The Young Turks - TYT Extended Clip - January 6th, 2020

Episode Date: January 7, 2020

Trump is threatening to commit war crimes against Iran. Ana Kasparian and John Iadarola, hosts of The Young Turks, break it down. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

You're listening to The Young Turks, the online news show. Make sure to follow and rate our show with not one, not two, not three, not four, but five stars. You're awesome. Thank you. Hey, we know you probably hit play to escape your business banking, not think about it. But what if we told you there was a way to skip over the pressures of banking? By matching with the TD Small Business Account Manager, you can get the proactive business banking advice and support your business needs. Ready to press play? Get up to $2,700 when you'll open select small business banking products. Yep, that's $2,700 to turn up your business.

Visit TD.com slash small business match to learn more. Conditions apply. Hey, guys, you've heard of the Young Turks podcast because you're listening to it right now. But make sure that you subscribe and give it a five-star rating if you like it. Thank you for listening. Welcome to the Young Turks. I'm your host Anna Kasparian. Joining in is John Ida Rola. Hello, Anna. Hey, John. How's it going? Pretty good. How's the damage report? It's going well. We had a good weekend. Yes, definitely. Make sure you check out John's show damage report. Oh, especially Wednesday, where we're going to be joined by Representative Ro Khanna, who's going to break down his effort to stop all-out war with Iran. Very nice. In fact, we're going to talk about Iran quite a bit on today's show for obvious reasons, lots of different news stories broke over the weekend and today in regard to Iran. So we'll talk about that and more. There's some good news out of New Hampshire and Iowa,

for our preferred candidate, and I say- Michael Bennett. Because John and I have both endorsed Bernie Sanders, so we'll get to that story in the second hour of the show. But before we get to all of that, I do want to make a few announcements. First, let me start off by saying that aspiration is where it's at. If you're looking to put your money in a financial institution that actually invests ethically, they will not put your money in any type of shady industry, including the fossil fuel industry.

And it's a great way to start off your new year in an ethical fashion. So if you're interested, go to Aspiration.com slash TYT. They also give you some extra perks and rewards if you shop ethically using your debit card. So check them out. All right, with that said, let's talk about Iran. As you know, the Geneva Convention's outlaw attacks on cultural objects on cultural objects in places of worship. Our own DOD war manual discusses protection of cultural property.

So why is the president threatening Iran with war crimes? And that is exactly what Donald Trump did over the weekend in a series of tweets. He threatened Iran if Iran had the audacity to retaliate against him and his assassination of the country's top military commander. Now, that was the story that broke last week, but unfortunately the situation has further devolved over the weekend. Now, in a series of tweets, Trump said, quote, Iran is talking very boldly about targeting certain USA assets as revenge for our ridding the world of their country.

terrorist leader who had just killed an American and badly wounded many others, not to mention all of the other people he had killed over his lifetime, including recently hundreds of Iranian protesters. He was already attacking our embassy and preparing for additional hits in other locations. Iran has been nothing but problems for many years, let this serve as a warning that if Iran strikes any Americans or American assets, we have targeted, and he's very specific here, 52 Iranian sites representing the 52 American hostages taken by Iran many years ago, some at a very high level and important to Iran and the Iranian culture, and those targets and Iran itself

will be hit, and this is of course in all caps, will be hit very fast and very hard, the USA wants no more threats. So again, this is in response to Iran threatening the United States following Donald Trump's decision to assassinate the top commander of Iran's military. Now, in order for the executive branch to unilaterally go about doing something like that, they need to prove that the target was an imminent threat. Our intelligence has not proven that. The Trump administration has not proven that. And while, of course, everyone knows that Soleimani, the target who was assassinated, was a bad guy.

The fact of the matter is, there are many bad guys throughout the world that we do business with. And in this case, we need to think about strategy and how Donald Trump's actions could lead to a domino effect and further escalate tensions among the United States and the Iranian government. Yeah, it's sort of like we're playing a game of how many war crimes can we like commit in one week, basically. They trotted out like almost an insultingly feeble case for why they desperately needed to kill him at that time in that place.

That has fallen apart in as many possible ways as an excuse could. And we saw that New York Times reporting over the weekend about how about a week before there had been a desire from Trump to have some sort of reprisal for the attack that killed the American defense contractor. And so they gave him a range of options with the most extreme being killing him. And he originally turned it down and he was thinking about other things. And then he got mad when he saw the protesters outside of the American embassy and then decided to go with that option.

None of that is consistent with, he was about to do something we had to take him out. Correct. Then why would you go through all that rigmarole leading up to it? You wouldn't do any of that. And so, like he's, it's almost like he's trying to distract us from the crime of launching us into a potential war in an unjustified fashion without alerting Congress by promising to commit future crimes. That's exactly right.

That almost certainly he'll be pushed into the position of having to make good on because the idea that Iran isn't going to do anything seems hard to believe. And so when they do, he's now made this promise. He either has to back off the brink or commit further war crimes. And knowing how Donald Trump easily gets goaded into extreme positions, like for instance assassinating the top commander for Iran's military, this doesn't look good. But I wanna be clear, right now there's a lot of speculation as to how Iran will retaliate. I'm not saying to avoid taking those threats seriously.

But we don't know how Iran is going to retaliate. We don't know if they're gonna retaliate through direct military action or if they're gonna just rely on what they've been doing, which is attacking the United States through their proxies. Now let me give you some details into why this would be a crime, a war crime if Donald Trump and the US government attacked or targeted some of these cultural sites. Destroying cultural sites could violate international agreements such as the 1954 hands. convention for the protection of cultural property in the event of armed conflict.

With that said, George Stephanopoulos talked to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and asked about it. And here's Mike Pompeo making a very unconvincing argument about how the Trump administration is not going to break any laws. Yeah, we'll behave lawfully, we'll behave inside the system. We always have and we always will, George, you know that. The president was getting to this point in the past. Previous administrations had allowed Shia militias to take shots at us, and at best, we responded in theater, trying to challenge and attack everybody who was running around with an AK-47 or a piece of indirect artillery. We've made a very different approach. We've told the Iranian regime enough. You can't get away with using proxy forces and think your homeland will be safe and secure.

