Trump tapes. He revealed, you know, the thing about Yovanovitch.

Yeah. He also said something about Bernie Sanders. Wait until you find out what that is. It's exciting stuff. But with that, what don't we launch into this? Down. Should I plug the poll also? Okay, t-yt.com slash snitch.

Do you think that Bolton is going to end up testifying? That way we can get some results going and we'll get to them after the first break. I'll give you my vote soon. Okay. And with that, let's jump into it. John Bolton has a book coming out in the relatively near future, and he wants to get you excited about it, and so he's teased something that's going to be revealed in it in the manuscript, which Bolton circulated to White House officials as part of a standard pre-publication review process. Bolton described the private conversation he had with Donald Trump in August about Ukraine.

Trump told Bolton that, quote, he wanted to continue freezing $391 million in security assistance to Ukraine until officials there helped with investigations in a Democrats, including the Biden. So Bolton is apparently asserting in this manuscript that the quid pro quo was as laid out and clear as it could possibly be. You don't get the aid until you investigate my political rivals. That said, it is John Bolton. And so there's a lot of contextual stuff we need to take stock of. What do you both think about this? Well, you know, this is the evidence that Trump did the bad thing.

I think we're not shocked to find out that he did the bad thing. But turns out he did do the bad thing. But again, I just, I find it so hard to follow this impeachment story that closely because you already know the end. You know, it's like how can you get invested in a book, a very long book that you already know the end. You know, it's very difficult to really get excited about what comes next. Yeah.

Because at the end of the day, he's, Trump's still going to be the president and he's not going to get removed. But yeah, I mean, this Bolton thing, it's about as clear as you can get. And the sad thing is that given the nature of the impeachment process and who controls the Senate, it's not going to matter at all. I think maybe because I gave up a long time ago on Republicans doing anything than anything do with actually representing Americans, it's not, it's no longer disappointing. It's just now what is the strategy?

And I think I mentioned it last week was, so Democrats' approach has to be, okay, let the public know what's happening since Republicans don't want. want to hear it. And I think they've been doing pretty good at that. So when it comes to this also coming out, it doesn't really matter to me whether or not Bolton testifies, it matters to me personally, but it doesn't matter to me as far as whether it's going to change anything. So I mean, I think we're going to go into also how, oh my God, this bombshell has suddenly allowed some Republicans to be a little bit shaky in their resolve.

No, it's not. No, it's not. Nothing will ever make them shaky in their resolve to continue to kneel and continue to kiss the ring of Donald Trump. It's going to happen that way from now on. So one thing left to do is to convince the American people who are listening and not watching Fox News to see, okay, this is, it's an indictment now of the entire party. They're covering up for it, and we're going to illustrate to you what it is that they're covering up.

Yeah, yeah, well, look, like it feels like forever ago, AOC laid out that we have to get them on the record, that we can't necessarily get them to, you know, act like responsible politicians that give a damn about American democracy, but we can at least get them to vote, and then we can cite those votes in the future. It seems like we all three agree that not much can come out that matters because we already believe we know what happened. We don't necessarily be convinced of that. We think that the people who do need to be convinced of that can't be convinced of that.

But hopefully there are some Americans that are, maybe they're not sure. If there were to be testimony, that could matter. Maybe matter insofar as it would change their opinion, not that it would necessarily change a single Republican senator's mind. Well, the thing about impeachment, if you know that it's not going to have. actually happen. Like if you know that Trump is- Or removal at the very least. That's what I mean.

If you know that that's not going to happen, then the only point of pursuing impeachment is some sort of public education, right, to get the public aware of something that's going on. And that's why I think the Democrat strategy of narrowing the impeachment focus to this Ukraine business is so bizarre because, I mean, fundamentally, it's such a weirdly small issue compared to the vast array of crime. that are going on in the Trump administration. I mean, this Ukraine thing is like, what, his like 287th worst crime, maybe?

You know what I mean? I have it in the 160s. It's in the 160s, yeah, I mean, we could argue about that, we could spend a whole hour arguing about that. But it's just, it's bizarre to me that they didn't pursue the sort of blatant corruption, the blatant self-dealing and enrichment that Trump has used, the White House, to enrich himself personally. Yeah.

And in that sense, that could have been a process that would have actually become a public spectacle, turning this into an indictment of how the ruling class uses all kinds of self-dealing and nepotism to basically entrench its own power and privilege. Instead, this, whether we withheld $300 million in Ukraine aid to investigate Joe Biden and Hunter Biden's job in Ukraine, which, by the way, is 100% corrupt, it might not be illegal, but it's 100% inappropriate and corrupt. I think they thought that this is a very understandable personal, obviously out of bounds thing to do. Is it?

Conditioning American policy on personal political gain? It happens all the time. It happens all the time and much worse. I mean, whether it was the Iran-Contra affair, which is like-well, thankfully that wasn't a big scandal. But it didn't, you know, it didn't even, it didn't become an impeachment. process. Neither did Nixon's secret dealings with the Viet Cong in order to delay the peace process to help his own presidential campaign. I mean, the examples are beyond, I mean, whether it was or George W. Bush lying about Iraq. I mean, come on, like that's a billion times.

Sign me up for all of those. But that was not an impeachable offense, apparently. Yeah. So this one is so, it's relatively small compared to, I don't know, using the presidency to enrich yourself personally. Really? It's so obvious. Which we've been here about this since the beginning. But it's not any, but it's not part of the people. You know what the American people said to that?

He's a businessman. That's what he does. That's the problem is those things were floated, I feel like. Maybe not by establishment Democrats or at least the Nancy Pelosi's and Chuck Schumers of the world. But after it was floated, the American people in general, I mean, not everyone, of course, was like, well yeah, I mean, yeah, he's doing that, that's pretty bad. But it didn't seem to feel the sting of that as much.

