The Young Turks - TYT Extended Clip - January 3rd, 2020

Episode Date: January 4, 2020

Did Trump just start WWIII? Cenk Uygur, John Iadarola, and Ana Kasparian, 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. Drop it. All right, welcome to the young Turks.

We do have a power panel. Normally, I'm excited, but here we are, perhaps on the brink of war. So hard to get excited about the disaster that Donald Trump created yesterday. So John Iderola, Jank Uger, Anna Kasparian with you guys. They have a giant show filled a lot of facts about the assassination of the top Iranian general yesterday and what disasters might ensue from that. So Anna, take it away. All right.

The Trump administration has assassinated Iran's top military commander, Major General Qasem Soleimani, and he did so through a drone strike, an airstrike specifically near the Baghdad international airport. Obviously, this is in Iraq. Soleimani led the coups force of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard. And as we all know, after Donald Trump had pulled out of the Iran nuclear deal, his administration decided to list the Islamic Revolutionary Guard as a terrorist organization. Trump has been escalating tensions with Iran from the beginning of his administration. And the very first step that he took was pulling out of the Iran nuclear deal. deal that Iran was complying with, a deal that involved other world leaders, and it of course

included checks, but Trump decided, no, I'm going to pull out. Now, the Department of Defense issued a statement claiming responsibility for Soleimani's killing, saying that he and the coupes force were responsible for the deaths of hundreds of American and coalition service members and the wounding of thousands more. Now, they also claimed that Soleimani posed as an image. threat. However, there has been absolutely no intelligence shared with the press to prove that point. Also, this was not authorized by Congress, and in order for the administration to follow through

with this type of assassination, without congressional authorization, they need to prove that there was an imminent threat. There has been no proof, although the State Department and the Trump administration continue to issue such statements. Yeah, let me be clear, I don't believe them. Do I believe that there was danger in the area? Yeah, it's the Middle East. And so Iran and the United States have been going back and forth.

You could say tit for Tampa, that really is understating it. We did have a US defense contractor killed and a couple troops wounded recently. Our retaliation for that involved killing 25 people and wounding 50. So that is a massive and arguably disproportionate strike. But that did not take us to the brink of war. And we were measured in our coverage of that saying, sure, it's a good idea. But I said at the time, look, we do have to have some response to a contractor being killed and our troops being wounded. The question is what kind of response?

Now, you know, and in the meanwhile, obviously we had the riot or however you want to characterize it at the embassy. No one was killed there, but it was a scary situation. Now, our response has not been proportionate again. We now kill the top Iranian general, which is clearly going to cause massive retaliation, and perhaps bring us to war. So later, actually, in fact, right now, the Republicans are all claiming they made us do it, and it's all their fault. Half the media is backing them.

The Democrats are tepid. The reality is we pulled out of the deal, and it was Trump who did it. It was Trump who assassinated their top general. Now, do you think that they might then target our top generals or our top officials? Well, that's what we're concerned about. And that's what a smart person would take into account before they went around assassinating generals of sovereign nations. So I want to get into the details of the possible ramifications in just a minute.

But before I do so, Donald Trump did issue a brief statement to the press. And here is his so-called justification for going through with this assassination. Last night of my direction, the United States military successfully executed a flawless precision strike that killed a number one terrorist anywhere in the world, Qasem Soleimani. Soleimani was plotting imminent and sinister attacks on American diplomats and military personnel. But we caught him in the act and terminated him. Under my leadership, America's policy is unambiguous to terrorists who harm or intend to harm any American.

We will find you, we will eliminate you, we will always protect our diplomats, service members, all Americans, and our allies. So the line that I'm hearing from people who are defending Donald Trump's actions and statements coming from Trump's own administration have to do with how Soleimani was a bad guy. He was a bad guy, he was a terrible guy, very similar to the type of propaganda that we heard prior to the preemptive war and the preemptive invasion into Iraq, right? Saddam Hussein is a bad guy, he's a bad guy, he's a bad guy. But here's the thing, the United States works with bad guys all the time.

Muhammad bin Salman of Saudi Arabia murdered. He ordered the murder of a US resident, a Washington Post journalist, Jamal Khashoggi, and what did Donald Trump do? First he tried to help the Saudis cover for that. And when that didn't work, he made, you know, he made statements about how we have a great financial relationship with Saudi Arabia, and that's all that really matters to him, right? In fact, we're helping them fight their war and carry out their genocide in Yemen right now. See, this is why you get frustrated with the media, because I'll go further than that.

So the main justification they give for assassinating Soleimani is he helped the Shia insurgency in Iraq and that killed our troops. There's a lot of truth to that. And so was I concerned about that? Absolutely. In fact, we were more concerned than anybody else. That's why we said don't go in Iraq because insurgencies will rise, militias will rise, and they will kill our guys.

And it doesn't make any sense to put him there when Iraq had not attacked us even though Saddam Hussein was a bad guy. Kim Jong-Lin's a bad guy who didn't assassinate him or his top general. Why? Because it was start a disastrous war between North Korea, us, South Korea, Japan, etc. See, those are what smart people do, dumb people go, oh, bad guy, and they create a giant mess like Iraq and what we're about to create. But on the Saudis, well, if the main justification was the insurgency in Iraq, the

Saudis funded the Sunni insurgency in Iraq, and they helped kill thousands of our troops. So now they say, look, look, look, it wasn't technically the Saudi government, it was just Saudi billionaires. All right, let's find them and kill them all. Execute them, assassinate them, drone strikes all over Saudi Arabia. Do you agree? I mean, it's not my logic. It's Trump's logic.

And all the media goes along, oh, yeah, yeah, I saw him, a bad guy. So I mean, you had to kill him, you had to murder him, right? Okay, well, then do we have to murder all those Saudis who funded the Sunni insurgency? Okay, if you are principled on that, you would say, yes, let's go kick the living crap out of Saudi Arabia. Oh, but they give us oil for a little less than other countries do. And Donald Trump said, even before he became president, they buy my apartments for 40, 50 million dollars.

