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

Episode Date: June 4, 2020

All four cops involved have been charged in the death of George Floyd. John Iadarola and Ana Kasparian discuss on The Young Turks. 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. Welcome to TYT. I'm Anna Casparian. Joining us today is John Ida Rola because it's Wednesday. And I'm super excited to have you on the show. There's so much to talk about John. It's been since Friday.

Last Friday I was on your show and that was when protests were really beginning to get larger in the country in response to what happened to George Floyd. And the story has definitely developed a lot since then. So I'm excited to have you on the main show. Yeah, I'm excited to be here, always fun. I'm already missing the days when Trump's biggest, like, threat to the American people is trying to get them to drink bleach. Now he's bringing the tear gas to them.

I like the passive Trump more than the active clearing out crowds, Trump. So it's been an exciting time in America. Yeah, well, Trump is not to be referred to as Trump anymore. He should be called Bunker Boy for the rest of time. only because it gets under his skin, probably more than anything. We will give you an update to that story later on in the show. I wanted to do a little more, you know, positive coverage today because there have been some positive updates to the George Floyd story, to the protests.

So we'll get to that. We also have some lighter stories related to the protests, which I absolutely love. You don't want to miss that either. But first, why don't we start off with what I'd, argue is the biggest development when it comes to the prosecution of the cops involved in the George Floyd murder. So Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison has elevated the charges against Derek Chauvin. That was the cop who murdered George Floyd in broad daylight by kneeling on his neck for nearly nine minutes straight. Now, not only will his third degree murder charge now be

elevated to a second degree murder charge, the three other cops who were there on the scene are also facing charges. So let me give you the details on that from some local news reporting. The other former three officers, by the way, they've all been fired. We all know that on the scene have been charged with, each have been charged with aiding and abetting second degree murder while committing a felony and with aiding and abetting second degree murder, manslaughter, with culpable negligence. Both charges are categorized as unintentional felonies. So, you know, I want to wait and see what the protesters, what Black Lives Matter

as an organization have to say about the charges for the other three officers. The fact that they've been able to roam the streets as free men, I mean, roam the streets is a strong statement. I highly doubt they've been roaming the streets, given the protests that are happening right now. They're probably in a bunker. Right. They've probably been an underground bunker with our bunker boy president, Donald Trump. But the elevated charge for Derek Chauvin from third degree murder to second degree murder seems to be a bit of an improvement, but people actually want much harsher charges against him.

And I wanted to get your thoughts on that. Because in order for you to prove that someone is guilty of first degree murder, you need to show that it was premeditated, that it was planned. And so based on how the law is written, it seems like that would be difficult to prove. But I do agree for sure with the second degree murder charge. I think that makes a lot of sense. Yeah. Look, I'm not a lawyer. I assume everyone knows that that I'm not a lawyer. I'm not many things. I'm also not a lawyer. But I do understand enough to know that trying to get him on first degree murder seems like it would be satisfying. The announcement would be satisfying, but it would significantly raise the odds that he would spend

no time in prison. Yeah, and I know that some people will think about the possibility and think, well, now we found out about the fact that they knew each other. There had been this overlap in their work. Perhaps there was something there. Yes, perhaps, but still, it's going to be much harder. And it's not like the deck isn't already stacked against you for literally anything to go through historically when it comes to a cop killing someone on the job. And so making it even harder I guess would be impressive in some way, brave, but not if you actually want him to spend time in prison. And he could still spend a significant amount of time. And so, look, it's a good development and it's one that didn't take long since Keith Ellison was put onto the case that the, you know,

he had the expansion of the charges. It's a, it's moving in the right direction. Right. And I also want to be clear that it isn't only about the cops involved in what happened to George Floyd. The protesters, and I absolutely agree with them, really want to, you know, reform this entire system because this type of behavior obviously isn't unique to what we saw in Minneapolis. And so the original Hennepin County investigator, the county administrator, the county attorney. attorney is the person who didn't really seem to take this case seriously enough. And so the protesters, for instance, want him to be fired. And I think that makes a lot of sense. Now right now, he is working alongside Keith Ellison, who clearly is taking this case much more seriously. And keep in mind that the governor Tim Walts is working alongside Keith Ellison in this case.

But the protesters are also enraged by how the governor has handled this. So I hear them on that. And I think that's where you have the perfect like intersection of politics and holding politicians accountable, making them uncomfortable by taking to the streets, right? You have to do both. Obama gave a speech today actually talking about the importance of doing both. We need to get these people out of office. We need to get involved in the elections.

