The Young Turks - TYT Extended Clip - January 9th, 2020

Episode Date: January 10, 2020

Details are emerging in the crash of a Ukrainian airliner in 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. If you like the Young Turks podcast, I think you'll love a lot of the podcasts on the TYT network. Old school, it's one of my favorites, one of the favorites for a lot of the listeners. Please check that out, subscribe, share it, that makes a big difference, and give it a five star rating. Thank you.

Welcome to the Young Turks, drop it. I'm just kidding, everybody relax, okay? Yeah, yeah, I can mess with you guys too. Oh, you just got burned in the control room. Welcome to the Young Turks, Anna Casparian, John Iarola with you. Look, they make me do it on Fridays when I'm leading, so I just figured I'd mess with them on a Thursday. I don't know what to expect now, anything could happen.

Anything can happen, I'm a wild card. We have such an excellent show ahead for you. The Democratic establishment is panicking about Bernie Sanders. There are so many articles about it that I can't even keep up with reading all of them. But there are two big pieces in the Associated Press and Politico that I want to talk about today. I love how failed Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel wants to chime in about how the Democratic Party

can win. Get out of here. I had forgotten about him. Yeah, that's, I wish I could say the same. Yeah, well, I'll go back to it after today. We have lots to get to, but before we do, quick plug for John's show. You should check it out every morning, the damage report. It's a fan fave already.

I'm a little jealous, but it's okay. It's a good show you deserve it. It's fun. Tomorrow, Brett Ehrlich will be on with me. Speaking of Brett Ehrlich, he's filming happy half hour tonight. So if you remember, you can always stream the show whenever you want. I believe it's available for streaming on Fridays. And that's also a great way to kind of get your mind off the serious news that's happening,

all the devastating stuff that's happening. But if you're watching this particular show, the flagship show, of our network, we're gonna get to the devastating stuff right now. Ready? Mm-hmm. All right. Drop it. A Ukrainian passenger jet crashed shortly after takeoff from Tehran on Wednesday this week.

And now there's some suspicion based on intelligence coming from the Western countries, indicating that it could have accidentally been shot down by Iran. Now this is a devastating story regardless of how this happened, why this happened. And about 170 people were on board, 79 of them were Iranian, 63 were Canadian, and 11 were Ukrainian, including nine crew members. There were also 10 Swedish individuals, seven Afghans, and three people from the UK on as well. So 176 fatalities, people are trying to figure out what's going on. And when the story first broke, it appeared that there was no connection with escalating tensions

between the United States and Iran. And remember, Iran had attacked two U.S. bases in Iraq using missile strikes, but this passenger jet crashed an hour later. So there was some reason to believe that it had nothing to do with what the Iranians were doing. But now, and I want you to be skeptical, because nothing is confirmed at the moment, the story is still developing, now there are some intelligence officials here in the United States who are arguing that Iran might have accidentally shot it down. So let me give you the details.

First, the London-based firm IHS market said in a memo that it assessed that the Ukrainian International Airlines Boeing 737-800 was likely to have been shot down mistakenly by the IRGC-operated SA-15 missile. It cited the images circulating on social media that purported to show debris from a Russian-made Tor M1 missile known to be possessed by the Revolutionary Guard scattered near the crash site. Now, that image has been shown all over social media. It hasn't been verified yet, and I feel uncomfortable saying that, oh, this is the missile. It was definitely a missile attack.

Again, hasn't been verified, and the Iranians are denying that they did this. Also, I want to just quickly note, it could not confirm the authenticity of the images, But said, it assessed them to be credible. Now with that said, this is what the image is. So if you see this online, just understand that this is not a confirmation that Iran was behind the crash. But you should just know this is what's going on around social media. This is the image that people are looking at. Officials also told U.S. media that they had identified the signature from an Iranian anti-aircraft

missile battery being activated shortly before the aircraft crashed into. to countryside southwest of the Iranian capital, killing all 176 on board. So look, before I get into what we're hearing from the Iranian government, I wanted to get your thoughts, John. Am I wrong to be overly skeptical about what we're hearing from Canada, from the United States, from the UK? Well, I think that you should be skeptical about what in particular, I think there's many things to potentially be skeptical about.

There's a lot of potential possibilities. It could be mechanical or non-mechanical. If non-mechanical, it could be an attack. If an attack, it could be a non-state actor or a state actor. If a state actor, it could be the US or Iran or some other body. I think everybody, most people were trying to be very responsible the night of the attacks on those two bases. I saw the initial news about the plane, but I think everyone was suspicious because the timing

was very suspicious. The plane had just gone through its maintenance a couple of days earlier. Planes do not frequently crash immediately after takeoff. It does happen. Generally, it doesn't happen right at the site of an interstate conflict. And so people were questioning that, but none of that means that one actor in particular is responsible. Right.

So if you're looking for some clarity from US President Donald Trump, have no fears, I have a statement from him about this, he said, someone could have made a mistake on the other side. Some people say it was mechanical. I personally don't think that's even a question. I have a feeling that something very terrible happened. Well, to be fair, he doesn't know what to think yet because he hasn't read what to think on Alex Jones or Breitbart. Or hasn't seen what to think on Fox News.