Am I supposed to not like them? So as long as Donald Trump is getting rich and we get oil a little cheaper, apparently our principles don't mean a damn thing. So don't tell me that you did it based on the insurgencies when there's this massive giant hypocrisy where the Saudis kill us over and over and over again. You guys remember who did 9-11? 15 out of the 19 hijackers were Saudis. Did we ever hit Saudi Arabia?

No, we went and kissed their ass after 9-11. Why? Because Republicans said, hey, listen, man, they give a spoil a little, little, and they don't really give it to us, ExxonMobil, et cetera, right? So as long as our corporations are getting rich, you could murder American troops all day long, according to the Republicans. But hey, you know what, Donald Trump wants to seem like a tough guy, take your mind off of impeachment, maybe get reelected, like he said Obama wanted to do, he said, oh, Obama

I don't want to get reelected, that's why he's gonna attack around. But Obama didn't do that. Donald Trump did do that, and so don't buy into his BS rationale, which is what I see all over television. Yeah, and there's obviously, there's the concerns about the insurgency. There's also, as he stayed in the video, not just that he was planning something, they caught him in the act. He was doing something right then.

And if you're holding your breath for details, you should really, you should take a breath because it's never gonna come, you're never gonna hear anything. It's sort of quaint, actually, that I mean, from everything that I've read, it's It was clearly illegal. They don't have the justification to do what they did. But the fact that they would care at all seems sort of old fashioned. Like if he just came out and said, yeah, there's no justification, but I did it. What are the Republicans gonna vote to remove him?

Are they gonna allow charges to go through against him? Like what would the consequences be? There's literally nothing. Pelosi probably wouldn't even add them into the articles of impeachment. There would be no consequences. So I like this nod to the way things used to be. That's such a great point. Now, there are real consequences and those consequences.

are for Americans abroad. And I'm not just talking about members of the military. There are diplomats and other U.S. workers abroad who could be targeted as a result of this. And so let's go to a CNN video. This is Samantha Vinegard. She's an analyst for CNN, but she actually served as a national security advisor under the Obama administration. I think she makes a pretty good point here. Take a look.

All American citizens are now walking prime targets for her. Iranian retaliation. The Department of Defense put out an important statement last night after this operation, indicating what appears to be declassified intelligence that Qasem Soleimani was responsible for planning additional attacks against Americans, but also that he approved the attack against the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad. So it looks like they were declassifying intelligence on that front. And going forward, we should really expect more of the same. The IRG could's force has demonstrated its willingness and intent to strike American citizens, to strike American diplomats who afforded protections under international law.

So in addition to the force protection measures needed for American service members, I am equally as focused on the American diplomatic corps, as well as all of the contractors that work for the US government and other American citizens, not just in the Middle East, but around the world. So I thought she made a good point specifically when it came to how, this escalation and this essentially a call for war is really threatening the lives of Americans abroad. But look, it shouldn't just be about Americans.

How many civilians in the Middle East have already died because of U.S. aggression? And so they shouldn't be an afterthought. They're going to be countless civilians who die if we engage in war with Iran. And don't buy the nonsense that I've been hearing over and over again in the corporate press today about how if Iran decides to respond militarily, it'll be an easy and quick war. Oh my God. That is an actual point that I've heard people make. It is insane, and I'm gonna provide examples of that later in the show today.

I think they accidentally loaded the teleprompters from 2003, actually. Yeah, and so yeah, they said we'd be greeted as liberators, it'd be Iraq war would take only a couple of weeks. Decades later, here we are, by the way, this is all happened in Iraq, because the mess we created in Iraq. Why? Because we said Saddam Hussein was a bad guy, he was. Did that make the Iraq war logical?

No, it did not. And here we are again. The credit where credit is due, I'm glad that CNN had her on and she said that, that's a very good point. But you'll hardly ever see it anywhere else. And certainly out of the idiot Republicans, you'll never see this obvious acknowledgement. So we get to call people terrorists all the time. And by the way, everybody's doing it.

I don't know, it's not covered by American media, but Turkey calls the Kurds terrorists. called the Turks terrorist, Iran calls the Sunnis terrorists, the Sunnis call Iran terrorists, and it goes around and around. And so, what does that mean? Well, okay, we said Soleimani, he might be the general of a sovereign nation, but apparently there are no international laws anymore, so we just murder him. And then we, the idiot Republicans sit back and go, okay, well, I guess we're done with that. No, we're not done with that.

They're going to retaliate, and they're going to call us terrorists, and they're going to kill us. So when, look, I'm worried to death about the embassy in Iraq now. Trump, the moron is like, oh, yeah, I voted a Benghazi, I'm so strong, I'm so strong. No, you didn't. Now that embassy is in great, great peril. There are 16,000 U.S. employees at that embassy. God, I fear for them. Get them out, get them out, get them out right now.

And now we're sending 3,500 new troops in. What? To be sitting ducks, what are they going to do? Fight the entire country of Iran? Are we going to war? going to war. And guys, they're gonna kill our personnel, they're gonna kill our troops, way more than they would have before, way more.

And when they do, they're these Pompeo lying on CNN and saying, oh, we stopped an attack that could have killed dozens, maybe hundreds of American troops. Really? Where's your evidence? No evidence. He's lying. And he said, oh, Jake, can you really say that? I already saw this movie.

It was called Iraq war. Everything was a lie. And the press was like, oh, I don't know. The Secretary of State, and then Connollyza Rice. At the time, National Security Advisor, she said it, a mushroom cloud, it could happen. So they said it, I bowed down, I bowed down, I do not bow down. They are liars, and they're gonna get our guys killed. Anna's right, they're also gonna get untold thousands of innocent civilians in the region killed.

