The Young Turks - TYT Extended Clip - May 13th, 2020

Episode Date: May 13, 2020

Mitch McConnell is criticizing Obama for criticizing Trump. John Iadarola and Cenk Uygur 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 the Young Turks. I'm Anna Casparian. Joining me today is John Ida Rola because it's Wednesday. What's up, John? That was such an upbeat intro. I was thinking briefly about matching it, but I don't.

have it in me. Not yet anyway. We'll see if I can get there. Yeah. Well, I'm happy to be among friends. I'm happy to be doing the show with you and I'm happy that there is a wonderful financial institution where you can park your money and not have to worry about it being invested in the fossil fuel industry.

If you want to know what that financial institution is, just go to Aspiration.com slash t-y-t. I love the fact that we're seeing some of these, you know, companies, banks, financial institutions, pulling away from the fossil fuel industry, something that we desperately need in order to mitigate the impact of climate change. But yeah. Did you like the way I weave that live read into the intro of the show today? It was very, very smooth.

Very smooth. All right. Well, we have a lot of news to get to today. For anyone who's watching live right now, I just want to let you guys know that we do some live videos, live stories throughout the day in order to provide some additional. stories for you guys. So make sure you check that out on our Facebook page and also on our YouTube channel, The Young Turks, of course. And let's get started. Let's start off with the Trump administration attempting to basically manipulate death counts when it comes

to coronavirus. So more than 80,000 Americans have died as a result of the coronavirus pandemic. Millions of Americans have also contracted the virus. And it doesn't look so good for Or someone like Donald Trump, who has shown a true lack of leadership and competence in dealing or responding to this pandemic. So what's a man to do if this could negatively impact his potential of getting reelected? Let's just fudge the numbers. Let's manipulate them. And that's exactly what Donald Trump is attempting to do with the help of Dr. Deborah

Berks, which is something that she should be held accountable for as well. a professional, she's a health expert, and she knows that this is the wrong thing to do. But nonetheless, here's what we're hearing from a pretty extensive report at The Daily Beast. Donald Trump and members of his coronavirus task force are pushing for revisions that could lead to far fewer deaths being counted than originally reported. And that's according to five administration officials working on the government's response to the pandemic. Now, Trump is suggesting that the way the CDC is currently, reporting the numbers, could be inaccurate. It could be an overestimate. But as we know, based

on the true experts, the real adults in the room, it's very likely that the numbers that we have now are truly underestimating the number of people who have died as a result of this virus. Now, according to one of the sources with knowledge of Trump's private remarks, the president recently said that he'd like a review of how the coronavirus deaths are counted and studied by the government citing hypothetical cases, and get this, in which a person has the virus but is killed by other unnatural means, such as falling down a flight of stairs. You know, there really is a prevalence of that happening, John. You know, and we don't want to, we don't want to overestimate the numbers when people are

really dying from falling down the stairs. You know, relatively early on, the first couple of weeks of the rising death toll during the pandemic, Donald Trump would do his press. conferences. And I remember at the time I had a guest on the damage report. And at one point, Trump said something where he said the number of deaths. I don't remember if it was 5,000 or 15,000 or whatever. The number changes so quickly, obviously. And the guest that was on with me said, well, you know, on Fox they're saying that a lot fewer people have died. But now Trump is on the record acknowledging the deaths, so he can't flip. And then the guest paused. And then we both

laughed. Because yeah, of course, it doesn't matter how many times he acknowledged it. Like, he just acknowledged the deaths that there would be, you know, 100,000 deaths a week ago. Like, but his base is out there just waiting to be told, oh, I was just fibben. Maybe nobody died. And, and like, that seems crazy. And it is crazy. But you can get away with it. In right-wing media, they're going to. And the thing is, Berks can do that. So how many, let's say they remove a few. It doesn't matter how many. It just puts it out there again, the number's not reliable. It doesn't matter if it's 10% lower or 20% higher.

You will have a significant chunk of the electorate that is inoculated, not against the virus, but against the idea that you have to care about it. Because it's just, ah, it's up for grabs. It's another thing that we can have a view based on our partisan affiliation on whether it counts or not. Yeah, look, they're messing with people's lives. and this situation is definitely not under control. So look, Donald Trump had no problem saying that the way that we've been counting the number

of deaths is very accurate. In fact, here's a video of him back in April, April 7th specifically, talking about the accuracy of the COVID-19 death count. States have had trouble with getting accurate death counts, particularly because of lack of testing or no uniform. Did you see death counts? Yes, because of lack of testing and no uniform system to put that into. When you say death counts, I think they're pretty accurate on the death count. Somebody dies. I think the states have been pretty accurate. That's a big deal what you're just saying. No, the death counts, I think they're very, very accurate. I do say this. I think if you

look at China and if you look at some of these very large countries, when you talk about cases, number of cases, I would be willing to bet they have more cases than we do, but they don't. But they don't do the testing like we do, but you look at, you know, you look at some of these certain countries, and I would be willing to bet a lot that they have more cases, but we're more accurate, and our testing is done very accurately, and we've got a good process. So he thought the death count was accurate. He also stated that the testing has been great, and that was back in April, April 7th. Five weeks ago. Five weeks ago. The testing is not great. It is not great.