Now, the UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson had earlier called for a full investigation following a telephone conversation with the Ukrainian president Vladimir Zelensky. Specifically, according to Iran's civil aviation organization, it is impossible that a missile hit the Ukrainian plane, and such rumors are illogical. And they're claiming that they have evidence to show that the pilot realized that there were possible mechanical issues and that the pilot wanted to turn around. And so if they have that evidence, they should provide it. The black box, by the way, was recovered.

And so, yeah, there should be a full investigation, regardless of what the accusations are. Even if Iran weren't being accused of doing anything wrong, we should know what happened with that flight. Well, we should know what the evidence is, but also what the evidence represents. The fact that the plane started to turn doesn't prove anything about what actually caused it to initially catch fire. But again, there's no reason to jump into believing anyone explanation. I will say, because I know we're gonna talk a little bit later about the briefing that

lawmakers received yesterday. What you read earlier about the radar blip of the anti-air battery, that's already more specific intelligence than we've gotten that supposedly led to Qasem Soleimani's death. 100%. Exactly. That tiny little bit. But look, if there is reason to believe that these are casualties from Donald Trump's irrational decision to take down Iran's top military general, people should be aware of that.

People should understand that there are consequences to military aggression, to any type of conflict that escalate to the point that we experienced over the last week. And one other thing that I wanted to note is that Justin Trudeau felt the need to speak out about this because so many Canadians lost their lives on that plane. So let's hear a quick statement from Trudeau. The news will undoubtedly come as a further shock to the families who are already greening in the face of this unspeakable tragedy. We have intelligence from multiple sources, including our allies and our own intelligence.

The evidence indicates that the plane was shot down by an Iranian surface-to-air missile. This may well have been unintentional. This new information reinforces the need for a thorough investigation into this matter. Canada is working with its allies to ensure that a thorough and credible investigation is conducted to determine the causes of this fatal crash. One of our members, Dell wrote in and said, good evening, everyone, sad day. It was surreal watching my Prime Minister Trudeau tell Canadians that the plane killed. The plane that killed 63 of our fellow Canadians and many others was very likely shot down,

heartbreaking and frightening. There is a lot of anger here toward Americans. and the Trump administration, I'm an American Canadian, this is very strange times. And look, I agree with you. And we've been very critical of the Trump administration because there are consequences. Again, we don't know for sure what happened with that plane crash. But regardless, there are consequences to the actions that Trump took. And if this is related to that, I hope that people around the world understand the gravity

of military action and any type of military aggression against another country. Well, I happen to see I was on Twitter before the show started. I saw one of our Tom Zawaki had tweeted in a tweet from Marco Rubio saying, it's just a matter of time before you start hearing some say that it's Trump's fault that Iran made a mistake and shot down a commercial airliner. So we don't know if the official story that we're hearing right now is accurate. But if it's accurate, they're related, they're certainly not unrelated. When they killed Soleimani and we said they had created an incredibly tense, dangerous situation,

We didn't just mean because Iranian and American tanks could meet on the border, we meant that they created a dangerous situation. Now is he the most responsible one? No, the person that fired the missile is more responsible, but it is simply nonsense to say that if Donald Trump hadn't decided purely on his own to take out Soleimani, that this would not have happened. That is simply true, that is an indisputable fact. Right, and as we know, the Trump administration did decide unilaterally to take

out Iran's top military general, and that has actually caused a rift between Republican senators, which is a huge story today. And so I want to talk about that a little bit, but just keep in mind, there are some people who understand the gravity and the consequences that come along with what Trump did. And we need to take this upcoming election, I know that we already have, but consider all of this as you think about who you're gonna vote for, we need to get him out. We need to get him out. He is irresponsible, he's irrational, he's ignorant, he's hateful, every imaginable thing.

And even if you happen to be a Trump supporter who never bought into the fact that he's a terrible hateful guy, you have to at least acknowledge the fact that he shoots from the hip, he's overly emotional, he's full of rage one moment, and then all of a sudden pretending to be super happy the next, he's completely influenced based on who he talked to last. You never know what he's gonna do next. You can't have someone this ignorant running the country because at some point he could get us involved. I mean, and I wanna be very clear about how we covered his address yesterday.

No one here is giving him credit for de-escalating anything, okay? What he did could have led to a full-blown war, and he always does this. He always escalates tensions, he did that with North Korea, and then he tries to de-escalating de-escalate and take credit for that. He gets no credit, okay? He is a dangerous person. He should not be leading this country. Agreed.

Yeah, with that said, let's move on to the division among Republicans. This is a fascinating story. Such as it is. Yeah. So, Senator Mike Lee has continued to speak out in frustration in regard to how the Trump administration has failed to provide intelligence to justify the assassination of Iran's top military general, Qasem Soleimani. Now, we showed some of his criticism yesterday, but he just recently went on Martha McCollum's show on Fox News. And here's what he had to say

about the briefing. What I'm concerned about is the flippant attitude that they reflected, both with regard to the underlying facts on Friday's attack, and especially as they relate moving forward to any subsequent attack that we might undertake on Iran. That's antithetical to the Constitution, and it's not something that we can countenance. We repeatedly ask them, under what circumstances would you need to come back to us to get authority from Congress before taking an action against Iran? For example, what if you decided that you wanted to take out the Supreme Leader? Would you, in that circumstance, need to come back to Congress for a declaration of war or an authorization for the use of military force? Astoundingly, they refused to answer

