The Young Turks - TYT Hour 1 - November 15th, 2019

Episode Date: November 16, 2019

Marie Yovanovitch testified in the House impeachment hearing. Ana Kasparian, John Iadarola, and Ramesh Srinivasan, hosts of The Young Turks, break it down. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

You're listening to the Young Turks, the online news show. Make sure to follow and rate our show with not one, not two, not three, not four, but five stars. You're awesome. Thank you. Hey, guys, you've heard of the Young Turks podcast because you're listening to it right now. But make sure that you subscribe and give it a five star rating if you like it. Thank you for listening. Welcome to the Young Turks. I'm Anna Kasperian, and I believe that today is Friday, which means that we are a

to drop it. Great to be with you guys. I've never been on with you, John, so I can join you. Yeah. Oh, okay, we've talked enough before that I just assumed we've done the show before. I just feel like we're connected already. There you go. Well, that's gonna be tested through the course of this hour.

So in hour two, we will have a whole new panel, Michael Brooks from the Michael Brooks show. We'll be joining in and so will our very own Mark Thompson. So I'm really excited to have them on as well. Lots of great discussions to get to. We have a fun event to plug for next week. Ramesh and I will get to that in just a minute. But before we get to anything, I do think it's important to just give you guys some notes about the programming of this show, because one thing that matters to me probably most

is the integrity of this program and the fact that we believe in giving you honest, truthful facts to any story without any type of conflict of interest. So with that said, as we had shared with you yesterday, Jank Yugar is running for Congress. As a result, I will now have editorial control of the main show, okay? So I will be making decisions about the content, and it's important for you guys to know that he has absolutely no editorial input whatsoever while he runs for Congress. Jank will not be discussing or promoting his campaign on this show while he is a host. However, if we bring him on as a guest, we will interview him similar to how we interview

other candidates who run in various races throughout the country. Okay, we will interview him as a guest. That is when he can talk about his campaign. But for the purposes of the main show, when he is hosting, he will not talk about his campaign. We will not talk about his campaign, okay? No favorable coverage for it. Also, the network plans to report on his campaign just as it does for other progressive candidates.

So just wanted to give you guys that note, because it's important for us to maintain the integrity and the true objectivity of what we cover on this show. When I say objectivity, I'm talking about the actual facts of the story. When it comes to opinion, that's a completely different thing. As a company, we do not do company endorsements, but our hosts are free to endorse politicians, endorse candidates, as they wish, on their own. Okay? Yes, sounds good.

So with that said, why don't we move on to our first story? There's a lot going on today with the impeachment investigation. There's another day of open hearings. So, John, take it away. Oh, one added little thing to what you're saying, just because in response to your tweets yesterday about it, I got a few questions about the damage report. I just want to reassure everybody, there's no changes happening to the damage report. Right.

So if people were worried that that meant that it was going away or something like that, no, it's not. Yeah, damage report is still, it's an incredibly important part of the network. That's an exaggeration. No, it's not an exaggeration. I'm kidding. I'm joining you next week, man. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Awesome. So we're gonna make it less important. Actually, you're gonna be taking over. I'm gonna be gone. That's the new role? Yeah. No, but it should be fun. And by the way, John is gonna be filling in for Jank while he's out campaigning.

But he's still gonna be able to come in and host. He says, he thinks, we'll see. But just wanted to give you guys that info. Yeah, I'm gonna be like planting the seeds that will stop him from returning, but we'll see. He's still gonna try probably. But anyway, the coup is underway. Okay, with that, why don't we launch into the big news of the day? And there is news of a coup in hour too, but.

hour two, but not right now, yes. Yeah, go ahead. Not this one, this is constitutional. The impeachment inquiry continues this time with former ambassador of Ukraine, Marie Yovanovitch. Now, she's an important figure, not necessarily for what she can reveal about the attempted quid pro quo with the president of Ukraine, because she was ousted from that position before that began, but because of the process that led to her being pulled out.

And just in case, you're not familiar with her in her history, she had already been removed from her post in Ukraine when all of those back and forths were going on. But Democrats say that she was the first domino to fall in this story, a model diplomat who lost her job because of corrupt people who then opened the door for more corruption that politically benefited Trump. That's sort of the narrative going into today. So as we talk about this, we're going to reveal some of what she said about the changes she saw happening to the State Department during her tenure.

And then we're also going to analyze to what extent were the Republicans able to fight back against the narrative that we sort of alluded to there. So first, a couple of the big quotes from her testimony, she said on being pushed out, perhaps it was not surprising that when our anti-corruption efforts got in the way of a desire for profit or power, Ukrainians who preferred to play by the old corrupt rules sought to remove me. What continues to amaze me is that they found Americans willing to partner with them and working together, they apparently succeeded in orchestrating the removal of a U.S. ambassador. As foreign service professionals are being denigrated and undermined, the institution is

also being degraded. This will soon cause real harm if it hasn't already. The State Department is being hollowed out from within at a competitive and complex time on the world stage. This is not a time to undercut our diplomats. And she went on to say, our Ukraine policy has been thrown into disarray, and shady interests the world over have learned how little it takes to remove an American ambassador who does not give them what they want. And she speculated a bit about how that might influence future foreign leaders in their interactions with U.S. ambassadors, and how it might also influence U.S. ambassadors, wondering what might I say, either in formal negotiations or just in conversation with other workers, that could end up with me being targeted for removal

myself? Oh, yeah. Yeah, absolutely. Look, I think what's particularly damning about Marie Yovanovitch's testimony, in addition to Giuliani's business associates testimony, Lev Parnas, is the fact that everything that Trump is accusing the Bidens of doing is what he's actually doing, right? So Lev Parnas has shared through his lawyer that Giuliani wanted to essentially work with some of the Russian-backed Ukrainians to push out people like Marie Yovanovitch because she

was actually fighting hard to root out corruption in Ukraine. And so when Trump claims and when Republicans who are defending Trump claim that all they wanted to do was investigate the Bidens because they were concerned about corruption, just understand that it is actually the exact opposite. The correct way of interpreting what's going on is that Trump worked with Giuliani and these two Soviet-born business associates of Giuliani's to push out ambassadors. and U.S. officials who were working hard to root out corruption in Ukraine. That's what's really going on.