No, no, it's not now, little on five weeks ago. He was basically asserting the idea that anyone is dying from coronavirus and not being counted because they were never tested, which we know is what's happened. And there are probably literally thousands of cases in the New York area alone. He was saying that's impossible, but that's consistent with what he'd been saying from a month earlier, March 6th, when he said anyone that wants a test can get one. That has never been true. It's not true today.

It probably won't be true in a month. month even, but he just keeps saying it. Yeah, look, I totally underestimated or overestimated like the way I was going to be able to do the show today, but I want to just tell you guys, look, this, this pandemic is, it's as bad as we've been telling you guys it is. My mom was rushed to the hospital yesterday and they weren't able to give her a coronavirus test because they didn't have any or they weren't able to. give her one because they don't have enough.

And so they gave her every other test imaginable because they wanted to see if they could exhaust all other options before testing her for coronavirus because, and I don't blame the doctors and nurses. Like they have limited tests, right? And I'm sure in their heads they're like, let's exhaust everything and then use this coronavirus test as a last resort. And look, I don't wish this upon anyone, anyone, but I want you guys to understand if If someone in your family is suspected of having coronavirus and they're admitted in the hospital,

you cannot see them. I am not allowed to see my mom. She's, you know, I can't even talk to her. Like they took her phone away, gave it to my father, my father can't see her. I'm like literally calling the hospital every hour trying to see if I can get a hold of her, seeing if like the nurses can give me an update. They're playing with people's lives and I'm like terrified that I'm not going to be. to see my mom again. And I hate that we don't have any, we don't have any leadership in this

country. Like, we don't have anyone, sorry, I'm really sorry. We don't have anyone looking out for the best interests of Americans. And I don't wish this upon anyone, including people who are like avid Trump supporters, please take this seriously. This is not a joke. And I would hate for anyone to lose a family member in this way where you're not even able to. to like see them or comfort them or talk to them. But anyway, look, I get that the economy is important. I get that they want to open the country back up. I get that Trump only cares about himself and his chances of getting reelected.

But nothing is more important than human life. Like how are you going to enjoy a great economy, which by the way, we didn't even have one to begin with before the pandemic? How are you going to enjoy anything if you're not alive, if your family members are dead. And I'm not trying to fearmonger. This is real life. This is what's happening. And you have the Trump administration, which, you know, went after China over them not being forthcoming about their death toll, about like hiding numbers and stuff. They went after China. And now they're trying to do the same thing with the help of Dr. Deborah Birx, who's supposed to be one of the

adults in the room. So Daily Beast reports that Berks, the coordinator of the administration's coronavirus task force has urged CDC officials to exclude from coronavirus death count reporting some of those individuals who either do not have confirmed lab results and are presumed positive or who have the virus and may not have died as a direct result of it. So again, she's parroting what Donald Trump wants. Luckily, there are some CDC officials who are pushing back against this. They refuse to follow the orders of the Trump administration because they understand the importance of getting the information to us. But we live in a we live in, we live in an as whole country. We do with this type of leadership because we don't have politicians who are

looking out for our best interests at all. They don't care about our lives. They don't care about our family members' lives. And I don't know, at this point, like, I don't know what to do about it. Sure. Go ahead, John. Okay, I'll just say the leadership doesn't care. We had the lockdowns for two months, which was apparently as long as, you know, a third of the country is willing to stick with it. And that bought two months that they did nothing with. And I know that you felt the need to, you know, like to say you feel for the people economically, you know, about the opening up because you care. And so you're acknowledging that. But it's, they're peddling a complete false dichotomy in both directions. It's not saving lives or reopening the economy.

we could save lives, keep the lockdowns, and actually help people to get through this by aiding them via the government. They're not even offering that as an option and they're stopping anyone from doing that. And reopening the economy, reopening the economy doesn't save the economy because all it does is ensure that we're going to have a horrific second spike and states will be forced to go into a lockdown again. That'll be longer and worse than it would have been if we just done it right the first time and use the time that we bought to make sure that we could do testing and contact tracing

and quarantines and all of that. It is, they're finding new ways every day to bungle this, to make sure that more money is wasted, more lives are lost. And the reason that you're, like, I hate that you're going through this, that you have to experience this. And you, because you care, like, you care about your situation. You also don't want anyone else to experience this. But also, because you're not a monster, you've been doing two months of this exact same coverage with the same empathy and concern for the lives that are lost, the lives that are being ruined, And even before it potentially hit home for you, you were doing the right thing advocating for people.