that question. I find that simply unacceptable. They kept telling us, that there would have been an imminent attack, had they not taken this strike on Friday? Which again, for purposes of this conversation, I'm willing to assume may well have been lawful. But then when we would ask them, what was the nature of that attack? When and where would it have occurred? By whom would it have been carried out? They refused to answer the question. And they deferred in the same way they would if we weren't in a classified environment saying,

well, we can't talk about that. Well, we were an underground bunker designed for that very purpose. And they should have told us. you know, most people understand your frustration. Actually, most people on the Republican side don't understand Mike Lee's frustration because they've decided to be loyal to Donald Trump, regardless of what he does, regardless of how unconstitutional it is. Rand Paul and Mike Lee, and I believe one other Republican lawmaker, have spoken out against the lack of intel. But for the most part, Republican lawmakers

are unified in their opposition toward what Mike Lee was saying there. And we'll get to that in just a minute, but I want to give you a little more from Mike Lee. So he said that he was briefed, the senators were briefed by Secretary of Defense, Mark Esper, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, CIA director Gina Haspel. I mean, this is a list of the worst people. And some of them acting, just to be fair. And General Mike Millie of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and as you guys know from earlier this week, we gave you a statement from Millie where he just said, yeah, yeah, imminent threat.

It was an imminent threat. I didn't know who, what, where, when, but we knew they were planning, they were planning. I'm paraphrasing, but not by much. And so that does not indicate that there was actually an imminent threat here. And I think what Lee is saying about how, okay, well, at what point does the administration think it's appropriate to notify Congress? And he says that they were unclear about that, that they couldn't give him an answer. That is a problem, and I'm glad that he's speaking out against it.

Yeah, yeah, and I guess he says they were unclear about it, but I would argue that they're being very clear about it, he could not come up with a situation extreme enough where they would admit that in that case, yes, they would notify Congress, even up to assassinating the Supreme Leader of Iran. If they believe that that does not require disclosure, then nothing does. I mean, we're launching 10 nukes at North Korea, maybe that then, if not the whole taking out the Supreme Leader thing. No, they believe that they should be able to start a war.

They know that in the Constitution says that the Congress is supposed to declare war. If taking out the top leader of a country isn't a declaration of war against it, then nothing is. And so that's fine, you can believe that the president should be able to do that, that that should be his power, the executive branch should have it. But then you have to forget pretending any more that you care about the letter of the Constitution or what actually is included in there. If you believe that, no, we have to sort of see how things have developed in our country over our history.

And I think now it makes more sense for the president to do that, then fine, then anything is up for grabs philosophically when it comes to the Constitution. So you're absolutely right. I mean, look, later you're gonna see a number of Republican lawmakers or right-wing members of the media argue that this is ridiculous, that Congress would need to be involved, that Trump should have all the power that he needs in order to unilaterally make these types of decisions. The Constitution is supposed to ensure that Congress is involved in the decision making.

The whole point of our system of government is to provide checks and balances. The executive branch isn't supposed to act unilaterally when it comes to something as serious as invading a country and pursuing military action. And so as we've also talked about, Congress is proposing a war powers act in order to ensure that congressional lawmakers are notified and part of this decision making process. And so Mike Lee has said openly that he plans on. voting in favor of that. But what I found interesting was, according to the Hill, officials warned against

supporting a resolution curtailing Trump's war powers, saying it would embolden Iran. It's just ridiculous nonsense. And here is Mike Pence, our vice president, justifying the lack of intelligence. Why not in a classified setting can our briefers from this administration share what it was, this threat that you talk about in a classified setting? Well, some of that has to do with what's called sources and methods, Savannah, that if we were to share all of the intelligence, and in fact, some of the most compelling evidence that Kasam Soleimani was preparing an imminent attack against American forces and American personnel also represents some of the most sensitive intelligence that we have. It could compromise those sources and methods. So look, I have tremendous respect for Senator Mike Lee. I recognize he's had a difference of opinion with our administration over self-defense

measures the president authorized in Yemen. Look, we'll welcome those debates going forward, but I can assure your viewers that those of us that have seen all the evidence that saw the evidence in real time know that President Trump made the right decision to take Qasam Soleimani off the battlefield. America is safer, the world is safer. If Mike Pence, if our intelligence organizations, if the executive branch had concrete intel and evidence justifying that assassination, I have no doubt in my mind that they would share it with the Senate and that these Republican centers, Mike Lee is not some progressive.

Okay, he's not some like peace loving hippie who's like, no man, I don't want to go to war. That's not who he is. He understands the gravity of the situation and he wants to see the evidence. I have no doubt in my mind that the intelligence community would show him that evidence if they had it and they would be detailed about it. I don't think they have it. This is one of those cases where I understand, but I'm frustrated about the need to hide sources for stories, because way back last, in the weekend, the New York Times reported that all of

this had nothing to do with some plan that Soleimani was coming up with it, that was brewing in the background. It was they needed to respond in some way to the attack that killed the American contractor. So they put together a menu of options for Trump. He initially chose to do that bombing that they did. They did the bombing. Then he got frustrated about it. The embassy was surrounded.