We're going to respond against the actual decision makers, the people who are causing this threat from the Islamic Republic of Iran. That's not what Trump said. That's not what Trump said. So we're going to show you some evidence. We've already shown you some, but I'm going to show you further evidence showing that the messaging, as always, is inconsistent between Donald Trump and members of his own cabinet. And luckily, George Stepanopoulos did push back a little bit in this interview. And so let's take a quick look at that. So just to be clear, when the president said he had 52 Iranian sites, including sites important of the Iranian culture, that wasn't accurate?

George, I've seen what we are planning in terms of the target set. I'm sure the Department of Defense is continuing to develop options. The American people should know that every target that we strike will be a lawful target. And again, I want to reiterate what Donald Trump initially tweeted was very conflicted with what Mike Pompeo said in that interview. And then later, when Trump was asked again about his threat to target 52 cultural sites in Iran, he decided to double down. He said, quote, they're allowed to kill our people.

They're allowed to torture and maim our people. They're allowed to use roadside bombs and blow up our people. And we're not allowed to touch their cultural sites. It doesn't work that way. Yeah, that's exactly how it works. I also want to be clear, you know, the way that some of the warhawks in the United States present this makes it seem as though the United States is never the aggressor, that we don't kill and maim people in other countries.

But if you thought that Obama's drone wars were terrible, get a load of how Trump has expanded those drone wars and has further assisted Saudi Arabia in the genocide in Yemen. So don't buy into this notion that the United States is full of like these peacemakers that are just trying to push for democracy around the world. In reality, the United States, under the Trump administration especially, has been the aggressor, which has led to the flare up intentions between the U.S. and Iran, and now Iraq as well. Yeah, and think about what a bizarre frame of mind you have to be, what a bizarre worldview where you say, and we're not allowed to touch their cultural sites, why do you want to touch

their cultural? What's the, what is the purpose of a war? And in a war, what is the purpose of military action? He seems to believe it's, oh, they have something and I want to break it. They have this thing that they like and I want to break it, not I want to degrade their military ability, take away their ability to stop our planes from occupying their airspace or take out soldiers that are advancing on our position. No tactical or strategic value to it, he just wants to break something. And so when I go on Twitter and I say that this is, like Fox is not just interested in a war with Iran, they're interested in an explicit war on Islam, this is what that looks like.

It's, oh, this Islamic country has things that they like that are important to their culture and their religion, we want to break them. It doesn't matter if it has anything to do with their military. And by the way, the thing about hitting a cultural site is that's not where generals hang out, that's where civilians hang out. And so what they are saying is we want to kill civilians and do damage them. It is a terroristic threat, that's all it is. And all across Fox News, it has been an encouraging, like just they could not be more excited

at the possibility that he is going to dispense with these rules of engagement and just start wildly killing civilians, which is something he's been promising to do. he was running for the presidency. Now, look, John, you and I and other hosts at TYT are very critical of people who just willy-nilly throw out words like terrorism. And you just use the word terrorism in regard to what Donald Trump is threatening here. Now, I think that terroristic threat is the perfect way to describe it because the United States government was very critical of ISIS when it did the exact same thing, when it actually carried

it out in Syria. So I want to take you to a video featuring archaeologist Michael Dante, and he talked about how ISIS was destroying cultural sites in Syria. And he explains why they were doing that. Take a look. Sources on the ground in Tadmore claim that there will be more of these ISIL destructions so that they can gain media attention. And to take away some of the attention from their recent failures in other areas in Iraq and Syria. You think some of it does have to do with failures? That's why they might be doing this?

Yes, I think sometimes that they're trying to control the message and to divert attention away from territorial losses to Kurdish forces in the north and in some other other theaters in the conflict zone. It serves as a very powerful ideological tool for the organization for recruiting, and it's a form of psychological warfare. And ISIL believes that this type of destruction of pre-Islamic heritage is primarily targeting the West. So when you are threatening to do to a sovereign country, what ISIS did to Syria did to Syria,

And Iraq? I mean, what does that make you? And so like, you have no moral leg to stand on. And every action that Trump has taken since the beginning of his administration in regard to foreign policy related to Iran has done nothing but escalate tensions and lead us closer and closer to war. In fact, his decision, and look, again, I just want to be clear, right? All of these democratic lawmakers are like, oh, no, no, Salamani was a bad guy, he was a bad

guy. to preface their statement with, he's a bad guy. Yeah, we got it. Everyone knows he's a bad guy. There's a ton of bad guys throughout the world. But you have to separate that from, you know, sound strategic foreign policy. And what Trump did has escalated the potential of full blown war with a country that has military capability that is underestimated in our media right now, okay?

Four times the size of the Iraq military, their weaponry is much more advanced. This is not an easy thing that we would engage in. The only way this would be a quick war as it's being sold to the American people in mainstream media is if we were willing to drop a nuclear bomb on Iran. Which he has expressed interest in multiple times. Which is terrifying, right? So this is a disaster and again, Trump isn't really thinking about strategy. He didn't even know who Soleimani was prior to winning the election.

Or probably the strike. Or even right now. I mean, I wouldn't be surprised if he was still in the dark about it. But I really want to drive this point home. Here's a CNN video from August of 2015 where they're talking about the destruction of cultural sites in Syria and Iraq done by ISIS. The Bell Temple, dating back to the first century when Palmyra, the city of Palms, was the crossroads between Roman and Persian empires.

Yet it is no more the UN has confirmed. This image is from last week when ISIS leveled a neighboring temple, Balchamene. named after a Phoenician god. They had long threatened to drag this vital trace of irreplaceable history into their world of destruction and did with crude devices. ISIS's obsession with destroying what is dear to all other cultures has not stopped at property here.

ISIS, many say, I'm in an obsessive competition with themselves to outdo their last ghastly outrage. It was with some relish. They released a video of their alone. elaborate dismembering of the Iraqi city of Nimrod and of Mosul's museum. Millennia of thought and endurance wiped away by a culture, worshipping death and the seconds of dark fascination they can conjure with videos on social media.