But unfortunately, the single largest media company in our country is spreading every form of dangerous misinformation imaginable, trying to ensure that more people die, that there's more economic damage. It is a ridiculous situation that we've got into where everyone who has power in politics and in media seems to be aligned against the American people. We've got to take a break. When we come back, we'll respond to some of the ridiculous Fox News attacks against Anthony Fauci. We need to talk about a relatively new show called Un-F-E-N-F-E-N-FTR.

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

For as the great philosopher Yoda once put it, You must unlearn what you have learned. And that's true whether you're in Jedi training or you're uprooting and exposing all the propaganda and disinformation you've been fed over the course of your lifetime. So search for UNFDR in your podcast app today. and get ready to get informed, angered, and entertained all at the same time. Hey, everyone. Welcome back to TYT, Anna and John with you.

You guys are incredibly kind. Thank you for the sweet messages. I'm going to try really hard to read them without crying because I got to get through this show. But let's just read a few super chat comments. Bonnie Hell says, I'm so sorry you're going through this. I cried with you. You're like family to me. Thank you so much.

Look, doing this show is keeping me sane right now. So I know that I kind of had a breakdown in the last segment because it's hard to go through this. But thank you for being there for me. Thank you for being family. You guys mean a lot to me. Bonita says, I'm really sorry, Anna, for you and your family's pain. My thoughts are with you.

You're not alone. Thank you. Thank you. So I'm going to go ahead and move on to the. next story. And just, again, thank you guys. It's really sweet. All right. So Anthony Fauci testified before senators yesterday. And unfortunately, although we finally have, not finally, but we've had some accurate information given to us by what seems to be the only adult in the room, he's being attacked for answering questions before the Senate and telling people the truth

about the severity of coronavirus. So first, let me just go through some of what happened during this, you know, Senate hearing. Half of it was done in person. Half of it was done with people, you know, joining in virtually, which makes sense because we're supposed to be social distancing. And Fauci shared information that's hard to hear. Like we all want to hear that the country can reopen, that the death toll is starting to plateau, that the number of people contracting the virus has gone down. But unfortunately, that's not the case. Fauci stressed that local officials should abide by the system developed by the federal COVID-19 task force and remain vigilant about a virus that is not going to disappear anytime soon. He was quoted as saying,

my concern is that we'll see little spikes that might turn into outbreaks. Fauci also referenced the notion that the virus could disappear, something that Donald Trump himself has mentioned as recently as last week. And Fauci said accurately, that's just not going to happen because it's such a highly transmittable disease or virus. And one of the senators who was probably the most harsh against Fauci was Senator Rand Paul, who tested positive for coronavirus. And so he should understand the importance of being factual and accurate here. But he told Fauci that he shouldn't be the end all and key decision maker in the virus response while urging humility, humility guys on the part of doctors regarding what they don't know about the virus. This guy who is in

no way an expert on this virus is telling a scientist, a doctor, Dr. Anthony Fauci, that he needs to show a little humility. It's disgusting. And the misinformation coming from Republican lawmakers and right-wing media are literally costing lives right now. Right now as we speak, people are dying because they downplayed and underestimated the severity of this virus because of the misinformation we get from people like Rand Paul and some of the Fox News goons that we're about to show you in just a minute. But John, before we go to those videos, I wanted to hear your thoughts. Yeah, you would hope that because he was one of the people who's been affected by it directly,

if perhaps lightly, that he would take it a little bit more seriously. But while we always say that for a Republican, it has to hit incredibly close to home for you to have any chance of empathy, it's not a guarantee that even in that case, you'll have it. And Rand Paul has to weigh being serious about this. He is, after all, a trained doctor, as I've seen Republicans reminding everyone online, reminding us that he's an ophthalmologist, clearly an infectious disease expert. Anyway, theoretically, being ethical and caring about the training versus wanting Laura Ingram to tweet nice things about him, which is what he got. And that's why he's attacking Fauci.

That's why he's been tweeting about the deep state and all that stuff. He doesn't believe any of this stuff, but he likes the far, the crazy right-winger's liking him. He certainly likes it better than when Donald Trump was slapping around the debate stage. And so, like a lot of politicians in the model of a Ted Cruz, he's doing what he has to to be liked by his party, even if it means, hypothetically, that some people lose faith, like Fox News viewers might lose faith in what Dr. Fauci says and then do irresponsible things and get sick and die and all of that.

That's the devil's bargain that many on the right have taken over the past few months. And what always amazes me is the pure patience and class Dr. Anthony Fauci has in responding to people who antagonize him and question the science. behind COVID-19. In response to Rand Paul, he said the following, I don't give advice about anything other than public health. We should be humble about what we don't know. And that falls under the fact that we don't know everything about this virus. And we have to be careful, particularly when it comes to children. Now, he mentioned children because at one point, he emphasized that schools should not reopen. It's a bad idea. And we're going to see a spike in coronavirus cases

among kids. And while initially it was thought that children cannot contract the virus, there's now suspicion that the virus has mutated and there have been children who have tested positive for coronavirus. So I understand why he comes at it from that perspective. And again, he's not thinking about, oh, what do we need to do to help the stock market? His job is very specific. What do we do to prevent as many deaths as possible? And the fact that, you know, people are attempting to discredit him when he is really at this point the only adult in the room is terrifying because we know the types of people Trump likes to replace experts with.

