The Young Turks - Vought Of Confidence

Episode Date: February 8, 2025

Key MAGA Leader’s Plans for a New Trump Agenda. Trump Calls Directly for Closure of U.S.A.I.D. Elon Musk’s DOGE Goonies Are The Worst Of The Worst. Kanye West Says He Has ‘DOMINION’ Over Wife Bianca Censori in Wild Racist Rant. Hosts: John Iadarola, Ben Gleib, Wosny Lambre SUBSCRIBE on YOUTUBE ☞ https://www.youtube.com/@TheYoungTurks FOLLOW US ON: FACEBOOK ☞ https://www.facebook.com/theyoungturks TWITTER ☞ https://twitter.com/TheYoungTurks INSTAGRAM ☞ https://www.instagram.com/theyoungturks TIKTOK ☞ https://www.tiktok.com/@theyoungturks 👕MERCH ☞ https:/www.shoptyt.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Welcome back one and all again to the first hour of the Young Turks Power Panel. I am John Ida Rola going to be leading you for this first hour and joined along the way by host both at Rebel HQ and also of the last week on Earth podcast. Ben Glebe, welcome back to the show. Good to have you here and Wazni Lombray as well. Senior staff writer at the ringer and I've heard you've been through the ringer because sports be sportsin, I guess, there's a lot of sports happening, huh? Oh yeah, let's just say I'm happy that it's over and we can all just go back to working normal hours, normal times, I'm happy.

I don't know what you're talking about. Sorry, what were you saying about? I just wanted to mention that it was Waz's birthday his birthday yesterday and John said he doesn't care at all because it's one day later. If you talk to me, you know, earlier, like 11 o'clock last night, maybe I'd care. But no, it's too late. It's too late, sir. And also, what are you talking about no sports? We're on the road to WrestleMania right now, okay? As a sports head, we're just elimination chambers coming up in a month. But anyway, that's as much as we'll talk about the WWE on this. Thank you everyone for being here, both on the panel and out there in the audience. We've got

all of the things to talk about because they just don't give you a day to catch up. We just want to talk about light stuff, fun stuff. But unfortunately, we have to talk about incredibly serious stuff. And that's what we're going to do for our hour. So everyone buckle up, sending your comments, your tweets, your super chats, all that. I'll be reading during our social breaks. And with that, why don't we jump into our first topic. 80% of my time is working on the plans of what's necessary to take control of these bureaucracies. And we are working doggedly on that, whether it's destroying their agency's notion of independence, they're independent from the president.

So that is Russell Vaught in that video right there. And up until recently, he was notable primarily because he's one of the architects of projects of project. 2025. The thing that obviously was going to be Donald Trump's agenda, that was very clear, and that's how it's going. He says there, these agencies and their supposed, supposed independence, they're independent agencies. That's how they were set up. But he doesn't believe that. He believes that the president should be king, should be emperor, should have unilateral control over all of this. Sorry, assuming it's a Republican. If it's a Democrat, then, you know, independent agency is the most important thing in the world. But anyway, all of that would be well and

good, except that he is no longer just the architect of Project 2025. He was confirmed last night by the Senate to lead the Office of Management and Budget, which is an incredibly important part of the executive branch. So he's returning to the White House to do exactly what he said he was going to do, both in that video and in Project 2025. And the thing about heading up the OMB is it doesn't necessarily draw a lot of attention, certainly by the public, even by the media for what they do. But what they do is incredibly crucial for setting the president's agenda and actually making change. And he's been very clear about what he wants to do in that sort of role. He had said in Project 2025 that the OMB, which he now heads, is a quote, president's air traffic

control system and should be involved in all aspects of the White House policy process, becoming powerful enough to override implementing agencies, bureaucracies. And so that's what he wants to do. All these different agencies filled with, you know, like career experts and things like that, those who haven't already been fired, those who haven't already been, I don't know, docks or had their pay cut by Doge or whatever, their autonomy is going to be gone. And he's talked a lot about his plans. And I think it's important that we familiarize ourselves with them so we know what's to come. So here is Vaugh back in 2023 in a private speech and take a look at what he's what he's saying here. We want the bureaucrats to be traumatically affected. We want when they

woke up in the morning, we want them to not want to go to work because they are so they're increasingly viewed as the villains. We want their funding to be shut down so that the EPA can't do all of the rules against our energy industry because they have no bandwidth financially to do so. We want to put them in trauma. Yes, so we want them to be in trauma, to not have autonomy, to not of the bandwidth, to not of the budget, to not have the expertise or the background to do that stuff, that's how they're staffing it. And to be very clear, because I know we have some conservatives to watch a show, you'll notice that nowhere in any of that did he say that that would benefit the American people. They're

barely even pretending that anymore. No, the reason that you want to shut down all of the agencies, particularly things like the EPA. The reason you want to shred all these regulations are the regulations confine and constrain the wealthy, the elites, both at the individual and at the corporate level. And they have no interest in that because Vaugh, like Donald Trump, like Elon Musk, are both of and tools for the 1%. And so all these organizations that theoretically might, for instance, he wants to bring up the EPA, might protect you from, you know, toxic emissions and things like that from these corporations, might allow you to sue them, you know, be compensated. If your land is ruined or if your health is

ruined, if your families are damaged, that's all going to be gone. But it's okay, those who already have the most in society will have slightly more. And so I know that all the big fans of Project 2025 are cheering today. They're totally happy that they got vaught in. I'm sad not only for America and for people, you know, like on the Democratic side, but also for the many conservatives who lives won't be made worse because of this sort of appointment. And so we have a little bit more reaction from Elizabeth Warren to Vaught, but Was I want to start with you. What do you make of this? I don't think anybody should be surprised. I think, you know, during the campaign, when Project

