The Young Turks - TYT Hour 1 - November 19th, 2019

Episode Date: November 20, 2019

Lt Col. Vindman just dropped the hammer on the Trump Administration. Ana Kasparian and John Iadarola, hosts of The Young Turks, break it down. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

You're listening to The Young Turks, the online news show. Make sure to follow and rate our show with not one, not two, not three, not four, but five stars. You're awesome. Thank you. Hey, 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. What's up, everyone. Welcome to the Young Turks.

I'm Anna Kasparian. John Ida Rola joins me. for the entire show today. For the rest of time. Well, we don't know about the rest of the time. But John will be the fill-in for Jank while Jank is doing stuff that he needs to be doing. Yeah. Although I was already the fill-in. Sort of. It was usually like, you know, sporadic, like, mishmash of various hosts on the network.

But, you know, for continuity, we're gonna have John on on a regular basis. And John, thank you for joining us. Anytime. So lots going on in the news. today, there are a bunch of different testimonies that we need to get to when it comes to the impeachment investigation. But later on in hour two, we're gonna discuss some updates to the primaries. There are Senate Republicans coming forward and talking about their admiration for Biden.

That's what he needs. Yeah, you know, it's funny because he's like touting it, like it's a good thing. Like yeah, yeah, Republicans like me. Except I don't know if it's really gonna work out for him in the primaries, we'll see. And then later, we're going to finally talk about what everybody's been waiting for, the Pete Buttigieg mob dancers. Oh, God. Yeah. I can't escape it.

Have you talked about it on the damage report? No, I tweeted about it once and regretted it. That's funny. Okay, well, we're going to talk about more than just the dance mobs, which I'm actually going to defend and people are probably going to get mad at me. Oh, geez. I want to talk about a speech he gave to a tea party group back in 2010. So lots to get to.

So why don't we get started? Okay. All right, let's do it. Mr. Vindman, you testified in your deposition that you did not know the whistleblower. Ranking member, it's Lieutenant Colonel Vindman, please. Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. That's Devin Nunes getting called out by Lieutenant Colonel Vindman, who testified today before impeachment investigators. Now, every time there is a public hearing or public testimony related to the impeachment,

the testimony becomes more and more damning. And I think that today is a good example of that. Now, as we know, Lieutenant Colonel Vidman has been attacked by Donald Trump and his loyalists. Devin Nunes is certainly no exception to that. But there were important elements of his testimony that I think we need to share with you today. So first, let me just give you this quote from Vidman. When a senior asks you to do something, even when it's polite and pleasant, it's not to be taken as a request, it's to be taken as an order.

Now let's stop right there, what is he referring to? So he's specifically referring to Vladimir Zelensky feeling pressured by Donald Trump to launch an investigation into the Bidens. Now there's this huge question about whether or not Zelensky actually felt pressured, but what I love about this statement is Colonel Vidman, Lieutenant Colonel Vidman makes it abundantly clear that there's a power dynamic in play. So let me give you more. In this case, the power disparity between the two leaders, my impression was that in order

to get the White House meeting that Zelensky so wanted, Zelensky would have to deliver these investigations. So that was an important piece of his testimony, but there were a lot of other things that were brought up during his opening statement. So for instance, he talked about Gordon Sondland's role in pushing for the investigations at the direction of Donald Trump. Let's take a quick look at that. July 10, 2019, Alexander Doniuk, then Ukraine's National Security Advisor,

visited Washington, D.C., for a meeting with National Security Advisor Bolton. Ambassador Volker and Sondland and Secretary Rick Perry also attended the meeting. I attended with Dr. Hill. We fully anticipated the Ukrainians would raise the issue of a meeting between the Presidents. Ambassador Bolton cut the meeting short when Ambassador Sondland start to speak about the requirement that Ukraine deliver specific investigations in order to secure the meeting with President Trump. Following this meeting, there was a short debriefing during which Ambassador Sondland emphasized the importance of Ukraine delivering the investigations into the 2016 elections,

the Bidens and Burisma. I stated to Ambassador Sondland that this was inappropriate and had nothing to do with national security. So there have been so many Trump administration officials who have spoken on the record about what they experienced and what they found problematic. Everything is starting to blur together. But one thing that you will notice if you pay close attention to these hearings is that there's a through line. There's a common character that comes up over and over again. And that is Gordon Sondland, the UK ambassador, I'm sorry, the EU ambassador who was

essentially pushing for these investigations, again, at the direction of Donald Trump and his personal lawyer, Rudy Giuliani. As you heard in that piece of testimony, John Bolton, who was Donald Trump's national security advisor, was disturbed by Gordon's statements during this meeting with Ukrainian officials. Yeah, and it takes a lot to disturb a guy who wants nuclear war with North Korea. Yeah. Yeah, it does keep coming back to Sondland, who's going to be testifying later this week. And Trump says that he might testify.