And they're usually loyalists. They're usually not experts and they're not qualified for the job. And who knows who he's going to replace Anthony Fauci with. I mean, I keep mentioning Keith Ablo, who was like a fake Fox News doctor, but it's not far-fetched. I mean, I wouldn't put it past him. Now, with that said, I just want to go to this first video because it shows some of the nonsense coming from people like Tucker Carlson. Nobody should ever shake hands again just to be safe.

I don't think we should ever shake hands ever again, to be honest with you. Not only would it be good to prevent coronavirus disease, it probably would decrease the incidence of influenza dramatically in this country. Look, this is just buffoon level stuff at that point, and we're not doing this to my the guy, you know? I mean, anybody who talks as much as Anthony Fauci does on television, we can tell you firsthand, is apt to say some stupid things. The point is, is this the guy into whom you want to vest all of your trust? Is this the guy you want to chart the future of the country? Maybe not. This is a very serious matter, the decisions we're making right now.

Tony Fauci has not been elected to anything. He's had the same job. for nearly 40 years. That means the majority of American voters never even indirectly picked him for the role he has now. This is not the result of any kind of democratic process at work at all. Yet in the last four months,

Fauci has become one of the most powerful people in the world. And some, particularly in our media and in our democratic establishment, are clamoring to give Dr. Fauci even more power. Why? Some people seem to think he should

dictator for the duration of this crisis. So this man, Tucker Carlson, is making Anthony Fauci out to be some sort of dictator because he's the only one who has the courage to tell Americans the truth about the severity of this virus. Like, how ridiculous is this? And by the way, it's rich hearing it from someone who gets to broadcast out of his goddamn mansion, you know, after collecting his multimillion dollar salary every year. If it's so safe, Tucker Carlson, then go out there.

I want to see him practice what he's preaching right now. Go out there and shake hands. Don't wear a mask, okay? Go out there and mingle with the hundreds of people who are at that Texas park over the weekend, right? Social distancing. Oh, we should open the country back up because Americans can be adults. They can be responsible, except they're not, as we've seen in multiple states that have

reopened prematurely. People are not social distancing, they're not wearing masks, and the number of coronavirus cases in those states are spiking. But let me tell you what the truth is, okay? The people at Fox News sat down and did a calculation and they realized, oh, this virus is disproportionately impacting people of color. It's disproportionately impacting the poor. Do we really care about them?

No. We care about our stock portfolios, though, so let's reopen as soon as possible. Remember, Tucker Carlson was one of the people in the very beginning who took this seriously. I wonder why he's changed his mind all of a sudden. What could it have been that made Tucker Carlson, you know, go from talking to Donald Trump to take this pandemic seriously to now downplaying it like the rest of the crap hosts at Fox? It's disgusting. Well, let's not go too far. He took it comparatively seriously compared to Sean Hannity.

And what you explained, that's one potential thing that's changed. The other is that Trump did an absolutely horrible job and tens of thousands of people have died. And Tucker Carlson, when he didn't yet know if taking it seriously would hurt Donald Trump, the person that he has vested all of his trust into, that he wants to have, you know, unilateral insane power for America, before he knew that it was going to be bad for Trump, he took it seriously. Now, to continue to acknowledge that these deaths are important would be damaging

to the economic elites that he actually supports, and so he can't do that. And so he doesn't care. And for all the people listening to this, I might think, well, come on, no, he's just trying to be fair, he's a critical thinker and everything. Do you really think that if Barack Obama was still in office right now, and 85,000 plus people had died, and another 2,000 are going to die today, that he'd be implying that the issue is Fauci, that that's the problem, is that people are taking Fauci's warnings too seriously, that we should go easier on the government? Does Anyone think that he would be doing that if it wasn't a Republican president? Nobody, nobody actually thinks that. And nobody is saying that Fauci should have dictator powers. Again, he's supposed to

be the serious one on Fox in the opinion side. Did he cite those people that are saying Fauci should have dictator-like powers? Who thinks that? Fauci is, after all, an advisor in all of this. He barely has any power. You want people who have unilateral control over issues that they don't know anything about? That's Jared Kushner. How many segments has Tucker Carlson done about the power undemocratically allocated to Jared Kushner over the past couple of years? I'm going to go out on a limb and say none, actually. Yeah, we didn't vote for Jared Kushner. We didn't vote for Jared Kushner. He was in the beginning of the Trump administration tasked with creating peace among the Palestinians and Israelis. You guys, Tucker Carlson is trash, okay? Don't.