Yeah, this administration is masterful, and it's in how it projects out, right? And it's able to project out and basically denigrate and disparage others for the crimes that they most heinously commit. And they're somehow able to do that because they have some sort of base or foundation in their support network that allow them to sustain themselves by basically calling others out for the things that they do worse than anyone else. I mean, just as an example, you know, the callouts of Hillary Clinton, right, in 2016, when they're the level of corruption that we now found out that Trump and his team were

engaging with, including with the examples like Cambridge Analytica, were pretty profound and deep. So I think that's sort of something we see is a common theme when it comes to this presidency, which is more than anything, the ability to just call other, call others names and actually have and effect, they're effective at doing that. It actually undermines these folks. And that's the second point I want to make, that the level of intimidation that President Trump is able to get away with

and his team is kind of remarkable. And why does that exist? And how does that exist? And how is that still effective now? And you can see in her tearful testimony from today how personally affected she is by all of this. And then the last major point I really want to make is another attack on a classic American institution, not one that is immune from critique, right?

There are lots of issues with their foreign service, just like there are even larger issues with our military. But if you notice, or with groups like NATO, for example, but if you notice actually what President Trump is able to do, again, quite effectively, is attack and root out and take away sort of the grounds and the bones and the real foundation of lifers in the foreign service, because that's an important point. She is not some sort of Republican or Democrat. She's sort of an institutional lifer who is now being undermined and was fired.

Yeah. And just briefly on the projection that you were talking about, that Rudy was sort of doing the same thing he was claiming the Bidens were doing. According to breaking news this morning, it's even more direct in that what we're finding out from Parnas and Fruman is that he was trying to personally profit from the Ukrainian natural gas exploration. So it's like, it's exactly like he was going to also change his name legally to Hunter. That's how specific the projection is, which I thought he doesn't have a hunter face, you know.

He has a rudy face. And look, I mean, think about it, it's killing two birds with one stone. It's an effort to help serve the business interests of shady figures like Giuliani and his business associates. And then at the same time, it gives Trump the ability to dig up political dirt on a rival, on someone that he is going to run against in his reelection campaign. I mean, it's so obvious and it's so clear. It's both strategic and sociopathic.

I mean, it's sociopathic in the sense that you can just kind of continue to be obsessed with lining your pockets, having more power, you know, lining the pockets of all your buddies and who cares what the effects are. But it's actually quite strategic. And it's actually, and this is the thing that really does concern me honestly with these impeachment hearings, different than the Mueller report, but some similarities, which is that all of this, in many ways, President Trump is quite effective in this. these moments, and like, and how is that the case? Like, how does that, how does that come to be? How do, how do these profound miscarriages of law that he represents end up not necessarily harming him that deeply, even if he does get impeached? I mean, that's a political question, but it's just something I want to put out there.

Yeah. I do want to give people at least a little bit of the actual testimony. So, one of the most dramatic parts of this, along the way, the plot to get rid of Marie Yovanovitch involves a comment from the second. phone call. So the first transcript that we got of Trump with the president of Ukraine talking about how she was going to go through some things. She was asked about that today at the hearing. And here's what she had to say. What did you think when President Trump told President Zelensky and you read that you were going to go through some things?

I didn't know what to think, but I was very concerned. What were you concerned about? She's going to go through some things. It didn't sound good. It sounded like a threat. Did you feel threatened? I did. Yeah, and I think, look, she was asked to sort of elaborate and she wasn't able to,

and I think understandably so, I mean, what is she supposed to say? Well, it sounds like the president is threatening my physical safety. That's what it sounds like. Yeah, you're dealing with the most powerful person in the world when you really think about it, telling another world leader that you're gonna go through some things. And it's coded language, but I think it's not so coded. You get a sense that it is a threat, right? Anyone would be fearful after hearing something like that.

And remember, the reason why she's targeted, and I want to keep repeating this because it goes against the ridiculous talking points you hear from the right wing, she's being targeted because she's actually trying to root out corruption in Ukraine. Yeah. Yeah, and we're also talking about a woman and not some sort of big politician, a sort of public servant if you will, and you can imagine how terrifying that must be to her. And I guess to my comments earlier about, you know, how is he so effective? He's so effective because these sorts of words are scary for people because there are quite

a few goons willing to carry out this president's agenda, as we've seen again. And again, and again, and that's the saddest and scariest part of all. Jamal Khashoggi, a U.S. resident who was a journalist for the Washington Post, was murdered. Choped up. And chopped up while he was still alive, by the way. Because Saudi prince, Mohammed bin Salman, ordered it, and Trump tried to help him cover it up. Yep. Let's be very clear.

So anyone who's fearful of Trump and this administration has the right to be because he would absolutely try to help one of his cronies or one of these goons from a foreign country cover up some type of violent crime or murder. Yeah. And it's disgusting. Yeah, and look, she, as we've pointed out, she has served for 30 years under Republicans and Democrats. She does not appear to be a particularly partisan person.

That's right. But she pays attention to the news. And when she heard that initially, she must have been thinking, well, this is a quote from Donald Trump. And if I look around the world, all of the leaders most likely to actually kill one of their critics, He has publicly praised every single one of them repeatedly and called their most barbaric actions strong and powerful and good leadership. And so has Donald Trump killed anyone that we know?