But look, if all you care about is Americans, I guarantee you they're in far greater peril today than they were yesterday. And so it's not one-sided, they get to counterattack, they get to also kill our civilians. And so now we should get out as soon as humanly possible, but instead we're bringing more people in to be sitting ducks for them to get killed. Yeah, and just like a month or two after the media was, they were falling all over themselves to give Trump credit for ending the Forever Wars. He's anti-war people, accepted, he's anti-war, just sending thousands of more soldiers

there. So you said that they were sitting ducks. I think it's a little bit more malicious even than that. It is convenient to people who want to start wars to have soldiers there because it's easy to kill soldiers when they're there. Super hard for the coups force to kill American soldiers in San Diego or Houston or Alaska. Super difficult. But if you put him in Iraq, it's not that difficult.

And honestly, it reminds me, you know, Edward Gallagher, the war criminal that Trump is so in love with. One of the sickest things he did was he wanted to shoot Iraqis, but sometimes they were difficult to see. So he would expose his soldiers so that the other soldiers would start to shoot at them. And then when they expose themselves, he gets to shoot at them. But what if you could do that with thousands of soldiers? What if you put them in a place where they would inevitably get attacked?

That would provide the rationale for anything you want, assassinations, bombings, whatever you want. Anytime you want to launch a war, you have the justification because you've placed it there, effectively hostages, these people you say you support, you put in a position that greatly increases the chance that they'll be killed. And all of this, by the way, the rationale that was given for killing him was to stop an imminent threat against who, the Americans that are in Iraq, presumably. Take them out of Iraq, they'll be way, way easier to kill, and you'll save a ton of money

in doing it. Right. And I think it's also important to keep in mind that Iran is not, you know, a single isolated actor in this entire case. Iran has its own allies. We're talking about Russia, we're talking about Syria, there are other countries involved. Our own allies have condemned Donald Trump's actions here in assassinating. the top commander for Iran's military.

So look, this is not good, and there are consequences and ramifications for our actions. And don't let anyone, either in the corporate press or the right wing, or even in the left wing, if you ever see it, claim that if you're not in favor of this war with Iran, or if you're not supportive of Donald Trump's aggression here, then you're anti-American, you're supporting the terrorists. I see them lodging these ridiculous insults and criticisms toward freshman progressive representatives like Ilhan Omar, for instance. But no, if you actually care about America, if you actually care about supporting the troops,

you don't put them in harm's way by engaging in this unnecessary war. And let's just remind you guys that Iran's military capability is very different from Iraq's military capability. We still have a president in Iraq. We didn't win, okay? Iran's military is four times the size. So, guys, when invariably, and I hope to God it never happens, but very likely it will, when Iran counterattacks and our personnel and soldiers and troops and perhaps diplomats

are killed, it was Donald Trump's fault. Later, they'll say, oh, no, it was all Iran, all Iran, it's their fault, they're boogeymen, they're terrorists, they're all terrible people, right? But the reality is they didn't kill our top general. We killed their top general. They didn't break the peace deal, the nuclear deal that we had. And neither did Russia, neither did China, neither did Europe. We broke that.

And I say we. Donald Trump is an idiot and a monster, and I go, no love for him. But guys, what would we do if they killed our top guys? We would retaliate, even if we despise them. My God, if they killed Trump or our top general or Pompeo? Well, of course we would counterattack. Of course we would, no matter how much we can't stand Trump or Pompeo. So of course Iran's gonna do the same.

And when our people are killed, it is Donald Trump's fault. They will lie to you a thousand times and say that he didn't start it. But he did start it. It is a fact and we know it. We gotta take a break. When we come back, I will give you more response from the Trump administration. And we'll go back in time, back to 2015. when Donald Trump was specifically asked about Soleimani

and his response gives you a sense of how moronic he is and how little he's actually even read up on what he just did in assassinating Iran's top military general. We'll be right back after the break. We need to talk about a relatively new show called Un-F-The Republic or UNFTR. As a young Turks fan, you already know that the government, the media, and corporations

are constantly peddling lies that serve the interests of the rich and powerful. But now there's a podcast dedicated to unraveling those lies, debunking the conventional wisdom. In each episode of Un-B-The-Republic or UNFTR, the host delves into a different historical episode or topic that's generally misunderstood or purposely obfuscated by the so-called powers that be. Featuring in-depth research, razor-sharp commentary, and just the right amount of vulgarity, the UNFTRTR podcast takes a sledgehammer to what you thought you'd knew about some of the nation's most sacred historical cows. But don't just take my word for it. The New York Times described UNFTR as consistently compelling and educational,

aiming to challenge conventional wisdom and upend the historical narratives that were taught in school. For as the great philosopher Yoda once put it, You must have learned 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. All right, back on the Young Turks. Maui, Greg, says so grateful for TYIT today, watching the mainstream news and stick to my stomach at the fake hand-wringing and pretend wondering whether Trump did this for political reasons, as Jenks says, of course. And they're never going to say it's for political reasons. They're never going to say it.

Guys, we're just talking about this. You think it's bad now? The media coverage, et cetera. There's some good spots here. We're picking the, and we're showing them to you, right? The minute Iran counterattacks, it's over. The media will put on the hats and wave the flag and put on the pins. And then the Democrats will buckle.

I've seen this movie before. And if you're a female trio of country music performers, just don't have any type of courage in calling out this action and this aggression by the U.S. government, because your career will end. Yep, yeah, all right, David Sorota, blah, blah, blah, I can't read the rest of it. Come on, guys, give me handles I can read. Anyway, he says, I got my mother and sister-in-law gift subscription to TYT for Christmas. Could you give Donna and Elizabeth a shout out, please? I'm so excited for them to see your content and not just have me relay all the funny bits.