I mean, we can we can just replace ISIS with, you know, what Trump is threatening to do in Iran. How is that situation going to make anyone safer? No, and we know it hasn't. I mean, we know that this has materially made it more difficult for us to fight with what remains of ISIS. They don't care. All of their stated foreign policy goals, they say that's what they want, but even though

this is producing the opposite, but they don't care. They say they don't want Iran to have a nuclear weapon. They don't care, this actually makes it more likely that they'll have one. They care, it's the same as the, it's trolling people on Twitter, it's, I want to cause pain, that's it. I want to see people I don't like being hurt. And if it's, you know, insulting someone on Twitter, if it's bombing a cultural site, if it's killing civilians, it's all the same.

We're not supposed to call these people deplorable. If Trump said, I will kill hundreds of thousands of civilians, Pete Hegsith would be defending him on Fox News the next day. All of them would. He wouldn't lose anyone. He campaign saying, I'm gonna kill the family members of suspected terrorists. He promised on the campaign trail we'd commit war crimes. He started doing it as soon as he got in office.

He surrounded himself. His new sidekick is a guy who he wouldn't know if he had not committed war crimes. That's all it is. His son posed with that gun that had the crusader helm, like carved into it. They want crusades, that's what they want. And all it's going to do is, first of all, it not only breaks international laws, but it makes U.S. troops abroad less safe. It deteriorates relationships that we've built with allies abroad, including with the Iraqi

government. The Iraqi parliament has now voted to oust U.S. troops from the U.S. troops from the Iraq. the country. I mean, the situation continues to devolve. And it's because you have a child as the leader of this country making decisions that are ignorant, that aren't fact-based, and simply based on impulse and emotion and his feelings. And it's terrifying because people's lives are literally at stake right now, innocent people's lives, because of his terrible decisions. Now, I do want to move on to a different part of the story. And it has to do do with some of the ramifications here in the United States, if you do happen to be an Iranian

American. So Iranian Americans are reporting that they've been detained for questioning at U.S. borders following escalated tensions between the United States and Iran. Now, of course, this follows the U.S. government's decision to assassinate the top military commander in Iran, Qasem Soleimani. And so the reports are actually from Washington State. The Washington State chapter of the Council on American Islamic Relations, a prominent Muslim civil liberties group, said on Sunday that more than 60 people of Iranian descent, including

American citizens, were held for hours long periods of time for questioning over the weekend at the peace arc checkpoint in Blaine, Washington. So that's along the border with Canada. And the Iranian Americans who were coming back to the United States were apparently at some snazzy concert, an Iranian pop concert in Vancouver. over the weekend. So they go to the pop concert, they want to come back. Suspicious.

And as they're coming back, they get stopped by Customs and Border Patrol. And in some cases, they've been detained for nine hours for questioning, right? And they get asked all sorts of inappropriate questions about their views on U.S. aggression in Iran, or toward Iran, I should say. So a source that U.S. Customs and Border Protection had reported that the agency received a national directive from the Department of Homeland Security to report and detain anyone with Iranian heritage entering the country who is deemed potentially suspicious or adversarial, regardless of citizenship status.

And I want to be clear, many of these individuals who were detained for questioning were American citizens. Len Saunders, an immigration attorney in Blaine, said his contacts through CBP indicated that headquarters in Washington had ordered new vetting procedures, which appeared to be directed toward people born in Iran that require port directors to sign off on admitting anyone held for questioning. Now, border patrol is completely denying this, even though there have been a few people who spoke to immigration lawyers and reporters on condition of anonymity.

But there were examples of people who were detained for as long as nine hours. I'll give you those details in a minute, but John, do you want to jump in? Yeah, I guess we have to know more and to know, is this something that's going to continue and everything. I mean, nobody sees this story and is particularly surprised. I mean, look at how the suspicion with which people from that area of the world have been greeted since Donald Trump became president. That was one of his chief priorities, was blocking anyone from that entire stretch of the earth. And so, yeah, I have no doubt that they're going to treat these people as if they're not American or they're suspect in some fashion, obviously. When really, like,

if your goal is to figure out what do people really think, or is it possible, they harbor dangerous thoughts. I say detain people in Magahats and ask them what they think about Trump wanting to kill civilians. Because if we're going to be surrounded by people that think it's okay to target civilians in war, I would like to know what those people think. I mean, we've seen Trump supporters target civilians in non-war situations, including at synagogues, mosques, churches, Walmarts, all sorts of places throughout the country.

And as we know, through FBI reporting and data, right-wing extremism. in the United States is extreme, it's unmitigated at this point. The Trump administration refuses to call it out for what it is, and people are dying as a result of that. But no, this is, we're talking about U.S. citizens, right? Like Donald Trump and the right wingers who support him don't care about your citizenship status. They don't care if you're here legally. What they do care about is whether or not you fall under their very specific categories of

of what is deemed an acceptable American. If you happen to be of any other dissent that they're unhappy with, they'll totally make excuses for this, they don't even apologize for it. It's incredible. These are American citizens, this shouldn't happen to anyone, okay? They're American citizens though, who are being pulled aside, detained for hours on end, and they're asked specific questions about how they feel about Trump's foreign policy toward Iran.

Okay, so let me ask you something. If one of these people who was detained said, I don't agree with Trump's aggression toward Iran, it's further escalating war in the region. Then what? Then what? What happens? Because in my opinion, I mean, I know I'm not like a constitutional scholar, but this goes against our First Amendment protections.

We should be able to have our own views and exercise our own political speech in regard to how our own government is acting, right? And if we just sit by and allow- On July 18th, get exciting. This is big! For the summer's biggest adventure. I think I just smurf my pants. That's a little too excited.

Sorry. Smurfs, only dinner's July 18th. How this to happen and think like, oh, I don't know, like, maybe it's happening, maybe it's not, maybe we just move on to another story. Like how much are we going to allow this stuff to progress? Yeah. Yeah, well, think about, like, we're talking about this story right now. Somewhere in the White House, what is Stephen Miller thinking about all this?