No, not necessarily, his critics or anything like that. But he sure seems to admire the practice. And so if I were her, I certainly would have been worried. And he has bragged about his ability to get away with almost anything. Including murder. Including murder. And in the case of our president, words do matter because they emboldened and and and empower violence.

Yeah, so just briefly, I want to give you one media reaction to this testimony, at least the early portion, and this was Chris Wallace of Fox News, who felt like she did a good job, she did a good job of presenting her case, and Republicans were largely ineffective in responding to try to derail that narrative. Yovanovitch's basic story remained unchallenged and untouched, and that story is that she was a corruption fighter, that she was working with the Ukrainian government. to try to improve relations, that she was the victim of a smear campaign by Rudy Giuliani and some of his associates, that she was taken out of the embassy, told at one o'clock in the morning,

you better be on the next plane. And that while the deputy secretary of the state said you did nothing wrong, she got no bolstering, no vote of confidence, no support from top people at the White House or at the State Department. And I just want to remind everyone that when she was concerned about Trump targeting her. And when she had a conversation with the State Department about it, first of all, Mike Pompeo did nothing to defend her, even though Mike Pompeo had worked with her in the past and knew who she was and knew that she wasn't some shady person. But more importantly, she was told by Gordon Sondland, well, if you're concerned about your job, maybe tweet some praise to Donald Trump and that'll save you.

Maybe stay at his hotel or something. I mean, a couple more weeks. Run up the tab. Yeah. So that was one of the initial reactions and from, you know, hardly a liberal or anything like that. Unfortunately, the testimony developed with Donald Trump weighing in individually. For that, we're gonna have to wait until after the break though. All right, so let's take a break. When we come back, I'm gonna read your comments and your live reads, and I have some fun news about an event that Ramesh and I will be doing next week.

We'll be right back. We need to talk about a relatively new show called Un-Fing the Republic or UNFTR. 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. Welcome back to TYT, Anna, Ramesh, and John with you. Before I read some member comments in TYT lives, I wanted to just quickly plug an event that Ramesh and I will be doing next week. So Ramesh has an awesome book out that I highly recommend everyone check out. It's called Beyond the Valley. And so we're gonna have a conversation about your book at Skylight Books in Los

Feliz, okay? So the address is 1818 Vermont Avenue. For those of you who are living in Los Angeles and you're interested in going, it'll take place next Thursday at 7.30 p.m. So please check that out. You can go to Ramesh serenivasan.org slash beyond the valley to learn more about the book and about the events. So check that out. Also, Georgia debate, that's happening next week. And we will be providing a special debate coverage for you all. We'll go live at 11 p.m. Eastern time. And on the panel, we'll have John Idrola, Ida Rodriguez, J.R. Jackson, and myself. So you can watch it live by going to

TYT.com slash live, and there will also be a revolution rally on November 20th in Atlanta. To find out more about that, just go to TYT.com slash rally. All right, now a few member comments. I'm an angry gumball says, yay for the announcement, I love the integrity of TYT, thank you, so do I. I also love avoiding any type of like, you know, illegal campaign contribution or anything like that. Yeah, totally. You know.

That's also important. Can you imagine we find ourselves in like hearings? Yeah, yeah. Roommate with Roger Stone. Oh, God. Oh, we have a story on that. All right, let's move on. Juan writes in and says, that's why I love Anna.

She's always thinking about the integrity of the show and network. Thank you so much. Topcat writes it and says she literally has been caught in the crossfire, meaning Yovanovitch. While representing the U.S., she showed courage and continued on her posts. But when the president of the country threatened her, and then the tweet ends. Tweet ends. All right, it is pretty devastating, but we actually have more on the Yovanovitch story, so John, take it away.

We do, okay, let's pick it back up there. While the former ambassador to Ukraine was testifying earlier today, Donald Trump, who decided he's just gonna start tweeting at her. And so he started tweeting things about her past, and because we live in a digital age, Adam Schiff actually cut into the questions to ask her about some of the things that Donald Trump was saying, here's what happened. As we sit here testifying, the president is attacking you on Twitter. And I'd like to give you a chance to respond.

I'll read part of one of his tweets. Everywhere Marie Yovanovitch went turned bad. She started off in Somalia. How did that go? You've shown the courage to come forward today and testify. Notwithstanding the fact you were urged by the White House or State Department not to. notwithstanding the fact that, as you testified earlier, the president implicitly threatened you in that call record, and now the president in real time is attacking you.

What effect do you think that has on other witnesses' willingness to come forward and expose wrongdoing? Well, it's very intimidating. It's designed to intimidate, is it not? I mean, I can't speak to what the president is trying to do, but I think the effect is to be intimidating. I think so as well. And so immediately that derailed most of the conversation about this. I know that Donald Trump had wanted us to be talking about the summary release of the first

call, which we're going to get to a little bit later on. But immediately, conversation around Donald Trump was his apparent attempt to tamper with this witness. And because that became a big part of the conversation, immediately responses from the right attempted to defend him from that charge, and some of them are a little bit laughable. Jim Jordan, noted scholar, said that the tweet can't be witness intimidation because she wouldn't have known about the attack if Adam Schiff hadn't read it to her. I think she was pretty familiar with the attack, and that was made abundantly clear when she realized that she was a target of Donald Trump's, spoke to the State Department about

it in an effort to get the State Department to defend her, and they told her no. And then she was told by Gordon Sondland, well, if you want to keep your job, maybe you should praise Donald Trump on Twitter. Yeah. And by the way, like if Schiff hadn't read it to her, I think that it might have gotten to her anyway. He's got 65 million Twitter followers. Two-thirds of which are apparently bots also.