We need to ensure that young people who are fired up and out there on the streets should vote. But don't believe for a second that I think that's the. only option, right? The only reason why we're getting changes, especially when it comes to these charges, is because people are out on the streets and they're making people in power feel very uncomfortable. There's something so important, inspiring, and motivating about that. Yeah, yeah, uncomfortable, but I would argue probably not uncomfortable enough yet, uncomfortable enough to have taken these insane authoritarian measures that they have. And I'm not just

talking about Trump there. I'm talking about mayors and governors and, you know, some of them, Democrats as well. But not enough for the vast majority of them to offer anything, even a fig leaf of reform. Honestly, so I put up a tweet earlier today, and I said, you know, I want to be fair. And so I want you to list any reference to a Republican admitting that some change needs to be made, that some reform, however shallow needs to be made. And people said that Justin Amash has suggested a few things. And there's Democrats, of course. But on the right, That was it. Like they think these protests are 100% illegitimate.

Any amount of violence is justified against them, we will give nothing, literally nothing. Not to placate them, not to calm the streets, not for any reason. So they might be uncomfortable, uncomfortable enough to unleash the dogs, but not uncomfortable enough to consider apparently that something needs to be changed. And I'm assuming that in the beginning, the changes they would offer up would almost certainly be a fig leaf. They would be surface level change. But we haven't even gotten that yet, not nationally from the Republicans, only from a few politicians, a few have been saying we need to make some changes. And Joe Biden, who has, you know, he has had some horrible statements during this entire

thing, has at least said certain changes need to be made. But I don't see Trump giving any, us an inch, a millimeter on any of this. Well, Trump isn't going to. I mean, that's really the difference between Democrats and Republicans, Republicans would never even offer a fig leaf, whereas Democrats, over the last several decades, have only offered fig leaves. And so now all of a sudden, we actually are seeing some pretty aggressive proposals coming out of Democratic lawmakers. And they're getting blocked by goons like Mitch McConnell, which we'll talk about later in the show. But that's why these demonstrations are important. They need to continue, Right? Because already they've had an impact in the type of legislation that's being proposed by Democrats.

And we need to get to a point where Republicans really do fear for their political futures if they don't play ball and fundamentally reform this system of policing in the country. And by the way, I think that one of the most important things to do is to really rethink how our civilian police should be armed. I mean, the type of military-grade weaponry that we're seeing out on the streets right now is unbelievable, unacceptable. And these are weapons that we paid for, that U.S. taxpayers paid for in order to arm the military abroad. And because of this never-ending military-industrial complex, right, these weapons manufacturers continue churning out more and more weaponry, more and more weaponry.

And the Pentagon ends up with a surplus. And so they literally have a program. where they hand off older military weapons to local police departments for free, right? It's free for the police departments, but keep in mind that our taxpayer money has already paid for them. Now those weapons are being used against us when we're practicing our constitutionally protected free speech rights. I mean, it's insane. Well, at least theoretically protected. Theoretically, exactly. And, you know, all of those free speech warriors, you know, the ones who cried about getting protested at Berkeley, the Ben Shapiro's, the Ann Coulters of the world,

of course, the Dave Rubens of the world. I'm sure they're outraged at how protesters have been treated out on the streets, I'm sure. They're going to speak out against that First Amendment violation any day now, any day. By the way, like the coward that he is, Dave Rubin decided to log off and unplug over the weekend. Gee, I wonder why. All right, so let's move on to some other news today because it seems like when it comes to the right wing, cowardice is a theme, an ongoing theme. Donald Trump thought it was a great idea to attack protesters viciously using DC police and the National Guard all so they can clear the way for his ridiculous photo op with an upside down Bible. Now, Republicans who claim that they're constitutionalists,

You know, people who truly believe in, you know, the Constitution verbatim, they want to protect it. I mean, that's the branding that they've ran with for such a long time. We're asked by MSNBC's Casey Hunt whether they agreed with what Donald Trump did after his now notorious Rose Garden speech. And let's take a look at them one by one cowardly running away from this reporter. Senator McConnell was what the president did last night, the right thing to do? Senator, nice to see you. Was what the president did last night, right? Senator, was what the president did last night with the peaceful protesters outside the White House, the right thing to do? Pardon? What the president did, the peaceful protesters that were dispersed with tear gas, he then walked across the street to the church.