I doubt that that's going to happen because he knows that that would be a horrible idea. and Rudy Giuliani's not going to testify, he might actually want to, but Trump, I think, knows him well enough to know that he can't do it either because he'd be a disaster. Barring those two being involved, Sondland appears to be the next most intimately tied to this entire thing, at least of figures that we know about, unless there were more conversations with William Barr than we know about. And really fast, just to go back to Zelensky and what he knew, Zillinsky has said that he did not feel any pressure, but the AP just reported yesterday that he had a meeting with.

with AIDS, specifically about how to deal with this politically difficult situation where he didn't want to be meddling in US domestic politics. Exactly. So he understood the lack of legality when it came to meddling in US elections. But at the same time, he needed to figure out a way to navigate the demands by Donald Trump in order to get the military aid that he so desperately needed when it comes to fending off Russian aggression in Ukraine. Now, go ahead.

And really fast, not to focus too much on this, but the fact that Zelensky said he didn't feel pressured for many people is going to be a hard thing to get passed on this. And they don't necessarily understand why he would lie in that particular case. But there are very good reasons that he would lie. I mean, he wants the aid now, but he doesn't just need aid now, he needs aid now, and he's gonna need it in six months, and in a year, and in four years. Exactly. doesn't win reelection, but along the way he appeared to be siding with Trump against

the Democrats, then that could endanger the chance of getting aid in the future under a Democratic presidency, or at least that would be the fear. You're absolutely right. I mean, look, he was asked during a joint press conference with Donald Trump whether he felt pressure. And so I like the fact that Lieutenant Colonel Alexander Vidman, who, by the way, is the National Security Council's Ukraine expert, drew attention to the power dynamic between Zelensky and Trump.

Trump has a great deal of power over Zelensky. And so in this very public joint press conference, you can see how uncomfortable he is, first of all. But secondly, he takes a giant risk by saying that he felt pressured. So he just said, no push, no push, right? That was the statement that he made. I just want to be 100% accurate about what he actually said. Now with that said, let's move on to the next video.

Again, this is Lieutenant Colonel Alexander Vidman, the National Security Council's Ukraine expert. And in this clip, he talks about how what Trump wanted was indeed political in nature. Take a look. As I said in my statement, it was inappropriate. It was improper for the president to request to demand an investigation. into a political opponent, especially a foreign power

where there's at best dubious belief that this would be a completely impartial investigation and that this would have significant implications if it became public knowledge and it would be perceived as a partisan play. It would undermine our Ukraine policy and it would undermine our national security. So I also want to note that Lieutenant

Colonel Vidman was one of the Trump administration officials who was on the call with Trump and Zelensky. And he was one of many who felt alarmed at the exchange that had just taken place. And so he explained in that video why he found it so inappropriate. Yeah. Yeah. It's amazing at this point. I mean, I guess it's amazing how many people he allowed on that call considering that

Trump knew what he was planning to ask. But then he also released the summary transcript and thought that that would be perfectly fine. It's the constant ramming together of incompetence and corruption. That's a great point. They're not smart enough to get away with the laws that they want to break. And remember, Trump hasn't actually released the verbatim transcript. He has released the summary or a memo of the conversation. And so there are things missing in that summary.

But one thing that we did learn through Vidman's testimony is that there was a specific word left out of the transcript. So let me give you that statement. Both Lieutenant Colonel Vidman and Pence aide, Jennifer Williams, said they heard Zelensky reference Burisma Group, a Ukrainian gas company where Biden's son Hunter once sat on the board on the call. The word Burisma isn't reflected in the rough transcript released by the White House, which only includes a reference to the company. Now Colonel Vidman said his attempt to correct the record of the call to include the company's

name and to reflect that Trump said that he had recordings of Mr. Biden failed. Yeah. Okay, so there were things, I mean, you could speculate about the intention, I'm gonna speculate right now, there were things that were intentionally left out of that summary of the transcript. Although it seems weird to leave out Burisma, but leave in Biden in Crowdstrike. Right, yeah. So I don't know, maybe it wasn't intentional, maybe it was an oversight, but once you have Lieutenant Colonel Vidman show up with his notes and say, hey, it's my job to correct

the record, why did his attempt to correct the record in that regard fail? And that's why I suspect that it was intentionally left out. But nonetheless, Vidman is taking a giant risk by coming forward and sharing the truth about what he experienced in Trump's discussion with Zelensky and the negotiations that took place with other Trump administration officials, including Gordon Sondon. behind the scenes. And so Vidman is certainly not surprised that he's been dealing with people threatening his life, and he does talk about that a little bit in his testimony.

Take a look. I also recognize that my simple act of appearing here today, just like the courage of my colleagues who have also truthfully testified before this committee, would not be tolerated in many places around the world. In Russia, my act of expressing concern to the chain of command in an official and private channel would have severe personal and professional repercussions and offering public testimony involving the president would surely cost me my life I'm grateful to my father's for my father's brave act of hope 40 years ago and for

the privilege of being an American citizen and public servant where I can live free and free of fear for mine and my family safety dad I'm sitting here today in the U.S. Capitol talking to our elected professionals, talking to our elected professionals, is proof that you made the right decision 40 years ago to leave the Soviet Union and come here to the United States of America in search of a better life for our family. Do not worry. I will be fine for telling the truth. So he has reached out to the military to investigate possible threats against his life as a result of him testifying. And this is unsurprising. I mean, when you've got to,

consider the type of rhetoric coming out of the Trump administration in regard to the whistleblower, is anyone really surprised? And so the U.S. Army is prepared to move Colonel Vidman and his family onto a military base in the area to ensure their security if it is determined that they are in physical danger. And that's according to U.S. officials. Army security officials have also been monitoring Colonel Vidman and his family around the clock to make sure there aren't any imminent threats. What a country we live in. Exactly. Yeah, and so obviously people on the outside are threatening him, but also there were attempts both Nunes and Jordan to again attack him. I mean, we already saw that a couple weeks ago during his first set of testimony when it was behind closed doors.