Like, they already set up concentration camps on the border. You think that they would never round up people, American citizens. And I hope, I hope that in six months or a year, Donald Trump's out of office and anything we say now looks like crazy talk. Why were you worried about things? I would love to be wrong, but this is a fascist movement. There's no limits on what his base will support. I know I say this about a lot of things, but if they said, you know what, things are getting

really tense with Iran, and we have unspecified intelligence that we're going to evade any question about, and we think that we need to detain people and just figure it out over the course of a few weeks. What are they going to bowl? Lindsay Graham's going to be like, nope, this is too far. I'm not with you, Trump. Marco Rubio is going to ask tough questions of Trump. No, they would go along with it.

They would go along with it. I mean, you've seen the Republican Party, through the impeachment investigation, throw long-standing allies of theirs under the bus if they have any of any courage to speak out against Trump's actions, you know, during this impeachment investigation, they don't care, they don't care, they care about their own political careers, and they know that speaking out against Donald Trump, just as Justin Amash did, means that you could lose your political career. And to them, that political career is much more important than the Constitution or protecting the rights of their constituents, including the First Amendment right, that they cry and moan about

every time a comedian is criticized too harshly in the press. Okay, so they feel much more passionately about protecting someone who wants to put out jokes that people don't like, as opposed to everyday Americans who should be able to practice their First Amendment rights. Anyway, I want to give you a specific detail or a specific individual who had tweeted about his experience. He's a historian. He specifically focuses on Iranian history.

His name is John, it's an Armenian name, but it's hard to pronounce. Gazvinian, I'm sorry, I can't say it in like an English way because I'm Armenian, so every time I see it, I can't say it in anything but. I know, I know. But anyway, he had tweeted about his experience and it went viral. He said, well, just landed at JFK and no surprise got taken to the special side room and got asked, among other things, how I feel about the situation with Iran. I wanted to be like, my book comes out in September, pre-order now on Amazon. on, then he included a link to his book as well. Now, he said that the first CBP officer flipped through his passport and asked him, when

was the last time you were in Libya? To which he replied, I've never been to Libya. The officer quickly corrected himself to say, Iran, you know, same country, not a big deal, to which he told him that he had last been there in 2009. He was then asked more questions in a private secondary screening, he said the first time he's ever been held up when returning to the United States. Now, he really underplayed the experience once the tweet went viral. He was interviewed about it of CNN, and he didn't want to make a big deal about it.

But I can kind of understand why. I mean, when you're dealing with this level of fascist behavior from a government, you know, you have a lot to lose, and it's terrifying. Like, he didn't expect that to go viral, but it's what he experienced, and I don't think he's lying about it. Yeah, no, the Trump administration has bought it. absolutely no goodwill from the American people. This is crazy.

So that's what we're dealing with right now. I'm sure all those free speech warriors out there, you know, the ones that were crying about Berkeley students protesting their conservative speeches on campuses are, you know, going to go out there and really fight for the rights of these Iranian Americans who are U.S. citizens and literally did nothing wrong, nothing. They didn't even do anything political. They just went to a concert. They existed.

They existed. That's all it took. Anyway, Dave Rubin is a disgusting coward. We got to take a break. We'll be right. We need to talk about a relatively new show called Un-F-Inging 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 UNFTR podcast takes a sledgehammer to what you thought you knew about some of the nation's most sacred historical cows. But don't just take my word for it. The New York Times described UNFTR as consistently compelling and educational, aiming to challenge conventional wisdom and upend the historical narratives that were taught in school. For as the great philosopher Yoda once put it,

You must unlearn what you have learned. And that's true whether you're in Jedi training or you're uprooting and exposing all the propaganda and disinformation you've been fed over the course of your lifetime. So search for UNFDR in your podcast app today. and get ready to get informed, angered, and entertained, all at the same time. Back. Welcome back to TYT, Anna and John with you. For our members, I'm going to read a few of your comments now.

But don't be afraid to send in your comments during the show. I'm going to do my best to read some of them in the context of the stories we're covering. So we can include your opinions as we cover these stories. But for now, I'll read a few of them. Jay Hufford says, it seems there's a major dissension in the Pentagon about Trump's actions. First, we have reports that top brass were shocked Trump did that. You're right, that was a big story. And now the US military sent a letter to Iraq officials that we respect your sovereign

decision to order our departure, which Esper had to deny, you're absolutely right. Apparently it was unsigned and unsent, or I'm sorry, unsigned and sent by mistake. Really, a letter like that gets sent to Iraq by mistake? Yeah, you're right. There's a lot of, I see a lot of dissent within the Pentagon for good reason. It's not as though people working in the Pentagon are in favor of keeping, you know, Iran's top military commander alive because they think he's a good guy. It's about strategy and it's about the type of ramifications that follow an aggression

like that. Yeah, well, and also earlier today, Chief of Staff, Desper, resigns. ambassador of Afghanistan also left. So it's a time of confidence and stability in Middle East foreign policy. Jesus Christ. Gabby Marita says Iran shouldn't be able to get away with using proxy forces. So will we be withdrawing our support of Saudi proxies fighting Yemen? Such a good point.

Such a good point. I mean look, we engage in proxy wars all the time. We did it in Syria, we're doing it in Yemen, there's no question about it. And Lieutenant MacMig, McG, yeah, Lieutenant MacMcG says, just donated using t-yt.com slash yes, you guys, all of you, even the ones behind the scenes, we never get to meet. Absolutely, thank you so much for donating. And you know what, if you're interested in helping TYT, wait what? Edwin, like, he like gave a signal and I was like, yeah, let's keep it that way.

Anyway, thank you. Actually, you know what? I'm gonna read super chats and then we'll move on. Little Mac says, I decided not to buy an appetizer during my lunch today. Not only does it help with my weight, those safe funds were used to make this chat and support, oh, and to support TYT, the only truth tellers I know in news, thank you so much, Little Mac. Craig Reeves says, if the Trump administration had conclusive evidence, Soleimani was an imminent

threat, they would have presented their case to Congress, you're absolutely right. The fact that they didn't should lead us to believe they were hiding something. I mean, all you really need to do is watch Secretary of State Mike Pompeo's interview with CNN last Friday. And every time he was asked to provide some details or some evidence, he got very uncomfortable. It was very noticeable. And so you're right, if they had evidence, if they had the intel, they couldn't wait to show it to the American people and make their case.