Was that the right thing to do? He didn't really see it. Senator, is what the president did yesterday at St. John's, was that appropriate? Was it an abuse of power? Senator Roberts Was what the president did last night at St. John's? Was that appropriate? Was clearing the protesters and abuse of power? I'm sorry?

You don't have any comment on what happened at the White House last night? The gasping of the White House protesters, so they have a right? I didn't watch that. Senator Enzi, are you concerned at all about what happened at the White House last night? Sorry. Senator Blackburn, do you have any concerns about what unfolded at the White House last night? Senator Portman, do you think what we saw last night at the White House? Senator Cassidy, was what we saw at the White House last night an abuse of power?

So you guys heard that. I mean, all of those Republican senators running away from a question that honestly provided an opportunity for them to hold Donald Trump accountable for violating Americans' constitutionally protected rights, free speech, freedom of, you know, assembly, they missed out on that opportunity because they were late for lunch. Mm-hmm. It appears that our elected leaders with massive amounts of power live by the maxim. With great power comes great.

I hope they're serving tacos today. That's it. No responsibility whatsoever. I mean, honestly, think about it. We pay them large amounts of money. They have staffs. They could do almost like think about how much power a senator has to drive the course of a nation. And they don't do anything.

the vast majority. There's no reason you should even know who they are. It's debatable whether they know who they are. They're just, they're barely able to hold themselves up so crushed by their own apathy and lack of concern for what's happening in the country. They are. They're not going to say anything.

Even Romney. I'm sorry, I wasn't watching it very closely. Like, if you're that female reporter, you should be allowed to shake him at that point. You're lying to us. Everyone in the country knows exactly.

what happened that day. You can lie about what happened. Fox is doing that. But even Fox doesn't pretend that they weren't paying attention to it. And Mitt Romney, he got into office pretending that he was going to be some sort of check, an independent thinker, a critical thinker from the right who's going to provide a check on Donald Trump. But I was, no, I was watching Ozark. I couldn't, I didn't see what happened in that particular day. Okay, well, then stop because apparently it's important. You're being asked about it by a reporter. They're saying, Was it acceptable? Shouldn't you want to know if, man, something happened that might not have been acceptable? Maybe you should look it up. There's some articles written. I've seen a few

videos. You could find out about it if you really wanted to. But of course he knows what happened and he is just choosing this isn't the hill that he wants to die on, I guess, or that he wants his values to die on anyway. Yeah, you know, it's, it is fascinating because on one hand, you have a bunker boy. That's Donald Trump. He's been determined as a true underground bunker boy because he was so afraid of the protest surrounding the White House that, you know, the intelligence community, the Secret Service, I should say, wanted to keep him safe and, you know, ease his nerves a little bit by literally putting him in an underground bunker for safety. And so Donald Trump, without a doubt, is a coward. And he's a laughingstock.

Everyone's making fun of how cowardly he is. And then you have these Republican lawmakers who somehow somehow are even more weak than Bunker Boy. They're so weak that they're afraid of Bunker Boy. They're afraid of condemning what he did in violating our constitutional rights. Okay, so every, every moment in history where you have the right wing positioning itself as the defenders of national security as these strong men who want to go around the world and spread democracy and they're so big and they're so tough. They're all little wuss boys, all of them. They run away from Trump. They run away from reporters. They run away from the

responsibility that they took an oath to fulfill. They are unbelievably embarrassing and pathetic. And I never want to hear anyone on the right talk about owning the libs or how they're constitutionalists ever again, you guys are embarrassing to this country and you have also contributed to dismantling the freedoms that you claimed you cared so much about that our soldiers supposedly fought for, right? That's what they say all the time. Apparently they don't care too much about it. For decades and decades, the symbol of the Republican Party has been an elephant. It needs to be changed to a tongue pressed firmly against a boot. And that's it. That's That's it.

That's it. Well, there's one other element to the story that I want to get to. I'm going to reset because it's important to know what is happening legislatively in Congress in response to these mass protests. So Mitch McConnell recently decided to block a bill by Senate Democrats that would hold Donald Trump accountable. It's basically a resolution that would hold Trump accountable for the vicious way people peaceful protesters were treated following his Rose Garden speech a few days ago.