And I wonder if any of those would have happened. And it goes back to. All those things are very valid points. But I think it goes back to no matter what it is, because he had, we're going to argue between 160 to 300 of the things he's done wrong. I forget the second number. But of those things he's done wrong, the general consensus says, I don't care from elected Republicans and his Republican base as far as the voters.

So no matter which one of these things you brought up, the same ads would have been la la la la la la. Well, I do find that interesting that it's not a big issue amongst the Democrats running for president. That's not a big issue on the Democratic campaign trail at the moment. They're concerned about alienating potential voters because that's what election handlers like to tell you. But this is the whole point of this is to become a political issue, right? The whole point of impeachment, if you know it's not going to actually result in impeachment

or removal from office, is to make it a potent political issue for your own side to win power. Yeah, I think that like Bloomberg has it in a lot of his ads. I think that most of the other Democrats. Exactly, well, he's like 9% in one of the national polls. I don't know, he'll spend another $500 million if he taunt him, so take it easy. I think that the rest of them are satisfied, too, for now, well, the one I support, contrast himself with the others by talking about what he wants to actually accomplish. But I have no doubt that when, if Bernie becomes the nominee against his general election,

he is going to be pushing the corruption angle, I think, pretty hard against Donald Trump. I don't think Bernie will talk about Ukraine ever in the case. No, I don't think Ukraine specifically, but I think he will talk about how corrupt and law that Donald Trump has been. Sure. He talks about how often is the most dishonest worst president that we've ever had and all that. Really fast though, just to be fair, Donald Trump does say that Bolton is lying effectively, so let me give you that.

I never told John Bolton that the aid of Ukraine was tied to investigations into Democrats, including the Bidens. In fact, he never complained about this at the time of his very public termination. If John Bolton said this, it was only to sell a book. I think it was at least partly to sell a book. I don't think it was only to sell a book. Well, part of what happened, I mean, I guess first of all, anytime anyone who's being accused of something, especially this president, that their response is, no, that's untrue, because

if I said yes, who does that? Which person is being brought up against these types of charges would be like, yeah, you know what? All these years, I've been denying that I've done anything wrong, but that whole John Bolton thing came out, I guess you guys got me. It's never going to happen. So a lot of times that's the basis for the defense is, well, the president said he didn't have anything to do with it.

And neither did anyone else that supports him. Okay, I could have told you that part. So that's the defense that's just, I said so, and we're supposed to believe that. So I wonder at what point people are gonna have to get beyond that and the point of having a trial in the evidence put in front of you is to determine that rather than just believe the two sides and what they said happen. If it's two people and they're disagreeing, hey, we got a trial, come in, both of you under oath, you know, that's the American way.

Our members are already weighing in on this with Connecticut. saying if Bolton really wanted to share what he knows, he'd go on TV and tell every news station what he knows. Look, I, if he doesn't testify, I think that's very likely to happen. It might be on Maddow, honestly. Bolton loves to go on TV. So he was like the most visible TV guy ever. I mean, he worked for Fox News for a number of years. So I guess I'm the pessimist here.

But even if he gets subpoenaed and somehow gets a lot from even testify, it's going to be It always is. Oh, yeah. Because as a lot of- The Mueller report all over again. Yeah, so as we'll get, a lot of Republicans like to say, hey, suddenly all these libs and these progressives and Democrats suddenly love John Bolton, no, they don't. When something comes out and the truth is there, you want that aspect to be revealed.

No one's gonna say, oh yeah, man, hey, John Bolton for president, Democrats, you know, that's not gonna happen that way. So that's just something to distract from the actual events that are going on. But if someone brings information, we want to see it. But let's not forget, and which gives, I guess, a little bit of credence to their argument, we're going a little bit too much in on what we expect from John Bolton. He's still John Bolton. Let's not forget, he still is a member of this corrupt and self-serving Republican Party.

So who knows how much of a milk toast thing he's going to have to say when someone to ask some direct questions, he may be very evasive about it. Yeah, well, so, okay, that's what we can expect from John Bolton. Why don't we turn now to what we can expect from Republican? Senators, because there were some nays saying from J.R. earlier, so we'll turn now to that. With the John Bolton accusations out there, we turn now to the Republican Senate and see what are they going to do about all this? And it turns out they're shaken. This is from Talking Points Memo.

Republican senators who have refused to allow witnesses in the Senate impeachment trial of President Donald Trump so far are reportedly shaken in their resolve after the New York Times published claims from an unpublished manuscript of Bolton's book, which contains explosive of accounts of Trump's direct involvement in the quid pro quo. When they're shaken, has it ever meant anything? John McCain voted no, that was a cool moment. Justin Amash left the party. Other than that, how much has there shakenness mattered?

On the margins, you know, it matters a little bit, but there's a little bit of a cottage industry of sort of wavering Republicans. Waivering Republicans all of a sudden become basically celebrities. I mean, who knew about Jeff Flake before he became a, like, a wavering Republican type of guy. Now he's a known guy. Mitt Romney has made his career lately about just being like the sort of anti-Trump Republican. But at the end of the day- To the extent that that means anything. Yeah, exactly.

But at the end of the day, they support 97% of his agenda. Yeah. You know, and maybe don't like that he's a gross, disgusting man. But other than that. Yeah. Matt Gates, you know, voted against him, you know, when it came to the war powers in Iran. And that was about it. And he's paying a serious penalty for that.

He was barred from being involved in the impeachment process and all that. So we'll see if he ever stands up again. All it takes is one. And then one thing to happen where people on the Republican side will call you a rhino and kick you out of the party like they did with Justin Amash or then praise you like to do with Markowski and Collins say, oh look, these guys bucked the party because they did it 4% of the time. So then you go, they establish this positioning somehow.

And then they'll continue that news cycle going of, hey, remember. I'm that person who bucks the party 4% of the time, and the media laps it up. And so that's a career move right there for them. They go, well, I'm the moderate, you guys, I'm the moderate. And it actually has nothing to with policy, has nothing to do with actually progressing the things that are going on. If it comes in the form of an actual vote that matters, then I will cheer as well. If it's just, you know, a tweet, I don't support what he's doing right now.

