The Young Turks - Wannabe Dictator DeSantis

Episode Date: December 4, 2021

The parents of the Michigan high school shooting suspect have been charged with involuntary manslaughter in connection with the rampage. Democrats have promised legislation to codify Roe v. Wade and preempt the Texas law, but they’ve chosen to leave it sitting with a congressional panel. Ron DeSantis, the governor of Florida, has proposed an extraordinary plan to create a state paramilitary unit that he, rather than the federal government, would control. Tucker Carlson pretended not to know what a hate crime is. Hosts: Cenk Uygur, John Iadarola, Charles F Coleman Jr. 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. Bexie! 3x3, 3x3, 3x, 3x, 3x, 3x, 3x3, 3rd by me, 3rd, 3rd, 3rd,000, 3rd 3rd 3rd. Power, power, power panel. Jake Uker, John Iderall. Look at Charles F. Coleman here.

All right, Charles, great to see you again, brother. And that hat is just the definition of cool. I didn't know we were doing hat day. Can you give me that top hat? Anyway, we actually have one. Can you get me my fez? That's old school. That's really old school.

All right. So, guys, lots of news. The usual variety, disastrous, disappointing, tiny bit of fun. Yeah, no, in second hour, we have a hilarious story. So, lots of important things to get to. John Idle takes it away. When are we going to have the hilarious story in the first hour? That's what I ask you.

I think in 2017 we had one. Anyway, okay with that, let's talk about something incredibly serious. How's that for a transition? The parents of the Michigan shooting suspect have been a pretty big. part of this story for several days now. But today, they became an even bigger part in two different ways. First of all, they are now facing charges, which is not often the case in these sorts of cases. But they were each charged with four counts of involuntary manslaughter. Their 15-year-old son is accused of fatally shooting four students and injuring seven others at Oxford High School

on Tuesday. And the parents you can see in this photo. So that's the news. as of this morning, that they would actually be facing charges as well. And we'll get into more about why those charges might be coming. But so far, what isn't coming is them forward, because they are sort of on the lamb. They're being searched for, at least they have been for the last few hours. But, Charles, you seem to have a little bit more updated information about this, that they're saying it was a miscommunication, but as of right now, they still have not actually turned themselves in, correct? to be some very significant systemic breakdowns in terms of the communication between both the parents of the defendant or the primary suspect in this case, as well as law enforcement and their attorneys.

So on one hand, you had them basically saying that they were not going to communicate with law enforcement anymore in terms of their surrender because they were going to be communicating through their attorneys. And then you had their attorneys essentially saying while they left town in order to sort of shield themselves from safety at the upon the arrest of their son after everything happened and they were going to be returning. But then of late, when law enforcement has tried to find out where in fact they are, the attorneys are saying we haven't spoken to them. So there's this very strange and astounding, quite frankly, lapse in communication it would appear between. all three parties. And as of right now, the sheriff's office in Oxford is apparently treating this like they are on the run, like they are fugitives. Apparently, there are federal law enforcement agencies that are involved. I believe the FBI is involved. And they are pursuing these parents as though they are on the run. So, wow, wild. Yeah, so guys, the amazing details

about the story and why I personally think that parents should are very much criminally responsible. and there's excellent evidence to that effect, in my opinion. But Charles, you're also a former federal prosecutor, I mean former prosecutor. So would you try to add charges here for trying to evade justice, or is it too early? I think, you know, we don't really know, at least from where we are sitting, whether we have enough for that. I definitely think it's on the table. The question about whether, you know, it actually becomes actualized would be something that we would have. to reexamine once the facts come out in the wash. Certainly things are going to be pointing

to that. There are a number of things that make this astoundingly spectacular in terms of the overall case. And it's first impression in terms of a group of parents being charged in a school shooting. And so I don't know as a prosecutor from a strategic standpoint how much you want to push the limit until you know what's certain. And so at this point, I would say, you know, we've already seen the prosecutor here file charges against them for involuntary manslaughter. That's already a very, very significant deal that viewers need to understand. Even as we may think it's common sense, it's relatively new in terms of being a case of first impression. And so I don't necessarily know that you want to push the limits there until you

can be certain that what you will be charging them in terms of evading justice or being fugitives or what have you is going to stick. So we want to give you a little bit more information about some of what's played into beliefs here on the network or out there that the parents should be charged and might have played into the fact that they were. So we know that initially the father had purchased a 9mm pistol for the suspect, Ethan Crumbly, who eventually posted a photo online calling it his new beauty. It's a 9mm pistol for a 15 year old child, oddly enough. And then we have more, more recently. A teacher found the shooter searching for ammunition on his cell phone during class and reported to higher-ups. Administrators left a voicemail for the mother in this case and followed up with an email but received no response.