And so the resolution condemns Trump for, quote, ordering federal officers to use gas and rubber bullets against the Americans who were peaceably protesting in Lafayette Square in Washington, D.C. on the night of June 1st, 2020, thereby violating the constitutional rights of those peaceful protesters. And John, as you know, those protesters were met with violence because Trump needed them to clear the way so he can go ahead and pose with the Bible. So it makes all the sense in the world to condemn Trump for that, right? Especially if these lawmakers claim to care so much about protecting our constitutional rights. Well, unfortunately, we have goons like Mitch McConnell who block it.

The Democratic resolution, by the way, would have also thrown congressional support behind the right of Americans to protest peacefully and the belief that violence and looting are unlawful, unacceptable, and contrary to the purpose of peaceful protests. But again, McConnell blocked it. And he actually proposed his own fascistic resolution. And that resolution would throw the Senate's support behind the idea that order must be immediately restored to the cities of the United States so that citizens may have peace and the legitimate grievances and the legitimate grievances of peaceful protesters may be heard and considered.

So, of course, McConnell's resolution is meant to condemn elements of these protests as opposed to condemning the president for violating our rights. It condemns them more, but the Democratic version also does quite a bit of condemning. Both of those bills suck. Seriously, it's been days. And granted, I don't have alerts that go off every time Nancy Pelosi makes a move. But as a person who digests a lot of news every day, it appears that what she has done in the past 72 hours is they've got that resolution and she did one of her, you know,

her little like viral things where she was holding a Bible to own him or whatever. That's it. The Democrats are AWOL. There's some good, Elhan's got a good bill. AOC is like rushing to the scene of cop ambushes of protesters. There are people who are doing a good job. But for the most part, it is just, it's the Biden strategy. I mean, even Biden isn't hiding anymore.

He's going to some things. Nancy Pelosi is more Biden than Biden right now. She seems to think, no, the polls are trending our way. Sure, this is, things are being normalized that should never have been allowed. But I don't know, it's kind of looking like it might go for us in November. So we don't really want to shake the boat. We don't want to do anything that might turn off some of the very comfortable liberals that we want to vote for us. So let's just like say something very specific about.

Trump, rather than the fact that people are cracking skulls all over the country, like, yeah, her bill was better than his. And that's about it. So I want to just note, though, like, if you read in between the lines with both of the resolutions proposed, they want the protests to stop, really. So we know that all these people in positions of power are uncomfortable right now with the mass protests hitting every major city across the country right now. So keep doing it.

I mean, keep protesting because if they wanted to stop, that means that activists right now have a tremendous amount of leverage over these politicians. And I was reading about how, you know, in some police departments, they're going to have to give up their typical days off per week until, you know, the civil unrest dies down a little bit. So eventually these cops are going to have enough. They're not going to be able to take it anymore. So just keep doing it.

I mean, just being out there on the streets peacefully, this sheer numbers of people out there is making people uncomfortable, people in positions of power. And if you just continue doing that, eventually I think you can get these politicians to bend to your will. And I think that's what needs to be done. And yes, definitely do vote. But again, I'm not delusional enough to think that's the only thing that works because, you know, over the last several election cycles, that has not worked out for a lot of people.

But that doesn't mean that you should, you know, sit out elections and not get involved in electoral politics either. All right, so we got to take- It's months away. Like, there's lots of time to do a lot of things and then do that. Definitely, yeah. All right, we got to take a quick break. When we come back, we have more for you, including a story about how Mark Esper

sucks. We need to talk about a relatively-neutral. 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

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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 first, philosopher Yoda once put it, you must unlearn what you have learned. And that's true whether you're in Jedi training or you're uprooting and exposing all the propaganda and disinformation

you've been fed over the course of your lifetime. So search for UNFDR in your podcast app today and get ready to get informed, angered, and entertained all at the same time. Welcome back to TYT, Anna and John with you. John, you read a tweet over the break that I wanted you to share with the audience because it was just so good. Yeah, I think it's actually, it might be a Facebook message, but anyway, Aaron Kench had sent out, why are people scared of the looting and riots? The flu kills way more people every year.

And I would add property damage. Car crashes cause way more property damage every year. And of course, it's nonsense, you can be concerned about Mulberry. multiple things. Yeah, but it's calling out all of the right wingers who are encouraging the premature opening of our country just so they can make money. And by the way, yesterday more than a thousand people died from coronavirus. I just want to remind people of that because I know it's easy to forget, but more than

a thousand Americans died from coronavirus yesterday. Yeah, by the way, yesterday right after the show, I ran over to the closest demonstration that I knew about because I just wanted to, I hate that we're not there. And I, you know, we do have an issue with resources, limited resources. So I'm like, whatever, I'm just going to show up with my phone. It's before curfew and I don't think it's going to be violent or anything. So I don't have to worry about security. So I went and of course, everyone's peaceful.