And that's it. And then you vote to give him a Supreme Court justice or something like that. All that is is worse. Yeah, exactly. If you tell me I don't support what he's doing and then vote in favor of what he's doing, Which one is it? It's Susan Collins, actually. But okay, so look, there was an interesting tweet I saw from Maggie Haberman who tweeted,

per sources, some GOP senators privately pushing White House for information on who had administration had visibility into the manuscript over the last month. Senators feel blindsided. And I, too, think, who could have predicted that Donald Trump would turn on those who had defended him? Like, seriously, I hate all of you, and I've been saying. He's going to turn on you. I'm amazed at how much they-

It's the most predictable thing. Yeah, how much they don't realize it. It's happened over and over and over again. I've talked about this isn't new. It's not even new within the last three years of his presidency. It's been his entire life. He's screwed over people from terms of business dealings to paying employees, all these things. He's done it since the beginning.

That's his MO. That's how he operates. So when you come in and say, I'm gonna pledge my loyalty to Donald Trump, and then he doesn't pledge it back because he, I mean, this happened during the primaries in 16, didn't it? didn't it? When they said, oh, we're going to vow to make sure we support whatever Republican nominee there is, and all 27 of them raise their hand, 26 out of 27, and Trump is like, yeah. He's telling you over and over again who he is, but they're surprised still.

So supposedly they're shaken, but let's go to some specific examples and see how shaken they are. So let's see, Mark Meadows said Republicans that break with Trump on impeachment may face, quote, repercussions. Well, yeah, I mean, again, if you look at it. it all comes down to this at the end of the day. If you look at Republican voters, they still support Trump overwhelmingly, mid-90% approval rating amongst Republicans. And the lesson that a lot of Republican politicians took after the Tea Party wave is that getting primaried is much worse

than facing a tough Democrat in a general election. But they're more vulnerable from their right in a primary than they are in a general election against Democrat. So as long as that's the reality, they're going to waver and get shaken all they want, but they'll fall in line with his agenda, again, 97%. Maybe in one or two very kind of idiosyncratic places, you might find a Republican who breaks with Trump. But at the end of the day, the vast majority of them, or the overwhelming majority of them, are going to fall in line. Yeah. Well, perhaps maybe Utah is the place.

Yes. Okay, so we got a quote from Mitt Romney, it's increasingly apparent. it would be important to hear from John Bolton. I, of course, will make a final decision on witnesses after we've heard from not only the prosecution, but also the defense. But I think at this stage, it's pretty fair to say that John Bolton has a relevant testimony. I think it's increasingly likely that other Republicans will join those of us who think we should hear from John Bolton.

Yeah, I don't know that Mitt Romney really has his ear to the pulse of the rest of the Republican Party. I mean, he's famous for being not sort of the most in tune with the rest of the Republican Party type of guy. That's his whole brand. You know, so this idea that he's going to find a bunch of Republicans to break, I don't know, I find Mitt Romney being a little overly ambitious here. That's Mitt Romney answering the question because he has to right now, but stalling

for time. Like, hey, after this all happens, you guys ask me again, I'm gonna go back and get some more marching orders and see exactly how we should do this. Because by the way, you know who has been responding to this? The Bolton revelations through the excerpts from the book is Democrats, Democratic elected officials, liberals all over the place, none of these Republican senators, at least last I read, responding to the fact that these things are coming out, because what they're doing is trying to huddle and figure out which way we're going to approach this next, because we can't

be have any factions here. So you say that, but what if I had a second Republican senator? Oh my goodness. Susan Collins said the reports, quote, strengthen the case for witnesses and have prompted a number of conversations among my colleagues. Yeah, conversations about, hey, so I'm going to subway, do you want the BLT or do you want the turkey sandwich. It's all that.

These are the conversations. How many senators do they need? Four to vote for witnesses. Which doesn't necessarily even guarantee any particular witness. But supposedly, anyway, like, it's just, it's almost too much that it's Susan Collins. It's like, hey everybody, look at me. I might be reasonable. And I saw a random comment.

It was a quote from John Oliver, which means it's time for the Democrats' favorite game. Hope Susan Collins flips and be disappointed when she doesn't. America's most depressing game show. Yeah, like, she's already had multiple chances to do the right thing, and when it mattered most, she didn't do it. She did what she thought, I guess, would keep her seat. And she will probably continue to do that same thing. And see how they, she's, even with the voter whether or not we're going to have, before

we got to the actual opening statements, the discussion, the opening discussion about what's going to happen, then there's also the worries. I'm like, well, I want to let you guys know that I'm still that centrist. It's to continue to let that one point in every once in, to remind it, hey, I'm still wavering, I'm not sure, we don't need to hear that right now. It speaks to a broader philosophical difference between Democrats and Republicans, in that Democrats are constantly hoping for Republicans to do the right thing, right? That's their governing strategy.

We'll just do something that makes them look so bad that some of them will have to do the right thing and defect to our side or something like that. Whereas Republicans have defined their entire governing strategy in how they can exercise power in very significant and violent ways without any democratic support. And they do all kinds of things in order to do that, whether it's gerrymandering or whether it's stripping powers from governors that become Democrat, whatever, you know, they do all kinds of things to be able to exercise power without having a single Democrat support them, whereas Democrats are just constantly trying to exercise power to the extent that

they do because they don't often exercise power, but with only if they can get Republicans on board. If not, they're not interested in exercising power. A good illustration of that is the way that they're saying this is not, when it was still in the House. This is not a bipartisan hearing, no Republicans have jumped on board, therefore this Democratic, their whole case is null and void. No one's making their argument, hey, this is not a bipartisan name because Republicans refuse

to listen to the truth, obvious truth, right in their faces. So the onus comes on Democrats to convince Republicans who've told you, you're not going to convince me to come over to your side. So now it's Democrats' fault because of the stubbornness of a party. And the pressure never goes that way. Look, there is one other aspect on this is how is right wing media going to spin the new revelations? We will have that for you after this. We need to talk about it. Longbendy Twizzlers candy keeps the fun going.