25 somehow broke through the public consciousness and became really unpopular, Trump did everything that he could to distance himself from the entire operation. Right? Just be like, yo, that's the Heritage Foundation's pet baby that has nothing to do with me and MAGA. And, you know, I'm an independent actor. I have nothing to do with that. But, you know, underneath the surface, it doesn't take hard to understand. Like, it's this expansive undertaking the entire Project 25 thing was. Yeah, 25 thing was. And it's hard to staff a Republican administration that doesn't have people who were a part of this. Like so many. people worked on this project 25 thing. Inevitably, many of them would have been tapped to staff to Trump White House. So, you know, we shouldn't be surprised that this guy who was leading the charge got pushed through because the Heritage Foundation is very influential within the GOP. So nobody should be shocked by this. Ben?

Yeah, not only is that true. I find it just stunning that people are in uproar about it now when this is the exact position that Vot held in Trump's first term. You reelect a madman who has a very clear mission that he has been crystallizing during a very long campaign and during four years of truth social posting before that, despite his unbelievable denials that he knew nothing about Project 2025 and all of his closest advisors were the architects of it, he gets reelected. This is exactly what's going to happen. It was clear as today that you were going to have Trump 2.0 ramped up to the nth degree, and that's what you're getting. You know, as VOT himself said, the director of the Office of Management and Budget for the White House is, and I quote, the best most comprehensive approximation of the president's mind. I mean, like you said, John, it's an under the radar group, but this is the group that sets the policy, that interacts with the agencies, that decides what the agenda will be in a very real, on the ground, practical way.

And this is who you've appointed. You can't be surprised when the person and the person who probably has the most extreme version of the old conservative adage of they want a government so small you can drown it in the bathtub. Inherent in that is drowning in the bathtub. That's not somebody that has any desire to run something more efficiently. They want to kill it. And that's what they're doing. They want to kill any oversight they just want, as you said, to line their own pockets. And it's just very transparent.

Yeah, it's definitely true. Although, to go back to what I said earlier, considering the goal of all this, I think that we should update that phrase. They want a government so small that corporate America can drown you in your bathtub, I think, and get away with it and have there be no consequences. But you're totally right, the mind analogy that they gave. But the thing is with Donald Trump, I don't even know if it's like. a reflection of his mind. I think it's a replacement for his mind. I know that, you know, the Trump cult or whatever, they love Donald Trump. They think he's like the biggest alpha or whatever, but like, I don't know, Elon Musk's off rampaging around. We'll talk about him later on the hour

doing all the stuff that he wants to do. Vought's going to be holding it down at the OMB, doing all of his project 2025 stuff. Meanwhile, Donald Trump is sitting in the Oval Office having binders handed to him and being told what the executive orders do, and then he gets to like scribble his signature or whatever, it doesn't really feel like, I don't know, it doesn't feel like he's running much of anything. It feels like he's just, rather than him being sort of like a proxy for the donors, they're just all in there. All the donors are just directly in control of these things. And he gets to like, I don't know, ban paper straws or whatever stupid thing he thinks makes him look cool or something.

And meanwhile, the wealthiest people of the country are they're just directly taking a hand. And so we'll discuss a little bit more. I do want to throw it though, because I said I would to Elizabeth Warren, so she obviously wasn't successful in stopping him, but she'd argued vigorously against him. And here's some of what she had to say. Russ vote has called for outlawing abortion, medication abortion nationwide. Doesn't matter whether or not you live in a state that says, no, we're going to protect abortion. Russ vote wants to find a way to make sure it's shut down everywhere. He wants to encourage discrimination

against transgender people, and he says he wants to put federal workers in trauma and destroy the merit-based system for civil servants so he can fill up our government with right-wing extremists. Russ Vote was the puppet master behind the funding shutdown that threw this country into chaos last week. If he is confirmed, you can absolutely bet on Russ Vote pulling out the rug from working people over and over and over again. It is up to us. I'm not lying down and playing dead, and I hope nobody else does either.

And look, the unfortunate thing is whether you want to describe some of these Republican senators as playing dead or just being happy that this guy gets in because, you know, as I believe Wazz, you're pointing out, like, you know, he's Heritage Foundation. This is like the stuff they want to do. It's all, it's in every one of these areas. It's a more extreme version of what they would have been comfortable pushing for before.

But it's in line with the insanity that they've been pushing for. Usually it's tempered by senators worried about reelection or a president who doesn't want to be unpopular. But, you know, all the breaks are off or whatever. And we should remember there is a reason that Donald Trump tried to run away from Project 2025. It's because they identified people don't like this stuff. A lot of people don't like this stuff. And the thing about it is they're not going to like this stuff. They didn't like it when it was a plan.