And they were trying to attack him at one point he had a read from a performance review that was very glowing in regards to him. Man, Jim Jordan looks like he's really struggling. Like physically, his face, he looks like he's happened a hard time. He looks like he hasn't slept in a while. Yeah, yeah. Sorry, it's just something I've noticed, like it's right under his eyes. The collective guilt of knowing you did something wrong decades ago, weighing on him, and it should. But then also in regards to Vindman, like what they are using to attack Vindman and many, many

other of these people testifying is effectively saying that we have filled the White House and the rest of halls of government with traitorous lying idiots. That's effectively, these are the people we chose, we surround our society, we surround our with people that you definitely can't trust, don't get on an elevator alone with them. These are the worst people ever. And the weird thing is that the pundits eat it up, the base seems to buy it. They think, yeah, yeah, they chose all these people that are 100% untrustworthy and they're big liars.

Well, the base is primed to believe anything that defends Donald Trump. So this isn't really about the base. This is about maybe people who are undecided about whether or not Donald Trump's actions were wrong or whether it's an impeachable offense. But really does strike me as ironic is how the party that has defended, or at least pretended to care a great deal about members of our military, I mean, they don't care at all. And we've known, we've known that they don't care about them at all. I've known that they've used members of the military as props when it comes to garnering

support for terrible foreign policy and unnecessary wars. But when push comes to shove, you have Republican lawmakers who are feeding into, you're this disgusting rhetoric directed toward people like lieutenant colonel vidman and it's it's just beyond gross yeah so just understand that they've members of the military have always been used as props by Republicans anytime you hear a republican lawmakers certainly republican lawmakers who are part of these hearings say that we need to support our troops they don't even support our troops they don't support our troops at all supporting your troops is preventing unnecessary wars in the first place. Let me just say that. That would be a good way, yeah. Yeah, but in this case,

I mean, this man's life is in danger simply because he's coming forward and doing the right thing, the honorable thing, in telling the truth about what he experienced in the Trump administration. Yeah, and in effect, saying something very similar to any number of different people have said, yes, I was on the call. It seems really bizarre. There's other times when I've overheard conversations that make it clear that they're putting pressure on these people. And coming out of yet another person confirming that, the obvious fall of question is, who is the whistleblower? Who is it? Who is he?

I know, it's amazing, right? Where is he hiding? I need to know that. I don't see anything else. The most irrelevant thing at this point, considering how many people are now on the record in public testifying against Donald Trump. These are people who are still working in Trump's administration. So with that said, let's move on to the other Trump administration official who testified

today. Security Advisor to Vice President Mike Pence, Jennifer Williams, testified before impeachment investigators today and share details about what she experienced while she was on the call between Donald Trump and Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelenskyy. Now she explains it in the next clip, let's take a quick look. On July 25th, along with several of my colleagues, I listened to a call between President Trump and President Zelenskyy, the content of which has since been publicly reported. Prior to July 25th, I had participated in roughly a dozen other presidential phone calls.

During my closed-door deposition, members of the committee asked about my personal views and whether I had any concerns about the July 25th call. As I testified then, I found the July 25th phone call unusual because, in contrast to other presidential calls I had observed, it involved discussion of what appeared to be a domestic political matter. So she's very clear in saying, like, look, this is an unusual exchange between Trump and Zelensky. I've been on other calls before, but I've never heard these very personal political requests, which is what Trump clearly asked for when he demanded the investigation into the Bidens and into Crouttsrike. Yeah.

Yeah, and it's yet another person that although she is an aide depends on an important issue that they say they care a lot about, national security, she'll be declared on lowering. show a never-trumper or something. Of course, they're all, I mean, any single person who has decided to comply with the congressional subpoena and testify has been labeled a never-trumper, every single one. Yeah, we used a clip on the damage report earlier today. It was Steve Deucey. I forget who he was declaring, might have been Bill Taylor, it might have been, it might have been a vin-man, I'm not sure, but just saying he's been called a never-trumper.

And then he just moves on. I know, I know. They just regurgitated. There's no evidence of that. And- They're working in Trump's administration. You can't be a never Trumper, let's say you're already working for the executive branch in some capacity, and then there's an exchange of power, right, from Obama to Trump. A never Trumper would say, I'm not interested in this situation. I'm going to go ahead and leave. None of them did that. In fact, Williams has been working for the State Department since the Bush administration.

And in the beginning of her opening statement, she said that her hero, her personal hero is Condoleezza Rice. So we're not talking about, you know, progressives who are trying to launch some sort of like resistance against Donald Trump. No, these are people who identify as like staunch conservatives who we typically disagree with. But I do give them credit in coming forward and sharing, you know, what they experienced and the fact that they're willing to tell the truth.