But they can retweet things. No, definitely. No, that's part of the strategy. But I do want to say that, you know, it's not an unpredictable. experience to have Trump attack you if you deviate from what he wants in the public eye. Yeah, and so it's, it is, it is a highly predictable and expected and unfortunate event that occurred to her. But not one that we should probably worry about for reasons it'll become clear from a Chad Pergram, Fox News senior producer, who responded to claims that this might be witness intimidation by saying,

Now, when we look at the U.S. Constitution and look at Article 2, Section 4, it doesn't say anything about witness intimidation. Wow. Wow. These are the best minds that the Wright has. Senior producers at Fox News, the representative who was moved from one committee to another so he could be there to, like, you know, issue four nuggets, nuggets of wisdom like, well, if he hadn't read it. And that statement, John actually says that when, it's very clearly indicated by that statement that witness intimidation is okay. Mm-hmm. It appears to think so.

Yeah, it appears that's directly in the impeachment section of the Constitution. I got news for child program, it's still against the law, you still can't do it. That's my point. Okay, so in any other case, is witness intimidation okay? In any other case. It's illegal. It's illegal, exactly. Well, we should know that-

That's the reason why Roger Stone was prosecuted in the first place and was found guilty. We'll get to that story later. Yeah, yeah, I can't wait to get to that too. But first, let's go to eventually. eventually more time passes by and Donald Trump is asked about this claim that he might be trying to tamper with the witness and here is how he responded. What do you say to Democrats that say you were witness tampering this morning when you made that tweet?

You don't want to talk about transparency? Well, I'll talk about transparency. I like transparency here and I'm the most transparent president in history. And I'll tell you about what tampering is. Tampering is when a guy like Shifty Shift, does it let us have lawyers? is one shift, doesn't let us have witnesses, doesn't let us speak. I've been watching today for the first time I started watching, and it's really sad when you see people not allowed to ask questions. So you know what? I have the right to speak. I have freedom of speech,

just as other people do, but they've taken away the Republican's rights. Okay, none of that is true. I know, none of that is true. By the way, he is free to testify. No one's stopping him from testifying. Well, someone is. It's just not who he thinks it is, exactly. It's people on his side that want him to avoid having to testify. But more importantly, look, these are now open public hearings, even when they were closed door hearings. You have Republicans on these relevant committees doing the investigation alongside Democrats.

So the way that he's trying to spin this as nothing more than a left-wing witch hunt is ridiculous. In fact, I mean, if you watch the actual public hearings, which don't let anyone tell you, oh, nothing's going on during these hearings, the revelations that have already come out from these hearings are huge, including actual testimony that links Donald Trump to conversations about the investigations into the Bidens. So Gordon Sondland and Donald Trump had a conversation on July 26th based on two U.S. embassy officials about the investigations into the Bidens, okay? That directly links Trump to this whole case and how he wanted to dig up dirt on its political

opponent. But look, my point is, they keep making this seem like it's an unfair process when Republicans have been part of the process since day one. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, they're asking questions as well. The evidence is pretty rock solid so far, and in that sense it's somewhat different than the Mueller report. And there is something, I think, strategic.

in terms of President Trump's messaging. He's quite good at messaging in an effective way that works for his own political aims. I've noticed this for many years, in the sense that he actually often doesn't just deny certain kinds of accusations, but he actually says the exact opposite of what the reality is. And there's something about the nature of messaging in that way that works really well to kind of rile his supporters up and to actually legitimate these insane claims that you're that everything that is critical of him is a witch hunt.

Yeah, yeah, and a lot of it is similar to what you'll hear on right wing shows. It's just basically winding constantly that you're the victim, while also claiming that you're an alpha male. So there's two things there. One, he's implying that the process is unfair, that the rules are unfair, well, I would take that up with the Republicans who establish those rules, because they're the ones that set out the way that this is going to run. And then the other side is, I don't get to talk, the people I want to talk, don't get

to talk, as we alluded to, Donald Trump, you are free to go testify tomorrow, I think they'll find time for you anytime you want, but you're not going to do that, obviously, because you're an idiot, but you're smart enough to know that you're an idiot and to know that you would definitely get yourself in serious trouble. But fine, you're not going to testify, okay, who do you want? When you say our people, well, Mick Mulvaney, well, why are you blocking him from testifying? Rudy Giuliani, feel free, let's have Rudy sit in the stand. Pompeo maybe, no, you don't want that either.

No, you don't want any of these people to testify. What he wants to do is block any cooperation whatsoever and then use his own obstruction to claim that they're being unfair against him. That's exactly the model. And actually yesterday he mentioned multiple times that he wasn't even paying attention to the hearings, yet he tweeted over 30 times about it. Yeah, and a lot today as well. Again, you just say the opposite of reality and it functions in this media ecosystem and

this political ecosystem. Why don't we go to one more quick video of Trump? A fall to the earlier. Sir, with your freedom, were you trying to intimidate Ambassador Yvonne? I just want to have a total, I want freedom of speech. That's a political process. The Republicans have been treated very badly. It's a disgrace and it's an embarrassment to our nation.

Do you believe your freedom can you have? Yes, go ahead, please. Quiet, quiet, quiet. Sir, do you believe your freedom of words can be intimidated? I don't think so at all. You gotta love Donald Trump yelling at this woman to be quiet. He believes in freedom of speech. He just wants to protect freedom of speech.