You think they're going to like it when it's actually in effect, when it's screwing them and their family's finances over? I don't think that they will. But the question is, like, which proceeds faster, the damage they can do, especially the long-term damage that will last, it will be very difficult to root out, or people's knowledge of what's happening and catching up in terms of, you know, not liking what they're seeing. And I do think that we see some early signs of that. And we can discuss this. You know, there were these polls of, you know, how interested Republicans are in Elon Musk having a lot of influence over the administration. And half of that group from back in September now doesn't want him to have a lot of influence over Trump. So I think there's a lot of people that don't like what they're seeing. But again, the OMB is a little bit more stealth. It's a little bit more camouflaged. So, and especially when you combine that with the way the media has sort of self-destructed, defang themselves over the last year. it's possible they could do a lot of damage without people necessarily seeing. But Ben, any final thoughts about this? Yeah, look, I think, you know, not just as this a heritage foundation guy in the years between terms, he himself founded and ran Trump basically MAGA think tanks.

It's not a surprise. And so when you say, John, that it's true, it's not really an approximation of the president's mind when he's being fed that. But that's the best way with Donald Trump to ensure that you are, are approximations. his mind is to tell him what he thinks. He doesn't have an ideology as a person that gets nefarious ideas run by him. He's like, that sounds pretty good. That sounds like I, something I could do.

And then he just goes and does it. And so when you write the script for a person who can't even spell his own name, as you see the scribbles there that you mentioned, he takes a long time signing his own name to not have one letter be discernible there. He could at least do it quicker, although then there would be faster executive orders. that would be a problem. Maybe that's one of the only benefits, one of the only guardrails of the amount of time that he spent signing his own name. We've got that on our side. Was, any other thoughts? Um, I think the way that they've started this whole government bureaucracy,

defunding is quite telling the first, the first agency they go after is USAID and, you know, and that's an easy PR win. They can go out and tell their voters. Why the hell are we sending aid to places like Africa and other places when we have our own problems here. And it looks like they're doing something that benefits people. And I think generally speaking, even something like the EPA, it's hard for the American people, somebody who wakes up at 6 o'clock every morning to make their kids lunch and send them off to school before going to work for them to understand how the EPA is working every day in their lives.

And you know what, it'd be nice. If there was another party, you could go out and make the affirmative case for these government bureaucracies as a check on corporate power. But the problem is the Democratic Party is wholly bought and sold by the corporate interests in our company. So they, excuse me, in our country. And so they can't come out and take a muscular stance against the corporate interest and say, look, these agencies, these government bureaucracies are guardrails. They're the referees in our system. We need them in place because these people, Yes, God bless them. It's America. You are allowed to go out and make money, but they can't be counted on to put a pause to the moneymaking no matter what. They will throw all of our citizens under the bus when it comes to the profit motive. And we need people, we need agencies to go out and be a check on that. But the Democrats can't do that. You can't do that when your brother-in-law, some freaking Uber CEO. You're taking meetings with Google the same day Joe Biden's Justice Department is suing them. You can't do that. You can't do that. You can't.

Can't go out and make that case. And so until these cuts start to touch people where they actually live, you know, something like the DOE cutting off special education or school lunches, et cetera, et cetera, until it actually affects everyday Americans' lives, most people are not going to understand why they should care that these agencies are being defunded. And it's because the Democrats have never made an affirmative case for them. I, you sound to me like a person who's not been listening to Chuck Schumer this week. Because he has been spitting hot fire.

Dude, they're talking about these guys didn't fill out the right forms. That's the case they're making. They is like some, you know, clerical era case and not why it's important that we have these agencies in the first place. I mean, look to Ben's point, if we can just have Trump's fill out the forms, that might take a while. That might slow down his agenda. True. Well, it's already slowed down plenty by Chuck Schumer's aggressive stance. I believe, I never been so inspired politically when I think this week he said, and what we must do is stop it as soon as possible.

I mean, bro, the country has crumbled during your statement. Can you possibly put a little zest in your voice? He can't move too fast because his glasses are always just a millimeter from falling off. the end of his nose, so you gotta just keep it together. Get a bifocal, bro. Please do something different. Yeah, or retire. Step down from leadership or whatever. You can still be a senator for a little bit. Or step down, let AOC become a senator, join leader. Like, come on, there are people. I'm not even saying they necessarily succeed because it's super difficult and they have very little power over this. But at least the American people would see them to be trying. And I think that would be a significant improvement. In any event, we've got a little break to go to

We're going to respond to your comments. There's a lot more news to get to after this. should have been cut off. I mean, $15 million for condoms for the Taliban? And, you know, $47,000, $47,000 to a transgender opera and Colombia, please. $15 million for condoms for the Taliban? That's what they discovered. Is it though? See, that's a GOP representative Buddy Carter. And he's spreading what you'll be shocked to find out is misinformation about USAID funding to justify Donald Trump. and Elon Musk killing that organization. And in so doing, killing a lot of people around the

globe while also killing a significant chunk of American soft power. There's just a lot of killing going on. And he's so bad at his job, which was to just go on the news and spread the already debunked conspiracy theory that he didn't even get the lie right. It's not $15 million for the Taliban, you moron. It's $50 or $100 million, depending on when you ask Donald Trump, in condoms for Hamas. Now, none of those things are true, but you could at least try to to get the lie right. And what do you know? The other things that he's cited to justify killing U.S. aid and that Carolyn Leavitt cited also ended up not being true. So the Washington Post did a great breakdown of this. The White House is wildly inaccurate claims about U.S. aid spending.