And it's surprising that so many have, honestly. Right. I mean, unless there were a hundred people on the phone call, it seems like a strikingly large percentage are willing to come forward and confirm that they had an issue with what was said. So she says something during her opening statement that seems to clear pence of some wrongdoing. And I think it's important to be fair and show you that portion of her opening statement. Let's take a look. On August 29th, I learned that the vice president would be traveling to Poland to meet with President Zelensky

on September 1st. At the September 1st meeting, which I attended, President Zelensky asked the vice president about news articles reporting a hold on U.S. security assistance for Ukraine. The vice president responded that Ukraine had the United States unwavering support and promised to relay their conversation

to President Trump that night. During the September 1st meeting, neither the vice president nor President Zelensky mentioned the specific investigations discussed during the July 25th phone call. So it seems like Pence was unaware of what was really going on in that case, based on what she's saying. But I will also mention that Pence had no problem throwing her under the bus when Donald

Trump began attacking her over the weekend upon news that she was going to testify. I actually didn't see that. Do you remember exactly what he said? On Twitter. He just went after her on Twitter with one of his typical stupid ludic tweets. But Pence, in response to that, had his office send out a statement that just distanced himself from Williams, which is gross. Yeah, yeah.

Yeah, and kind of a waste time, because at some point, Pence is going to say one bad thing about Trump, and be declared to never Trump or anyway. Yeah, I mean, it's the point. Yeah, exactly. One final thing I wanted to mention about Williams, she shed light on one more mystery related to why Pence abruptly canceled his planned trip to Ukraine to attend Zelensky's inaugural. told lawmakers that an assistant to the vice Why just survive back to school

when you can thrive by creating a space that does it all for you no matter the size. Whether you're taking over your parents' basement or moving to campus, IKEA has hundreds of design ideas and affordable options to complement any budget. After all, you're in your small space era. It's time to own it. Shop now at IKEA.ca. President's chief of staff, Mark Short, told her, in mid-May that Trump had asked Pence to stay home.

So he was supposed to go to the inauguration, and Trump apparently told him, no, you're not going to the inauguration. And so I guess we would have to speculate that the reason would be that having him show up would be a small version of having a meeting at the White House, and they wanted to hold as much of their leverage as possible until they got what they wanted. Yeah, that's exactly right. Pence showing up to the inauguration is a symbolic gesture. And it actually means a lot to this new president of Ukraine. And so Pence refusing to show up, or more importantly, Trump demanding that Pence avoid showing

up means something. And so the question is, why did Pence, I'm sorry, did Trump use that as leverage? Was there another purpose? Was there something else that Pence was doing? There was a line of questioning by a Republican lawmaker where William said that, you know, Pence attended some other meeting, some other gathering. of world leaders pertaining to trade. So, you know, we're finding all these little details.

But I think the most important part of this is that the topic of this investigation and the demand for the investigation keeps coming up. And Gordon Sondland, who was just a businessman who did hotel stuff until he decided to donate a million dollars to Trump, you know, he's the one who keeps coming up again. And he should have probably just stuck to the hotel business instead of wanting to be part of Trump's administration. Also true for Trump. Some trouble.

Yeah, yeah, that's true. And so I know that we're gonna get to Volker, but at some point, so Williams doesn't have as much exposure to a lot of these conversations as someone like Bill Taylor did or Sondland, which we'll get to a little bit later this week. But at a certain point, I get that there's, I guess, value to repetition and sort of driving home the message. But for someone like me or you who's watching this every day, it starts to feel really repetitive. Repetive and unnecessary.

I mean, is there a single, is a single rational, intellectually honest person left in this country who does not believe that Donald Trump clearly wanted Zelensky to give him something that would benefit himself politically and use the threat of withholding aid, and in fact, withheld it, to get it. That's the simplest, obvious truth. Yeah. And there are people who won't admit that, you know, they're broadcasting on Fox right now. They're saying that today's hearing was just a bunch of people talking about their feelings,

which I'm assuming was either making fun of Vindman's thing about his dad or just a massage I'm not sure at this point, but it's not like they're waiting to have like some really shiny fact that gets them to finally admit, oh yeah, no, he was clearly doing it for his own benefit. Well, look, I think that there were some enlightening moments, some, and there have been new revelations as a result of the public hearings. And I think Volker changing some of his private testimony during his public testimony is one example of that.

And so I think that these public hearings are important, especially if you look at the polling and you see how much the polling has shown an increase of Americans who find Donald Trump's behavior an issue. And now a slim majority of Americans actually think that he should not only be impeached, he should be removed. Yeah, and only one in four actually think that he didn't do anything wrong. Right. Those people are lost cause.

That's exactly right. And those people are part of Trump's base. So we're not having a conversation about them, we're having a conversation with people who are open-minded, who want to hear the facts and make a decision after these hearings. But with that said, let's take a quick break, and when we come back, we'll give you a little piece of Volcker's testimony. I'll explain what changed between his private and public hearing. And later on, we'll discuss, what's his name, Prince Andrew, right? Yeah.

Yeah, that guy. A lot of trouble. Bad. Very bad. Not good for you. We need to talk about a relatively new show called Un-F-The-Republic, or UNFTR. As a Young Turks fan, you already know that the government, the media, and corporations are constantly peddling lies that serve the interests of the rich and powerful. But now there's a podcast dedicated to unraveling those lies, debunking the conventional wisdom. In each episode of Un-F-The-Republic, or UNFTR, the host delves into a different historical episode or topic that's generally misunderstood or purposely obfuscated by the so-called powers that be. Featuring in-depth research, razor-sharp commentary, and just the right amount

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So search for UNFDR in your podcast app today and get ready to get informed, angered, and entertained all at the same time. You're back. Hey guys, welcome back to TYT, Anna and John with you. So I want to read a few member comments and TYT lives. Lots of really nice, encouraging comments from our members. Thank you guys so much. Judy says love having John for the whole show.