Everyone's great. But I'm with my phone. So I held my phone up to people while they were being interviewed and the mic didn't pick up their sound because there's people chanting, you know? So it's just, it sucks. But thank you to everybody who's contributed to. our fundraising effort, tyt.com slash go. That's where people have been donating. And so far for the month, wow, look at that thermometer. We're up to $37,725. Look, if we weren't, if it weren't

for you guys, we wouldn't even be able to do what we're doing at this very moment. So thank you so much. Every major effort by TYT, whether it's hiring investigative reporters or doing coverage at a specific location has been supported by you guys. We wouldn't be able to do it without you. So thank you again. A few super chat comments. Adrian Beadingfield says, hey, guys, I know there's a lot going on in the country, but can you do some stories on the immigrants being detained at the border, please? Adrian, yes, I will definitely look into that for the show tomorrow.

I will say one of the most difficult things is letting go of stories every day that we just don't end up having time to cover. I wish we can cover all of this news. Chub Toad says President Bonespurs Bunker Baby, the progressive linguist says cadet bunker spurs, and John Howell says, simple, charge all four, they will rat on each other. Well, John, as we reported earlier in the show today, all four have been charged. So that's definitely a positive development, and it would not happen if it weren't for the demonstrations across the country and across the globe. I mean, you see other

countries staging some of these protests as well. Okay, so let's move on to Esper and why he sucks. So a Pentagon policy advisor has resigned from his job and he has cited what he refers to as Defense Secretary Mark Esper's violation of his oath of office. Now, this is specifically tied to how Esper handled the vicious attacks against peaceful protesters in Washington, D.C., also Donald Trump could do his photo op following his Rose Garden speech. Now, Mark Esper, who is the, you know, defense secretary, is trying to play dumb now and act as if he was completely unaware of what was going on. But before we get to that, let me tell you why James Miller resigned. So he resigned from the defense advisory board in a clear rebuke of defense secretary Mark

Esper's role in the violent dispersal of anti-racism protesters from Lafayette Square for a presidential photo op. Miller denounced Esper visibly supporting the excessive crowd control measures, calling it a violation of the nation's top defense officials' oath of office. He even released an open letter so the public can read his reasoning behind his resignation, which I think makes a lot of sense. He says to Esper in this open letter, you recited that same oath on July 23rd, 2019, when you were sworn in as Secretary of Defense. On Monday, June 1st, 2020, I believe that you violated that oath. Miller also wrote that he feared

Esper may be asked to exploit U.S. military power by wielding it in ways that further undermine the Constitution and harm Americans. And those fears are certainly warranted. because in a story that just broke, we've just learned that the members of the military who were in D.C. to basically help protect Donald Trump, aka Bunker Boy, and these are people who viciously contributed to what happened to those protesters. They were supposed to be sent home. Esper was supposed to be sending them home. And we just learned that that is not going to happen, that the, you know, that the government has decided to keep these members of the military in D.C. as these protests continue. So essentially, we will continue having the military

fight peaceful protesters in Washington, D.C., because Donald Trump is a giant coward who's only enabled by people who are larger cowards like Mark Esper. Yeah, yeah, and only thinks that he look strong when he has other people beating other innocent people, and he's near it. That's an alpha male, I guess, for conservatives, apparently, because that was his plan. I think this is going forward, this should be the thing that scares people the most, I think, other than possibly the coronavirus, is what will the military do and what won't they do? And looking back over Donald Trump's time as president, it is difficult to come up with times where the military has told him no.

Like he used the largest non-nuclear armament we have in Afghanistan a few years ago. They seemed totally willing to launch into a conflict with Iran, totally unnecessarily earlier this year. I mean, they wouldn't have tanks in a parade. That's the only thing I can think of where the military said no to Donald Trump. And so, you know, when you have the tear gassing and the buzzing people with helicopters, and now on the streets, apparently possibly mercenaries, people, heavily armed quasi-soldiers that we have no idea who they answer to.