And so he decided to take out Soleimani. And the top officials, multiple of which talked with the New York Times, but haven't been named, were stunned that he took that option. Exactly. They were stunned because there wasn't an imminent threat that needed to be taken out. Exactly. But they can't be revealed, and so there's no pressure. What we do know, based on Trump's own comments after what happened at the embassy

in Tehran, he kept repeating that he's not Obama, right? That this isn't going to be another Benghazi. And so the action that he took in response to what happened at the embassy in Tehran was to prove a point about how he's this tough guy, as opposed to Obama, who Republicans keep saying was weak when it came to what happened in Benghazi. Yeah, and so we have to go through a full another week of this ridiculous back and forth. Right. Oh, do they have the intelligence?

Do they not? Nobody who went into that room came out who hadn't already thought they did, thinking that they did, they were convinced by the evidence. It's all BS and they can't burn their sources. So those people who spoke to the New York Times, they were so worried about what they saw that they reached out to the New York Times. They then slunk back into their jobs in the Trump administration and they're allowing this myth to continue that Trump can be trusted to pretend that he has intelligence.

So the next time something like this happens and they say, oh, we had imminent threat, wink, wink, some people will still believe it because it's not being outed right now how much of a sham this is. And keep in mind that North Korea is developing its nuclear weapons. Donald Trump has not spoken out against them. In fact, he went on an international tour touting his love affair with Kim Jong-un. So I put that out because remember, our actions in other countries influence the relationships we have with other countries, right?

So if Donald Trump is, you know, in a very public way demonstrating this giant double standard for Iran and going out there doing like positive PR for Kim Jong-un, how is he going to then turn around to Iran, which was complying with the Iran nuclear deal and say, no, no, you're the aggressor. You're the bad guy. We're coming for you. Like, it's just, it's ridiculous. I think most people who follow the news and have, you know, at least some like, you're level of cognitive functioning, understand that this is nonsense, and he's not to be trusted.

I don't trust anything that comes out of Donald Trump's mouth. He's a serial liar, and he's a child. Yep. Anyway, we got to take a break, but when we come back, I want to give you some of the responses to what Rand Paul and Mike Lee have been saying about the lack of intelligence, including Lindsey Graham, who is convinced that Donald Trump's address about the escalating tensions with Iran was historic. We need to talk about a relatively new show called Un-F-The-Republic, or UNFTR.

As a young Turks fan, you already know that the government, the media, and corporations are constantly peddling lies that serve the interests of the rich and powerful. But now there's a podcast dedicated to unraveling those lies, debunking the conventional wisdom. In each episode of Un-F-The-Republic, or UNFTR, the host delves into a different historical episode or topic that's generally misunderstood or purposely obfuscated by the so-called powers that be featuring in-depth research, razor-sharp commentary, and just the right amount of vulgarity, the UNFTR podcast takes a sledgehammer to what you thought you knew about some of the

nation's most sacred historical cows. But don't just take my word for it. The New York Times described UNFTR as consistently compelling and educational, aiming to challenge conventional wisdom and upend the historical narratives that were taught in school. For as the great philosopher Yoda once put it, you must not learn 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. What's up, everyone, welcome back to TYT, Anna Kesperin and John Ida Rolla with you. It's a whole new year, so you're probably asking yourself, what can I do to be more financially responsible? Where can I keep my money? Is there an ethical financial institution out there? And lucky for you, yes, yes there is, aspiration. So aspiration is one of our partners.

It's very difficult for us to find companies that we're willing to do any type of partnership with. And we've decided to work with Aspiration because of their mission to avoid investing in the fossil fuel industries, and also the fact that they like to reward their customers if they are shopping consciously and thinking about environmentally friendly companies to shop at. So go to Aspiration.com slash TYT to learn more. Also, of course, we're gonna do coverage of the debate. In fact, there is a debate happening January 14th next week in Iowa.

So you can check us out, John Ida Rola, Ida Rodriguez, Jake Ugra and myself will be providing special coverage Tuesday, January 14th, beginning at 11 p.m. Eastern Time, 8 p.m. Pacific. You can watch live at t.t.com slash live. And it's such an important debate. It definitely is, yeah. It's about to begin. I'm, God, I'm excited. That last year went by fast.

Yeah, it did. This year probably won't, but we'll see, we'll see. All right, just some other stuff. Actually, no, let's get to the stories because something just broke that I want to share with you guys. So the House of Representatives has just approved a resolution that Mike Lee is in favor of. It's the War Powers Act that would limit Donald Trump's ability to unilaterally go to war. And of course, this follows Trump's decision to assassinate Iran's.

top military general. Now this is non-binding at the moment, and look, let's keep it real. The likelihood of Mitch McConnell, even bringing this type of legislation up for a vote in the Senate is, I can't even imagine that would happen, but it is important to note that there are Republicans who are supportive of this, including Mike Lee and Rand Paul. But there are Republicans who are vehemently against it and are speaking out against their fellow Republicans who dare to question Trump and his unilateral ability to go to war with any country he pleases.