She did respond, just not to them. To her son, she texted, lull, I'm not mad at you. You have to learn not to get caught. So she was cool with him shopping for ammunition while in class. She just didn't want him to be caught. And then it gets even worse. And we want to play a little bit of video of the prosecutor in this case, Karen McDonald, talking about what happened on the day of the actual shooting.

On November 30th, 21, the morning of the shooting the next day, Ethan Crumbly's teacher came upon a note on Ethan's desk, which alarmed her to the point that she took a picture of it on her cell phone. The note contained the following. A drawing of a semi-automatic handgun pointing at the words, quote, quote, the thoughts won't stop, help me, end quote. In another section of the note was a drawing of a bullet, with the following words above that bullet, quote,

blood everywhere, end quote. Between the drawing of the gun and the bullet is a drawing of a person who appears to have been shot twice and bleeding. Below that figure is a drawing of a laughing emoji. Further down the drawing are the words, quote, My life is useless, end quote. And to the right of that are the words, quote, the world is dead, end quote.

As a result, James and Jennifer Crumbly were immediately summoned to the school. A school counselor came to the classroom and removed the shooter and brought him to the office with his backpack. Counselor obtained the drawing, but the shooter had already altered it. The drawings of the gun and the bloody figure were scratched out along with the words, Help me, and my life is useless. The world is dead and blood everywhere. Those were all altered by him. At the meeting, at the meeting, James and Jennifer Crumbly were shown the drawing and were advised that they were required to get their son into counseling within 48 hours.

Both James and Jennifer Crumbly failed to ask their son if he had his gun with him or where his gun was located and failed to inspect his backpack for the presence of the gun, which he had with him. James and Jennifer Crumbly resisted the idea of them leaving the school at that time, of their son leaving the school at that time. Instead, James and Jennifer Crumbley left the high school without their son. He was returned to the classroom. So we've talked about a lot of school shootings because America is a country that has tolerated an ever-increasing number of school shootings. But honestly, as many as there have been over the years that we've been doing this, I've personally never seen anything like this in terms of direct parental involvement and ignoring of many warning signs. Yeah, they should definitely, definitely be arrested.

And based on the evidence that we have now, obviously you go through an actual jury trial, et cetera, right? But on the publicly available evidence, they appear to be enormously guilty, unbelievably guilty. So Jennifer Crombley, the mom, had also posted online about the gun that she had, they had just bought him saying, quote, it's his new Christmas present. So they know that he has the gun for sure. They see his drawings where he's saying blood everywhere. The thoughts won't stop. Help me. And they don't get him help and they don't take the gun from him.

And every other piece of evidence from their social media indicates that they celebrated the gun culture. Okay, are the rest of us celebrating? I know the right wing loves gun culture. Well, it just got four kids killed again, right? How many kids are going to die in how many different high schools? And seven more injured. So it's, it appears right now to definitely be the parents' fault. They taught him to love guns and to use him.

And he's 15. And my God, if that's one drawing, you're telling me they didn't know that he had emotional and psychological problems. They lived with him and they never noticed that. And they gave a kid that, I'm going to say it, that damaged that he says he doesn't want to live and the thoughts in his head won't stop and all he can think about is violence. And they handed that 15 year old a gun as a Christmas present. And by the way, a lot of our members are writing in already, including a guy named Turkasaurus Rex.

They say, count down to him becoming a right wing hero and the parents becoming a right wing hero. Is there anything that the right wing will not celebrate in quote unquote gun culture? All right, Charles. Well, you know, I think as I have listened to this story and learned more about the details, it really is chilling. And to be candid, there are so many different failures systemically that we are talking right now about the criminal side. But the civil side of what we are going to see from a liability place is just enormous. When the prosecutor was talking about the parents' failure upon coming to the school to ultimately check whether he had the gun or whether he was armed or search his backpack, In fact, I thought it was absolutely convenient and very, very conspicuous that she did not note that at that time, neither did the school resource officers who were present in the school or any of the school administrators, they also failed to check him at that time in order to make that determination at that search.