We should all be extremely worried about Donald Trump, especially if he is fearing that he might lose the election, which based on the polling, it looks like, is certainly a possibility. We want people in positions of power who will say no, who will refuse to follow orders, and we know that the past few years Donald Trump has been weeding those people. out the entire time. That's exactly right. I mean, he has surrounded himself with yes men and he's fired all sorts of attorneys general.

This is the type of person he is. He doesn't like any type of oversight. He doesn't like to be challenged in any way ideologically, even though there isn't really much of an ideology there other than Donald Trump looking out for Donald Trump. But Mark Esper apparently has caught in wind of the backlash because he is certainly playing dumb about what happened. So let's take a quick look at a recent press address that Esper gave and let's see if we're buying any of what he's selling here. I did know that following the president's remarks on Monday evening that many of us were going to join President Trump and review the damage

in Lafayette Park and at St. John's Episcopal Church. What I was not aware of was exactly where we were going when we arrived at the church and what the plans were once we got there. It was also my aim and General Millies to meet with and thank the members of the National Guard who were on duty that evening in the park. It is something the president likes to do as well. In other words, I just, I didn't know. I just didn't know. He claims that he had no notice before Trump led him to St. John's Episcopal Church for a photo op and he's claiming John that he thought he was just gonna go there to survey some of the damage that was done to the church and also talk to the troops. That's what he thought. Yeah, it's, it's like the thing is that we have no

reason to believe that anything any of them are saying is true. No. And we have no reason to believe that the clarifications they provide are true when we know Donald Trump is right now and always watching the news. And so if Esper comes out and says, you know, I didn't know why we were this or whatever. He's going to immediately get a call from Donald Trump. And because only weenies are left in positions of authority, he's going to immediately change his story to try to like make Donald Trump less angry at him, I guess. But all of it is lies. The entire purpose of that event was a big deception. We shouldn't trust any of this. And honestly, I'm inclined to just say, I don't care what Esper thought was going on there. I care about what he allowed to be done

and what Barr allowed to be done because now Barr wants us to believe that it was his idea even though Ivanka also says it was her idea and I don't know how Barr could actually be responsible for it but he says it was his idea

to clear people out earlier but again because of the threat of Antifa even though we find out thanks to the great reporting of Ken Klippenstein that the FBI has found no indication that Antifa has been involved of literally any of the violence

so far over multiple days of protests so I don't trust any of them and I really don't care I care about what they do not their BS excuses that they give after the fact Well, you have a good reason to avoid trusting anyone from the Trump administration, including Mark Esper, because in that same speech, he claimed that, you know, what we saw in terms of how

these peaceful protesters were treated wasn't actually what we saw. Here he is. I want to address a few other matters that have been raised about that evening. First, National Guard forces did not fire rubber bullets or tear gas into the crowd as reported. Second, guardsmen were instructed to wear helmets and personal protective equipment for their own protection, not to serve as some form of intimidation. Third, military leaders, including the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, were wearing field uniforms because that is the appropriate uniform when working in a command center and meeting with troops in the streets.

Fourth, it wasn't until yesterday afternoon that we determined it was a National Guard helicopter that hovered low over a city block in D.C. Within an hour or so of learning of this, I directed the Secretary of the Army to conduct an inquiry to determine what happened and why and a report back to me. It's all lies. So clear, yeah, it's all lies. And clearly, for those of you who are watching a video version of the show as opposed to the audio podcast, we're the ones who used video to debunk the nonsense that you're hearing from Esper. So the tear gas you can clearly see in the video. you also see these heavily armed, you know, police with their shields and their helmets charging at...

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Yeah, no, I thought I saw police brutality there, but I guess it was just in my mind. You know, Esper's got to be telling the truth. Yeah, yeah. And finally, Esper claims that he's on our side, okay? That he doesn't actually want to use the military against its own people. The option to use active duty forces in a law enforcement role should only be used as a matter of last resort and only in the most urgent and dire of situations. We are not in one of those situations now.

I do not support invoking the Insurrection Act. In the YouTube super chat comments, Clayton Mill writes in and says, I thought the military also swore an oath to protect Americans from harm, not harm them. So bunker bitch, that's Donald Trump, can have a photo op. Well, I guess oaths don't really matter at all, right? Just like how the Trump administration has shown us how little regard they have for our constitutional rights. Yeah. Yeah.