So first, let's go to Senator Lindsey Graham, who loves going to war and would love the idea of Donald Trump, starting another one. Here's what he had to say about Senators Mike Lee and Rand Paul. I think they're overreacting, quite frankly, go debate all you want to. I'm going to debate you. Trust me, I'm going to let people know that it. at this moment in time to play this game with a poor War Powers Act, which I think is unconstitutional, is that whether you mean to or not, you're empowering the enemy.

You can't have 535 Commander-in-Chiefs. The War Powers Act is unconstitutional. There's only one Commander-in-Chief. If you don't like the action the Commander-Chief is taking, as Congress, you can defund those actions. We have control of the power of the purse. But they're great Americans, but when we get on the floor of the United States Senate in the next couple weeks and talking about restricting the ability to deal with the religious Nazis in Iran, it will be seen by the Iranians as division at home.

I hope we won't do it. Now, the war powers resolution is not unconstitutional. In fact, I'm going to go ahead and read you a portion from the Constitution that's relevant to this conversation. Article 1, Section 8 of the U.S. Constitution stipulates that Congress shall have power to declare war, grant letters of marquee and reprisal, and make rules concerning captures on land and water to raise and support armies, and also to make rules for the government and regulation of the land and naval forces.

That can be in anything. That's weird. It's weird that he would call it unconstitutional when it's part of our constitution. Now, the resolution that just passed in the House, I want to give you a few more details about it. As I mentioned earlier, it's non-binding on the president and would not require. require his signature. But House Speaker Nancy Pelosi nonetheless insisted it has real teeth because it is a statement

of the Congress of the United States. I can't believe that she would think that's true. I think that she believes that she needs to pretend that she thinks it's true. Which is disappointing because I think that the situation we find ourselves in in almost every way is terrible and I wish that we weren't there. I wish that Donald Trump had acted differently or not acted at all. But I do think that it has provided an opening. We know that like two out of three of Americans think that the killing of Soleimani has created,

has made the US less safe. I think that we're seeing in the news just today a demonstration of how theoretically we might be less safe. I think that that situation, the fact that the people don't want a war with Iran combined with Donald Trump's speech where he wants to pretend that he's interested in peace and diplomacy, creates an opening where you could put way more pressure on Donald Trump and the Republicans, just to limit their ability to start a war in the future, but say, okay, if you want peace, if you want diplomacy, we want diplomatic talks by this date.

We want you to pull out of the region by this time. Like we think, oh, well, if you want peace that we certainly don't need to be spending so much money abroad, then let's talk about dialing down the military budget being spent overseas. Like if the people don't want to- I know it's ridiculous, and I know that most of the Democrats don't even support it. But if he wants peace, if his base even some of them want peace, certainly the voters in general want peace, then let's push for actual peace, not just a little bit more red tape for him to go through if he wants to bomb Tehran.

Also, I would argue that Democrats should have thought about the future when Obama was president, because they were fine with President Obama making decisions unilaterally when it came to what was going on in the Middle East. That was exactly when Democrats should have thought ahead of time and limited the powers of the executive branch to unilaterally make these types of decisions. And look, Obama was, I'm not even gonna say he was like more responsible. I mean, he expanded Bush era foreign policy and expanded the drone wars. I mean, we didn't go into Yemen for the first time under Trump's leadership.

That started under Obama. And so we have to hold our own party accountable. And I know that we do that here on this show on a regular basis, but I'm talking about, you know, broadly Democrats, right? Like we need to be aware of the flaws in our own party and we need to demand more. And I know that people like Nancy Pelosi are very uncomfortable and get very offended by that, but you should read my latest op-ed in the Hill so you can see how she enables Donald Trump more than anyone right now.

Take a look, maybe share it. Yeah. Actually, you tweeted it out so you guys should check out his Twitter account. I think I might have too. And I have one coming up in the next few days, actually, about this very topic. Oh, I love it. Well, let's go to Mike Lee, because he actually responded to Lindsey Graham's nonsense. That is fundamentally antithetical to the Constitution. Look, I love Lindsey Graham. He's a fantastic guy.

We work closely together on a lot of issues. He's dead wrong insofar as he's suggesting that this is playing a game. Mr. Graham, the Constitution of the United States is not a game. In Federalist 69, Alexander Hamilton explained why it is that we put the war declaration power in Article 1, Section 8, Why we put it with Congress rather than the executive. There are good reasons for that, and those reasons need to be respected. So he makes good points there. So does Rand Paul in this next video.

I think it's sad when people have this fake sort of drape of patriotism, and anybody that disagrees with them is not a patriot. Look, I love my country. I have many family members who have served in the military and continue to serve in the military. You know, I love my country as much as the next guy. But for him to insult and say that somehow we're not as patriotic as he is, he hasn't even read the history of the Constitution. The Constitution specifically says that the war-making power resides in Congress. He believes in this unitary theory of the executive that presidents can do whatever they want.

The only way you can stop them is by defunding a war. That's not what our founding father said. It's not what the Constitution says. And he insults the Constitution, our founding fathers, and what we do stand for in this republic. by making light of it and accusing people of lacking patriotism. I think that's a low gutter type of response. But I do have criticism for Rand Paul and Mike Lee. While they might be right on this specific issue, they have been enabling Donald Trump

over and over and over again. They've been defending him and his lies, his wrongdoings as executive or commander in chief over and over again. And so they even did it after making these types of statements because look, what do they care about? What do lawmakers unfortunately care about more than anything else? Their political careers. And when you go up against Donald Trump, there are consequences if you're a Republican.