ever, ever be fooled by his faux populism. Don't ever be fooled when he pretends like he's concerned about inequality in America. Tucker Carlson cares about Tucker Carlson. Tucker Carlson cares about the wealthy. And more importantly, Tucker Carlson will pretend like he cares about inequality. So he can then pivot over to a message about how immigrants are the real problems. They're the ones who are creating the inequality. Don't be fooled by that trash. That's what Tucker Carlson is. He was trashed from day one, and that's not going to change, period. And you know what? We have other videos from Fox News hosts. I don't really care to show them. I'm done with them. I'm done with their misinformation. I'm done with the fact that they're playing

with people's lives. And we need to, I mean, we've been doing it on this show. But for the love of God, if you have family members who watch this garbage and are persuaded by it, tie them up, lock them in a basement, make sure they're not going out there and downplaying the severity of this virus. Because God forbid, they contract it and they end up in a hospital and you're unable to even see them. Okay? That's what people are dealing with right now as we speak. And you have these goons lying to the American people about the reality. Yeah, by the way, I'll make this fast. But if you believed that he was some sort of free-thinking right-wing populist or something, he has been given an excellent opportunity to do.

demonstrate that during the coronavirus. It is an absolute emergency. People are hurting, not just in terms of their health, but also economically. And so hypothetically, he could advise the government, the president listens to him literally every day to do something to help these people. He was given that option. He'd go in that populist direction. Or he could just say lockdowns aren't necessary. Just go back to work. I don't care if you die in the thousands upon thousands. My stock portfolio isn't doing well enough. So you need to go and jump into the meat grinder, for me, those were two paths that he could take. And we know what he took. Is he doing segments every day calling on Trump to make tens of millions of additional tests

available? Is he saying that? Is he doing segments saying that people desperately need an extension of unemployment benefits or that they need some sort of stopgap money to get them by? Rent freezes or foreclosure freezes or anything populist. Is he calling for any of that? No. He's talking about Obamagate and he's talking about Fauci and he's saying go back out there and work. I don't care what happens to you. Such a sham, Jesus. It is, it is, it is. It's just, our media is compromised by self-interested hacks, and we have no leadership in this country.

And it's just devastating to see it every single day as more and more people die. Thousands of people in this country die every day because of this behavior. Let's switch gears a little bit and give you some updates on what's happening in, the Michael Flynn case. The DOJ dismissal of former national security adviser, Michael Flynn, has been put on hold by a federal judge who would like to allow independent prosecutors or independent groups to weigh in on the case. Now, this specifically has to do with Watergate prosecutors who believe that they have a very

unique perspective on this case. Now, just to refresh everyone's memory, Michael Flynn was fired by the Trump administration following revelations that he had lied to the FBI during the Russia meddling, election meddling investigation. So he had spoken to Sergei Kisliak, who was the Russian ambassador to the United States, on a few occasions and urged Kisliak, according to reports, to avoid reacting to the Obama administration's implementation of sanctions following Russian meddling in our elections. Now, I've said a million times before, I don't know why he lied about that, but lying to the

FBI is a crime, and he had pleaded guilty twice to that crime. And so once the DOJ decides to drop a case against a person who, A, got fired by the Trump administration, and B, has pleaded guilty twice to lying to the FBI, you got a question, like, what's going on and What are the motivations here, right? So now let me give you what the judge is doing. So that's U.S. district judge Emmett G. Sullivan, and he said in an order that he expects individuals and organizations will seek to intervene in the politically charged case. Having others way in could preface more aggressive steps that the federal judge in Washington

could take, including holding a hearing to consider what to do. Now, the action by Judge Sullivan appears to rule out immediate action on the Justice Department's decision to reverse course and throw out Flynn's December 2017 guilty plea. Sullivan said he will, quote, at the appropriate time, set a schedule for outside parties to argue against the Justice Department's claims as the government seeks to drop the charges. And so what has the DOJ referenced in their decision to drop this case? Well, they're arguing that the FBI entrapped or committed entrapment in an effort to get Michael Flynn to lie about his contacts with Kisliak. And they're making all these ridiculous things up. There was a big story that I

talked about today in a live video about how, oh, Joe Biden and other Obama era officials had unmasked the identity of Michael Flynn and the classified intelligence reports. Let me just be clear. That is something that happens all the time, all the time. So that's not a legal behavior. That's not an issue when it comes to like the prosecutorial process. They're just doing everything they can to undermine and delegitimize the case against Flynn. And anyone who's actually paying attention to the details knows that it's nonsense, complete