So it makes a good headline for Esper to say, I don't invoke using the Insurrection Act. It's like, oh, he's standing up for himself. Here's an important follow question. what if they don't have to? What if invoking it could prompt a response? Instead, you just do all the things you'd do if you invoked it. You send the troops. I mean, after all, we're apparently led to believe that some helicopter pilot just decided on his own to buzz people below the level of buildings. That's something that helicopter pilots do all the time on their own. They weren't ordered to. No one's responsible. That's the cool thing, is that it was done, but no one's responsible.

No one can be held responsible. The tear gassing didn't happen, even though we saw it. So no one can be responsible for that since it didn't happen. Now there's people who are not soldiers all over D.C. They look like soldiers. They have the weapons and the defensive armor of soldiers, but they're not soldiers. They're not military police. We have no idea who they are.

Why would you go to the trouble of using the Insurrection Act, which would produce its own headlines, when you could just do all of those things informally? That's exactly right. And the thing that I just want Americans to be just hyper aware of moving forward because I feel like we've ignored it for a long time. And I don't mean all of us, but in general, like our media has ignored it. I think that there's been just like this disinterest in the general public. What we do abroad, our U.S. foreign policy is tied to what's happening within our border.

borders today, when we turn a blind eye to this military industrial complex, which leads to, you know, which of course focuses on that profit motive for more war, more war, more weapons, you know, all of the investment goes toward defense, right? You don't think that that's eventually going to turn around and negatively impact us. And by the way, if that's all you care about, if all you care about is what happens within these borders, you should care about U.S. foreign policy. But if you're uncomfortable watching our police treat American citizens the way they are with this disgusting level of brutality, also understand that the way we treat civilians abroad is actually worse. And we're talking about civilians. We're not talking

about soldiers and foreign militaries. We're talking about average people who want to have dinner with their families, who want to go to school and get educated, who want a better life for themselves. Our government has been maiming them, murdering them with no problem. Referring to them is nothing more than collateral damage. So we have to take a good hard look at everything systemically in this country and how we do things. Because if we basically turn a blind eye to the government treating foreigners the way they treat them, there's no question that they'll turn around and treat us the same way because the common factor there is human life. If they don't value human lives, they're not going to value ours. And I think that's what we've seen. You know you like

that tight shot. You know you like it. All right. We're going to take a quick break. And we'll be right back with some more news. 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

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and secure your data with a top VPN solution of it. ExpressVPN. And if you go to ExpressVPN.com slash TYT, you can get three extra months for free with this exclusive link just for TYT fans. That's EX, P-R-E-S-S-V-P-N dot com slash T-YT. Check it out today. Hey guys, welcome back to TYT, Anna and John with you. I'm going to read a few member comments, but I have to go fast because we have so much more to get to. Jur writes in and says, never stop fighting, never give up. Great message for the protesters for progressives.

And progressive pirate says, inspecting a bathroom for what? Glory holes? Okay, so we'll get to that story later. Craig Cray Souffley says, please, Esper do everything. And Leroy, not Jenkins, says Esper went full Sean Spicer. By the way, guys, I just read member comments, members of the the ones who make this entire show, this company happen, and we wouldn't be able to do it without them. Members get special perks, including exclusive content like the post game. And yeah, we

love you guys. So thank you for supporting us from the bottom of our hearts. Seriously, we could not do this without you. Moving on to the rest of the news today. So police were filmed in multiple cases, trapping and brutalizing protesters in some major cities last night, the protests were peaceful. There were no issues with the protesters whatsoever. However, the protesters engaged in civil disobedience by refusing to abide by these ridiculous curfews. So I'm going to start off with the first example, which took place in Charlotte, North Carolina. The protesters were led by riot police into a parking lot, which meant. that they were trapped and then they were terrorized. Take a look.

They've got everybody trapped here. We're trapped. We're trapped. They're trapped. They're shooting pepper balls. They're shooting pepper balls at us. They're shooting pepper balls at us. They've thrown out tear gas, flashbangs, smoke. They just chased everybody down this way. There's a line of riot police up there. There's a line of riot police back there. You're trapped here. They're up top shooting at us. Just absolutely disgusting. To see how much disdain they have for people, you know, they just do not care about human lives at all.

These are peaceful protesters. And they purposely did that. They trapped them in a situation they couldn't escape from and use tear gas and just terrorize them. Yeah. The idea was to brutalize them. That's all that they wanted. They set up a situation where they wouldn't be able to leave because they didn't want

them to leave. These are some of the worst things that we've seen. That there's, I'm sure many people saw sort of on the embankment next to a highway. People were trapped again being tear gas and all of that. And then just yesterday on the Brooklyn Bridge, both sides were blocked off. So they were being yelled at to leave. They were being blocked from doing so and being attacked the entire time. Yeah.