And so they have to add all these caveats about Lindsey Graham and specifically Donald Trump when they dare to cross him on issues like war. Take a look. We're not quite at war, and I hope that this will be an isolated killing. And look, I'm a fan of the president. I think the president has shown remarkable restraint in many areas of foreign policy. But on the idea of who has the power? Congress only wields the power to declare war.

Now, look, I support President Trump. I support the way that he has wielded his power as commander-in-chief. I think he's actually been the most respectful of all presidents during my lifetime of the commander-in-chief power. I do think that the people who briefed the United States Senate today. And who were they just so people at home? I love, I mean, don't go, don't get me wrong, I love Donald Trump. He's shown remarkable restraint. He's so good.

I mean, he's the best. Yeah, he went on an international tour talking about how amazing Kim Jong-Ooot is, and they write each other love letters, and he's, he shoots from the hip all the time, but he's a remarkable president. He's incredible. Please, please don't come at me. Please don't come at me, Trump. Don't tweet about me, please.

What a couple of weenies. Yeah. Come on. Just, you're finally. sticking up for something, you're finally making a strong statement that needs to be said as Republicans, right? You don't need to qualify it by pretending like Donald Trump is a rational human being who deserves to lead this country.

Yeah, I don't know which is more pathetic. So Rand Paul with his, I'm a fan of him stuff, he stood on the debate stage and he made fun of your hair, said you were ugly. I know that we should choose our leaders for their intelligence experience and all of that stuff, but stop being such a little weenie, seriously, this is why he didn't go anywhere in the primary. So that's like a personal thing where he continues to suck up to this guy that mocked him viciously.

It's the Ted Cruz level of deference. But for Mike Lee, what he wanted to have you believe is he came out of that briefing. He was just red hot mad at how they wouldn't answer any of his questions, and they were clearly hiding things, and he didn't like how they responded to his hypotheticals. But Trump is great. It's just that the people in the briefing, they disappointed me and probably Trump, too. Well, who do you think told them what to say? You think that they were like, what were they backstabbing Trump?

Trump was like, I want you to go there and tell good Mike Lee everything he wants to hear. And then they were like, screwed Trump. We're not telling him anything. No, they don't have anything. If they're lying, it's because they're all lying. But he wants to pretend that I'm pointing out all out. They're clearly hoodwinking the American people, but Trump's good. Don't get mad at him.

It doesn't make any sense. It makes no sense. They want to have their cake and eat it too. Well, they want to have their cake and not be kicked out of the Republican Party while eating it, basically. Yeah, that's what I mean. Like they want to hold Trump accountable without really holding Trump accountable. You can't do that.

This started by Donald Trump. This entire escalation is Trump's fault, okay? The lack of intelligence that was cited by Trump is Trump's fault. The intelligence didn't exist. He made a unilateral decision and then he and his administration tried to make excuses for it or justify it after the fact. That is exactly what happened. They know it and enabling him in this situation, enabling him and everything else he's done

as president, right, enables him to continue acting this way with no consequences. So if you're gonna have a backbone and you're gonna call him out, then do it appropriately, even if it means that you might lose your political career. Because the whole point of having members in Congress represent us is to have leaders represent us. Being a leader is not easy. Being a leader doesn't mean that you do what's beneficial for yourself in your career. Being a leader means that you lead, you do what's difficult and you do what's principled.

And Republicans have shown us over and over again that while they talk about how strong they are and how patriotic they are, they're the biggest cowards in this country because they will bow down to power if it means that they get to preserve their precious career. Yes. All right, so now let's have a little bit of fun. This is an amazing story. Pretty deep. Yeah.

Lindsay Graham had a very different take from the rest of the American people when it came to Donald Trump's speech following the escalation of tension with Iran. Now that speech was a disaster, we covered it. In fact, the speech was such a disaster that words like Adderall began trending on social media. And so get a load of how Lindsay Graham felt about the speech. The president made a very bold decision today to allow things to calm down. This speech will be talked about long after his second term. This is on par would tear down this wall, Mr. Gorbachev. This is resetting the relationship between the world in Iran, just not the United States. The president said there's an evil empire

in Iran that's been on destroying the world, killing the people in Israel and coming. and after us, and I will no longer tolerate it. So this is on par with Reagan's tear down this wall speech. This is on par with Reagan's tear down this wall speech. Maybe he's only heard two speeches? This is insane. And as I mentioned, words like Adderall were trending because his speech was such a disaster that people thought he was on drugs.

And I just want to show you another word that was trending. sniffy McAdderall, that was also trending following Trump's crazy speech. But you know what? Twitter is not the end-all be-all. Oftentimes, Twitter is incorrect about things, right? I've seen it. Why don't we show our audience some evidence of this remarkable speech? And then you can judge for yourselves.

Your campaign of terror, murder, mayhem will not be tolerated any longer. It will not be allowed under my leadership. Our economy is stronger than ever before and America's achieved energy independence. These historic accomplice shades tolerated. And then the reason why people thought he was on drugs is because he was acting like he was on drugs.