And so Leavitt had basically created like a dossier of 12 things that mean it's unacceptable for the U.S. aid to continue as it is. Now there's fundamentally an issue with their list where if you add up all of those 12 things, it's pennies, it's nothing. It's nothing. compared to the funding that USA gets or that the US budget is. But I also think that we need to dive into the specifics because they make claims like you heard from Buddy Carter there of a transgender opera, $47,000 for a transgender opera, which kind of sounds like it might be fun. Also not true. It was $25,000, which isn't that big of a mistake. Also, it wasn't the USA that funded it. It was the State Department. It was a totally separate thing. They also talk about a

transgender comic book. Again, it's not a transgender comic book. It's a comic book that has a transgender character in it. And also USA didn't fund it. Again, it was the State Department. And so of the 12 examples they cite, virtually all of them are wildly inaccurate. Most weren't actually funded by USAID. Most don't actually concern the sort of identity politics fear-mongering thing they're talking about. They'll just say that like, Because a thing has a gay character, that's what it is of the point of it, which isn't true. One of them actually was from the Trump era, they leave that out. And at the end of the day, we're talking about very small amounts of funding anyway. But you're not supposed to think about

that, okay? You're supposed to just be happy that they're killing a thing that might result in trans people in Peru being sad for a while or something. And along the way, you'll then ignore the people who will actually be suffering. It's not operas in Peru that at the at the end of the day are going to bear the brunt of the death of U.S. aid. You know who's actually gonna suffer a lot is U.S. farmers. You see, USAID oversees projects such as food aid, disaster relief, and health programs, and over 100 countries with a staff of more than 10,000 will return to that number in a second, and a budget of around $40 billion. Billions of those dollars flow back into the U.S.

economy, or at least did until the spending was frozen. And a lot of that comes in the form of buying food from U.S. farmers to ship around the world for these projects. And so purchases and shipments of U.S. food aid worth over $340 million. That includes rice, wheat, and soybeans have been paused just during this freeze, to give you an idea the massive sums of money that are going around. That has left hundreds of tons of American grown wheat stranded in Houston alone. And so billions of dollars that would have gone to U.S. farmers now will not. And along the way a lot of these crops are just going to rot. It's absolutely wasted. And the thing about it is like what does Donald Trump have with U.S. farmers? He's scurring them over to the tune of billions

of dollars. He just screwed over California farmers with that little water release stunt that didn't do firefighting any help and might ruin crops next season when the water is actually needed. And I'll also remind you that his trade war with China ended up doing a ton of damage to farmers during his first term necessitating a multi-billion dollar payoff just so that they wouldn't go under because the damage of the trade war did. And so that's the sort of thing that's intentionally lost when they talk about transgender operas and comic books. That's not what the big money is really about. It's U.S. farmers that are going to be really hurting in the years to come. But Ben, I want to go to you. You've seen that this has been all over the news of last week.

What do you make of this whole thing over USAID? Okay, well firstly, I agree with you. What is Trump doing with farmers because it's been a very schizophrenic approach, even from term one, when due to his first round of tariffs in his first term, he then had to subsidize American farmers so they wouldn't completely go under. And now is he going to subsidize them again because his own plans are again taking money away from the farming community? That's an issue. Now, of course, freezing U.S. aid, which they conveniently also referred to as U.S. AID, so the word AIDS, not even in it in the way it's presented. So emotionally it doesn't hit as we are helping people, but instead it's just another program. It's insane to be cutting it blanketly, to be

freezing it blankedly. And if there truly is some reason to be reducing it or even ending it, which is arguable whether it's in a president's purview or not to do, some say because it was started under an executive order that it can be stopped by a president. That's to be litigated in the courts, but why do it immediately? It just proves how malintended people in this administration are. They're not trying to save waste, fraud and abuse. They are just trying to, with draconian cuts, so chaos, whatever the damage might be, because they want to as fast as possible implement their agenda.

That said, also on the flip side, we give them reasons to be able to even allow the altered misinformation to get out there because what is the State Department doing funding operas and comic books? This is our tax money and we are strapped for money here in our own country. Our economy is not doing amazingly. People certainly are not doing amazingly in their pocketbooks. They don't have $400 for an emergency. We do need to be cutting waste, fraud, and abuse in our government. We should never be funding operas and comic books in other countries, regardless of what characters they are in it. And so we give rise, we give cover to this narrative that we're doing it through organizations. We may not be doing it through,

whatever the case, we of course should be getting rid, in my opinion, of this waste. And when you allow these narratives to flow, then they can say, oh, it's this org, it's that org, end it all. And we've again, I think, lost the plot by spending way too much money and how to and having two bloated of a government, so it gives way to way over correction. Was, what do you think? I mean, it feels like they're waging a PR war, right? And I think it's a mistake to when people on the left just brand these people as crazy foaming at the mouth lunatics, when oftentimes they're doing things that have a very clear

logic to it. I think Trump and his cronies can intuit that stuff like, say, funding the the war in Gaza endlessly, funding Ukraine's war endlessly, billions of dollars leaving our tax coffers to go abroad. When all we hear, when we have a crumbling infrastructure and families are struggling that we don't have enough, they can intuit that people don't like that. And so going after something called USAID and branding it as extravagances abroad, they know they're going to win that on a PR basis. Now, again, the proponents of USA, it's on them to go out and explain why this matters and why everyday people should want this agency to exist. But Trump and them have a clear directive, and they have a sense that they can brand this