And at that point, certainly a search by a school resource officer that would have been enough to justify that under any sort of standard, which would have been necessary in. that situation. Beyond that, it floors me that there does not seem to be any at this point standardized protocol for dealing with young people with students who have shown some level of emotional outcry or propensity for violence or something involving violence such that the parents can't simply say, we don't want to take them home, we don't want to bring him home. That is not something that should be left up to their parents in that situation, because what you are doing is you're allowing those two parents to make a decision that is actually going to impact the safety of the entire student body as well as the staff and faculty employed at that

school. And so all of these institutional and systemic failures, I find are a huge part of the conversation. Granted, we haven't gotten there yet because we're dealing with the more serious aspect of the criminal side of this and trying to apprehend these two parents. But I think it's important that we don't forget that. The other thing that I want to say is culturally, this is, as far as I'm concerned, endemic and representative of America's domestic terrorism problem. This young man, in terms of what he decided to do, I see no difference in him being labeled a domestic terrorist than anyone else that we point the finger through who's black and brown and does not live in Oxford, Michigan.

And as far as I'm concerned, his parents are aiding and abetting domestic terrorism. I can't speak to their guilt or their innocence as I'm not on their jury. I don't live in Oxford. I'm not going to be on their jury. But certainly in terms of this being in case for suppression, there remains a mountain of evidence in what I appear and can only, what appears to be and we can only assume is factual information that certainly supports their conviction under the Michigan involuntary manslaughter statutes.

Because under those, you don't have to intend for someone to die. You don't have to want someone to die. What you have to do is support someone committing the crime that results in someone else's death. And they clearly did that. When you look at these text messages, we look at the fact that they bought the gun. They knew that they bought the gun for him. Like all of these things point to us. So the totality of the circumstances, to Jay's point, absolutely points directly to these parents having some criminal liability. We know they're going to have tons of civil liability, although it's unclear right now whether there'll be anything to recover once all the smoke settles. Yeah, and I saw a text that once the news had broken

that the shooting had started, the mom apparently texted him saying don't do it. Oh, right. No, that's a great point. were a little bit late at that point. No, they knew it was going to be him because without knowing that it was him, they did not know at that point. The mom texts him, don't do it, but he had already done it. So she knew it was him, okay? And then the dad called authorities after he heard about the shooting, but didn't know it

was his son to say, oh, he's got a gun, et cetera, right? Did they tell the school, like I know they left him there, they left, they didn't. searched the bag, was the school warned in any way that these parents knew they had just gotten him a gun? As far as I've seen in all the news reports, the school was not at all warned about the gun. Remember, the teachers saw him researching ammunition, how to buy ammunition and get ammunition. But as far as we know for now, that's all the school knew on top of the drawings and obviously what it appeared to be his intent. But the parents knew, and even before Before they found out it was their son, that was the culprit in this case, they had already

assumed it was their son. Yeah. So they knew he was literally armed and dangerous. They didn't take the gun away from him, they let him go back into school, it is, it's one of the worst cases of culpable negligence that I've seen, you know, and look, last thing on it, the reason I, part of the reason that I bring up the gun culture is because there's such wide disparity throughout the country and how these rules are enforcing the schools, right? So here in LA, I know about a student when camping with

his family comes back, goes, it has a knife left over from the camping trip in his backpack expelled from school instantly. And they can't put him in any other school. Kids gone, obliterated. Okay. On the other hand, you have other parts of the country where parents just hand 15-year-old's guns, including knowing that they're, you know, have significant psychological issues. And then schools don't even bother checking the backpack and, well, I don't want to fend the right wing. I mean, oh, you have a little, you know, Tweedy Bird Swiss Army knife. Oh, that's it. You're a criminal. We expel you. Oh, my, you have rope. I don't know what you can do with that. You're expelled, et cetera. Oh, you have guns. Oh, bring him in, bring him in.