utter nonsense and an attempt to distract the public from Trump's failed coronavirus response. Yeah. Look, I care about what Barr is doing. I care about the precedent that he's setting. I don't like this direction, obviously, and you shouldn't either if you want our servants in government to not flagrantly break the law. And if they do, do not face any consequences. If you want to avoid that, you should care about this too. But in this case, I think that the right wing and me has something in common. It is that I don't care about Michael Flynn at all, and I would be perfectly happy to have never heard his name for the rest of my life. I know that they think that we're on the left so we hate him, like that we're just driven by wanting to

like take him down and ruin his life. I honestly hadn't thought about him for like six months at one point. Don't care about him, not interested him at all. And neither are they, by the way. They'll talk about him. And sure, if it was up to them, if there were two buttons they could press, one he continues to be prosecuted, goes to jail. The other he goes free. They'll press it, but they don't care. Like, I don't think Tucker Carlson or Sean Handy or all that concerned, but they are very interested in using this to help Donald Trump. I think it's futa.

I think it's a horrible direction they're going in. But the idea, like crafting this idea of Obamagate, which I think you just described better than I've heard anyone on the right describe what it is actually about. They will talk about it for literally hours on end without ever even indicating what they think happened or what the crime is supposed to be, they do not care about Mike Flynn at all. They think that hypothetically crafting some idea where in Obama, but also by the way, Biden, we're breaking the law, somehow corruption, sort of, that that can create an aura that they can run on. Since they're not going to run the economy anymore, because that's been destroyed, and they're

certainly not going to do anything having to do with your health or anything like that, because have utterly botched that, he wants to try to recreate the ground that he had in 2016 and also that he thought he would have with Ukraine. I don't think that a lot of people are thinking about that anymore. So this seems like their replacement for that. Yeah, exactly. And the fact, look, again, I love that you mentioned that it's not about protecting Flynn or for us, it's not like, oh, we want to see Flynn in prison. It's about the rule of law, right? And it's about setting or avoiding setting a precedent that allows the executive branch and the Department of Justice to abuse its power. And what we've seen over and over again from the Trump administration

is one abuse of power after the next, after the next. And what William Barr did here is just wrong. It's just wrong, especially because we're dealing with a person who not only pleaded guilty, but a person who Donald Trump fired and publicly berated for lying to vice president Mike Pence. And so they keep doing this game where they say one thing. And then all of a sudden, when they want to distract the public from their failures, they'll say something completely different and accuse the Obama administration of criminality. It's pathetic. And I just want to make sure that people are aware of what's really happening. So you don't fall for this nonsense. And you don't think that there's actual justification for what William Barr did,

because there is none. And if he is able to go through with this, with dropping the case against Michael Flynn, it does set a precedent and it does weaken the Department of Justice or at least what the Department of Justice is supposed to do in carrying out the rule of law. All right, well, we got to take a break. When we come back, we have more news for you guys, including sufficient Schumer. Schumer has weighed in on the Tara Reid allegations. We're going to compare his response to that to how he responded to Brett Kappa.

in all. We'll be right back. At TYT, we frequently talk about all the ways that big tech companies are taking control of our online lives, constantly monitoring us and storing and selling our data. But that doesn't mean we have to let them. It's possible to stay anonymous online and hide your data from the prying eyes of big tech. And one of the best ways is with ExpressVPN. ExpressVPN hides your IP address, making your active ID more difficult to trace and sell the advertisers. ExpressVPN also encrypts 100% of your network. data to protect you from eavesdroppers and cyber criminals. And it's also easy to install.

A single mouse click protects all your devices. But listen, guys, this is important. ExpressVPN is rated number one by CNET and Wired magazine. So take back control of your life online and secure your data with a top VPN solution available, ExpressVPN. And if you go to ExpressVPN.com slash TYT, you can get three extra months for free with this exclusive link just for TYT fans. That's E-X-P-R-E-S-S-V-P-N dot com slash T-YT. Check it out today. Hey, everyone, welcome back to the Young Turks, Anna Casparian and John Ida-Rolla with you. We're going to have an awesome postgame.

One of my favorite stories is in the postgame show. What do we do to go to restaurants while social distancing? but like maybe we're like super social and maybe like we like we like intimate settings that are like cram with people. How do we like, how do we scratch that itch? Well, one restaurant has an interesting solution for that and it's just a fun story. I'll share that with you in the post game. Become a member. Go to t.yt.com slash live. A few members comments for you guys and then we'll move on to the rest of the news. Meg writes in and says, ah, yes. What is 40 years of experience in infectious diseases? That's definitely not as good as getting elected.

I love that comment. Based on the name of your dad. Right. Jur says Tucker Carlson wasn't elected either, and he manages to influence policy, hypocrite, true. And finally, Mike says, I minored in Japanese language and culture in college, and I got accustomed to a slight bow instead of shaking hands. I loved it. It's incredible.

Please don't force me to touch other people's bodies to be consistent. considered polite. Yeah. Yeah. It is interesting how different cultures greet one another. Like in a lot of European cultures, you know, you do like the one cheek kiss. I know Armenians do both cheeks. Then you have like Japanese culture with the bow.