as more extravagances by our government for purposes abroad that aren't quote unquote America first. And it's a clear vision to sell. You and I may not agree. with it or like it, but it's kind of easy to see why somebody might see this and everyday person might see this to be like, I don't see anything wrong with this. Yeah, in terms of making the case for it, sometimes it's helpful to have like people who are like culturally relevant and stuff like that. So I have an example of it. In 2019, Melania and Ivanka Trump promoted very successful USAID programs that they were running to fund like entrepreneurship programs in Africa for women, the sort of stuff that I'm assuming would now be

banned by the government as DEI, international DEI. But that's what they were doing. Ivanka and Malani were touring the world and buying video equipment and stuff like that to put on presentations. And you know what? That's probably the best use of their time from the first term when he was in office. What I would say, I totally agree with you, the issue is, and maybe it's hard for people to see this because the zone gets flooded, with all these cuts and everything. Donald Trump, despite supposedly being a builder, has always been a thousand times better at destroying than building things. They're gonna do all these cuts. Is he proposing massive infrastructure plans?

The border wall, I guess, the concentration camp in Guantanamo. I guess that's infrastructure, I suppose. I don't know, he killed the massive interstate highway EV network that they were gonna build. And so like a lot of people I think rightly will be like, We are spending too much money, we should spend it here. So let's cut it. But that doesn't mean we're gonna spend it here. Donald Trump is preparing, within a month, they're gonna do their tax cut bill. It was just estimated to cost between $5 to $11 trillion. And I think there's something, I totally understand for a regular person that doesn't pay attention to the news a lot, how like $25,000 for an opera, like swells to fill the entire confines of your brain,

but $5 to $11 trillion, 95% of which will go to the richest people in our country. I I think that's more important. They're not gonna build highways. They're not gonna build bridges. We're not even gonna have air traffic control soon. They're putting Elon Musk's 19 year olds in charge of it, despite having no experience in the field before. And so he's very good at dismantling things.

And that's what we've seen over the past couple of weeks. I would love to see some building. And I don't think we're gonna see it out of Donald Trump. So to return to Woz's point from the end of the first block, it would be great to see Democrats running on a platform of rebuilding America after the four years of devastation that we're in the opening phases of right now. We do need that massive infrastructure bill, far beyond anything Biden passed in his first term. In any event, to close out this segment, there are some lawsuits that are trying to stop

some of the cuts and likely the firings because of the 10,000 employees that USA'd had internationally a week ago, it's expected that maybe by the end of today, it'll be down to 600, which I think is a cut of 97%. But they were all bad and they were all just wasting money, I'm sure. Elon Musk looked at it very closely. First and foremost, Elon Musk. Who the hell does Musk fake he is? He has absolutely no right in shutting down USAID.

What Elon Musk is doing is illegal. It is a coup. Elon Musk makes unsafe cars and now he wants to create an unsafe world. We will not shut up. We will stand up. We will speak up. So that's some Democrats protesting against Elon Musk, not necessarily the ones that I would have had speak at these events, but that's what they're doing right now. And that was in reference to USAID. But of course, through this last week, Elon Musk and his generally, they'd prefer to be kept anonymous group of like 19 to 23 year old lackeys have been going from organization

to organization agency to agency. They've been at the Department of Energy. I believe today they're hitting the Department of Labor and they're accessing in many cases classified data despite the fact that none of these employees nor Elon Musk himself have provided any evidence or even claimed that they've had background checks or security clearances. And so throughout the week we've learned a little bit more about some of these employees. You can take a look at this photo mainly because Elon Musk thinks it's a crime for you to see it, which seems seems weird, but it shows six of his closest lieutenants. I checked to make sure I thought that was my old favorite League of Legends team. But no, it's actually the people who are remaking

the US government. And there's a seventh actually that we're going to talk about a little bit soon, Marco Elez, who's 25. That makes him the king of that group. But anyway, all of them have very interesting backgrounds. We're going to be talking mainly about two in this video. So the first is Edward Coristine, who prefers to go online by big balls. And so that's his name. He's a very important person. I'm not even joking. He is now. He's 19 years old and he has finished high school. That's good. 19 year old who established at least five different companies in the last four years, registering them in Connecticut and Delaware and the UK. So all over the place. In 2022, he worked at the PATH network, a network. monitoring firm known for hiring reformed black hat hackers. Someone using a telegram handle tied to him also solicited a cyber attack for hire service later that year. So no worries at all about this guy having read and write access to incredibly important government servers. But anyway, he's listed in the Office of Personnel Management Records as an expert at that agency,

despite being 19 years old. And so employees of the GSA say that he's joined calls where they were making. to justify their jobs and to review code that they've written. That's what we've seen and heard all over the government. One of his companies, remember, he's got many, is Tesla.sexy LLC, which is very, very cool. I just want to say, I'm a fan, I love it. Anyway, he created that back in 2021. Anyway, it controls dozens of web domains, including at least two Russian-registered domains. One of them, which is active, offers a service called Healthy, which is an AI bot for Discord servers targeting the Russian market. And so there's a lot of concerns with many of these people, especially considering they don't seem to have had background checks or security clearances