Oh, it has very rarely happened that you lead the first hour. I'm also here for the second hour, and then we do the post game together. I know. Like three times, maybe? Yeah, it's been a very long time. Unprecedented Madness says, it is so refreshing to see two young, intelligent millennials discussing politics. Thank you, Anna and John, the two of you are an inspiration.

I wish one of you would be at the Atlanta rally tomorrow, though. I wish I was there. Yeah, me too. My family in the area, it would have been nice to see my brother. Oh, do you? Oh, will. Nice. Well, we gotta hold down the fort.

But speaking of the rally, let me give you some details on what's happening tomorrow, lots So big news, first off, the Georgia debate is taking place on November 20th, that's tomorrow. And we will be doing a special debate coverage for you. You can check us out live at t.t.com slash live at 11 p.m. Eastern, 8 p.m. Pacific. I will be on the panel along with John, Ida, and J.R. And for those of you who are in the Atlanta area, please check out the rally that we'll be doing there. You can always find out more information about the rally by going to tyt.com slash rally. And lots of great guests are confirmed, including Nina Turner, Ted Terry, and William

Hasten. Check it out. Jank will be there as well, and it'll be a good time. And then one other quick note, aspiration is a financial institution that you should look into. It's a great place to keep your money. If you're concerned about banks investing your money in companies that you disagree with, Aspiration will not do that.

They're environmentally friendly. They think about those things when they invest any of their customers' funds. So again, check them out. Go to aspiration.com slash t-y-t. And yeah, let's move on to the rest of the news. So today was a big day for the public hearings in the impeachment investigation. A number of Trump administration officials did testify. One of those officials was Kurt Volker, who is no longer a,

Trump administration official, but he was formally the special envoy in Ukraine. Now, his testimony publicly apparently is different from what he said privately. So let me give you the details, according to various sources. The week writes, in his original closed-door testimony, when asked if there was any talk of investigating the Bidens in a July 10 meeting with a Ukrainian defense leader, Volker repeatedly answered no. But when appearing publicly before the House Intelligence Committee on Tuesday, Volker reversed that statement. On Tuesday, Volker acknowledged that Gordon Sondland, the U.S. ambassador to the EU, brought up the investigations and that he found it inappropriate.

In fact, in the next clip that you're about to watch, he discusses what he really feels about the demand for the Biden investigations. This references the conversation I had with Mr. Giuliani as well, where I think the allegations against Vice President Biden are self-serving and not credible. So the fact that he says that it's self-serving is important because one of the Trump defenses that we commonly hear from Republicans is, well, I mean, what's the big deal? I mean, quit pro quo. We do it all the time, right?

I mean, we make these deals with foreign leaders. Yeah, but you make the deals with foreign leaders in the way. an effort to do what's in the best interest of America overall, not what's in the best interest of the president or his political campaign, which was the case with Donald Trump. Or at the very least, in the best interest of the American military industrial complex. But not for an individual politician, really. Right. Yeah, and it also undercuts, I know that a lot of right-wingers had been expecting that he might

sort of come up and hint that, well, you know, there were concerns about Biden at the time. Like, that's one of the main, like, one of the main three, I guess, defenses of Trump. Trump was that obviously there were issues with Biden and his family. And so you cannot say that it was weird to bring it up. But he's pointing out that no, the people in the meeting knew that there was no legitimate reason to be talking about investigating Biden at that time. And in previous testimony, we learned that the investigation into the Bidens makes no sense because the accusation by Trump is that Biden wanted to get rid of a prosecutor in Ukraine

who was investigating Burisma. But now we have multiple people who are part of Trump's administration saying, no, that prosecutor who got fired, first of all, the international community wanted him to get fired because the investigation was stagnant and that particular prosecutor was corrupt. And so you say that, and it's so simple, so easy to understand. But even that very easy to understand thing, in the like three months that this scandal has been in the public, like, attention, you can't get people to accept that. They still think, no, no, Biden protected them.

So I get your perspective, and you're right, you're definitely right. But also at the same time, look, this is why the giant conflict of interest of having Hunter Biden serve on that board is coming back to Biden, you know, because he really shouldn't have been on that board. Let's keep it real. So we're honest about that. If you want to have a big conversation where we finally take stock of the fact that nepotism is a huge thing in American politics and American business and American entertainment,

and music and the media and all of that, and we strip all those people their positions and make them actually earn what they get, then sure, we get rid of Hunter Biden and Jared Cushner doesn't have his job and you get the Trump's aren't running the Trump organization and Megan McCain's off the view and everything. I think we can totally have that conversation, it's probably long overdue, but that is not what Donald Trump was trying to do. And it is so disingenuous of the right to pretend that Trump actually cared about Hunter Biden, not insofar as it hurts the credibility of Biden.

in an election, but because Hunter Biden being on that board means, well, that's really hurting the energy sector of Ukraine, and I won't stand for it. Yeah. No, look, I 100% agree with you. And think about Donald Trump and the nepotism within his own administration. Yeah. I mean, two of his top advisors are family members who have absolutely no business serving in the White House or in any form of government, for that matter.