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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. Hello, everybody. Welcome back to the first hour with Nando, JR, and myself. Before we jump back into the news, I wanted to read a few of these comments. James left a member comment

Nando, just what my Monday needed. And I assume not sarcastic. No. I think it was serious. Yeah. So that is definitely good. Disappointed Marlon Bundo says, shaken for a Republican is a feeling.

Like indigestion, it soon passes. That is true. Let's see. Seth Jones says at this point, I put more faith in God than I do Susan Collins, and I'm a giant long-term atheist. That's definitely a good point. Eddie O'Donnell and hashtag 2IT Live said, yeah, but Nando, what you're missing with this,

and I think he understands that you don't actually miss it, is that it was a crime against Joe Biden, and therefore the establishment Democrats in the House had to act. The rest of his crimes benefit most of their donors. That's a good point. That's certainly a consideration as well. And with that, why don't we jump into the last little bit we have to cover on this whole John Bolton thing. So far, it doesn't seem like many Republican senators are taking John Bolton's accusations

very seriously, but there is the possibility that Republicans. Republicans voters will take it seriously. But for that to happen, it first has to be filtered through the digestive tract of Fox News. So let's see what their take is on this whole thing. First, the most important news show on the face of the earth, Fox and Friends. If John Bolton's lawyers are telling the truth here, and they just submitted it in and it's leaked out, if that is indeed the case, more evidence that people within the administration are actually against the administration. And the other thing is devastating timing because this thing was on the fast trick to closing out without witnesses on Friday. Only Mitt Romney pretty much saying, I want to see witnesses, everybody else saying, I've heard enough.

And now this gives fuel to the Senator Schumers of the world, there's Adam Schiff's in the world to say, I need a witness, and he wants to testify. But when you say devastating timing, it's got to be a coincidence, right, that it would come out just hours before the Senate impeachment is going to start at 1 o'clock. What I love about that is you get so much a deception on Fox News that when they're honest, and only like the simplest ones, like he's like, it's devastating timing, we were almost done with this, like he can't, he's being honest, he really thought that they were almost done with it. They're admitting that they're just basically trying to cover up the crime. Yeah.

And that this pesky little John Bolton guy or someone within the administration is not helping them cover up the crime. Like, it's just, it's blatant. I mean, you gotta admire it, to be honest, I mean, and you know what the sad reality is that they're probably right and that people don't care. Like they don't care about whether he did the crime or not. They care about whether you can get away with it. And this is just, they're just laying it out perfectly.

It's like, and I hate to keep referring back to this, but it's like the cheating scandal happened in baseball, right? Yeah. So there's guys on the team that are no longer on the team that then told, call him a whistleblower. So, afterwards, some people were upset at the pitcher from that team that decided to tell about what was going on and like, hey, he played with those guys, he was in practice with those guys, he went in the trenches with those guys, they won a championship game, they gritted it out, how dare he flip on them?

That's sports, bro. Yeah. There's something completely different, but that's our problem. Again, maybe the 700th time I'll say it, we take politics in this country from a general voters perspective as being something that we do, like it's a sporting event. It's entertainment. It's a reality TV show that we watch every day. We have our little cast of characters and we like these guys and we want those guys to win

or those guys to lose. That's what this is and that's what most of politics is sadly in this country. Yeah, yeah, the sports analogy is so robust and it frustrates me because it's the analogy I want to be true least. Like if it was we treat politics, like we treat board games, I would be like a set. I'm ready to go political commentary. Not so much with the sports thing, but it's totally true. In sports as in politics, if the crime they were trying to commit was to win and all

You want is for them to win, you're kind of not going to take it that seriously. Like, yes, and with Trump, it's like, yeah, he's, he wants to win so that he can protect me, so he's willing to do anything, including break the rules, I want him to do that. That's how much he cares about protecting me. If you're deluded, that can make sense. Now, what's interesting is that with Kilmead right there, he was sort of honest. They're not even trying to hide that they just want to cover up. And that is going to hold true as well with Rush Limbaugh.

So before we get to that though, first of all, here is Rush Limbaugh's. frustration with the fact that John Bolton is now being, not even defended, but just talked about by people who traditionally don't like him. Something else that's not on anybody's mind is John Bolton. Most people don't know who he is, especially with all the coverage of the Kobe Bryant helicopter crash. But even before that, when Bolton's name was in the meet, they hated him. They despised Bolton. They hated Bolton. They hated Bolton's mustache, folks. They hated Bolton because

they thought he mistreated women. He was a bully in the workplace. Whenever any Republican wanted John Bolton in the ambassadorial service or anywhere in the national security apparatus, the Democrat

Party went literally bat crazy because they hated the guy. And they hated the guy because he was a hawk. They hated the guy because he was aligned with the neocons. He wasn't aligned with the neocons. He was in the neocons.

And yes, I hate him because he was a hawk. But like, that word is pulling on a weight there. He's not a bird. He wanted us to go to war with virtually every country on the planet. He wanted us to nuke North Korea. He wants war with Iran. These are not small disagreements. There's significant millions of lives are on the line.

He also, in terms of like, they had an issue with him being part of our ambassadorial squad or whatever. Yeah, he made a joke about blowing up the UN. That should be disqualifying, I think. John Bolton was single-handedly responsible when he was a member of the Bush administration for scuttling peace with North Korea, which was this close to happening. And John Bolton made it his personal mission to block that peace agreement that Clinton had more or less agreed upon with North Korea. So, yeah. See, this is one of your petty issues with him. Yeah, you know, like, whatever. Who cares? The peace in the Korean peninsula is something that, you know, would be a World Historic Event, it's just a little disagreement.