that they could potentially be targets for foreign, you know, intelligence agencies and that sort of thing. We'll see about that. They also, as you'll find out, seem eminently blackmailable considering their social media activity in the past. But anyway, so we don't know for sure about whether these businesses would put him in violation of U.S. law, and we don't have a functioning DOJ, so we're unlikely to find out anytime soon. But honestly, he's the one I'm less worried about. We're going to turn in a minute to one of those who's a bit spicier in his online activity. But I think, as I'll start with you, this is a good example of the sort of person that seems to flock to Elon Musk and that he likes to groom, sorry, I shouldn't say groom, he likes to prepare for jobs,

later on in life. So anyway, that's sort of guys all over the place. What do you make of it? I mean, vaguely dorky virgins on the internet seem to be the people that love Elon Musk the most. Dudes anyway. And so, yeah, he completely fits the description of, you know, an engineer type who probably isn't very good at being a social person. has found his hero king and Elon must like nobody should feel surprised when they see that. This is generally like the people that are holding, you know, are holding up their Elon fan subscriptions online, man, and his biggest acolytes are all these younger type of people. Ben? We're, I mean, we're, we're done.

There's too much to fight back against it once. So much of it is so ridiculous. Like we have 19 year olds that are running the government. I mean, talk about going from having two old of people running our government and shooting to the complete opposite extreme. It's insane. It doesn't make sense. It's become normalized that we have people without background checks. It's become normalized that we have people with zero experience deciding the lives and careers of people who have been trying to dedicate their lives to serving our country,

to working for our country in great nonpartisan governmental roles. And again, this is what happens when you allow bloat to get out of control. people overcorrect and instead of having reasonable discussion led by reasonable people to make reasonable cuts, you just have insanity and we don't have enough manpower to stop it. It's just frustrating beyond belief and I can't wait until you get to the next part because it's further proof of exactly that. Yeah, and really fast on your point about, you know, having a reasonable conversation. Like, I don't believe that necessarily everything about security clearances and background

check should be exactly the way it is. Like the idea that somebody who smoked weed or whatever shouldn't be able to serve, like I don't believe that at all. That's crazy. But as you'll see, there's a reason they don't want background check. checks of these people. There's a reason they don't want Elon Musk to give a blood sample to the government. It's because they know what will be found. And so let's turn to this guy. And also, who say anything about drugs? I mean, I ran for president and I smoke weed and on the odd occasion for celebratory purposes, do other things. That's not at issue. It's about, it's the history of people having no history. It's the history of people when they do have

a history saying and doing very messed up things, which you're about to share. Exactly. So let's turn to this. One of Elon Musk's lieutenants that's drawn the most attention this week is Marco Ellis. So he is one of those that reportedly now has the ability to alter the code responsible for the vast majority of payments that the U.S. government makes to its citizens including Social Security tax returns and much more. He's been granted access not just to read but to write code with a U.S. payment automation manager and a secure payment system at the Bureau of the Fiscal Service. So he's off, he's got his

laptop and God knows what he's doing. God knows what he's accessing. God knows what he's planting in there. They also have the authority, by the way, to alter the documentation of what they've done in the code, we know specifically. So that's fun. And he's an interesting guy. Here's some of what he's posted online. Just for the record, I was racist before it was cool. He posted that a long time ago, though. It was July of last year. So everybody can change, I guess. He also row in September of last year, you could not pay me to marry outside of my ethnicity. By the way, I've seen pictures of him. Dude, I don't think they're going to be banging down the door to get to you. I wouldn't worry too much about that. Take who you can get.

Anyway, normalize Indian hate, he said that month, in reference to a post noting the prevalence of people from India in Silicon Valley. He has a particular issue with Indian people saying that 99% of Indian H-1Bs will be replaced by slightly smarter LLMs, large language models, one of the AI forms. They're going back. Don't worry, guys. Don't worry, racists will replace all of these damn Indians with AI chatbots soon. That's great. He also said this one, I would not mind it all if Gaza and Israel were both wiped off the face of the earth, which is a fun little musing. You know, every man, woman, and child in Gaza, Israel being simultaneously exterminated? That's fun. Anyway, there are consequences in America.

Don't ever believe there aren't because those past comments were reported by a reporter, and he resigned. And then Elon Musk posted a poll on Twitter asking if he should be, if he should return. And shockingly, the people who follow Elon Musk online thought that he should. He got 80% of the vote, and also J.D. Vance came to his defense saying, here's my view. I obviously disagree with some of his posts. I'm not going to be specific, but I don't think stupid social media activity should ruin a kid's life. He's 25, by the way. Remember, he's the old one in the group. 25. If you're white, I guess, 25's still a kid if you do something bad. Interesting, we shouldn't reward journalists who try to destroy people ever. Again, they've made no claim that anything. the reporter reported was inaccurate. They just don't like that it was reported. So I say bring him back.