But that's not what happened. And it's super suspicious, especially when you look at all the other news stories. in the lead up to what happened last week. You know, I mean, all of the different accusations at the U.S. government lodged against Iran without any evidence. And then those accusations later faded into like the ether. All right, let's move on to some other news. In fact, we're going to flesh out more of this Iran story.

Actually, do we have a cold open? No, we don't. Okay, the repercussions in response to Trump's assassination of Iran's top military commander have begun. Okay, so the Iraqi parliament has actually voted to oust thousands of U.S. service members that are currently stationed in Iraq. Also, President Trump, as we reported earlier, had threatened to bomb or destroy some of the cultural sites in Iran. And he is threatening Baghdad, Iraq with sanctions if they push U.S. troops out of the country.

Now, why would Iraq want to push U.S. troops out of the country when Iraq invited the United States to come help them defeat ISIS. Well, a little fact that I think is super relevant to these discussions doesn't get mentioned often. The Iranian military, right, under the direction of the man that was just assassinated by Donald Trump, also assisted in defeating ISIS in Iraq. So you have U.S. forces, you have Iranian forces, and you have the Iraqi government working together in order to defeat ISIS in Iraq.

And so Iraq actually has a pretty, the Iraqi government, I should say, has a decent relationship with Iran because there are some common interest there. And Donald Trump and the US government decided to do this drone strike that effectively assassinated the top commander of the Iranian military. And they did it without working with Iraq, notifying Iraq, they just did it unilaterally. So that is a problem. And that's the reason why parliament wants to oust service. members. Also, hundreds of thousands of mourners packed Iran's streets to pay respect to

Soleimani. That was the top commander who was assassinated by Donald Trump. I have more details, but I wanted to open this. Yeah, and I would also say, look, they certainly will have concerns about long-term stability if they allow the U.S. to stay in the region. I mean, any confidence that they might have had in Donald Trump's ability to prosecute this conflict or any conflict in the region is probably going to be pretty shaken by what they've experienced over the past week. But in the short term, too, if they expect that Iran is going to attempt to strike back in some fashion. The closest, easiest way to do that would be against U.S. service members in Iraq.

And there's an incredible likelihood that if they were to do that, there's the possibility of collateral damage against Iraqis in the area. So just having those American soldiers there potentially endangers Iraqis as well. Exactly. And I also want to note, you know, in an effort to garner more support toward this aggressive, you know, foreign policy against Iran, the government keeps to. telling the American people that the people of Iran are very happy with what happened to Soleimani.

Don't believe that for a second, because in that B-roll video that we just showed you right now, that was hundreds of thousands of people who took to the streets to mourn his death. No, I'm not saying that to make Soleimani out to be some great person, but it's clear that what Donald Trump did here actually is counterproductive to his stated goals, because prior to this assassination, there were mass protests in Iran. And that is exactly what the US government wanted. So the Trump administration implements these harsh sanctions that cripples the economy in Iran. And the people start protesting, obviously they're hungry, they're angry with how the government

is handling things. And then once Trump did this assassination, the entire country is united now. So it's just amazing how little strategy Donald Trump has. How little knowledge he has, how he has no intellectual curiosity about the matter. It is so, it is so uniquely 100% counterproductive to all of his and his supporters stated goals in the region, which should lead one to believe that he is either uniquely incompetent or is lying about what his actual goals are. And unifying them against the US, that's bad if you actually want some sort of renewed,

more pro-American diplomatic overtures, if you want a better version of the Iran nuclear deal, which he's been sort of implying, like, it was just, it was, it was too easy on Iran. But if what you actually want is war with them, this is just about the best thing you possibly could have done. It's exactly right. And Iran has announced that they will now work on their military, I'm sorry, their nuclear capability. Why wouldn't they?

I mean, Donald Trump is the one who decided to pull out of the nuclear deal and then implement these sanctions. So at this point, especially with the aggression toward Iran, the country really has no incentive to avoid building any type of nuclear weapons. Yeah, and one reason that they were willing to stop was to get out from under previous sanctions. Well, the sanctions are on, and they weren't going for the nuclear weapon. So why have the sanctions and no nukes? Why not at least go for the nukes?

And if you're worried that Donald Trump or some other crazed Republican could actually attack and try to invade the country, the nukes are the best possible deterrent you could have. So I want to give you some news from the Iraqi Prime Minister. The new BMO VI Porter MasterCard is your ticket to more. More perks, more points, more flights, more of all the things you want in a travel rewards card, and then some. Get your ticket to more with the new BMO ViPorter MasterCard and get up to $2,400 in value in your first 13 months.

Terms and conditions apply, visit bemo.com slash the iPorter to learn more. Who tends to agree with Parliament in wanting U.S. troops out. The Iraqi Prime Minister told Parliament that Iraq was grateful for the assistance the U.S. had provided in fighting ISIS, but he's now recommending that the 5,200 U.S. troops stationed there permanently leave the country. The Defense Department officials said that because of attacks on Iraqi and U.S. bases over the last two months, the U.S. would be suspending support for Iraq's anti-ISIS operations and training of Iraqi forces.

So there's a little bit of inconsistent reporting when it comes to this part of the story. So the Pentagon had initially sent some notification to Iraq indicating that they'd be willing to pull U.S. forces out. And then later, there was a statement issued saying that, no, no, no, this was a mistake. We're just going to move some of the troops around. We're gonna reposition them. So it's unclear what they're really gonna do. But one thing that is clear is that the Iraqis do not want U.S. troops in their country,

considering how things have gone down. And then I wanna give you one final response from Donald Trump. This is what he told reporters aboard Air Force One. If they do ask us to leave, and he's talking about Iraqis here, if they do ask us to leave, if we don't do it in a very friendly basis, we will charge them sanctions like they've never seen before before ever, it'll make Iranian sanctions look somewhat tame. If there's any hostility that they do anything we think is inappropriate, we are going to put sanctions on Iraq, very big sanctions on Iraq.