Yeah. It's a consistent move, and we talked about how Sean Haney was listing Trump's accomplishments, scrolling them during last week's impeachment hearing. So then of course, it is the same thing. If you list someone's accomplishments, and if you listen closely, it's all about the tone. So for many of his listeners who are listening, like, yeah, look at all those things that they hated John Bolton for, but if you listen to what those things were instead of being like an empty-minded listener here, you'd be like, yeah, that's pretty bad.

Oh yeah, he did that too. man, maybe these Democrats and libs were on to something hating this guy. Yeah. Because all those things are not good. Now, I did say that we're going to have him being totally honest, and we do have that. For the first time ever, Rush Limbaugh is going to be honest on his show. Take a look at how little he cares about the truth in what actually happened with Trump and Ukraine. I've, I've had dinner with John Bolton a couple times.

I've met him two or three times. And if this passage in the book is true, and this is actually what? what he's intending, it's not the John Bolton I thought I knew. I did, I, this, this kind of disloyalty and you may say, well, Roy's not disloyal, he's simply telling the truth the president didn't want to give him. Yeah, but it is disloyal. The truth would actually happen, reflection of objective reality. Nah, I care about loyalty more. That's the most honest I've ever seen him be.

And you know what, he's right in that people, most people, most people, people don't actually care about corruption, like they obviously say they do care about corruption, but they don't care about corruption so long as the person who is doing the corruption is on their side, right, or perceived to be on their side. I mean, I think most people assume that politicians are corrupt. I think most people assume the politicians enrich themselves in all manner of ways. But as long as the politician can signal that, you know, I'm doing all the bad stuff, but I'm on your side, I'm looking out for your interests, most people are okay with that.

It's part of the mask that we've allowed to be unveiled here. Like, hey, I can go ahead and say, who cares about the truth? Literally, that's all they said. Yeah, yeah, sure you're going to say he uncovered the truth, but who cares about that? And then people will nod their heads and continue to let it go. I don't know how to undo it, but it's just, it's, we're not getting there anymore. Lyndon Johnson became a politician as one of the poorest people to ever get involved in politics and left as when he stopped being president. He was a multimillionaire.

He was hideously corrupt. But he kept on winning elections because he told the people in the Hill Country in Texas where he was from that I brought electricity to the hill country. And that guaranteed a victory in every single one of his elections no matter what. And so because he could signal, listen, yeah, those guys are saying that I'm enriching myself. Don't listen to them, I brought you electricity. And that works. It really does.

And this is some of the problems, I'm sorry, when there was some Republican politician, I think he's a senator who also threatened and said, hey, they can call some witnesses, But you know, we're going to call Biden, and we're going to call Hunter, and then we're going to call Joe, and then we're going to call Hillary, and then we're going to call Obama. This was literally said on Fox News, and this is why this shows where their mindset comes from. They think that means Democrats or Libs are going to go, man, don't do that. You know who's not my father? Joe Biden, Hunter Biden, Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, Bill Clinton, I don't care. If they did something, which is completely unrelated to this, I don't care if you go after them, go after them, if you go after everyone else.

But you think this is some kind of thing where Libs want to just hold on because that's what you do is no matter what my guy's done, it's okay with me. Again, you can keep coming back and saying, what if we come after your guys? Hey, my father's name is Don Jackson. He's not up for any kind of investigation, so I don't mind. But what if he was? We're going to look into you. Oh, we can't send Ken Klippitt sign anymore. Damn.

Okay, so finally on this, those FOIAs would have come fast. Drazenstein? Exactly, you got you right right there. So, t.com slash snitch, do you think enough Republicans will defect to make Bolton testify? We'll give you updates on that a little bit later on, and you're seeing it right there. Super easy, you click yes, you click no, it couldn't be any easier. There's no maybe, okay? Take a stand for once in your life.

No comment, maybe. I'll have enough information to have an answer. Just think about it, go to TYT.com slash snitch. And with that, why don't we turn to something very different? Okay, I'm preparing for the wrong story. Apparently, we're talking about Mike Pompeo. I was all excited to talk about Bernie. So let's do that then.

Mike Pompeo recently had a very public meltdown, of which we have some of the audio, during an interview with NPR reporter Mary Louise Kelly. So she asked him some pretty tough questions about Ukraine, and he did not like it. So why don't we jump to that first video you'll get an idea of what I'm talking about? People who work for you in your department, people who have resigned from this department under your leadership saying you should stand up for the diplomats who work here. I don't know who these unnamed sources are you referring to. I can tell you this. These are not unnamed sources.

This is your senior advisor, Michael McKinley, a career foreign service officer with four decades experience who testified under oath that he resigned in part due to the failure of the State Department to offer support to foreign service employees caught up in the impeachment inquiry on Ukraine. I'm not going to comment on things that Mr. McKinley may have said. I'll say only this. I have defended every State Department official. We've built a great team. The team that works here is doing an amazing work around the world. I've defended every single person on this team. I've done what's right for every single person on this team.

Can you point me toward your remarks where you have defended Marie Yovanovich? I've said all I'm going to say today. Thank you. So, yeah, the thing is Yovanovitch, obviously she was ousted after like a Verdi Giuliani led Parnison Fruman sort of scheme to get Trump to hate her. And along the way, might have been spied upon stalked, and there might have been a plan to potentially assassinate her. And he can't even pretend to care about that.

And so great, followed questions there. He is not as smart as he thinks he is. His ability to navigate that sort of interaction, he's just not as quick-witted as clever as he thinks he is. And in the end, he apparently went crazy. We're gonna have a little bit more, and I'll let you guys get in. Well, the problem is they're used to just saying something that's very serviced, and then media members or anyone else just listens to them and moves on.