And then I don't know, Americans with like handshakes and sometimes hugs. Just random comment. Okay, let me move on. Some parts of America, it's the okay symbol. You know, just different stuff. I know. You know, the thing that sucks about the okay symbol is like, I actually like that symbol, like as an okay, just like I remember I would do it a lot in the studio to like give Brett like,

okay, I got it. And then, you know, the stupid right wing being what it is. I just, I fear that someday the right wing is going to take the chef's kiss and I just don't want that to happen. I know, I know. All right, well, let's, let's move on to anyone who might be tuning in now and didn't catch the rest of the show. We just spent the last, what, 40 minutes, 47 minutes bashing Donald Trump and all of his cronies. Just want to give you that before we get to this next story. I just, I don't want people to have meltdowns because we're going to be critical of a Democrat. We're actually fair on this show. So with that said, let's move on to Chuck Schumer. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer has decided to stick by Joe Biden, calling the former vice presidents

denials in response to Tara Reid sexual assault allegations sufficient. Here he is making that case. Before the Me Too movement, women were not listened to who were telling what had happened to them. Since Me Too, women are listened to. Now, I've heard Joe Biden's explanation. I think it's sufficient. I think he will be a great candidate.

I think he will be a great president, and I think he'll help us take back the Senate. Okay, so there's Schumer saying, you know what, Biden's denials are sufficient. He, is he not merciful? He allowed her to speak, even though Biden had nothing to do with her speaking. She finally felt the need to come forward and share her side of the story. But look, before we get to that, I do want to just juxtapose what you saw in response to Biden's denials with how Chuck Schumer responded to Kavanaugh's denials. And in the video you're about to watch, he's specifically addressing his comments to Mitch

McConnell. But what he's saying does give you a sense of the double standard that was applied in this case. So let's take a look. Instead of looking at what happened that a young woman came forward because she felt compelled to knowing she. she'd risk so much on herself, which unfortunately has happened, he seeks to blame somebody else. In this case, the Democrats. Let's remember, Dr. Ford came forward before Judge Kavanaugh was

even nominated. Judge Ford came forward and called up two people before anyone even knew of her allegations, including one a hotline from the Washington Post according to her testimony. And our colleague, my colleague here, has engaged in a giant kabuki game.

He knows how believable Dr. Ford is. He knows how the American people, a majority of them, believe Dr. Ford was telling the truth, rather than Judge Kavanaugh. He knows that any focus on Dr. Ford would bring more feelings that Judge Kavanaugh is the wrong person for

the Supreme Court. But he can't tack Dr. Ford because of her credibility greater than Judge Kavanaugh. So we've gone over the allegations by Reid, and we also did extensive coverage of the allegations against Kavanaugh. I absolutely believe Dr. Christine Blasey Ford. There's no question that I believed her. That was a difficult story to report on. I also believe the allegations made by Tara Reid. But the amount of evidence in the Reed story or the Reed case is certainly more than the, you know, corroborating witness evidence that we had in the Christine Blasey Ford case. And I just find it so fascinating how differently Tara Reid's allegations are being treated. Look, for me, this is, I get it. People want to make this political. They want to make

it about like, oh, we got to beat Donald Trump. I don't know. Maybe I'm wrong in not taking that into account when I'm assessing the allegations because I think sexual assault allegations are serious and you should hear out what's being alleged. You should look at what evidence is being presented. And you should, because someone's life is really, you know, on the line here, not like whether she lives or dies, but like what she went through, right? I think it's important to like just take the politics out of it and just assess it fairly. And I hate the fact that it's become so clear that sexual assault and the abuse of women seems to be nothing more than a weaponized political prop. And it's gross. It really is. Yeah. Look, and I feel like this is very similar

the last time we talked about it, all we can do is what we think is our ethical duty to accurately report the news, and that's what we've done. I feel like we were consistent across both of those cases. Yeah, look, I hate the way that Schumer talked about that, obviously. I find his comments insufficient, actually, and he'll probably be asked in the future about it, although not on, like, CNN or MSNBC more than likely, but now, like, looking at it as, I don't know what we can expect at this point. I mean, look, obviously, look, I think it would be very easy for the Democrats to both ensure that they have the appearance of actually caring about moral consistency when it comes to

these sorts of allegations and also pragmatically benefit themselves likely in the election by choosing another candidate, a candidate who's not going to. have lingering doubts and questions about this for the rest of the election, they could do that. They're not going to do that, clearly. What we in the news have done is try to do our best to make sure that people know about the story. And, you know, I saw a poll showing that 86% of those polled were familiar with the story now. So I think that to the extent that that's possible, that has been done. but it also shakes down to about a third believe it, a third don't believe it, and a third

don't know what to believe. And it doesn't appear at this point that anything is likely to come up that is going to drastically shift that. And so that's that sort of leads to even more frustration, knowing that we've we've talked about this story, we've described to the best of our ability, and it looks like the country is breaking down into the same sort of camps that they They always do. They shift which camp they're in depending on who's being accused, obviously, but it always seems to be so contingent on the perceived political consequences. Yeah, and I think, and I know you hate this word because it's been misused so much by dishonest people. But I think like the neoliberal project has always been, yeah, we agree with

Republicans on all of these economic policies. But what makes us better, is that we look out for the disenfranchised. We want to protect people from abuse. We want to make sure that we give women a voice. And I just don't see how they're going to make that argument now when it's become clear that when it comes to politics and when it comes to convenience or benefiting themselves, they don't actually care about these things at all.