which is why he's shouting down to a reporter who's asking that question. And not for women. Right. Is this a, this feel, I don't remember him ever claiming that freedom of speech is his defense in this. I wonder if like he's going to eventually claim that his comments to the Ukrainian president, hey, freedom of speech, I can say whatever I want. And as you've pointed out in terms of messaging, if you say that freedom of speech is what

you want, the right wing will love it, obviously. But it's a weird tactic, I haven't heard him use that before during this impeachment inquiry. Maybe he's having a conversation with a, you know, Mr. Brain in Recovery Mode ideas, you know? Well, he's in recovery mode right now, as you'll get into in the second hour. Yep. Well, with that, why don't we turn to one other related topic, and that has to do with, you know, we're in this impeachment inquiry because of initially concerns over his second call with

the Ukrainian president, but that wasn't the only one, and that's where we return to the story. Donald Trump decided to perhaps try to take control of a news cycle today by releasing a summary of his first call with the Ukrainian president. So this first call took place in April after Zelensky's presidential election. The second, the one that you're more familiar with, was in July after Zelensky's party won a majority in parliament. Now what's interesting about it is less what's in the actual summary and more what's not in the summary, but was previously promised. The White House readout, a summary of the call released hours after it occurred, so this is back in April, claimed that Trump quote, underscored the unwavered. support of the United States for Ukraine's sovereignty and territorial integrity, phrases

that he has literally never said, nor does he understand, within its internationally recognized borders, and expressed his commitment to work together with President Alex Zelensky and the Ukrainian people to implement reforms that strengthen democracy, increase prosperity, and root out corruption. Now, those are specific references to specific things, but the transcript shows him congratulating him on his recent win, promising to arrange a White House visit with him, and recounting the large number of Ukrainian women who participated in Trump's Miss Universe competitions, it's got that, but it doesn't have any efforts to address Ukrainian corruption, economic prosperity, or democratic institutions, nor does he even allude to its efforts to beat back the Russian occupation

of the Ukrainian territory of Crimea. And indeed, it is difficult to have a substantive back and forth with a foreign leader about rooting out corruption when the word corruption does not even appear in the transcript itself. It's interesting, I mean, his interpretation of that first phone call with Zelensky, was very different from what it turned out to actually be, right? I mean, he kept, it was interesting to hear him constantly talk about, like, maybe I'm going to release the first call. You just watch, I'm going to release the first call.

I'm going to release the first call. And you're like, okay, then release the first call. Like, why are you, like, latching onto this and not actually doing it? And the reason why he didn't actually do it is because there's nothing there. There's nothing there that actually helps him out. Yeah, no, I know we've talked about this before, Anna. I mean, so many aspects of this presidency are rooted in the personal and the shallow and the soap operatic, right? Yeah, the reality TV show.

This is our first reality TV show president, hopefully the last. But you know, so you can actually, it's actually extremely revealing when you see the actual transcripts of these phone calls and how absent they are, any aspect of governance, history, institutions, democracy, diplomacy, economy, it's just about, like, chicks at my, at my, at my at my agent, you know? And also, by the way, I just want to clarify, we, no one has seen actual transcripts because the actual transcript of the July 25th phone conversation between Trump and Zelensky was immediately moved to a top secret server by White House lawyers because they were so concerned about the conversation. We've yet to see it. And so, So we have a summary of the call that was released by the Trump administration under the

assumption that the exchange between Trump and Zelensky wasn't that damaging. They thought that wouldn't be so damaging. Yeah. It's insane. So if they thought that was an okay portion of the call, what does the unredacted actual verbatim transcript of that call look like? Some level of all this is considered normal and acceptable. It's crazy.

Yeah. So you mentioned the sort of reality show nature of this. So I just want to, look, we reference the Miss Universe thing. But this is what actually was in the summary of the transcript. When I owned Miss Universe, they always had great people. Ukraine was always well represented. And then the transcript says that he winked a couple of times at the phone, not realizing that the president couldn't see him.

Anyway, yeah, he actually referenced that. In another instance, he claimed that a Ukrainian woman had won Miss Universe, but no Ukrainian has ever won the competition despite several times making it at the last round of the Ukrainian, Belarus, Lithuania. I just love the Business Insider had to research that to see if they'd ever won. But you reference the, like, I'm gonna show you the first one, because really he did want to tantalize, like don't look at this former ambassador, I've got something more exciting coming, but he even got sort of tripped up in trying to oversell this, which J.R. Jackson noted

in one of his best recent JR rated mashups. What they want is they want my first phone call. I had another phone call, and it's a very important phone call, and it came to my attention last night that they want the first phone call. Now, the problem I have in releasing the first phone call, because that was actually the second phone call, and it's, yeah, and it's a perfect call. But they found out there's another phone call, and that's the first phone call, and they want And we're considering that.

Which one? That I don't know. I don't know about any call. Wow. Nothing was said. There was no information communicated by that. The helicopter din. The helicopter noise did.

Chopper talks a bad time to communicate anything. Especially when you can't. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. But I mean, when you really think about it, what was he supposed to say about the first phone call? In regard to the substance, I was talking about Ukrainian. models, I was talking about the pageants and the very strong women, many, many strong women in the hot, very hot.

There's really nothing he can reveal about the call that would actually help mitigate the damage that was done by the second call. But that actually is one of their tactics right now. So what I have been reading is all the right wingers are like, look at this first call, you know what you won't find, you won't find anything about Biden, anything about a possible quid pro quo. There's nothing there. And so you left this. This proves that he wasn't trying to set up some sort of quid pro quo, which is just a little bit too clever, because you should really take note of the timing of these calls. So the original call that we were talking about

was a couple months into Joe Biden's candidacy. And that's when he apparently wanted to set up this quid pro quo. This first call took place in April. Importantly, it took place four days before Joe Biden launched his presidential run. And so it doesn't necessarily prove what you think it proves that before Biden was in the race, he wasn't interested in Ukrainian corruption. And once Biden had gotten into the race, suddenly he's really interested in CrowdStrike and Burisma and all of that. So I just wanna make that timeline really clear.

Well put. Thank you. Yes. Okay, with that, why don't we take a break? When we come back, Roger Stone is he's gonna be finding a new place to stay. Dance party. Exactly, and Pete Buttigieg, what are you doing, buddy? Yeah, we got that for you after.