So. We're living a nightmare, but I don't even know what to say at this point. Yeah. I'm shocked he didn't threaten to bomb them, honestly. It's just, it's so frustrating. frustrating that we're, I mean, the Bush administration was a nightmare. And this just continues to devol. Like, I didn't think things could get as bad as the Bush administration. We've been saying for years, he's a madman. He's an actual madman. And he's proven

more power than any other human ever on earth. Yeah. All right. Well, I do want to read a few member comments that, yes, I want to read a few member comments. And if you're interested in becoming a member and chiming in on our stories in real time, you can do so by going to t-y-t.com slash join, and says American imperialism for the loss. This kind of move creates the kind of people that become martyrs. And, you know, Solomani, while he was a bad guy, is being mourned as a martyr right now. Super Bernie Bro says, it's funny how the right is accusing Dems of being unpatriotic because they oppose the assassination of Soleimani.

They seem to forget that Dems were fine when al-Baghdadi was killed. And you're right about that. So it's not just about doing away with bad people around the world. It's about doing so in a strategic way that doesn't lead to further war. And what Donald Trump did with Soleimani will lead to more war, will lead to escalated tensions in the Middle East. And it's abundantly clear that he hasn't really considered that before, you know, agreeing to that drone strike that killed Solomon.

And even with the leader. of a terrorist group, you have to consider the likely consequences of taking them out. But we were in active war with ISIS, al-Qaeda in the region, in other regions as well. Like, we're already in conflict with those people. It's not the same thing. Right. All right. Well, we got to take a break. When we come back, Fox and Friends chimes in on this whole situation. What does the bright and intelligent Ansley Earhart have to say about it? We'll be right back. At TYT, we frequently talk about all the ways that big tech companies are taking control of our online lives, constantly monitoring us and storing and selling our data. But that doesn't mean we have to let them.

It's possible to stay anonymous online and hide your data from the prying eyes of big tech. And one of the best ways is with ExpressVPN. ExpressVPN hides your IP address, making your active ID more difficult to trace and sell the advertisers. ExpressVPN also encrypts 100% of your network data to protect you from eavesdroppers and cybercriminals. And it's also easy to install. A single mouse click protects all your devices. But listen, guys, this is important. ExpressVPN is rated number one by CNET and Wired magazine. So take back control of your life online and secure your data with a top VPN solution available, ExpressVPN. And if you go to ExpressVPN.com slash T-Y-T, you can get three extra months for free with this exclusive link just for T-Y-T fans.

That's E-X-P-R-E-S-S-V-N dot com slash T-YT. Check it out today. We hope you're enjoying this free clip from the Young Turks. The whole show and more exclusive content while supporting independent media become a member at t-y-t.com slash join today. In the meantime, enjoy this free section. Welcome back to TYT. I love all of the comments that you guys are sending us. In fact, I'm going to read one quick super chat, and this is from Michael Parker.

All it says is great reporting with three exclamation marks. Michael, thank you. Wow. You know, it's, foreign policy stories are always a little risky on news shows because conventional wisdom is that people aren't interested in foreign policy. But I love that you guys are, I love that you support the show, and I love that you appreciate our commentary on it. It's also risky because in the vast majority of cases, the people reporting on it don't

know what they're talking about. Well, yeah, which is fine if you acknowledge that. Yeah, like the story, and we took, we owned up to it. I mean, it wasn't our fault because we, the only thing that we did wrong was trying, New York Times reporting, which I guess you should never do. But yeah, when they were reporting on Venezuela and there was like a doctored video that I was naive enough to believe, so be skeptical. And I'm doing my best to be even more skeptical these days.

So a few TYT lives, Jay writes in and says, it's nice to see that Iranian officials are making the distinction between the American people and the government in some of their public statements. Don't usually see that sort of nuance in any government official statements from either side. You don't even see that from Trump now. I mean, we've never seen that from Trump. Yeah. I mean, the man said that he was willing to murder the family members of terrorists, right? So just guilt by association, even if it's like a, like, does I include children? Yeah. I mean. Yeah, chosen by God, that position, Trump plus. Corn Pop's right hand smacks says, Pop was a bad dude.

And he knew a lot of bad guys. All right, watch Trump say he had a bigger crowd at his inauguration than Soleimani had at his funeral. You think he wouldn't? All right, a quick announcement. And this is a win-win. I'm actually going to sign up for this myself. Go ahead.

I almost made a really dark joke. Don't. No, dark jokes. Let's let's go on. Happy time. Well, maybe. No. So, TYT has launched what's known as the TAP program.

And it's a way to sign up our viewers. to become affiliates who help us sell memberships. Now look, here's the thing about the affiliates program that I love, right? Now if you sign up a bunch of people and you get like a one time like payment for it, kind of, I mean like selling is hard, it's hard to be a salesperson, but you get a payment for every member you sign up as long as they're members every month. Every month going forward. So here's what I'm gonna do.

You mean the first month? No, no, every month. As long as they continue being members, the people that you sign up. cap on how many months, though? As long as they're members, there is no cap. No cap. Yeah, so our engineers are amazing. And by the way, you guys did that.

You guys helped us pay for engineers who, you know, gave you wonderful products like the TYT app. I highly recommend you download it if you haven't already. But what I love about this tap program is that they found a way to keep track of all the members that you've sold members to. And you get paid for those members every month as long as they remain members. Yeah. That's amazing.

I don't entirely get it yet, but it sounds good. And I'm gonna try to sell membership. Why wouldn't you? I'm going to. But it's not, but anybody can do it. Huh? Anybody can do it. Anybody can do it.

So we've got 332 TYT affiliates already. Oh wow. And we have a goal of signing up or getting 2,500 TYT affiliates to sign up. If you're interested, please go to TYT.com slash win-win. And this really truly is a win-win. because you help keep TYT sustainable through members, the only people that we really want to be accountable to. And you also get paid. You get paid for doing this.

So it's wonderful. Check it out. I'm going to actually participate myself, and I'll give you the details later. Go to tyt.com slash win-win. We should compete. I will get crushed. I'm already so competitive. It takes a lot of energy out of me, but maybe, maybe.

All right, let's do the next story. It's so interesting that people are critical of the president's decisions of our intentions. intelligence community's decisions, our general's decisions. They want details. General Teta said, well, they can't have it. They can't, everything can't be made public. That is Ainsley Earhart, unironically defending U.S. intelligence when it comes to the so-called intel that they're citing to justify Trump's escalation of war with Iran.