And so when they get a follow-up, or then they said, I can throw this at them, and they won't have any answer to it. But the preparation for, okay, I need to prep for how this person is going to lie because they are a well-known liar. So she had information readily available from the say, I don't know who these unnamed sources are. I have a name for you. So then after that, then it's like, well, I'm not going to talk about that,

what he may have said. It continues down this line of denying the reality. situation. So then that's where you'll get to where the anger comes from. It comes to now, how dare you hold me accountable? I'm Mike Pompeo, which by the way, the same Mike Pompeo, according to the releases from Bolton's book, was one of the two or three guys that was telling Trump, hey, what are you doing with this whole Ukraine holding up of aid?

He, this guy, this way, he's one of them. He's one of them who said, hey, Donald, might want to, what are you doing? And he had to add to it. Now he's got to defend it. So it's even harder for someone to lie for a guy who they were trying to stop from doing what they have to now lie about. So he's getting mad. Mike Pompeo is underrated as like one of the biggest psychopaths in the entire Trump

administration. I mean, he is like one of these like blood and soil. America's involved in a holy war against the evil Muslims. Like he believes like in an American jihad 100%. And he's used to going on all these like insane right wing shows all the time. And that was like his favorite thing to do to go on like Frank Gaffney's show and. Rosh Limbaugh, whatever. So, like, the fact that he goes on NPR and gets, you know, again, like, credit to the

NPR reporter, but it's not like, it wasn't the toughest interview I've ever seen in my life. And he just has an absolute meltdown at the lightest pushback is, you know, frankly, you'll have to see it. Yeah, you're totally right. I think that because he stands next to Trump, we think, oh, Mike Pompeo, maybe not so bad. But like, no, he's a really bad guy. And honestly, like, there's different types of Republicans, obviously, but like, his type

reminds you that like the Rex Tillerson, I'm just in this to make a quick buck thing. There's worse. Yeah, this guy is a true believer. This guy is a blood in soil. Let's just kill them all. Yeah, yeah, Tillerson just wants the oil in the soil. He's not so much, he doesn't want to invest it with blood. Now, as a result of the sort of interactions you saw, a question specifically about whether he owes an apology to Marie Yovanovitch. According to Kelly, he shouted at me for about the same time as the nine minute interview itself had lasted, this is later in his room. He was not happy to have been questioned about Ukraine. He asked, do you think Americans care about Ukraine? He used the F word in that sentence and many others. And then this is

where it gets funny. He asked if I could find Ukraine on a map. I said yes. He called out for his aides to bring him a map of the world with no writing, no countries marked. I pointed to Ukraine, he put the map away. He said people will hear about this. No, they won't. No, they Will from her telling the story. Bless the polite NPR people that the thing that they're outraged by is that he used the F word. Just naughty. F word, guys, in that sentence and others. Many of them.

One time. I just love the idea that he like turns to its aides, get the map. And the aides just like, God, I can't go one day without the map. I'm sorry, this is one of those things where he should take some cues. So if you're gonna challenge someone and say, hey, I bet you can't find a rock on a map, and then someone goes, okay, That's when you go, that was a little bit too confident. I think I'm going to stop right here and go, okay, well sure you can find it, just to believe them.

Because if you go to the step of making them prove it, now you're in a complete corner and you have to go, somebody's going to hear about this. Which by the way, I think we mentioned this before, hey, let's go ahead and have old Donnie find Ukraine on a map and see if he can pull that feet off. He's asking that question because the people he's surrounded by can't do it. Let's see if Donald Trump can sing the national anthem. If I had a chance to interview, Trump, that's like the first thing I would ask him. That's, that's way too tough.

He was in an interview and he was asked, they said, you're a big Bible guy, right? And he's like, yes, they were like, so which do you like better, the old or the new? And he was like, both. You can't pick a testament? Yeah, just pick one, who cares? Like, American Christians will be fine with either, really. Like, yeah, you're on the new, but you know, you could do either. There was, I'm sorry, last thing, John, I'm sorry, because there was something, the way that that came off, I was

We've seen or heard the way the map discussion came. It's like, I've heard about these stories that people are getting to fights. And the guy you don't want to get in the fight with is the one who's quiet and calm. The one who's all up throwing his hands around and ready to push, ready to fight, that guy, it's okay, when somebody says, hey, you want to go outside, he goes, okay, you go, maybe we shouldn't go outside. This is way too much of a routine. Yeah, the loud guy's like, yeah, if it wasn't for, I got like a shoulder injury in my basketball game last week, I would kick your ass. You know, like, you know, tell your cousin to, like, hold me back.

Yeah, yep, yeah. The guy who's ready, quietly ready, is the one you don't want to mess with. He's the guy that leave you, like, bloody on the floor saying, people will hear of this. So, okay, he also put out a public statement after this, and I'm not going to read the entire thing. I'm going to skimit, but he said, NPR reporter, Mary Louise Kelly, lied to me twice. First last month and setting up our interview and then again yesterday in agreeing to have her post-interview conversation off the record. She apparently did neither of those things. We have some more seats on that as well.

It is shameful that this reporter chose to violate the basic rules of journalism and decency and then insert a bunch of stuff attacking the media. But the important thing is at the bottom. It is worth noting that Bangladesh is not Ukraine. Whoa. Which is the sort of, you know, like general fact toy that you would tweet or something. But no, there he specifically means the map thing, she got it wrong and she pointed to Bangladesh. Which just in case you're not like up on your geography, I Google Maps did.

They're pretty far apart. Now, yes, some people might still make a mistake there, but probably not someone with a master's degree in European studies from Cambridge University. I think she probably got it. What a ridiculous claim to make. What a laughable. It should be below anyone in government service, particularly someone who's working for Donald Trump. I just find it hilarious also, like my Pompeo defending the sacred rules of journalism.