On the other hand, I love your message. Thank you for doing that. Okay, appreciate it. I know where you're going with it, but I can't read it on air. Okay, anyway, Whitney says, I'm watching TYT on the big screen. I put CYT on my family TV on Xfinity, making Anna John and Jenks' fiery passion burned through the cold conservative halls of my family's home. Oh, wow.

Okay, now our- That tweet written by George R. Martin. Yeah, well, at least now our laughter is ringing through your family's home as well. Thank you for doing that. Yes, we're on Comcast, Xfinity. Just say TYT or Young Turks, so you'll get us. Bridge Force is new to the TYT Investigates channel, but John Larson is a wizard. I highly recommend Trump's blunderer in Iran's stream from today. Thanks for the inside, Sir John Larson, too strong.

That's from YouTube Superchat. Last one, Elliot also from YouTube Superchat. I'm currently on vacation to my hometown of Kermon, Iran, where Soleimani will be buried. I could see with my own eyes how much this action was resented by all of the Iranians from all ideologies. That's weird, Pompeo says that you guys feel liberated. We're gonna get to that in a second because, again, like he broke the record on stupidity. All right, but I wanna tell you one more thing, not related to the comments.

We're doing an affiliate program, it's really important, and hopefully it can be a win-win. So get some side money for you guys, help your income, but also get us more membership, and all of us spread the progressive message. So you sell membership for us, and we give you commission. It's not like a gift card or anything like that, it's cash, okay? And you collect that commission every month as long as the individual that you signed up continues to be a member. So it's not a one-time payment, you keep getting paid.

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2,500 affiliates and already a lot of you are making sales, I love it, thank you. One other note, if you are looking for an ethical place to keep your money, Aspiration is a great place to do so, go to aspiration.com slash TYT to learn more. The great thing about them is you get rewarded for shopping consciously. So if you are specifically spending your money, using your debit card from Aspiration at businesses that are environmentally conscious, you get rewarded for that. So check it out, you can get more details if you go to Aspiration.com slash TYT. All right, so back to the news with Iran.

And now let's talk a little bit about what the Trump administration is saying. The Trump administration is attempting to justify its assassination of Iran's top general, Sassem Soleimani. And since Congress did not authorize the assassination, they didn't have a vote on the assassination, you will hear various members of Trump's administration. And Trump himself argued that they made this decision because Soleimani was an imminent threat to the United States and to our troops. In fact, on Twitter, Trump said, quote, General Kassem Soleimani has killed or badly wounded

thousands of Americans over an extended period of time and was plotting to kill many more, but got caught. He was directly and indirectly responsible for the death of millions of people, including the recent large number of protesters killed in Iran itself. While Iran will never be able to properly admit it, Soleimani was both hated and feared within the country. They are not nearly as saddened as the leaders will let the outside world believe he should have been taken out many years ago.

That's fascinating because a few years ago, back in 2015, Donald Trump was asked about Soleimani specifically. And he didn't seem very afraid of him. Take a look. Are you familiar with General Soleimani? Yes. Go ahead. Give me a little. Go ahead.

Tell me. He runs the Quds forces. Yes, okay. Right. Do you expect his behavior? By the way, have been horribly illustrated by us. No, not the Kurds. The Quds forces.

The Iranian Revolutionary Guards forces, the bad guys. Do you expect his behavior to change his result? No, Kurds. No, I'm sorry, I thought you said Kurds, because I think the Kurds have been very poorly treated by us here. Go ahead. Agreed. So that is the man who just greenlit the assassination of Iran's top military general.

And while it's true that he wasn't a great person, he wasn't a good guy, this is going to lead to devastating ramifications for American citizens abroad, we know that. And we're all waiting to see what Iran's reaction is gonna be. If they engage the United States militarily, this is not a good, this is not a good idea at all, this is gonna lead to a lot of bad consequences. All right, we're gonna break that small clip down, that actually was a much larger interaction. I wanna tell you about some of the rest of it in a second. But first he's like, he knows General Soleimani.

He's like, yes, tell me more, okay, so everybody knows he doesn't know him, right? And he says, well, you know, the Cuds, he's the head of the Cuds force, he said, oh yeah, the Kurds. And then he says, I misheard you, but wait a minute, if you know General Soleimani, why would you think that it was the Kurds? Soleimani is head of the Quds force in Iran. So you didn't know Soleimani. Just say you didn't know him, right? No, he's got to lie about everything, right?

And he, oh, I misheard you. Does anybody think he really misheard him? No, of course, he has no idea what the difference between the Quds force and the Kurds are. And throughout the rest of that interaction with Hugh Hewitt, who is a conservative, he's kept like, these are gotcha questions. Yep. He asked him, hey, do you know, an astrologer?

who's the head of Hezbollah, doesn't know him. Didn't know the head of Hamas, Hezbollah, or any of these groups, the leader of al-Nusra. He didn't know any of them. He didn't know any of them. And he's like, these are good, your questions. Well, it turns out if you're president, you gotta know that. You're not running for plumber in chief, you are running for commander in chief. And he went on to say, oh, no, by the time I get in office, they'll all be different anyway.

No, they were all the same when you got in office. And he said, it doesn't matter, I'll know it so well, it'll make your head. headspin. Does it look like he knows it so well it'll make her head spin? No, he's no idea who these people are. He doesn't know. It makes a difference if your president is an idiot and is totally indifferent to reality and facts. Because it means that he's not educated on a serious decision that he made, right? But more importantly, he hasn't sat down to think through what the consequences will be, what the aftermath will be, right? So it's not enough to just say, we did this because it was a bad person.