Tolerite it. Okay, no two awkward drug-fueled sniffs were repeated. That was just a video montage. Each one was a special snowflake, unique in its own way. And by the way, so yesterday when we were covering the story, I mentioned how Adderall was trending. And Adderall, of course, is a prescription drug that you take orally, but I forgot that some Some people actually do crush it up and snort it.

Because he's doing the sniffing thing as if he was like on cocaine or whatever, but he couldn't be using Matt. So look, I think, I don't know what it is, I don't necessarily know that I buy any of these theories. I will say for those of you who might take Adderall for its generally prescribed purposes, I can't speak for everyone. We're not in any way trying to stigmatize that or anything. But if Donald Trump is taking something and is not making clear what he's taking, then

And that can be concerning, especially when he's on the precipice of launching us in a war. Yeah, look, prescription drugs exist for a reason, right? But they get abused by people who shouldn't be taking them. And we don't know if he's actually taking them. It's just funny because that word was trending following his speech because the speech was unhinged. It was unhinged. The fact that Lindsay Graham has no shame and refers to that ridiculous speech as something

historic and incredible is incredible. It's incredible to me that he would think that. Because here's the reality is he doesn't think that. The reality is he doesn't respect Trump, he doesn't like Trump, we all know he hates Trump. Even now, every once in a while he'll throw out a little jab at Trump and make it clear that he thinks Trump is a complete nutter moron. But what Lindsey Graham cares about more than anything else is remaining relevant. In fact, he admitted so much during an interview with The Daily, the podcast for the New York Times.

Please go and listen to that interview with Lindsey Graham. He says in his own words that he's nice to Trump now because he wants to remain relevant. And so he has no shame, none whatsoever. He's willing to go out there and use all these like platitudes and all this lovely language about Trump's ridiculous speech full well knowing that it was nonsense. It's sad. Sad. All right.

Do Democrats love terrorists? That's the statement from Doug Collins, and we're going to explore that in more when we return. 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.

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We hope you're enjoying this free clip from The Young Turks. If you want to get 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 second. What's up, everyone? Welcome back to T-Y-T. Gabberrita writes in from our member section and says, whatever else I think of Mike Lee, he's one of the few Republicans in Congress right now who recognizes that Trump will not be around forever. And the GOP needs to have actual principles. But I wonder if he'll soon be joining Justin Amash.

I wouldn't be surprised. I mean, they shun Republicans who speak out against Trump all the time. War is over if you want it, says the intelligence doesn't exist is the best description on Trump ever. I know, I purposely worded it that way. I'm glad that people caught it. Yes. Now for some TYT lives, this is on Twitter, so you use that hashtag if you're not a member and you want to see your comment read.

Bearded Progressive, you're not the only one bearded these days. Justin Trudeau with that stubble situation going on. Hey Rand Paul, finally woke up and real Donald Trump has been taking it, I don't know, can we say this word on camera? Let me see. Yeah, we can say that. Yeah, I think so. I think so.

Has been taking a huge doo-do on the U.S. Constitution- That's literally what it says. Since he said his, oh, that's not what it says. And Orpheus says, how did those two survive into adulthood? Yeah. I also saw, I think I'm a derpy dragon, tweeted, Luke, I am your president for the sniffing. I appreciate that, thank you. I don't know what that means. Okay.

I'm kidding, I'm kidding. Have you seen any of the Star Wars movies? I have, yes. Okay. Let's talk about other crazy Republicans. Republican Representative Doug Collins, the top Republican lawmaker in the House Judiciary Committee, accused Democrats of loving terrorists during a recent interview on Fox News. Take a look.

Nancy Pelosi does it again and her Democrats fall right in line. One, they're in love with terrorists. We see that. They mourn Soleimani more than they mourn our Gold Star families who are the ones who suffered under Soleimani. That's a problem. So there you have Representative Collins defending Trump's decision to unilaterally assassinate Iran's top military general Soleimani.

And that, of course, led to ramifications, consequences. It's a bad idea to allow the executive branch, especially with a leader like Donald Trump, to unilaterally make these types of decisions. And so Democrats have been critical of what Trump did. And there have been some Republicans who have been critical as well, including Mike Lee and in Rand Paul. And so the common strategy that you'll see from these war mongers is these people hate America, they don't support our troops, and this is my favorite, they love terrorists, okay?

So no one, no one has said that Solomani is a good person, no one said that we should treat him as if he should join the gang of seven or whatever. No, none of that, none of that, okay? Soleimani's a bad guy, everyone had to share that caveat, but it's not about whether he's a bad person or not, it's about whether there was any strategy behind what Trump did and whether he even considered the consequences of taking out Iran's top military general without any congressional authorization. And what I also find interesting is that this whole notion of not respecting Gold Star families.

You know who didn't respect Gold Star families? Donald Trump, here's a video of him in 2016 after he went after the Khans, okay, the family who lost their own son as a result of our unending wars. Take a look. His son, Captain Humayin Khan, was killed serving in Iraq, and he had some very tough questions for you. He said you wouldn't have even let his son in America. He doesn't know.

He doesn't know that. I saw him. He was very emotional. and probably look like a nice guy to me. His wife, if you look at his wife, she was standing there. She had nothing to say. She probably, maybe she wasn't allowed to have anything to say, you tell me, but plenty of people have written that.