No, not the rules of journalism. Decency and honesty, keep it real. Well, you said, back in the day, he would always be on, like, journalistic enterprises like Rush Limbaugh. Yeah, like he cares about it. Okay, we do have to take another break though, stick around after this. Front page news, Bernie's got some bros, so the New York Times isn't standing for it any longer. At TYT, we frequently talk about all the ways that big tech companies are taking control

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In the meantime, enjoy this free second. Hello, everybody. Welcome back to the first hour with J.R. and Nando and myself. Let's see, we do have a lot to get to, but I want to read some of these, including a member comment from Deanna Zed, who says, longtime viewer, new member, shout out from Montreal. Hell yeah. Nothing like TYT here. Maybe I should start TYT, Canada. I appreciate you all. I appreciate you too. Let's see.

Orpheus, so does Pompeo think Bangladesh is where Ukraine is? Like, he's smart enough, he could point you to it, right? No. No, you don't think so, really? No. He travels enough, he has to, right? No, guaranteed. I'll bet anything in my life that he could not, in a pinch, put, like, Poland

on a map or, you know, or like the Central Africa, no, like, yeah, no way, no way. Okay, okay, that'll be a new poll. I really like this comment. I'm convinced we're just from the way you said it. No way. I completely disagree with you until you came out that strong with it. What? About $1,000?

I was, I know. If I had $1,000, yeah. Okay, so at hashtag TRT Live, we've been getting some great tweets. And one, I just have to read from Axtimus Prime, who said, I think TYT should hang Ken Klippenstein's lavender sweater from the ceiling like a retired jersey. Bro, listen, I'm telling you, I was going to interrupt you. If you didn't get to that and read it because I saw that one too. Good handle, good tweet from what Quantum Guillotine will.

That was an awesome good handle to it. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. By the way, I don't know if anything's going around. If you think there's like any bad thoughts with like us and Ken, no. No. He's a traitor.

He's a traitor. He's a traitor. He's a traitor. He deserves every bad thing that happens to him. Just as long as we should know, in order for us to hang it, Ken has to send it to us. So first off, pressure him to send the purple sweater. A purple sweater. Do a fundraising drive.

And also, maybe it's his power cloak. Maybe you can't work the same without it. That's true. Oh, maybe we should find out. Yes, but please tweet to Ken to send us his clothing. Not just the sweater. Okay, but this is the best story of the day, so we do have to jump back to the news, unfortunately. Bernie Sanders has this massive online following, which seems like it would be a good thing.

But the front page of the New York Times told me that that was not the case today. In one of many articles over the past week or so attacking his online supporters, they went in-depth into the bros. We're not going to read you the whole thing. It's very, very long, and you should go do that. But we're going to give you a taste of what happened on there. So he said, since the start of Mr. Sanders' first presidential campaign in 2016, his colossal online support base has been by turns a source of peerless strength and perpetual aggravation. Envied and caricatured by rivals who covet such loyalty, feared by Democrats who have faced harassment from his followers, and alternately cherished and gently scolded by the candidate himself.

As Mr. Sanders moves to position himself as a standard bearer for a party he has criticized from the left for decades, the power of his internet army has also alarmed Democrats who are familiar with its underside, experienced in ways large and small. So, then they begin to go through, look, I'm gonna keep it real, tweets that they got. Yeah. Like there was a person who was mean on Twitter, like updates at 9, yes, there are mean people on Twitter. Some of them are tweeting me right now.

Yeah, go through Anna Kasparian's mentions on any given day. I can't, I'll lose it, but look, we're gonna read more. I want your general thoughts about the fact that the New York Times apparently is like, It's effectively knives out, a little bit against Bernie, certainly. And Jennifer Rubin had this op-ed today saying that he's running a Trump-like campaign. But against any- You mean the guy who won? Exactly. Or the campaign of the guy who won the presidency?

Yeah. Oh, God forbid. But against his supporters too. Like it is, it's beyond just the sort of condescending smear of the bro thing. It is full, lengthy articles with multiple bylines on it attacking. his supporters. Do you think it is a coincidence, John, that the latest polling out of Iowa has Bernie up nine points and that we are seeing this rash of anti-Bernie bro pieces at the same exact

time. Do you think that is a coincidence? I think the chances that it's a coincidence is as high as the chance that Pompeo could point out. Ukraine on a map. Yes. Exactly. No, I do not think at all.

And the thing that bothers me so much is almost all of these attack pieces, that you could point They're supposedly their concern that's always expressed at some point in the piece, usually about halfway down, sometimes they're at the end, is, and the big issue is that his supporters are hurting unity and they're attacking other candidates. And Bernie himself is not showing unity because he's attacking other candidates. And here's 3,000 words about why he's Trump, basically, every one of them is how could you possibly attack a candidate who could become the next nominee and we're gonna shred you over it.

You know, Adam Gaffney had a good tweet that was like, you know, say I went online and wrote a big thing about how Star Wars is a billion times better than Star Trek. And then a bunch of Star Trek fans said that they disagreed with me and were angry with me online. And then I could say, look, obviously Star Trek fans are meaner than Star Wars fans. You know, like, well, yeah, because if you talk crap about the thing that they like, they're going to be mad at you, not the other way around. And, you know, the broader thing that's going on with this whole Birdie Brown, you

narrative and it's fundamentally a case where for so long the left in the United States has been so dormant that liberals have been used to fighting only with Republicans. Like they are used to fighting to their right. They have developed that muscle to their right. And a big part of the liberal self-conception is that those are the big bad Republicans on the right, they're evil, and it gives them a sense of moral superiority. And they get attacked from the left, it's like, oh my God, this is a new thing that I'm not used to.