It's just not enough to say that because they're bad people all throughout the world, many of whom we actually work with. Yeah, Vladimir Putin's a bad guy. Should we assassinate him? Is that a good idea? Should we assassinate his top general? Maybe start a nuclear war. And then afterwards though, we could say, oh, he was a bad guy, he was a bad guy, it's a bad guy,

okay, it's easy to say, no, we shouldn't do that. It's a really stupid idea. And one of the sad things is, I mean, we can listen to that and as soon as he said yes, every rational person says, he never heard of that person in his entire life. But then a couple years go by, he becomes president. He's been surrounded by top military brass this entire time. If he wanted to, if he was 1% interested, he could have found anything he needs to know. But we reached this point where lots of people, including some like elected Democrats today,

were like, you know, I just, I have to hope that he has a plan. No. Who thinks that he has a plan? What Republican thinks that he has a plan going forward? And they don't care because they're not going to go, none of they're going to be there. The vast majority don't know anyone who's serving. It is just reality TV, it's an interesting new season to a show they love. I'll give you an example of what a Donald Trump plan looks like.

Six months ago, he called for an airstrike against Iran, and then right as that airstrike was about to happen, he called it off. That's Donald Trump's planning. Now, I'm happy he had called it off. It would have been a complete, utter disaster if that airstrike had gone through. But my point is, it's not like Donald Trump is some deep thinker who's sitting down, and again, thinking about the consequences of his actions. How is this assassination going to lead to more harm to both civilians abroad and to U.S. citizens abroad? And that includes troops, but also diplomats who

happen to be working abroad. Now with that said, I want to move on to his Secretary of State because he had some interesting interviews to justify what the administration just did. And Pompeo is a clown. So let's go to him. So Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo, Pompeo had an interview with John Berman on CNN. And he tried to justify the Trump administration's decision to assassinate Iran's top military general. And here's what he had to say about it. You put out a statement a short time ago that says the decision to eliminate General

Soleimani was in response to imminent threats to American lives. What was the nature of those imminent threats? John, I can't too much about the nature of the threats, but the American people should know, the President Trump's decision to remove Qasem Soleimani from the battlefield saved American lives. There's no doubt about that. He was actively plotting in the region to take actions, a big action as he described it, that would have put dozens, if not hundreds of American lives at risk. We know it was imminent. This was an intelligence-based assessment that drove our decision-making process. The American people also know the history of Qasem Soleimani,

hundreds of American lives on his hands, too. He was involved in the Beirut bombings. He'd orchestrated an attack right here in Washington, D.C. It ultimately failed. This is a man who's put American lives at risk for an awfully long time. And last night was the time that we needed a strike to make sure that this imminent attack that he was working actively was disrupted. A specific target overseas? I'm not going to say anything more about the nature of the attack.

But no, that this was not just in Iraq, it was throughout the region. He's not going to give specifics about the nature of the planned attack because the nature, that that planned attack didn't exist. I mean, that's my speculation, but I have reason to believe that I'm accurate because there's been no evidence provided for the action, for the reasoning that they keep providing, for the action that the US took. There's no evidence. You can't just sell it as Soleimani was a bad guy, he was an imminent threat, and that's

it. The American people should just buy it. And some have, the right wing has, they think that they're safe now because Donald Trump has decided to do this. But he has not made Americans safer. All right, John Bourbon actually did a great job there. And as far as cable news goes, that was as much skepticism as an anchor could possibly give. He asked a question a couple of times after the interview was over.

He said, well, he did make news claiming that they have documents about imminent threats and that they would release them. We're looking forward to them. That is a cable news anchor's way of saying, I don't believe him. And so I give a lot of credit to John Burman for a really good interview. But I, you know, we're allowed to give our opinion and perspective here. I don't believe him at all. And so the United States, unfortunately, I love this country, but our government has a history

of lying about so-called threats. In the Iraq war, they said, oh, you know, if the evidence can come in the form of a mushroom cloud, as if Saddam Hussein had nuclear weapons. Well, we know that he didn't have nuclear weapons, he didn't have weapons of mass destruction, he was not connected to 9-11, they were all lies. And now we say that, I'm gonna, oh my God, can you believe we believe those lies? Then Pompeo comes out with this outrageous claim that, oh, hundreds of Americans were about to die, and then everybody goes, hey, you gotta believe him, you gotta believe him.

Why do I have to believe him? No, this government, and specifically the Trump administration, has a legendary history of lying, you'd be an idiot to believe them. They have, okay, has Trump's administration done more things that are true, honest, or more lies? I mean, we know he's got over 13,000 lies himself. I mean, with that track record, if you're an objective analyst, you should assume what they're saying is a lie rather than the truth, especially with the history of the United States government, especially in the Middle East, especially with the Trump administration.

Especially in the middle of an impeachment process. Yeah, definitely. Look, I know you summarized the rest of the interview that Berman did, but I actually do want to go to some more of the video, because I do think he did a great job. And this next clip is a good example of that. And what I ask about the timing, the reason I am asking is because General Soleimani, as you well note, has been an enormous threat to the United States and U.S. interests for decades. I was in Iraq between 2003 and 2008 when he was responsible for the death of probably 600 or more U.S. servicemen.

So what is different or what was different yesterday than over the last 15 years? Well, John, you're right about the history of General Soleimani for sure. What's different today is that Iran has now been engaged for months and managed to dozens and dozens of attacks throughout the region. President Trump's shown enormous restraint to date. While we've made clear to the Iranians that we weren't going to tolerate the killing of Americans on December 27th, and American was killed in Iraq, and then we watched the intelligence flow in that talked about Soleimani's travels in the region and the work that he was doing to put Americans further at risk. And it was the time to take this action so that we could disrupt this plot, deter further aggression from Qasem Soleimani and the Iranian regime, as well as to attempt to de-escalate

the situation. So I just want to make one quick point. So look, again, he fails to provide any specific example of how Soleimani posed as an imminent threat. Again, the Trump administration has to show that there was an imminent threat in order to carry out this assassination without congressional approval, right? They haven't demonstrated that, they haven't provided evidence. But he mentions the importance of deterring future aggression by Iran.