It's just kind of, it feels like it doesn't, that they don't. And I want to also be fair, it's not like every single congressional Democrat has come out against Reid, there have been Democrats who have said, no, she sounds credible. AOC was the first to finally address it and do so, I think, in a compassionate way. But, you know, some of these Democrats, including Democratic leadership, the way they've handled this, I think really does make people now question whether they're sincere in their concerns about disenfranchised people or people who have been abused. I mean, as a quick answer to your question, they will go back to saying that they're in support

of those people and the right who are just ecstatic that they can briefly pretend that they give a damn about anything that's ever happened to a woman will instantly go back to viciously attacking them and cheering on a president who mocks their, mocks the appearance of the people who accuse them. They can't wait to turn back to that. This was a fun little game that they played and then they'll go back to not caring. Both sides will go back and will be left as one of the, you know, the few who are trying to be consistent across the entire thing. Yeah. Well, um, let's move on to our final story. We only have a few minutes left, but I want to make sure we cover it. All right. An African American family in North Carolina that was

terrorized by an armed mob led by an off-duty sheriff's deputy is now getting a little bit of justice. That sheriff's deputy has luckily been fired, but I do want to give you some context into this story and what happened. We're now seeing more and more surveillance and witness testimony of what went down a few weeks ago. And it was when an armed mob led by off-duty new Hanover County sheriff's deputy Jordan Kita allegedly tried to force. their way into 18-year-old Damien Shepard's home to question the teenager. The mob was said to have been looking for a different teenager who no longer lived in the neighborhood. So the off-duty sheriff's deputy, Kita, was looking for a young girl in his family who was missing.

And I guess he got some sort of tip from someone and decided that he was going to show up to this neighborhood looking for some teenager who was allegedly with her. But first off, there was a mistaken identity here because Damien Shepard was not with her, and it turned out that the young girl ended up going back home. So I don't know what ended up happening with her, but you have this armed mob of 12 to 15 people showing up to this family's home while they're armed, demanding that the family let them into the home to look for this girl. And the family was terrified.

Luckily, no one got hurt, but considering the weapons that were. were involved, including an AR-15 semi-automatic rifle. One person had a shotgun. You have this unhinged, unruly, off-duty cop who's trying to take matters into his own hands and carry out vigilante justice. He was out of his jurisdiction. I mean, they're like terrorizing this family. And, you know, luckily, there's been some justice because the sheriff's deputy has been fired and there are charges against him now. But the reason why you probably didn't hear about this story is because the local police weren't planning on doing anything about it until there was enough media attention to do something about it.

So, Jono, I'm going to give you some of the witness accounts in just a minute. But, I mean, did you hear about this story? I mean, a videotape has to come out, to have any chance, to have the minimal chance. I mean, we saw that obviously in the Arbor case as well. And this also, So this is getting news coverage around the same time as Breonna Taylor's killing, which at least in that case, it's police, again, mistaken identity, show up to the wrong place, somebody dies. That's a story that tragically happens all the time. It's the rise of these mobs is insane. The idea that these people, anytime they come up with some excuse to pick up their gun

and run out, like it really just does appear that nobody buys an air 15 and then like puts sit in the safe and then says, you know, I hope I never have to pull this trigger. Everybody's just looking for an excuse to grab their gun and to run after people. And just the, the merest, like, idea that someone has transgressed and now you can citizens arrest, form a mob, whatever. I really hope that the stories that have cropped up over the past month are true exceptions and that this doesn't become the norm under Trump. Right. And people luckily have been sharing like their nest surveillance to show what the scene look like when the mob arrived. But just one quick comment from a witness. I saw a bunch of guys

jumping out of their vehicles grabbing firearms. They seemed unorganized. Just a bunch of people grabbing guns and running around. I saw a guy run to his truck to the front driveway, run back to his truck and grab an AR-15 and run back to their house. And after a little bit, I saw him run back into his truck and throw his gun in the back seat. Maybe after he realized it was the wrong House. People are going to die from these vigilante white mobs terrorizing black people. We've already seen it happen and it needs to stop. There needs to be charges. There needs to be consequences. The postgame is next. 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 yt i'm your host shank huger and i'll see you soon