And by the way, we see this in every part of the criminal justice. Kyle Rittenhouse has a weapon so he can murder people with it. But if you have a skateboard, you're not allowed to hit him with it when he's presenting a weapon. Trayvon Martin has skittles and ice tea and no weapon. Zimmerman has a gun. Zimmerman is allowed to defend himself because he already has a deadly weapon. But Trayvon Martin is not allowed to defend himself because he doesn't have a gun. This is insanity.

It's total utter insanity and it's reversed than what logic indicates it should be. I'm fairly certain now. A lot of these stories begin to blend together that we covered a kid who was expelled from school because he had a chicken nugget that he had shaped like a gun and he put. at someone and so they expelled him from the school as a result of that. Yeah. So and look we already we already know exactly how this is probably going to play out because so much of it already has. The the shooter is white and so the photos of him that have been going around social media are him praying as a small child and

everything like that. You could expect that. The right wing, look I'm not going to go so far as to assume that they're going to try to make a hero out of him but they're definitely going to make the story about how this is gun control nuts going out. They can't it's the going after the parents they can't allow. Because if you imply that people around a killer have some sort of culpability, that it's not that far of a leap that, in theory, gun sellers, gun manufacturers who are advertising to people like this, could in theory be responsible as well. And the right is going to absolutely lose it over that. Yeah, I tend to agree with John on that point. I think that, you know, the right is likely to try to cut off their sort of support at the point that it gets to be ready. radioactive. And what I mean by that is you have a shooter who you just pretty much, given the

information that we have now, is indefensible. This is not even, you know, not that written house was, but in their eyes, they felt like written house was being attacked by people with skateboards. And so you had to shoot them with an AR-15. But in this case, you know, this is just completely indefensible. And so you don't touch the shooter. However, the implications of not trying to rally behind the protection of these parents who didn't necessarily know and could not have predicted. This is the narrative that they're going to spend, of course, that they didn't know, they could be predicted, so on and so forth. They will exaggerate that to a point that makes sure that the damage is limited to the person who they can't defend, which is the shooter in this case. And anybody

else who even remotely can, you know, they can get within their scope of protection, they absolutely will because of the larger implications. Yeah, look, you guys are making a great point. And I don't want people to get me wrong. I agree. But I'm going to put an asterisk on it. So my agreement is, yeah, the kid is too toxic. He's an obvious murderer. I know they've defended obvious murderers before, right?

But it's a school shooting four other kids are dead. Most of them are white. I mean, they're going to be conflicted, right? And it's going to be too much. I think. I think, I think there's a bottom of the barrel. but every time I think that, they go below it. But the parents, I would be surprised if the right wing did not rally significantly around the parents.

What, what, what, we have guns, we share them with our kids. I teach my three-year-old how to shoot people in the head. Whoa, whoa, what? That's not allowed anymore. I'm supposed to look for warning signs? Yeah. And so they think a weapon that is designed to kill people is more important than the actual life. Those four kids are dead. The other seven are shot in in the hospital.

and they think they are not as important as the weapon I use to kill them, because that is the thing they pray to. That is their now golden calf. Oh, weapons, guns, guns! That's the right way in this country. And then my asterisk guys is, if we're being honest, if Ethan Crumbly had just pushed one of the kids and the kid had pushed back or thrown a chair at him to defend himself or done anything,

then he could have taken out the gun and killed him, and whoever else he pushed and then tried to defend themselves. And yes, at that point, the right wing and a huge part of our judicial system would say self-defense, he just stood his ground. Yeah, I don't disagree with that. I think that this is all circular in terms of what it fits into the narrative, right? So we have to take a step back from this particular case and look at the narrative that the right has, attempted to advance about where we are as a country as a society that has created a necessity for this, right? In terms of gun culture and the way that gun culture is promulgated among

certain sectors of society, think about the narratives that the right has been so, so adamant about advancing. Number one, that people are trying to take their guns, right? Like, that's the first one. So any time that you try to take something from people who have something or or something that people feel like they are entitled to, there's going to be a big fight there. That's number one. Number two, that there are people who are here in various pockets that are threatening your way of life, whether that is forcing a mass mandate, whether that's telling you that you have to get vaccinated, whether that's, you know, threatening another shutdown because of the Omicron. Whatever it is, there are these people on

all levels, whether it's government, whether it's individual, whether it's Antifa, the boogeyman, whatever it is, there are these people who are threatening your way of life. And so all of this supports this notion and this sort of ideology, as Jane put it out there, around gun culture sort of being paramount. And I think that when you take a step back further and you look at the demographics of Oxford, Michigan, when you look at who we're talking about in terms of the shooter and his family, and when you look at the ideology of the right and how toxic it is right now, a lot of it, unfortunately, is not surprising. Yeah.