I agree. Yeah. So one other quote from Volcker's testimony that I want to say. to share with you, he said, quote, I participated in the July 10 meeting between National Security Advisor, Bolton and then Ukrainian chairman of the National Security and Defense Council, Alex Danube, Danilup, who has the best name. I love saying his name. As a reminder, the meeting was essentially over when Ambassador Gordon Sondland, again,

Gordon Sondland keeps coming up, made a generic comment about investigations. I think all of us thought it was inappropriate. The conversation did not continue. concluded. Yeah. So can I just talk briefly about, so Volcker, what he just said, a little bit different in some substantive ways from what he'd said earlier. Sondland was the earlier version of that.

He had originally said no quid pro quo, totally not. And then he's like, sorry, I meant quid pro quo, it's easy to get this too mixed up. And you know why. The reason why he had to change his testimony is because his testimony conflicted a great deal from the testimony given by other Trump administration officials. Exactly. And so that's what's really interesting about. The Republicans didn't want the closed door hearings.

They also coincidentally don't want the public ones. But they said that they didn't want the private ones. But the thing that the private ones brought was they had multiple people come in, talk about what they knew. And then when stuff started to come out from it, some of them started to realize like, oh, it's going to be really hard to sustain what I told them. Or best case scenario, some of them, their memories were jogged or whatever. And so now their story is changing, especially when they have apparently come to the

understanding that they work for a guy that would love to throw them under a bus. And they don't want to be the person who goes down for this. Gordon Sondland's like, this was just fun, man. I just spent a million dollars because thought it would be cool to be ambassador for a few years. I don't want to go to jail for Donald Trump. And so if Gordon Sondland tells the truth, or at the very least avoids, you know, going to jail for perjury or something like that, then at the very least from his point of view, it passes the Bukta Rudy Giuliani who can go to jail.

Right. And I think that it is honestly given what we've heard. Look, we know that investigations into Trump don't necessarily work out the way that you would expect them to, even if there's overwhelming evidence. You know, the obstruction of justice outlined in the Mueller report is just so clear. I know. But all the people surrounding Donald Trump, who engaged in any type of criminal activity, paid the consequences. So if I had to take a bet on... One of the hardest parts of getting older is feeling like something's off in your body, but not knowing exactly what.

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So, White House Press Secretary Stephanie Grisham is a clown. And a good example of that is what she tried to do today in distracting the American people from the disastrous impeachment investigation to Donald Trump. Now, I say it's disastrous because it's disastrous for Donald Trump. We now have multiple Trump administration officials testifying against him, showing that there clearly was a quid pro quo, that he did demand an investigation into the Bidens, and he did in fact hold up military aid. But Stephanie Grisham is like, okay, well, let me just go ahead and do this, and maybe you guys will stop paying attention to the investigation.

So Abby Phillip, who is a reporter with CNN, said White House press secretary Stephanie Grisham claims Obama aides left, you will fail notes in offices for Trump aides. We came into the White House, I'll tell you something, every office was filled with Obama books and we had notes left behind that said you will fail, you aren't going to make it. Now, okay. So I wrote a note and it said you will fail, but I don't know if that really got it across ad, you're not gonna make it. That'll really sell the message.

Let's do a little bit of pop psychology. First of all, this is complete BS, and we'll go through that in just a minute. But before we get to that, think about what goes on psychologically with these people in Trump's administration and with Trump himself. Like internally, he knows he's a failure, right? I think so. They know that this administration is a failure, that it's complete chaos, that they haven't actually succeeded in delivering on any of the promises to Trump's base.

And so, like, they know their failures, and this is like a weird way of letting that, like, self-assessment leak to the public. Yeah. Yeah, and the thing is, it's not even like I find it inconceivable that someone working there had left behind a note or something. But I do know that if that had happened, there is no way they sit on it for three years. 100%. And the thing is- It would have been day one, it would be in the news.

Exactly, especially because if you remember, there were stories that supported. Supposedly they trash the place or it was dirty or whatever, it was ridiculous, like there was weird racial stereotypes in there and stuff like that. But they did try to smear the Obamas as they were transitioning into the White House. The idea that they would have left behind this, especially at a time when supposedly they had physical evidence, they could show the note, you can match it up with someone's handwriting or something, the idea that you know what, they thought about it and they decided no, in the interest of continuity and respect, we're just gonna bury this.

This one. No, not this White House. They're not going to. They would have shown it. It's such a joke. So Jonathan Swan made a very similar statement about the validity he said, and he's from Axios. He said via Twitter, interesting, over the past two and a half years, I've heard no end of complaints to Trump officials about their Obama predecessors, but never has this remarkable detail been mentioned.