Look, all of these different pieces of the U.S.-Iranian relations aren't separate. Donald Trump pulling out of the Iran nuclear deal did what? It basically now allows Iran to enrich uranium and build nuclear weapons. They can now, why not? I mean, Donald Trump has implemented these insane sanctions. It's crippling the economy in Iran. They had been complying with the Iran nuclear deal. They're not the ones who reneged.

The United States is the one that reneged, and then encouraged, not encouraged, coerced every other ally that was part of that nuclear deal to pull out and implement sanctions and avoid doing any business with Iran. Iran has no reason to avoid building nuclear weapons at this point. My point is, the actions of the Trump administration don't deter future aggression. They encourage future aggression. Well, and that's not even a hypothetical at this point. I mean, they issued that warning to Americans throughout the region to flee imminently.

And so if your goal was to stop these people from being attacked, you should come out today and admit that was obviously a failure inside of one day. We ensured that attacks would come. But no, there's no fail state for aggression. If aggression seems to work, that will justify. its use in the future, if aggression is met with more aggression, then you're going to meet it with more aggression. And he, in an alternate reality, he seemed like a guy who was trying to avoid providing

video that would be played during congressional testimony six months from now. He seemed like a guy who didn't want to go on the record because he knew he'd have to answer it for it someday, except that he probably won't. Because at some point in five months or in a year, Ken Clippenstein's Freedom of Information Act requests will go through, we'll find out for sure that there was nothing. They had nothing, and it won't matter if we've killed people, they'll stay dead at that point. I mean, maybe the media will ask a tough question, but what's the difference? It won't matter if it affects the election.

It won't matter. There's no consequences for any of this anymore. You know, Mark Twain has that old quote that I'll paraphrase of how the lie gets around the world before the truth can get its boots on. And that's what is this case. You put out the lie and no one has enough information to say it is a lie. And so they're very scared, the New York Times, CNN, et cetera, to say that it's a lie. And so that becomes the narrative.

And to a John's point, when you find out five months or five years later that it was a lie, no one cares anymore. It's not relevant anymore. By the time the truth got its boots on, it's, the game's already over. Well, actually, can I say one more thing on that? Because we just had those Afghanistan papers like four weeks ago. Now I know the media wasn't really interested in that, they didn't really cover it. But the investigation was done.

It revealed all that it revealed. Watch for a month, forget about that stuff. Let's create the fodder for the Iraq papers that will come out in 10 years that no one will learn anything from. Yeah, and Washington posted a great job on that. They do. Now one more piece of evidence as to other than just the history of lying in this administration and previous, the Defense Secretary before we did the strike, Esper yesterday, said we have

a right to do a preemptive strike. So we're right back to the Iraq war. We said, oh, well, they didn't really attack us. That's why it's preemptive, because Iraq did not attack us on 9-11. In this case, the reason the defense secretary said we have a right to do a preemptive strike is because they don't have evidence that they were about to kill hundreds of Americans in the region. It's not true.

And by the way, just again, on that same logic, Berman said, hey, Soleimani might have orchestrated the Shia insurgency against us in Iraq, that's true. But as I told you earlier, the Saudis funded the Sunni insurgency in Iraq and got thousands of our troops killed. So should we go and execute a whole bunch of Saudis? According to that logic, we'd be right to just bomb the living crap out of Mecca and Riyadh and different places and go, hey, hey, they did it 10 years ago, so I get to execute them now. It's not my logic, it's their logic.

But the press should do a better job in holding them accountable to that. So can we execute Saudis now? Because they don't want to, because Pompeo has a deal with them. Trump has a deal with them. So they love the Saudis. They kiss Saudi ass day in, day out. But according to their logic, they should be killing them instead of kissing their ass. Now, if all of this wasn't enough evidence to convince you that the Trump administration

is lying to the American people to justify what they just did in this assassination, I'm going to give you one more clip and pay close attention to how, first, what John Berman says, and how Pompeo reacts. Take a look. Will the administration be releasing details of the intelligence, which did lead to the raid, the imminent threat over the next few days? John, we'll do our best to release everything that we know that's appropriate that we can that doesn't put anyone at risk. We'll do our best. We want the world to understand that there was, in fact, an imminent attack taking place. The American people should know

that this was an intelligence-based assessment that drove this. Yeah, they don't have anything. There is no intelligence, they're not going to provide any intelligence, there wasn't an imminent threat. They wanted to assassinate him without having to go through Congress, and that's exactly what they did. Yeah. Yeah.

So look, I wanna be clear, we shared it with you guys. That's their point of view, this is our point of view. You guys get to make your decision. Now, we are, I think, do a better job than the rest of the media, because the rest of the media goes, that is their point of view. And I can't, I'm not allowed to say anything about it, okay? I'm not allowed to express skepticism. On this show, we're allowed to express skepticism about the United States government.

You know why? Because we're not government controlled. We should ask the rest of the media if they're also government controlled or if they want to do some healthy skepticism about what the United States government says all the time. I said it about those papers that John alluded to earlier. You do the story about how the American government lied for decades about the war in Afghanistan, But the very next day, the entire media has collective amnesia. And whatever the government says, they believe it.

I told you ahead of time. And so here we are in the exact situation that we talked about. So we know the government lied for decades. Now the government says, oh, trust us, they were about to kill hundreds of people. And everybody goes, yes, sir. We don't say yes, sir, we challenge them. That's what the job of the media is to be watchdogs. But again, John Burman did a very good job in that interview.

I wish others would follow suit and bring an analyst to show why you. there could be and should be healthy skepticism about what he just said. When we come back from the break, we're going to share with you one more clip where Pompeo tries to rebrand what's going on in Iran as liberation. We'll be back with that. At TYT, we frequently talk about all the ways that big tech companies are taking control of our online lives, constantly monitoring us and storing our data. But that doesn't mean we have to let them.