Well, we're probably going to have to take our first break. Lots to talk about, but we'll have more after this. All right, back on TYT, Jenk, Charles and John with you guys. I'm just going to read one comment here. DeAndre Hendricks wrote, and I live in Detroit, and I want to thank TYT for not saying Metro Detroit or suburban Detroit, media constantly tries to use Detroit as a scapegoat for anything bad happening in Michigan. No problem.

We do real news. We try. It's the easiest you're welcome of all time, but I love that you care about that. All right, John. Okay, let's do it. It can be easy to forget in the day-day news cycle that the Democrats are actually technically in charge right now, especially as bad things are happening and they don't really seem to be that eager to do much about it. it. Student loan crisis hasn't gone away and Biden who promised that he would

cancel up to $10,000 hasn't done it. Scotus right now is considering apparently taking away women's reproductive rights and the Democrats are doing what the Democrats do. Rather than actually solve these problems even though they're now in a position to do so, they're sort of just sitting back and fundraising off of it and tweeting about it a little bit and let's give you a couple of examples. Other than the student loan debt, let's talk about the SCOTUS. David Sirota, friend of the network. He recently tweeted, it's weird how this is literally happening right now, even as Democrats are fundraising off the SCOTUS abortion case. And in that,

he's linking to one of his articles about a bill that's currently stalled in committee, the Women's Health Protection Act, which would create federal protections against state restrictions that fail to protect women's health and intrude upon personal decision making. It promotes and protects a woman's individual constitutional rights no matter where she lives. That's according to Richard Blumenthal. And so it has been stalled in committee, for literally months. So Roe v. Wade might be going by-bye. Ohio's got their insane anti-abortion bill. Texas not only has their bounty hunting bill, but also just yesterday cut the medical abortion timeline from 10 weeks maximum to 7 weeks maximum. All these new state maps of

gerrymandering are coming out, and the Democrats could do something about that, but they're not reforming the filibuster. They're not talking about any sort of structural reform. The Supreme court either. They're just tweeting, you know, elect more Democrats. They're in charge, vote for Democrats. We did. And so it's a little bit frustrating to see all of these politicians who've worked their entire lives to be in a position of power watching all these multiple crises hit us, and they're just sitting back and talking about the next election. Yeah. So look at what the message that Democrats are sending. They're saying a procedure in Washington that's not in the the Constitution, that's not in any law, okay?

It's just a procedure in the Senate is more important than voting rights, women's rights, 50-9 minimum wage, paid family leave, lowering drug prices, on and on and on. All of them combined. They're telling the voters, we care more about Washington and the procedures than we do about you, about all of these things. Now I know their excuses, their excuse, oh, well, what if the Republicans then win in a Democratic and they pass their laws. Yeah, that's how a democracy works, okay?

But if you say because the Republicans might one day pass a law, that's why I'm not going to pass any laws now, well, then what was the point of electing you? What was the point of any of the democracy? And now here's a very important part, guys. The reason why the filibuster is now rampant, it is used in every case. It wasn't always that way. The reason why it's such a huge issue now is because,

For the Republicans lost their minds, it would be used sparingly, and only almost always in anti-lynching and civil rights laws, that it was racist senators who would say, no, I want the ability to lynch people in the southern states. And I'm not exaggerating at all, okay? And so, but they had the filibuster. They would use it mainly for civil rights and those types of laws. And then, but they didn't use it on every bill, of course not. Now though, the Republicans think things are pretty golden.

Corporations have almost everything they want, the American people have the lowest wages imaginable, they have, they don't have the ability to get health care, the drug companies can literally charge them whatever they want. We pass the law, say we're not even allowed to negotiate prices. They can just set any price they like. And then the government has to pay for, I mean, it is golden for corporate rule. That's the perfect time to freeze everything. They don't, the Republicans, remember, are just corporate tools, they're politicians.