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hey guys welcome back to the young turks anna remesh and john with you i wanted to do a live read about some programming and this is a show that i really I really love on our network, so I highly recommend you guys check it out. Brett Ehrlich hosts happy half hour. It's a once a week show, and it truly is a happy half hour, okay? So he covers all sorts of fun news, none of this depressing stuff that we usually cover on the main show, and it's just a good respite from all the negativity that you get in the traditional news cycle, so please check it out.

It's airing tonight, you can check it out on YouTube. So he actually had the good new, it's a good new show, YouTuber and dancer, Brittany, how do you say, Marsechek was on, okay? I want to make sure I don't mispronounce her name. And it's available video on demand for members. So if you're a member, you can check it out in the archives whenever you want. If you're not a member, you can help support this show by going to t.yt.com slash join. It is a lot of fun. He is.

If you haven't watched it, there is a character on that show who is both a moose and a toilet. Yes. And Brett's that character too, huh? He is. He is. Brett, half comedian, half toilet. Oh my God.

All right, so member comments. BWP 120 says Love Ramesh's contributions, even bought one of his books. Can't wait to read it. Oh, it's so nice. Thank you. I bathe in a very stable geniuses tear says, oh, I love this strategy. Get Trump's tweet read into the record in real time. This should allow new charges to be easily proven.

Yeah, that's never been done in these types of investigations before, you know. Chickenfoot says, while I was listening to today's hearings, I could not believe when they read Trump's tweet live while the hearing was in progress, this is witness tampering. So I actually didn't get a chance to read the, or I'm sorry, watch the full public hearing today. But does anyone know who read the tweet first? Was it Republicans or was Adam Schiff the first to read it? He was the first that I saw, but it's possible someone else referenced it.

That's an interesting take. Yeah. WV truth seeker says Trump claims he is the most transparent person, which is a laugh since he's refusing to release documents or his taxes. So in a lot of ways, first of all, you're right, but in a lot of ways he is transparent, but he's accidentally transparent. He's psychologically transparent. Right.

Like he says the quiet parts out loud all the time, like when he admits that he is willing to sell weapons to the Saudis or work with the Saudis. because of business dealings. Yeah, yeah. It's insane that he just says it out loud and it's not a big deal. So in one regard, I think it's a good thing because he really does reinforce and confirm things that we had already suspected about government officials. It's just that he's so dumb, he doesn't realize that these things are wrong.

Well, he's made a couple of profound comments over the years, I wouldn't, I don't like to praise President Trump, but they're kind of incredible, like, you know, I remember on the Republican debate stage, you know, four years ago, you know, I paid all of you, I bought you all out. I've given all money to all your campaigns. You're all going to do whatever I want you to do. That was one. And then another was like, we're gonna take, I would have taken the oil, which is exactly what he's been talking about in Kurdistan. Right, absolutely. In Syria, yeah, absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. So. All right, John, take it away. Why don't we launch back into it? Okay. Lest you believe that there's no good news in 2019 today, Roger Stone, a former aide

and longtime friend of President Trump was found guilty of obstructing a congressional investigation into Russia's interference in the 2016 election in what prosecutors said was an effort to protect Mr. Trump. So, look, the trial had been going on for some time. That's the most normal photo of him we were able to find. So the trial had been going on for some time. It had been marked by multiple attempts by stone

to intimidate witnesses, intimidate the judge at times. It was a weird case. But you should know that he was charged with lying to the House Intelligence Committee. trying to block the testimony of another potential witness and concealing reams of evidence from investigators. Prosecutors claimed he tried to thwart the committee's work because the truth would have, quote, looked terrible for both the president and his campaign. He was found guilty on all seven counts he was charged with.

And, you know, we have no idea at this point how much time, if any, he will actually serve. But supposedly he faces up to 50 years. Oh my God. That would be so nice. You all have actually interacted with this guy in person. He is a, he, look, he's just a bad, he's a bad homebrey, okay? It's one of his favorite politicians would say. He's horrible, and I'm glad that, look, I think that there was an injustice when it comes to Trump

and the clear obstruction of justice that was outlined in the Mueller report. Now, Democrats decided that they were just going to leave it alone, even though they wasted all of their energy on this investigation. So Trump got away with the obstruction of justice. But there are all these Trump cronies who have had to pay the consequences for their illegal activity. And obstructing justice is a serious crime. And I'm glad that they investigated this, and I'm glad that there were consequences for

at least some people surrounding Donald Trump, including Roger Stone. Roger Stone's favorite political figure from history is Richard Nixon. So great, now you get to actually pay consequences for the types of things that you thought you know, Richard Nixon was so great at. Yeah, it speaks to and legitimizes that if not Trump himself, which we're quite sure, is guilty of obstruction of justice, that his senior advisors and his team does obstruct justice and that there's clear evidence of that. And I think it's really important that that is somehow used in the political campaign in 2020

depending on who goes against Trump. Just really fast, I know this is like not the take you're supposed to have, because it's like, hey, it's good news. Roger Stone's awful, but, and he's not going to face 50 years. Doesn't seem like if he did, that's way too much, right? No. 50 years? Yep, that's perfect. That's a long time.

It's the best sentence, a strong sentence. White collar criminals very rarely get, you know, as we know, significant sentences that are proportionate to the impact of their crime. In this case, it seems like the crime may not be that, you know, violent or impactful. But if you look at it systemically in terms of how it corrodes our country as we know it. Yeah. So from our member comments, Logan wrote in and said, I look forward to Stone being given only five years in jail because he is a first time offender. So Logan, I agree with you in that he's likely to get a much shorter sentence.

I don't know if it's going to be five years or a little more, a little less than that. That's usually common. I mean, look at what happened with, what's the other guy's name? Colan or Manafort? Yes, Paul Manafort. Yeah. Paul Manafort's sentence was incredibly short considering the crimes he had committed. And so, but look, I'm partly joking about the 50 years, right?