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And we did, we found one here. Katie Turr just said to John Pothorz, Neocan and MSNBC that they have on regularly because he's an ever-trumper, but this he's ecstatic about it. He's like, yes! John Bolton with a elated tweet, etc. Katie Turr said, I am questioning the evidence. Great, wonderful. Let's try to keep that up, okay?

By the way, if you're a journalist, you should be questioning everything that comes out of the mouth of any government official, period. Yeah, okay, pocket in a pocket writes in from the member section. What's that mean? No, it's from the hoodies when we were doing the shopty.com sale. Get with it, John. Please. The one thing I'm grateful for is that there are more voices of dissent against these endless wars.

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Vladimir writes in 25,000 watching live concurrently. As my friend Jesse Lee Peterson would say, amazing. Wow, that's a lot of people. That's a lot of people. That's a lot. Yes, it is. Geez. Hi everyone.

Feels so exposed all of a sudden. All right, let's get to the rest of the news because I want to make sure we get to all of this. So following the Trump is, following the Trump administration's assassination of Iran's top military commander, Iran has responded, luckily not militarily yet, but they have responded with a number of threats. So I wanted to share those threats with you. First, NPR is reporting that both of the leading figures in Iran's government, Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khomeini, and President Hassan Rouhani have vowed to take revenge for

the killing or harsh retaliation in the words of Khamenei. Is it Khamenei or Khomeini? Khomei. Okay, I want to make sure to pronounce it right. I'm guessing too. So let's read a statement from Hassan Rouhani, who is the Iranian president. He says the flag of General Soleimani in defense of the country. territorial integrity and the fight against terrorism and extremism in the region will

be raised, and the path of resistance to U.S. excesses will continue. The great nation of Iran will take revenge for this heinous crime. Now look, I don't agree with pretty much anything in that statement, but understand that if you're gonna come after the top military general, of course they're going to threaten you with retaliation. They actually sound a lot like Trump. They do, yeah, exactly. I mean, they cite terrorism, they cite extremism, which is exactly what our government does.

Now, Soleimani was a popular figure inside Iran, and even many Iranians who are against the government are likely to be outraged about the targeting of a high-ranking official of their country. No Iranian leader will be able to spare the political capital to engage the United States, at least for the foreseeable future. And that was a statement by a woman who's actually an expert on foreign policy and specifically foreign relations with Iran. I give you that comment because this isn't just about what the Trump administration is doing to destroy relations with Iran or actually lead to escalate tensions with Iran. Even if, let's say, knock on what I hope this happens, Donald Trump gets elected out of office and you get a wonderful leader like Bernie Sanders, for instance, it's going to be much

harder to approach the situation diplomatically, right? So that's a huge problem. Because they also have internal politics. Yes. So when even if you just name any other person, it doesn't matter, let's say take Elizabeth Warren, she wins, and then the Iranian leaders go, no, she's more progressive, but maybe we can go back to diplomacy. But the people go, no, we want blood, they killed our top hero.

And so we don't trust the Americans, what are you nuts? Look at what they did in Iraq, look at what they did. us, why would you trust the Americans? It creates political pressure on the Iranian government to never work with us. And finally, I want to read a statement from Javad Zarif, who is the foreign minister of Iran. He called the killing of General Suleiman an act of international terrorism and warned it was extremely dangerous and a foolish escalation. He continued to say the US bears responsibility for all consequences of its rogue adventurism.

Now, the people of Iran based on what we've seen online are not pleased with what happened with this assassination, but it doesn't matter to the Trump administration because they're gonna be able to go on the media or in the media, and they're going to completely change the narrative of how people are reacting to this, right? And so here's Secretary of State Mike Pompeo arguing that this was an act of liberation. Yeah. I saw last night there was dancing in the streets and parts of Iraq, we have every expectation that people not only in Iraq but in Iran will view the American action last night

as giving them freedom, freedom to have the opportunity for success and prosperity for their nations. And while the political leadership may not want that, the people in these nations will demand it. Well, we'll see. So far this morning on the streets of Tehran, we've been seeing pictures and we have a reporter there. We've been seeing pictures of large scale anti-American demonstrations following the death. This is in Iran following the death. We've heard from Iraqi leaders so far condemning the U.S. action. We heard from a French official this morning putting out a statement saying that the world is less safe following the killing of General Soleimani. And the concern there, no one is saying that General Soleimani was a good actor, he was a bad actor.

What they're suggesting is that destabilization will create a threatening environment. So when you hear from France, the world is a less safe place this morning. How do you respond to that? Yeah, well, the French are just wrong about that. Oh, wow, great, real persuasive. He went on to say the world is safer, I'll get back to that in a second. But you want to know why Sulamana was so popular in Iran and why you see those massive demonstrations in Iran? He was known for a number of different things, and it's complicated and nuanced.

But lately, the thing that he was most popular for was because he fought ISIS. And he helped destroy ISIS. In fact, when they say he's brutal, there is a lot of truth to that. And there's internal Iranian documents that were leaked. And in the documents, even some of their leaders say, man, Soleimani was brutal to ISIS. And so what he did to ISIS was unspeakable. Now remember, we also fought ISIS. So that's why these situations are complicated.

We have real disagreements with Iran on certain issues. On the other hand, we are aligned on fighting against ISIS. So we just killed one of the top fighters against ISIS. Now do you hear that all over television? Nope, okay, but that is a fact. Now that doesn't mean that's the only thing Soleimani did. He was a bad guy in other respects. And so, but that is one of the reasons he was so popular, not just in Iran, but also in Iraq.

But I don't want to bury the lead. You saw what he just said. They're gonna be happy because we just gave them freedom. I mean, it's like a parody. If the onion wrote it, you'd be like, hey, that's a bit much. Yeah. administration famously said that we would be greeted as liberators in Iraq. Were we greeted as liberators?