Would love to see a copy of these You Will Fail Notes. And then finally, a former NSC, National Security Council employee confirms that it's a lie. And the tweet is, this is an outrageous lie, I know, I handed over the nuclear office at the NSC, shameless and disgusting. I mean, look, and the press secretary should be fired. But this is the trait that Donald Trump loves about people like Stephanie Grish. Yeah, yeah, there's one other thing too, I don't know if maybe this is going too far, In that original comment, it said that the notes were left behind, but it also said that

the rooms were filled with Obama books. I think, maybe I'm crazy, I think that is subconscious strikeback against the conversation that's been going around the past couple days about Don Jr.'s book and about how it had to be bulk purchased to get up there. I think they're trying to pretend that Obama's book, like the White House just filled the rooms with Obama books, and that's how it seemed like it was a popular book. I don't know. Anyway, if what I just said doesn't make any sense and you want more information on the damage

report, I did an analysis of the right wing pundits bulk buying to get on the New York Times best out list. So go look at that video. It's pretty embarrassing. And by the way, it is also interesting to see which right wing writers did this and which did not because some actually didn't. And I found it to be surprising. So I wanted to read a few member comments before we get off this story.

The mathematician says Anna hits the nail on the head, I really love this comment. The problem with any accountability in our system is that to the average American, and this is absolutely true, everyone is corrupt in our government. So that's the difference between Biden. So what's the difference between Biden and Trump? There's a huge difference, but you can't blame them for not being able to see that. And I think that you make such a great point there, a lot of people aren't hyper focused on every single detail in politics, right?

And so yeah, I think a lot of people do see. this entire system is corrupt. And so if you're not paying close attention, you can just easily like brush things off as Biden's corrupt, Trump's corrupt, they're all corrupt, it's all the same thing. But it's not the same thing. In this case, you know, what Trump is accusing Joe Biden of doing in allegedly pushing for the firing of a prosecutor is just not true. And the one thing that is questionable is the fact that Hunter Biden was on that board.

He shouldn't have been on that board. There's a giant conflict of interest, we all agree on that. But look, here's the thing, here's the difference between the left and the right. On the left, you have people who call it like it is, and they tell the truth, right? And they're able to concede that what Hunter Biden was doing in being on a board that he had no business being on was wrong. But at the same time, Trump is lying about other aspects of this, and what he did is an impeachable, impeachable offense.

Yeah. So- Yeah, I feel perfectly comfortable criticizing Hunter Biden being on that board, because I think most board appointments are absolute BS. I think the whole thing's corrupt. I think that almost every like, you know, Silicon Valley investment is given based on people knowing each other and no actual honest economic analysis of the likely, you know, return on a product or service. I think the entire system is absolute BS.

But also, if you're a Trump, in the Trump base, if you love Donald Trump, it's really weird to think that Hunter Biden being on that board is wrong. Because that's entirely consistent with everything about Donald Trump and his family. The idea that you would think that like what you're not supposed to use your family connections to get ahead in the business world, Donald Trump's been drilling into your head over and over that that's perfectly acceptable. That's the way it's supposed to work. Well, I love the member comments.

If you are a member, I want to make sure to read some of your comments in the context of the news stories that we do. You can become a member and support the show by going to t.yt.com slash join. All right, we're gonna take a quick break. When we come back, we're gonna switch gears. We're going to get off the impeachment investigation and talk a little bit about the very loud calls for Trump advisor Stephen Miller to resign. At TYT, we frequently talk about all the ways that big tech companies are taking control

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media, become a member at t-y-t.com slash join today. In the meantime, enjoy this free second. Doe is a good thing, okay? Donuts are great, and dough as a place to invest your money is also great. So dough is one of our partners and what's wonderful about them is they help you out if you're looking to invest, but you don't know where to start. I don't know about you, John, like do you invest? Like it's- I-401K, that's an investment.

Right, but like even that, it's like, I don't know what I'm really doing, it's just coming out of my paycheck and hopefully it works out, right? I actually, I changed mine very slightly recently, and so now I'm terrified. I exercised a little bit of control over it, and now I'm like, looking at it every day. Well, look, if you want to invest your money outside of traditional retirement accounts, you can do so by going to dodo.com slash t-y-t. And what they do is they ask you some questions about what your interests are, what your passions are, and, you know, maybe things that you don't want to invest your money in, and they'll help you out. It's a really great guided way for you to get started in investing your money. And what I also like about them is they're not shady with the fees, okay?

So make sure you pay close attention to fees, guys. Go to Doe.com slash TYT for more information. All right, a few TYT lives, I don't want to neglect you guys. Dad tweet says, there could be recordings of Trump saying, I want a quid pro quo, I don't care if this is breaking the law and unconstitutional. the Ukrainian money until I get dirt on the Bidens and the right wing will still defend him. And you're so right, you're so right. That's pretty good.

It's so depressing. Okay, you know what? We do a different kind of show here, okay? I want my coffee. Can I have my coffee? All right, thank you. I'm about to fall asleep, I'm exhausted, I've had really bad insomnia, so this needs to be here.

All right, let's get to the next story. Thank you, Edwin. All right. Following a Southern Poverty Law Center expose on Stephen Miller, a top Trump advisor, and the racist emails that he was sending in his emails to Breitbart editors, there are growing calls for him to resign, which makes a lot of sense. Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez had started a petition demanding that he stepped down, and he hasn't done so yet.

But we do have some more information about what people are demanding and what the response from the Trump administration has been. Now, civil rights groups have banded together to call for Stephen Miller's resignation. The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights wrote to the White House saying that the administration will continue to, quote, be responsible for the violence fueled by Miller's hate and bigotry as long as he's still working for the federal government. Now, I want to refresh your memory about what we found through that exposé by the Southern Poverty Law Center. CNN outlines some of it in this next clip. Take a look.