Now, he did that by assassinating Iran's top military commander. And it's amazing because, as we all know, through the Russia investigation and now the impeachment investigation, Donald Trump has accused the intelligence community of being part of the so-called deep state over and over again. He doesn't trust the intelligence community. Even when they do provide evidence to indicate that he has obstructed justice and done all sorts of nefarious things. But nonetheless, let's hear what Fox and Friends had to say in its full context. It's so interesting that people are critical of the president's decisions, of our intelligence community's decisions, our general's decisions.

They want details. General Tata said, well, they can't have it. They can't, everything can't be made public. We heard Pompeo over the weekend saying everything that we have, the intelligence community has. He said, I ran the CIA at one point. We can't release everything. We can't release all of our intelligence information.

We'll release as much as we can, but you just have to trust us, basically. And General Tata said it makes us more safe. He agreed with killing this general, this evil terrorist. He says it goes to show how ridiculous our divide is that they say, support Soleimani over the president's decision. It counters everything that I learned as a soldier. Just keep in mind, if you're going to be critical of the president for not hitting Iran after they killed, took out our drone, and not hitting Iran after they rocketed the Saudi oil bases, and not going after they were trying to minding the Gulf, you can also be critical of the president

when he does take action in that area. Yeah, they go, well, how could the president let our embassy get breached and not do anything? Well, he does something, and these same people are going, oh, my good, how could the president do something? Who is that person that had those two positions? So I am going to go through a timeline of what happened with U.S. Iranian relations under the Trump administration. Because the way that this is all being portrayed in the mainstream media, not in all cases, there has been some good reporting, certainly not on Fox. But the way that it's mostly being portrayed is Iran's the aggressor, Iran's the threat. Trump had to do it.

He's protecting the American people. That's the narrative that they want the American people to believe in order to garner support for yet another disastrous, endless war. But if you look at the timeline under the Trump administration, our government has been the aggressor. And it's actually kind of astonishing how much restraint the Iranis have had in response to Trump. And I'm gonna prove that to you in just a second. But John, I wanted to get your commentary on that ridiculous exchange. They're idiots. And that's what their job is to be idiots.

They, ah. No one supports Soleimani. Let's just be clear about that, right? So don't buy into the like the fake like narrative that they're setting up where if you criticize Trump's actions, that means you're, you're a Solomani fan. You have a Solomani poster in your bedroom. You go to like Solomani rock concerts. No, no. Everyone acknowledges he's a bad. guy. The question is, what is the best strategic move in order to stabilize the region, to keep American troops abroad safe, to keep diplomatic employees abroad safe? Like what is the right way to go about it?

So for instance, Jeffrey Epstein, Jeffrey Epstein was a terrible person, right? But it is against the law to do an extrajudicial killing of Jeffrey Epstein, right? He has to have his day in court, you get it, there's due process, yada yada. So if I make that argument, it doesn't mean that I like Jeffrey Epstein. It means that you can't break the law and you can't just unilaterally decide to do things. There are consequences to that, namely deteriorating our justice system if that kind of action stands. Yeah.

Right? So. Yeah. And also, like if you're watching this and you're a Trump fan, you can't watch that and think, oh, they have been consistent in what they think about the trustworthiness of the intelligence apparatus in America, that they've been saying, oh, they're all lying to you, they're all part of this embedded multi-decade deep state, but now they say that they had something and I don't want any more information.

I'm good. How could you possibly question them? First of all, there's not a deep state the way that they've been saying that there is. But if there was a deep state, if there was a longstanding across multiple administrations continuing policy, it would be pushing us into war. That's the only thing consistent through all of these administrations. And that's what it's doing now. And to get you to bow your head to it, it's telling you that you're un-American if you don't support that drive to war.

Just like Iraq, just like what happened in the lead-up to Iraq. If there was a deep state, that's what it would be doing. But no, the only thing the deep state does is occasionally pop up to spit in the eye of Donald Trump, and that's it. Look, there is a deep state in the content. And there are, people should be skeptical of the intelligence community, especially when it comes to, you know, their, like, U.S. back coups. What just happened in Bolivia, for instance. The intelligence community tried to convince the United States that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. So should you be skeptical of the intelligence community?

Absolutely. When it came to the Russia investigation, they had to show their work. Yeah. And yeah, exactly. And let's be clear, the intelligence community didn't say we needed to go after Soleimani. Exactly. Pompeo said they said that. That's right.

That's right. And then when you asked 12 questions, they evaded away. It's not like we've released this 300-page inspector general analysis of all the intelligence leaning up to the bombing of Kasim Soleimani. That doesn't exist. It would be like if in the run-up to Iraq, Colin Powell, he didn't have any of his charts or his satellite photos. He's just like, I heard something.

It's bad. Let's go in there. That's as casual as the lie has been. And Fox is lying to you pretending that they find it to be convincing. Right. And so I wanna go through the timeline of what's happened with Iran under the Trump administration. Because every time you hear this argument that Iran is the aggressor, understand that that is not the case. Now I'm gonna start this off by saying the obvious, which is in 2015, one of the best things that Obama was able to accomplish was the Iran nuclear deal, which made sure, and it wasn't just between the United States and Iran.

It was between the United States, Iran, Russia, China, and European countries, right? And so there were ways to check in to make sure that Iran was no longer enriching its uranium. There were ways to prove that Iran was not building a nuclear weapon. It was the best deal to prevent Iran from building a nuclear weapon. Donald Trump gets elected and what does he do? So let's start with May 8th of 2018, Trump withdraws from the Joint Comprehensive plan of action. That is the Iran nuclear deal, right? So once you do that, you're basically telling Iran, we've pulled out that this deal doesn't exist anymore. If you want, you can

go ahead and enrich uranium, right? And that's essentially what they ended up doing. But there's more detail. So let's go further. August 7th, 2018, Trump announces first round of sanctions against Iran. November 5th, 2018, Trump announces second round of sanctions against Iran. April 8th, 2019, Trump administration designates Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps as a foreign terrorist organization. Something that's unprecedented and does what? Further devolves or further deteriorates the relationship between the United States and Iran and makes it incredibly difficult to renegotiate a nuclear deal, which is what Trump claimed he wanted.