Did it turn out that way? So when Pompeo says that, I mean, it is so over the top. Burman could barely contain himself saying, we'll see, right? But obviously, we did not just give Iraq or Iran freedom, and they're not excited about it, and they're not dancing in the streets. They're soon will be bombing in the streets. And the issue is that none of the people, like a couple of Republicans will say that, but they don't care, they're not interested in any Iranian civilians.

We can, they can show you on CNN that footage of those massive protests or the funeral march, which are massive. And considering the world we live in, later today, Trump is going to put up a tweet saying that they're dancing in the streets, and it's going to be footage from like, you know, outside of an NBA championship, and it's going to get 100,000 retweets and no one's going to believe anything again. That's the world we live in. Just briefly I want to mention that obviously the biggest concern is full scale war between

our countries. There's also the concern of cyber terrorism or traditional terrorism inside of the region or against Israel or against the US or in Europe. That's certainly possible too. But the other way that this could go is they could shut down the straits of Hormuz or they could do something to interfere with the flow of oil or they could sink a couple of ships there and destabilize things that way. They could trigger if they wanted to, not World War III.

an economic depression effectively that could affect the entire planet. So that brings me to a couple other points. So he said his very next response, and I'll give you the quote, Pompeo said, no, no, no, we're safer. He said, the world's quote, this is a quote, the world's a much safer place today. And I can assure that Americans in the region are much safer today. Okay, really? Because the State Department, his own State Department, he's the Secretary of State, put out

a press release today on Twitter saying, we urge U.S. citizens to depart Iraq immediately. Well, if they're so safe, why do they have to run for their lives? Exactly. So they know that they're not safe. And so to your point about the intelligence, part of the reason we've been saying throughout today's coverage that we don't believe them when they say that Suleiman was in the midst of doing imminent attack where hundreds of Americans were going to be killed, when asked for

evidence later, the government put out a number of possibilities of what they could have done, including perhaps a financial. attack in Lebanon. Wait, I thought you said hundreds of Americans were going to die imminently. Now we're talking about it, maybe a financial attack in Lebanon? Oh, they're such gargantuan liars. There's such, I mean, he almost did it with a smile on his face. We're giving them freedom. Okay, the fact that they're liars is the most clear thing that there is on planet Earth. So now finally, to the possible dangers, guys, why are we freaking out today? Iran has not counterattacked yet.

If things just stopped now, we shouldn't have done that. It was illegal, it's provocative, it's a bad precedent, but we'll live, it's fine, right? And Soleimani was a bad guy in many respects, right? We're not worried about that, we're worried about what's coming next. So, okay, what could come next? You think Iran doesn't have capabilities? Because we're so arrogant, we're filled with hubris, especially the Trump administration. They have drones, they have boats, they have bombs.

Their army is far more capable than Iraq's army was, but they have militias all over the Middle East. In fact, that's why we said we killed Soleimani because he directed those militias all over the Middle East. Well, guess what they're going to do? Hezbollah has 13,000 rockets. Now we get into a real conflict, you think they're not going to fire them on Israel? Yeah, let me, can I jump in on that because, look, there are world leaders throughout

the world who have condemned the Trump administration's actions. There are very few who are supportive, and one of those individuals happens to be Benjamin Netanyahu. And it's amazing because in his statement, Netanyahu claims, well, you know, Israel has the right to defend itself. I applaud Trump for the actions that he took in defending the United States and defending Israel, but at the same time, the Israeli government is making preparations to defend itself from aggression by Iranian-backed Hezbollah in Lebanon, right? So you're not safer.

I mean, that is an admission. The military action in Israel to defend Israel in response to what Trump did is proof that Israel is not safer. No, but there is one person who's slightly safer today, that's Benjamin Netanyahu. political chances just went up. If Israelis might get killed, he doesn't care. Americans got killed when we did the Iraq war. Cheney didn't care.

Now when the Iranians attack and the Israelis and Americans die, Trump's not going to care. What do they care about? My reelection. Oh my God, Trump is obsessed with his reelection. He says Obama might have attacked Iran. He said that back in 2011, 2013, over and over again, right? 2013, even after the election, 2012 before the election. And he says, oh, I know what Obama would do.

He tried to start a war with Iran to get reelected. Now Obama didn't do that, but look at what Trump just did, right? And then he's like, oh, Israelis might get killed. But you know what, I'm in the middle of a power struggle right now. And if we have a war, the right wing always rises in popularity. These are the most craven, despicable people on earth. They don't actually care about our citizens. All right, and last thing, guys, they have the capability of sinking our ships.

Again, we think in our infinite arrogance that they can't, what if they sink an aircraft carrier? What are we going to do then? There's thousands of people on aircraft carriers, and then America's going to see red, and we're going to want to bomb the living crap out of Iran. And then we're in the middle of the war, and no one can stop it. If they sink an aircraft carrier, we're neck deep in a war, and no force on earth can stop it. And then we have a war four times the size of Iraq. This is why Trump should have never won the presidency. He's too stupid, does not understand the consequences of his actions.

All he cares about is himself. Oh, I gotta get reelected, I gotta distract people from impeachment. And he's driven by his ego. Oh, I'll show the Iranians how strong I am. And he doesn't think through what's gonna happen next. They sink a ship and we're all sunk. So, and it is very, very possible. help us. Let's hope that it doesn't get to that, but that's exactly what we're worried about.

So when we come back from the break, I actually want to stay on the topic of the importance of electing the right leader in America. And so we will give you the response from Democratic presidential contenders. And look, unsurprisingly, Bernie Sanders really does shine through from all the rest. And I'll show you why. We'll be right back. Thanks for listening to the full episode of the Young Turks. Support our work. Listen to ad-free. access members, only bonus content, and more by subscribing to Apple Podcasts at apple.com slash t-y-t. I'm your host, Shank Huger, and I'll see you soon.