If he's a bad dude or a terrible member of the team, fire him for that. So let's just be very clear. Calling for every Palestinian and Israeli citizen to be wiped out does not necessarily make you a bad dude. It could. You could be a bad dude, but not necessarily. Also, he called to normalize Indian hate and implied that it's disgusting to be involved in an interracial marriage. J.D. Vance is married to a woman of Indian descent. The Marco Willes knows that. He said that in September, J.D. Vance had already been chosen at that point, but for some reason, you cannot insult J.D. Vance's wife and children without J.D. Vance running to defend that

person instantly, like some sort of weird like cuck symbol that just flies into the sky and then he runs to social media. Nobody asked him to defend this guy. He volunteered to do it. I don't know what they have on this guy, but it's something bad. In any event, it's done. As I predicted on TDR this morning, he's being brought back. So you can call for, I guess, like a follow-up Holocaust. You can imply that being racist is cool. You can call as he did for a eugenic immigration policy, which in his defense, Elon Musk also did that this week. And it's cool. You can go right back to Reading and writing to government servers, maybe messing with particular members of particular races, social security payments and stuff like that.

It's totally cool. Was, I want to start with you. What do you think about this? Yeah, I think what JD Vance is doing there is like a vaguely anti-cancellation policy, right? Like that's been the rights big little hobby horse forever now, decided that the libs are insane and they're constantly canceling people for no reason. And what J.D. Vance is trying to do there show himself to be a true, you know, anti-woke warrior. And, you know, this whole episode, I'm surprised that the guy was asked to leave or that he left in the first place for racism. Because obviously, like, the entire project culturally of MAGA and everybody in its orbit is to be like, no, we need to bring all of that, you know, hateful stuff, hating marginalized groups.

We need to bring all of that back because that's what was missing from America and was making America awesome. And so I don't think we should be surprised about that. This fits perfect with the brand of MAGA, this entire idea that we should have cultural sensitivities or, you know, not call for the mass genocide of an entire race of people. That just shouldn't be part of the messaging. That's what the right believes these days. And so J.D. Vance is just furthering that cause. Yeah, and two races for the price of one. The mass annihilation of both.

Efficient. Both sides of a long conflict. And Ben, really fast, just to follow up, like he's an employee of the guy who, depending on your interpretation, did a Nazi salute multiple times on stage. That's exactly right. And if it didn't get covered on TYT, I'm not sure. But there are videos, I did in one of my rebel videos that show Alon Musk the same year, earlier or I guess last year doing a normal my heart goes out to you like this so he knows how to do it so there goes that argument but this is exactly the point I was going to make it doesn't matter if specifically the people in charge have the specific hateful ideology of the thing

they're being accused of it doesn't matter if Elon Musk in particular has anything against Jewish people because he did a Nazi salute because he's also done things to support Jewish people. The point is the lack of morality that is empowering quite intentionally the worst elements of our society. What they're doing intentionally is empowering fringe elements. It's the proud boys stand back and stand by. It's not that Donald Trump wants to be a proud boy or supports every bit of their ideology either. It's that they want troops on their side. They want everybody who has been put to the margins of our society empowered to speak out and to hate just to further divide because their goal is not, it's the opposite of unity. It's very specifically division.

It's so that we have as many divisions in our societies we can. So we're fighting each other more. We're fighting left and right. We're fighting white versus black versus Jew versus Indian versus any group we can so that we don't realize yet again. The elites at the very top are stealing the money, they're taking the gold. We three kings be stealing the gold, and that's all we need to do is distract you to whatever way that we can. It proves, it proves the absolute moral disqualification of Elon Musk, J.D. Vance, and Donald Trump to be in power to say, should we bring back the guy who just last year said normalize Indian hate and let's annihilate the Jews and the Ghazan people? You are disqualified from public life. It's exactly the same

as Kanye being canceled from public life, then being invited to the Grammys, and then now again saying I'm a Nazi and I don't trust any Jewish person. For J.D. Vance, and it seems a requirement to work for Donald Trump to straight up be, as you said, but the world's greatest cuck. You have to literally let your wife be, be humiliated to work for the man. It's the way you prove your loyalty to an out of control, race baiting king of our rapidly crumbling democracy. But when you say, bring the guy back and then see if he's bad, when you know already he's bad, a reporter exposing this is what they are more upset about, exposing the horrible, disgusting, bereft of moral elements that are now all over our government.

If you expose it, you're the cruel, sick person. That's directly what Alon Musk said. And it's empowering to hate everywhere. I just got a threatening DM yesterday from somebody saying to me, and I quote, you're an anti-American terroristic piece of S, and you're going to be dealt with. And I care about this country more than most people. And so this person clearly doesn't like that I'm against their MAGA agenda and I'm trying to actually hold us to the standards of what has made this country truly great and they're threatening me. And that's a tiny example of what so many of us by the millions are already starting to experience two weeks into this bereft, disgusting administration.

If you can't be morally clear and realize that a statement just like that alone disqualifies Musk, disqualifies any sort of moral leadership from Vance and Trump not coming out and disavowing it immediately, which of course, he won't do because it's by design, this qualifies them from leading this nation. But it won't take anybody off of their teams. It just riles them up further. They love it. They love getting liberals in a twist. I guess liberals equivalent now to being somebody who actually wants to stop just outright hatred. 100%. Yeah. And in that, they might have found, they might try to reach out to the person who message you. Give him a job and doge, fit right in. By the way, we're going to go to break. Another member of his group of little goons and toadies or whatever. Apparently, reposted content from Nick Fuentes on social