I don't think 50 years is a reasonable sentence, but he does deserve prison time. Because anyone else who was caught and convicted of obstructing justice, any average, American would face a lengthy sentence. And this allows me to make the point I most wanted to make, which is we should not just assume that he being sent to prison is the same as other people, especially poor, black, and vulnerable, and working people being sent to jail. He might end up in some penhouse in prison. That's entirely possible.

Now, he might not end up there at all if Donald Trump chooses to pardon him. And we don't have much of a response from Donald Trump yet about what happened. But there were two tweets. He tweeted, so they now convict Roger Stone of lying and want to jail him for many years to come. Well, what about crooked Hillary, Comey, Strock, Paige, Brennan Clapper, Shifty Schiff, Orr and Nelly, Steele, and all of the others, including even Mueller himself, didn't they lie? A double standard like never before C, never before in the history of our capital C country.

So he's just listing his political opponents, okay, you put together a list in a tweet, I can put together a list of names. What about this list? Roger Stone, Rick Gates, Michael Flynn, Michael Cohen, George Papadopoulopoulos, Paul Manafort. Those are all buddies of yours, and they're all in jail. Why do you hang out with so many criminals? Or have served time in prison. Exactly, exactly.

They've all been convicted of felonies at one time or another. Some still serving their sentences, some about to go. And it's amazing that on the same day that this impeachment inquiry is going forward, Roger Stone, one of his former, like to the extent that a sociopath can have a friend, one of his best friends is going to be going to prison. We also find out Rudy Giuliani is under multiple investigations of multiple different charges. It's just a band of criminals from top to bottom, that's all it is. And it is exceptional and it is spectacular and it's insane and heinous how this administration,

how this group of criminals has taken over our presidency. Yeah. But we also, again, I know, I know this is a much larger point, we have to understand what are the conditions that created this in this country, like how there's other forms of deep-seated corruption, deep-seated institutional injustice that has pervaded this country, the neoliberal aspects of this country that kind of led to this populist, you know, con artist takeover. Yeah. So that's what led to Trump.

If you want to know what led to Roger Stone, Joker is still in theaters. I wanted to read one more member comment. And by the way, you know, members are such an important part of this program because they They help to support the show and keep us independent. And so if you'd like to have your comments read through some of our stories, you can join by going to t.yt.com slash join. Anyway, serial bunglers are people too, writes in and says, as a Norwegian, I don't think anyone should spend 50 years in prison.

However, if anyone deserves this, it's Roger Stone. Oh, he's like number four. What does it like to live in Norway? They're bringing Norway. Okay. I think we have time for one more story. Let's do it. We're going to mix it up a little bit.

Enough of Trump. Pete Buttigieg has recently been doing better in the polls, both in some individual states like Iowa and New Hampshire, but also a little bit better overall. In some polls, he's at 6% or 7 or as high as 9%. But he hasn't been going up uniformly across all groups in certain demographics, including African American voters. He's having a lot of trouble getting above 0 or 1 or 2%. Now, if you've been following TYT's reporting from South Bend, it makes a little bit of sense,

but he has heard these criticisms, and when they're brought up to him, he says generally something like this. Our response to those who ask what our agenda for Black America is, is the Douglas Plan. It is the most comprehensive vision put forward by a 2020 candidate on the question of how we're going to tackle systemic racism in this country. So this is a plan, it's been out for a bit, you can look up the details, but there are some issues with the way they've promoted it. And Ryan Grimm did a great job in a write-up for The Intercept, breaking down a few of the major issues with this effort by Buttigieg. So to build

support for the plan, Buttigieg and his staff lobbied prominent black South Carolinians to endorse it in order to strengthen the cause of racial justice. The Buttigieg campaign began promoting a list of 400 South Carolinian supporters of his Douglas plan in emails to reporters and posts on social media. So let's start from the top of that list. At the top of the press release were three prominent supporters of the plan, is Tamika Devine, Ivory Thigpen, and Johnny Cordero, chair of the state party's Black Caucus. But there are issues with each one of those names appearing on this.

Tamika Devine, who has not endorsed a candidate yet in the presidential election, told the intercept that she did not intend her support for the plan to be read as an endorsement for Buttigieg's candidacy and believes the campaign was intentionally vague about the way it was presented. Asked if she knew of any black supporters for the plan who were also supporters of Buttigieg, she said she wasn't sure. The next person listed at the top, Ivory Thigpen said, even though I had had conversations with the campaign, it was clear to me, or at least I thought I made it clear to them, that

I was a strong Bernie Sanders supporter, actually co-chair of the state, and I was not seeking to endorse their candidate or their plan, and yet her name ended up there. The third, Johnny Cordero, is no longer listed publicly as a supporter. When the Intercept reached out for comment, he explained that he had never endorsed the plan, nor he endorsed Buttigieg, and he had a particularly incendiary comment, saying it's presumptuous to think you can come up with a plan for black America without hearing from black folk. There's nothing in there that said black folk had anything to do with the drafting of that plan. Now I like Pete, please don't get me wrong, I'll help him in any way I can, I think he's an honest man,

I think he's a decent man, I think he has integrity. I'd like to see him keep running, but you don't do that. Those days are over and done with. We're tired of people telling us what we need. You wanna find out what we need, come and ask us. Wow. Well, we did that in sick. I know, because this story is just so out of control.

Yeah, great job by Ryan Grim on this. Ryan Grimm is such an excellent reporter. Look, how do you call him an honest man though when he, first of all, used black lawmakers from the South as endorsements when they haven't endorsed Buttigieg at all. And look, this is a common thing that I see with politicians. And I see it a lot on the right when it comes to veterans and various groups of people. People are not props. You can't use people as props.