It's a thing that I've never had to deal with in the past. And for starters, it challenges my own moral superiority or sense of moral superiority. So that's why they have this collective freak out there. We don't know how to deal with this. We don't know what this new thing is. And it's got to be this new toxic thing that I can't, you know, that has to be destroyed. Because it's something that's completely new to them. And in the New York Times piece, they actually allude to that, that Bernie has been.

criticizing the Democratic Party from the left for decades. That didn't register to most liberals forever because Bernie was a relatively obscure figure and didn't have any sort of real base of support outside of his, outside of Vermont. But now that he does, it's this new thing that they're just not used to. So that's fundamentally what's happening. Well, I mean, we always complain primarily, Jane does, about how Democrats don't do anything. There's not enough fires, none of anger, and it does too. So when it comes to these type of things, when they actually are coming, as you mentioned,

And it's not comfortable and it's not normal to them. So when you start seeing fire and anger from the left of a certain segment of the party, they think, man, I only hear this usually from the right, as you mentioned. But the thing is, when it comes also with policy behind it and anger because of how you're muting that or mis-interpreting or mischaracterizing all that, that part gets ignored because we don't want to address the policy problems that we have. Let's address the way that they're talking to me, which then comes to complaint, or at least the comparison about how he's running a truck.

Trump-like campaign. If he's running a Trump-like campaign, he has to be at rallies going, that's right, every Hillary supporter I've seen here, get her hell out of here, like at least in 2016, or even now to come after people's support groups. So when someone comes along, there's a part of this, again, like you mentioned, a very long article, where people that are supporters of Sanders are saying, you can't control these folks. And as we've seen, there are annoying supporters of every candidate.

Of course there are, because that's where annoying people are, online. So that's where they're allowed to just say whatever they want without having much of responsibility to take over what they've said. You have to understand that's the nature of the game. And when I don't want to deal with it, I don't go. Yeah, annoying people from when humanity descended from the trees, they sat around for 100,000 years being bored, and then Twitter was created. And then suddenly they had something to do. And here's the thing. There are examples here of feminist authors getting death threats and things like that.

A lot of examples like that, obviously all of that is 100% unacceptable, and if you are a Bernie Sanders supporter and you're doing that sort of thing, you need to seriously think about whether you hold the values you think you hold. But if you are anyone, don't do that, and I got news for you, it is all over the place. I've received death threats, Anna receives 100 times as many death threats. Awful people should stop being awful. But I got news for you, when we assert that there's bad people all over, I can also say, but Bernie Sanders supporters in general are better in these ways.

And I say that as a direct result of polling that I've seen, when they asked back in 2016, the supporters of a bunch of different candidates on the left and on the right, they asked them questions intended to measure things like misogyny and racism. They asked them questions like, are black Americans lazier than white Americans? Are black Americans more criminal than white Americans? And I got news for you, everyone in America's racist, but the supporters of different candidates were different. Now, the Republicans were the worst, and then there was like the Clinton supporters, and

then there was the Bernie supporters, still too high, still unacceptable, but better on all of these measures than other Democrats who were supporting people like Hillary Clinton. And at the very least, think about that a little bit before you try to make your entire counter attack to Bernie Sanders based around the fact that, like in your analogy about Starry, Not just that Star Trek fans are worse, but Jean-Luc Picard is worse. Patrick Stewart, the Sir, he's worse. Now, okay, all of us are old enough to remember the 2008 primary, right? We're all in our 30s or close to it.

And if you remember the 2008 primary, there's a lot of like rose-tinted goggles looking back at that time because that campaign between Obama and Hillary was absolutely vicious. I mean, far more vicious than anything that's been going on, both in 2016 and now in 2020 in the Democratic primary. That campaign, the Hillary campaign through Sidney Blumenthal released the photo of Barack Obama in Muslim garb. The implication being like, look at this radical Muslim guy, like, you want to vote for that guy?

You know, there was the, when Hillary said that, you know, wondered out loud whether Obama was gonna get assassinated or not, that's why she was staying in the primary. I mean, just insanely vicious things going on. And at that time, you start, you were seeing almost verbatim the same exact articles that you're seeing against the Bernie bros about the so-called Obama bros, that were more online than the Hillary supporters, that were, you know, more misogynistic toward Hillary supporters, all these things. They were, you could, you could just switch out the term Obama and subbed it in for Bernie,

and it's the exact same article. Yeah, yeah. And that said, if you feel the inclination to send basically any negative thought, Think about whether you need to do it. If it's violent, said it to Ken Klippenstein. Yeah, if it's sexual, if it's violent, just don't do it. Whether you support Sanders or Yang or Ted Cruz or whoever, let's all try to be a little bit less awful online. It's not going to stop the New York Times from writing a hundred more pieces like this between now and Super Tuesday.

But it will make the environment that many of us are obligated to dwell in a little bit more positive. The one, sorry, we're going over, but the one line of thought I always have whenever it comes to something it comes out about a candidate that isn't about their policy or what they're going to do for or against the country is these things that I'm hearing, will it change what they promise they'll do? Will it change Bernie's push for universal health care? Will it change his push for college, for people's tuition to change, for free college for everyone? Will any of those things change because of what his supporters, some of them are doing? I mean, if you're upset because of his supporters, be upset at his supporters. I have nothing wrong with that or fighting back or saying, can you believe these idiots are doing this online? Voice it, call them out, put them on blast.

I don't care. Again, they're not my father. So whatever it is, just do it. I don't have any love for anybody who does filthy things online. So we're not looking to protect anyone like that. If your reason for leaving a candidate's, his base is based off what other people are doing and it's none do it policy, you didn't really believe it in the first place. Yeah.

Yeah. And you can enjoy the most recent Star Wars movie and still be excited that Picard is on the air. The new Star Wars movie sucks, come on, Josh. It was fine. It sucked. It was terrible. It was fine. It was the most cynical thing I've ever seen.

Go watch the Mandalorian. That's pretty good. It's okay. Shake on it. Mandolarian. See, you know, civility. unity okay anyway thank you jr thank you nando always great to have you on we've got an awesome hour coming up you just have to get past 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 podcast at apple dot co slash t yt i'm your host jank huger and i'll see you soon