media, enthusiastic Nazi, Nick Fuentes. And Trump's lunch buddy. This is exactly. The group is only like six people and you've got multiple people like that. It's almost like that's a common denominator. In any event, we have to take our second break. We'll be back with a little more story after this. Welcome back, one and all to what remains of the first hour of the young Turks. A little update, the second hour is going to be led by Brett Ehrlich. You're going to have Yaz, you're going to have JR. It's an awesome panel. Definitely stay tuned for that. But first, this. Kanye West started off this week, posing next to his wife at the Grammys, who was at that point effectively naked. And then it got weird after that. He capped it off by publicly

embracing Hitler. It's been a lot. So he went on a Twitter tirade posting so many things. We're not going to read all of them because nobody's got time for that except apparently Kanye West. This one really sums it up. I'm a Nazi in all caps. If it wasn't in all caps, I wouldn't know how serious he was. He says, I love Hitler. Now what? Okay. Now what? I also am wondering, now what? Jesus. Call me Yadolf Yittler and your blank still wants to blank. Hitler was so fresh. I'm gonna normalize talking about Hitler. The way they talk about Killing Edwards has been normalized. Don't try to like both sides this now, buddy. You're like seven Hitler tweets deep at this point. Don't try to make

like a deeper point. Don't try to like chapelle it or whatever with what you're doing. I'm racist. Stereotypes exist for a reason and they all be true. He claims some of his best friends are Jewish, which generally that's not even a good start to a sentence, but, and I don't trust any of them. And then he did like, I think it was a laughing, crying face. So you know he's cool and also hip. I don't even know what the F anti-Semitic means. It's just some BS Jewish people made up to protect their BS was that the right there. I love Hitler. Now what bees? So there's a lot there. And if we have time, we can get into the other weird thing about his wife. But let's start there, Ben. What do you think about Kanye? I think it's lovely. I think it's a real breath of fresh air.

air that we needed in this already bonkers beginning of 2025. Look, on TYT about two years ago, when Hitler, when Kanye, it's pretty much synonymous at this point, went on his. Yadolphe, Hitler, please. My mistake, my mistake is saying corrected, went on his infamous Info Wars wearing a mask. I love Hitler tour that he did the first time. I came on and showed photos of my family, 17 members of which were annihilated by Hitler. in the Holocaust and said, this man must be canceled forever. And I think, and several others across the media said similar things, I think.

And to their credit, I haven't seen him interviewed anywhere. But then as time passes, people begin to be normalized again. Shame on the Grammys for inviting him there. If indeed they did, there's been mixed reporting on that. It seems like they did invite him at the end. Shame on them if they did do that. Shame on the press for covering his. stunt on the red carpet, shame on anybody who gives any sort of publicity to a monster like

this without outright directly calling him a monster and calling for him to never be discussed publicly again. At what point do you have to go far enough that you are just permanently not talked about? Do people need clicks so much that they must keep calling into debate whether or not this person still can exist without being immediately demonized as the monster he factually is. Are there no lines left? When you say repeatedly now over the course of years that you love Hitler, can you be done? Can you just be obviously somebody who is not just hateful and bigoted and racist and anti-Semitic and disgusting, but also obviously playing you to remain relevant when He's been unable to make any sort of palatable music now for probably a decade.

You're done, period, full stop. Yeah, obviously I agree with pretty much most of the points that Ben made. But what I encourage people to understand as well is that this dude is sick. He is diagnosed bipolar disorder. And I know I can already hear people saying, oh, you can't paint with a broad brush, a bunch of people with bipolar disorder. I'm not saying everybody who has bipolar disorder has a pension to do this, but one of the known symptoms of somebody who's going through it, do episodes is to spew and say horrible epithets. And this dude is clearly off of his meds. He's clearly got a bunch of horrible people around him.

Yes, man, because he's still very rich, but he's sick. He's a sick individual. And so when I see somebody acting, when I see somebody acting out like this, I see somebody who's, sick. I'm not saying it's a good thing that he's doing this or that it should somehow be excused. But I'm telling you, you're watching the ravings of a mad person. No doubt, no doubt, but so what? There's plenty of bipolar people that do not do that. The vast, vast, vast majority of bipolar people do not do that. I have friends who are bipolar who have never said an insulting thing and they deal with their emotions privately and they hopefully seek help and or medication if

necessary. It doesn't matter when you become a danger to the public. I don't care what reason it is. You are canceled regardless of any mental health issue. You lose the right to speak publicly on an amplified platform when you speak and engenders and creates and empowers hatred for a group of people. You're just done blanketly forever. There's an old stand comedian used to say, I never understood the insanity defense for someone who murders somebody. Great, if doesn't know what reality is, then put him on an electric chair and tell him it's a ride. That's an extreme version of it. But the point simply being, if somebody is going to be a danger to society, it doesn't matter what the excuse for it is. There still has to be a protection

for greater society, because as we've seen, there's mad men running the country, there's madmen speaking publicly, and all they're doing is just giving more cover and more fodder. The vast majority of people don't know about Kanye's mental health issues or diagnoses, if there are even our official ones. They do know he's a rapper and a clothing designer that they like, and he's normalizing hatred against Jewish people. And that cannot be tolerated. I have thoughts, the possibility that this could be a plan for him to get a government job, and it's not a bad one in that case considering the time we're in. But we are over, and I know that everybody wants the upcoming panel, Brett Ehrlich and Yaz and JR, to have as much time as

possible. So thank you everybody for watching this first hour. Ben, thank you so much for being here. Was as well, appreciate both of you and your time. Thank you. And we'll be back with more after this.