In one email, dated October 2015, while Miller still worked for then-Senator Jeff Sessions, he touts what he saw as the dangers of allowing hurricane victims from Mexico to come to the U.S. They will all get TPS, he writes. That's temporary protection status. He goes on to write, that needs to be the weekend's big story. TPS is everything. Then he sends then Breitbart staffer Katie McHugh, an article from prominent white nationalist website VDARE of the dangers of TPS. In 2018, well after Miller joined Trump's inner circle, the president ended the TPS status for several countries, including in Central America and Africa. So he was communicating with a specific Breitbart editor who was later fired over Islamophobic

tweets and just made it clear that he was trying to pressure, not even pressure, them. I mean, they're in the same type of ideological space. You know, he tried to kind of drive their coverage on immigration and race-related stories. And he's a terrible person, so you can understand what kind of terrible things he was encouraging them to write. Yeah, yeah. And the stuff that came out today had much more granular discussions between him and I believe the same Breitbart reporter about exactly what terms to use when referencing immigration reform, apparently as part of an effort, even earlier an effort. to hurt Marco Rubio back during the primary and things like that.

And so it was a very close working relationship with them that obviously reflects poorly on Stephen Miller and Breitbart and both. And for some reason, Breitbart is like a trusted news source on Facebook, even though they're coordinating not only with white supremacists, but with the White House too, in a way that Facebook wouldn't allow other news outlets to do. I mean, we have a Democratic presidential candidate constantly advertising on the website and doing interviews with them and also name them in. in her lawsuit against Google, as if Breitbart is a legitimate news organization that

needs to be protected. But nonetheless, I'll focus on this particular story in front of me right now. Now, Stephen Miller is a complete, utter disaster, not only because of the way he has influenced the type of reporting coming from Breitbart, but because of what he pushes for within the White House. So the child separation policy, he successfully pushed for that, and he got his wife. And we have children in cages, some of whom literally died while being detained in those cages away from their parents.

We have multiple adult migrants who have died in those cages. These are the type of cruel policies that, I mean, obviously Trump is in favor of as well. He's complicit in it in the very least. But these are Stephen Miller's ideas, and you can see them actually carried out within the administration. to give you a little more from the leadership conference on civil and human rights, the letter that they sent to the Trump administration. They write, quote, Stephen Miller represents white supremacy, violent extremism, and hate, and ideologies that are antithetical to the fundamental values that guide our democracy, allowing

him to remain a White House advisor as a betrayal of our national ideals and of justice, inclusion, and fairness. We call on you to halt your own hateful actions in rhetoric and remove all. all hate enthusiasts from the administration. I mean, look, I commend them for writing this letter, but good luck, let's keep it real. These are the types of things that Trump finds appealing about Stephen Miller. But I will say, there have been various Trump administration officials who have been pushed out because of their, in some cases, unlawful activity within the administration.

So the misuse of taxpayer money, there have been people pushed out because of that. But you need pressure and it needs to be consistent pressure. And right now, unfortunately, I think Americans are being pulled in so many different directions. Like we're so distracted because there's so much to focus on. I think even in some of those earlier cases, I think that he was done with those people. I think that if he still likes Stephen Miller and thinks that he's a good advisor or whatever, I don't know what leverage anyone calling for him to resign has. I think it's awesome that AOC did it after this initial reporting and she's still talking

about it even as the impeachment has taken a lot of people's attention. But why would he resign? What possible reason? Why would Trump force him out, especially over this? He wouldn't want to send a signal to his base that he was against someone for being a white nationalist. Stephen Miller has nothing to gain by resigning. It's not like he has a reputation that he's protecting and he wants to get out of, get

the criticism off of him. not really trying to work with the Democrats on any legislation through the rest of his term. So it's not like he needs goodwill among the Democrats. I think it's great to put pressure on him. But I can't imagine why either of them would give an inch on this. Yeah, I mean, look, you do make a good point, especially because Trump hasn't actually delivered on anything for his base other than the bigotry that they found appealing about him, right? And so if Trump gets rid of Stephen Miller, you're right, he'll probably get viciously attacked

by the worst aspects of the right wing, and it doesn't serve his best interests, especially at a time when he needs support the most. Yeah. But it is important to not lose sight of all the other things that are going on with this administration. It's not just about Trump's, you know, activities when it comes to the impeachment investigation. It's also the policies that he's still pursuing behind the scenes as we're focused on the impeachment investigation.

You still have these goons working for him. You still have, you know, provocative actions abroad. Just recently you had the Trump administration reverse the U.S. policy on Israeli settlements in the West Bank. We'll talk about that story a little later. It's just a complete and utter disaster. So try not to get too distracted by one thing, just understand what this administration is really about and what's really going on.

All right, with that said, we do have to go to break. When we come back, though, I will give you the details on that story about the Israeli really settlements in the West Bank. Thanks for listening to the full episode of the Young Turks. Support our work, listen to ad-free, access members-only bonus content, and more by subscribing to Apple Podcasts at apple.co slash t-y-t. I'm your host, Shank Huger, and I'll see you soon.