I mean, in the past, it's happened a lot and it's actually been a strategy that's worked. But I think we're in a completely different age now where people are hyper aware of what's going on. I think a lot of voters are paying close attention to the words coming out of politicians' mouths and the actual actions they put forth in their campaigns. And so to just put out there that these individuals have supported you, have endorsed you, is unacceptable and he's using people as props, it's not okay. Yeah, at the minimum it's disingenuous. At the worst, it's deliberately misleading and lying.

And I do want to make the point that I think in this cycle, with this primary, we're going to find out whether a rhetorical expert like Pete Buttigieg, who basically does what a lot of typical centrist, neoliberal politicians do, which is try to pretend like he supports everything that everybody wants that could possibly vote for him. As we saw with Medicare for all and then Medicare for those who want it or something like that, he called it, right? So it's very consistent with what I've seen out of Pete Buttigieg's campaign, which is an attempt to claim all spaces and try to be sort of appealing and acceptable to everybody

and actually feign support from all these different constituencies. Yeah, definitely. And I want to note that Ramesh is a Bernie Sanders surrogate. So we want to make it abundantly clear to the audience. just to maintain the integrity of the show. Well, we should probably reference that both of us have endorsed Bernie Sanders at this point. Yes, on this show. Yes, great.

So, you know, that's why I think that there's this distinction between and voters are going to choose. Are you going to choose, are you going to, and I'm saying this with my biases, are you going to support someone who not only says the right things, but actually has shown that in practice? Or are you going to support someone who is slippery with their language and their claims of who, what they support and who they support? And look, to be as fair as possible, it's unlikely that in this first instance of sort of deception that he was directly involved. He didn't put together the press release himself, I'm sure, but his campaign did.

So let's be clear about that. The issue is, and I'll go fast through this, this is just the first of four different really questionable decisions in this promotion plan. So the first was involving these three very well respected leaders as supposedly having been endorsers of the plan when they apparently weren't. But there are three other issues. One is that after publication, the Buttigieg campaign said that it had sent the plan to the list of supporters and asked them to opt out if they did not want their name included

on the list. So many people found themselves on this list just because they got an email that they didn't even see. And opting out or else you're an endorser, that's a crazy strategy. You don't opt out in the digital world. You are always, you are as a default opted in, and it's extremely difficult to opt out. And we all have mysterious emails that all three of us get every day and we don't even know how they come and we just sort of ignore them.

Exactly, exactly. We don't opt out. Exactly, that's obviously dishonest, that's number two. Number three is the list of 400 supporters in South Carolina, look, to be fair, in some cases they're just referenced as 400 supporters from South Carolina. In others, it is strongly hinted that it's 400 African American supporters of the plan, which makes sense considering what they're trying to do with the plan and the promotion. The issue is that Ryan Grimm did an analysis of the people on the list, and to the best

of his ability, he found that 42% of the entire list is white, not African American. Oh boy. So that's number three. Number four is I guess the most petty, and Pete Buttigieg definitely was involved in this. But come on man, look at this tweet, on top of everything else, the Buttigieg campaign used a stock photo from Kenya to promote its Frederick Douglass plan for black America. That's incredible. So it's just a shutter stock image, and he obviously didn't choose it.

From top to bottom, this promotional effort is best case scenario, the most tone-deaf thing in politics. Yeah, I mean, look, I think that if you're genuinely wanting to reach out to various communities, that is part of your platform, that's part of your campaign. The best way to do it is have representation of those communities within your campaign. So look, I don't know what the makeup of his campaign is, and I can't really comment on those specifics, but I will say, you know, if he's genuinely wanting to reach out to various communities, have that representation as part of your campaign, have them working in your

campaign so you don't promote things or you don't craft policy or plans based on your simple, like your worldview, right? Because we all have different life experiences and it's difficult to understand, like really understand the worldview of others when you haven't walked in their shoes. No, the best possible way to go is instead of trying to appropriate and maybe intentionally or not objectified those who you want to get support from, instead you actually say, hey, you and your communities, you lead my campaign. You be part of the leadership.

You direct things. It's you that's in charge, you a human being from this community, rather than I claiming you. And finally, really fast, I want to play a very quick game of Can You Imagine. So maybe I'm wrong and maybe you will tune into MSNBC tonight and CNN and you will see this all over the place, but I kind of doubt it. It was on the intercept because Ryan Grimm did a great job and we're covering it. But can you imagine if Bernie Sanders had done one of these four things? No, I can't.

I can't. But he won't. He won't. And because if you actually look at the makeup, again, biased I'm a surrogate for the campaign. If you look at the makeup of senior leadership in this campaign for 2020 for Bernie Sanders, it's very different than 2016. We're talking about people of color, Latinx leaders, Brianna Joy Gray, right? Like his press secretary, Faz Shakir, the first Muslim campaign manager in the history

of this country. We're talking about young people of color, people from community positions of leadership. And that's really a large part of why I support this campaign. All right, real quick, I do want to read some of what our members are saying about this story. Members help to keep this show independent, so you can join by going to TYT.com. slash join. So where is the Buttigieg? My gay marriage writes in and says, I like Buttigieg in the same way someone might have a crush on their local cute Starbucks barista. I might give

him some flirty side eye, but I'm already taken by a real man, Bernie Sanders. Boom. Get it. And then a guy writes in, nothing sums up Buttigieg's campaign better than him using a plan named for someone else and taking credit for other people's work. That is beautifully put. Yes. That is. Yeah. Yeah. All right. Thank you to our members. And again, you can join by going to t-y-t.com slash join. All right. Thank you all for having me. Thank you. Nice to see you. John Iderola. Thank you. This was a wonderful panel. When we come back for hour two, we'll have a whole new panel with Mark Thompson and Michael Brooks. Stay tuned. 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 Podcast. at apple.co slash t yt i'm your host jank huger and i'll see you soon