And it's such a stupid strategy. I mean, it's obviously horrific for all the human rights reasons, all of that. But like the police have got to understand that this is, this is hurting them too much. I mean, people know that like during the civil rights movement, the fact that the footage was getting out was so damning to what was going on because finally people around the country were seeing what would have been happening the entire time. Now they're seeing a hundred viral clips every day are spreading. around. And that's, like, are they shocked that so many people support these protests that there was majority support for burning down the police building in Minneapolis? People see what these police are doing. The attack that sparked all this, the murder of George Floyd, was brutal.

But most of these videos would be themselves justification for protests of this sort. And so they are just feeding it in cities across the country every single night. Right now as we are doing this as we're doing the show, there's something happening that's going to be uploaded to Twitter soon, and we're going to be rightfully horrified by it. Yeah, you're absolutely right. And look, what happened on the Brooklyn Bridge last night was absolutely unacceptable. I was terrified, because they were trapped on that bridge for hours, and I was terrified that it would eventually devolve into like a very violent interaction with the police, Eventually, I think because there was so much backlash in real time in regard to what was happening,

they allowed people to get off the bridge on the Brooklyn side, but they wouldn't allow them to cross over to Manhattan. And I think part of the reason why these protesters were saved is because Spider-Man made an appearance. Take a look. You know, he's really kicked at us the other night. Oh, no. You know, he, uh, his spiky sense, like really kicked into, really kicked into gear, came in. I'm just kidding. Obviously, Spider-Man did not save the protesters.

But it is, it's incredible some of the footage that you come across, uh, online, on Twitter specifically. Like, I, I follow hashtags at this point when it comes to getting an accurate depiction of what's happening on the ground, really. Yeah. Because the media, like, only focuses on the looting, but that's not, that's not the full story. Yeah. And yet, I get it makes for good imagery or whatever, and you can, you know, it seems like

you're being responsible and you can ignore the fact that much of it's going to be insured and everything anyway. But look, the Spider-Man thing is cool. We like the imagery or whatever. They might not have had an actual Spider-Man, but they did have a friendly neighborhood Congresswoman because when the footage was going around, AOC. tweeted that she was rushing to the Brooklyn Bridge. And we don't know, if public attention on these things results in, for instance, those people

being allowed to flee into Brooklyn, it is possible that she contributed to that. And so thankfully, we do have some people, if not spiders. And finally, I wanted to show you one other example of how the police respond to peaceful protesters, including medics who are specifically there to help protesters if they get physically hurt. Take a look. We had set up a medical center so that anyone protesting would be safe. We were not protesting. We were not agitating. We had claimed that space. We had set up a triage area in case of any injuries. We had eyewash, sutures, EMTs, doctors, EMS workers. They came in in full riot gear, hit us with shields, threw several people to the ground.

We were grabbed, thrown, shouted at, screamed at, treated as criminals. Yeah, and today I actually came across a disturbing video that I retweeted, featuring a protester who's a diabetic, she's begging a police officer to give her her insulin, which is in a purse or a bag that the cop has and won't give back. And she's like, you can go through my stuff if you want. You can keep everything. Just give me my insulin. My blood sugar is I can feel it dropping.

And he just, they thought it was funny. I mean, just complete disregard for human life and what they're supposed to be doing, which is protecting and serving the public. Yeah. Yeah, I don't know. Maybe it's a bubble thing. maybe just brutalizing people in the most horrific ways imaginable plays well with certain people and that's who they're trying to appeal to. But when I see footage of LAPD, you know, like driving up

on a group of teenagers, firing rubber bullets out of the car at them, and then chasing them down the street, I don't feel safer or more secure as a result of that when they're, you know, trying to ram through barricades with their police SUVs and running over people. seems like a terrible strategy, I would probably go in a different direction if I were them. Definitely. So we have about 30 seconds left in the main show. Unfortunately, we didn't get to the Bunker Boy story that we had prepared, but we will do it in our postgame show for our members. You can help support TYT, keep us sustainable by becoming a member, tyt.com slash join to do so. And this postgame is among my favorite. We're going to show you some

messages toward the LAPD that were vicious and it just brightened my day. It was awesome. We'll have that and more in the postgame show. See you soon. 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, Jank Huger, and I'll see you soon.