Let's go further. By the way, who's the aggressor so far? May 5th, 2019, John Bolton announces or announced that the U.S. was sending a aircraft carrier strike group and air force bombers to the Middle East against Iran. May 8th of 2019, Iran announces it is preparing to increase enriched uranium production. Trump implements sanctions against Iran's steel and mining sectors. So look, at this point, what's amazing, Trump pulled out of the Iran nuclear deal on May 8th of 2019.

It wasn't until a year later that Iran was like, okay, I mean, we've been trying to comply with this, even though the United States pulled out. But at this point, I mean, these sanctions are crippling us. The other countries that were part of this deal have been coerced by the United States government to stop doing business with us. And so we're left with no choice. Let's go to May 14th of 2019, because remember, the United States is engaged in all sorts of nefarious actions abroad.

Yemen's Houthi rebels allegedly attack major oil pipeline in Saudi Arabia. The U.S. blamed Iran for the attack, but Tehran denies involvement. We talked about this story. The U.S. government has still failed to provide any evidence to show that Iran was behind that oil tanker attack, right? And as we know, the United States is assisting Saudi Arabia in the Saudi-led coalition in Yemen, which is leading to a genocide of the Yemeni people. Let's give you more.

June 13th of 2019, U.S. accuses Iran of attacking Japanese and Norwegian. oil tankers, while Japanese Prime Minister Shenzhou Abe visited Iran, Iran denied involvement. Again, there's been no proof of what the U.S. has accused Iran of. June 17th of 2019, Pentagon deploys a thousand additional troops to the Middle East. Iran said it was 10 days from surpassing the limit set by the nuclear deal that Trump pulled out of on its stockpile of low enriched uranium. Again, I mean, I know this is super detailed, and by the way, there's a bunch of other stuff like little sanctions here and there that I haven't even included in the timeline.

But where is the aggression coming from, guys? Like, let's take responsibility for what our government is doing. There's only so many times you can punch someone in the face before expecting them to punch back. June 20th of 2019, U.S. drone shot down by Iran. Iran said that the drone was flying in Iranian airspace while the U.S. claimed it was flying over international waters. June 21st of 2019, Trump calls off an airstrike against Iran.

Okay, so he had called for an airstrike, and then 10 minutes before it was supposed to happen, he called it off. June 22nd of 2019, Iran responds to U.S. threats by ordering the execution of a U.S. military contractor who was convicted of spying for the CIA. By the way, no one in the U.S. press talks about that story. June 29th of 2019, U.S. deploys F-22 stealth fighters to defend American forces and interests. And the list goes on and on.

On December 27th, the rocket attack on an Iraqi military base in Kirkuk killed a U.S. contractor and wounded several U.S. service members and Iraqi personnel. The U.S.-led coalition against ISIL did not specify who might be responsible, but U.S. officials later blamed Qatayib Hezbollah, an Iran backed militia for the attack. Two days later, on December 29th, the U.S. military carried out defensive strikes on sites in Iraq and Syria belonging to Qatayib Hezbollah. The Washington, that Washington said were in retaliation for the killing of a U.S. contractor. Iraqi security and militia sources said at least 25 fighters were killed and 55 others wounded.

Following that attack, that was when protesters stormed the U.S. embassy in Iraq. And the way the media reports it makes it seem like the story or the timeline starts right there. Oh, they attacked our U.S. embassy. Yeah, but why? Why? People don't just randomly attack embassies. Okay, so we need to think about how our actions lead to these types of repercussions. It's about strategy, okay? It's not saying or making excuses for the bad actors abroad.

It's about thinking about the best way to de-escalate the situation and Trump has consistently done the opposite, mostly because he can't handle Obama's legacy and he wants to destroy it in any way he can. He thought he could negotiate a better nuclear deal. If this is the way he goes about negotiating deals, he's a terrible deal maker. But we already knew that by the six bankruptcies that he went through. Yeah. And as you go through that timeline, I just think about like, if you were trying to have

a war between our countries, this is kind of how you would do it. You'd bring in John Bolton along the way, a guy who has no qualifications outside of pushing for literally every war someone can imagine. And also right wing media has been pushing for it too. If you might, if you recall, when they shot down that drone, Fox and Friends talked about it like they murdered R2D2, like it was this like, like this iconic person in American history that they dared to shoot down instead of, you know, like a drone, it's a valuable piece of military equipment, but that's it, nobody was killed.

But they have been trying to push for this from the very beginning. We were lucky that we didn't have this same sort of situation six months ago. Yeah, I mean, Trump calling off that airstrike was. a big deal, right? But at that point, Iran knew that- I hate every reference to that because he ordered the airstrike and- Like, I don't give a damn that he called it off. Exactly. He ordered it.

That was the point I was about to make. The fact that he ordered it in the first place led to an escalation of tensions between the United States and Iran. So calling it off was important and I'm glad he did, right? Because this situation today would have been even worse than it already is. But my point is, he doesn't think about his actions before he actually carries them out. And what he has done has not led to the possibility of a better nuclear deal with Iran. It's done the exact opposite.

All right, and that's why we talk about strategy. That's the reason why we're talking about strategy. That's the important part of the story, not differentiating between good guys and bad guys. Because remember, Donald Trump went on an international tour touting his love affair with Kim Jong-un who has his own people in gulags right now. He murders his own people on a regular basis. Yeah. All right.

Yeah, you don't even have to go that far. He loves MBS. Exactly. A man who killed a U.S. resident ordered the killing of a U.S. resident and a Washington Post reporter. Donald Trump tried to help MBS cover up for that. It's unbelievable. Anyway, we gotta take a break.

When we come back, we have more, including a story that will remind you that Megan Kelly is still stupid. Thanks for listening to the full episode of the Young Turks. Support our work, listen ad-free, access members-only bonus content, and more by subscribing to Apple Podcasts at apple.com slash t-y-t. I'm your host, Shank Huger, and I'll see you soon.