She was extremely quiet, and it looked like she had nothing to say. A lot of people have said that. He said you have sacrificed nothing and no one. Well, that sounds, who wrote that? Did Hillary's script writers write it? How would you answer that father? What sacrifice have you made? I think I've made a lot of sacrifices.

I worked very, very hard, I've created thousands and thousands of jobs, tens of thousands of jobs. Those are sacrifices? Oh sure, I think they're sacrifices. He went after Senator John McCain, who was a prisoner of war and refused to abandon his soldiers when he had the ability to leave. I mean, Trump is everything that these Republican lawmakers. is accused Democrats of, I mean, he made excuses for the crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman,

who ordered the murder of a U.S. resident and Washington Post reporter, okay, Jamal Khashoggi. And so, isn't that terroristic? Mm-hmm. Yeah, and look, nobody loves terror. So stupid. We can disagree about whether one side or another or one faction inside of one side or another, whether their strategy is more or less likely to succeed, we can do that. But as dumb as I think most of these Republicans are and as counterproductive as I find most of their ideas and military strategy, I don't think that they're doing it because they love the other side.

This is what you get when one party decides we're going to elect people to office that are no better or more moral or intellectually serious than, you know, one of our fans who replies to our tweets effectively. That thing that he said, I've seen tweeted at, you know, Ilan Omar, a million. times over the past couple of days, and that's what you have. Fox News, what I didn't see, we cut the video off. I assume they had a lot of harsh questions making him back up what he just said. No, probably not, no, because he has a safe space that he gets to go on Fox News and

launch bombastic comments. Remember when Ilhaden was getting in trouble for things that she said? How is he not being censured by the House for that comment, asserting that not just one individual on the other side, but all of them, the majority of the House of Representatives, the majority of the people that America has elected to represent them, all love terrorists. But there's no consequences. Well, we know that Donald Trump loves dictators, we know that he's willing to go on international tours to tout his relationship with these types of people.

If you forgot, I'd love to remind you. Really, he's got a great personality. He's a funny guy. I like him, he likes me, I guess that's okay, am I allowed to say that? Am I allowed to say that? He's a very smart guy. He's a great negotiator. Very few people at that age, you can take one out of 10,000 probably couldn't do it.

I think he liked me and I like him. And you know the interesting, when I did it and I was really being tough, and so was he. And we would go back and forth and then we fell in love. Okay? No, really. He wrote me beautiful letters. And they're great letters. We fell in love.

So that's Donald Trump talking about his love affair with Kim Jong-un who literally murders his own people, murders his own family members. Not one in 10,000 could murder his people the way he does. Donald Trump is complete and utter garbage. And he is everything that Republicans claim Democrats are, right? He is everything that Republicans claim they're against. He represents everything that this country should be embarrassed about, honestly. He's ignorant, he's irrational, he's childish, lacks any intellectual curiosity.

He doesn't take care of himself in any way, he's lazy, he engages in fraudulent activity. He steals from the American government by deflating his assets in order to avoid paying taxes, which is by the way, fraud that all of us would go to prison for, but he's gotten away with it. That's who the president is. The most unpatriotic, the most ignorant person to ever sit in that office. It's disgusting. He said, that video, how's that real? But he said he loved him.

And then I know we move past the video of him talking about Kaiser Khan and his family, but all that, like he was asked about a specific thing and he just started talking about how the wife didn't say anything. And he went off on his thing, you get what he was trying to say. It's like, oh, it's because it's that sort of person. The wife, they're not allowed to say anything. spoken in public settings like Melania, certainly. But no, that's all it was was I'm being criticized because I'm attacking the family that

lost a kid. Their son in war. Yeah. Who's a soldier. And so I'm just gonna start saying stuff that makes it clear to the people watching that I hate this culture because I know that my fans also hate and fear and suspect this culture. And that answer was nothing but identity politics, dark, cruel identity politics.

lack of virtue signaling to his audience, that's all it was. That's exactly right. Dr. Chaos MD from our members section, by the way, you can become a member by going to t-y-t.com slash join, writes in and says, realistically, the U.S. is the largest purveyor of terrorism across this planet through the use of our military, sanctions, intelligence apparatus, et cetera. Therefore, the most jingoistic among us are the true lovers of terrorists. And I want to just note, look, economic sanctions, and I apologize for not making this clear

in our coverage yesterday, that is a form of warfare, right? That is economic warfare against a country. So it's used to coerce a country to do what we want them to do. And that's exactly what's happening with Iran right now. Yeah, yeah, and also understand, I know there's gonna seem a weird aside. We define things in weird ways, but the economic sanctions, also to some extent, to some The extent, the tariffs that he's setting up are effectively sanctioning supposedly China, but really our own consumers and producers in a lot of different industries.

And so to the extent that they are effectively economic tools of war, he's perfectly willing to deploy them against his own people. Absolutely. All right, we gotta take a break. When we come back, we have more news for you. We're gonna start our second hour, and in that hour, we'll talk a little bit more about the Democratic primary, including establishment Democrats panicking about Bernie Sanders. 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.co slash t-y-t. I'm your host, Shank Huger, and I'll see you soon.