So they already passed a $2 trillion in tax cuts. They already cut corporate taxes to the bone. They literally don't want anything else passed. And so they think, yeah, we're going to now gridlock it. We're going to filibuster every single thing. Now, when the Democrats get in charge, they promised their voters that they actually would pass things, right? And so when they don't, and they give in to the Republicans and say, oh, filibuster is more important than all of our voters and the entire country, they're

allowing the Republicans to freeze everything as is and maintain and protect the status quo. Those are facts, unassailable facts. So if the Democrats want to cry and say, oh, I have excuses, the filibuster, the parliamentarian, I love Washington so much. Rules and regulations are more important than real people, and it's not even a real rule of regulation. Then yeah, you can say that and good luck. And then after you lose the election, you blame it on Bernie Sanders or me or Susan Surrender or anyone you like, and I'm sure you blame it on all of the above, but you will lose the elections and you will deserve to lose the elections. Charles. So here's the deal, guys. The first thing that comes to mind when I think

about Democrats in Congress right now is an old quote. Some of us may be familiar with it from Danny Green. We stood up at the time, a former coach of the Arizona Cardinals at the time. We We stood up at the table at the podium after a game and said, they are who we thought they were. They are who they thought they were. And Democrats continue to prove over and over again that they are exactly who we thought that they were. And I think that the second sort of thing that comes to mind is, you know, a progressive or someone who may call themselves a progressive in America right now as far as that discourse is fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice. Most of us, other than perhaps former president,

Joe S. W. Bush, know the rest of that line. The point that I'm making is this. At this point, we have seen who these people are and what they're going to do. There is no reason that with control of government, the way that you have, that this should be the conversation that it is where we cannot protect the reproductive choice and rights of women in America.

That should not be on the chopping block. There's no reason that we should be having such a discussion about voting rights in 2021 and where we can't get this figured out and done by deciding that we are going to make this a priority. Similarly, there is no reason why we should be struggling with police reform in America. America. You know why we are? Because Democrats are exactly who we thought that they were. And the more that we continue to wait on them to be somebody who were not, as opposed to really giving some thought to how do we create or invest or engage a conversation about a viable third party, a viable alternative, as opposed to trying to fit everything from Joe Manchin to AOC under the same ten. that does not work. And ideologically speaking, what we have seen over and over again is that Democrats believe for some strange reason that is beyond me, that there is a moral high ground to be earned in Washington, that there are points for pain, for niceties and playing

things the right way and doing things the right way. Guess what? The points that you're getting are not helping you win. And at the end of the day, we are going to see a bloodbath as of right now. The midterms elections were held right now, it would be a virtual bloodbath. And the pain that the Democratic Party is going to receive on that day is very well earned. I don't see this turning around anytime soon, and they will have no one else to blame. I don't care how much funds you raise.

I don't care who you make the poster child of your problems. Given the amount of control that you have, there's no excuse for these top line items of your policy agenda to remain. Linguishing while real Americans suffer and while rights for millions of American women are on the chopping block. There's no excuse for that. So when you let that happen, the pain that you receive during a bloodbath of a midterm election, that's going to happen. I am telling you, it is going to happen. You earn that. You deserve it.

Yeah. Because you had every opportunity to prevent it and did not. Yeah. Yeah. No, and we already know their excuse. It's all over social media. Right now, Democratic establishment people are putting all over social media. This is Susan Sarandon's fault. I'm not joking.

I'm not joking. They think this is Susan Sarandah's fault. That's absurd. That's the most absurd thing I have ever heard in my entire life. Okay, if it's Susan Saranan's fault, okay, you could blame her. And then today, you could end the filibuster and protect women's right to choose across the entire country and say, aha, we got you, Susan. You couldn't stop us from protecting women's rights.

But they're choosing not to do that. So it has nothing to with Susan. I mean, the absurdity of blaming Susan Sarandon is mind-blowing. Okay, but I mean, that's so preposterous. I can't stand to have a conversation about it. But if you don't take action today, and instead you're talking about a tweet of Susan Sarandon's from five years ago, well, no, you're just a loser.

You're an epic, epic loser. And obviously, you're making obvious excuses. Everybody knows it. I know that cable news is a protection racket for the Democratic establishment. That's all they ever do, and they do nonstop propaganda on their behalf, okay? But the rest of us already got the news.

You guys are liars. You're never gonna do anything. So if you can't do voting rights, and if you can't do women's rights, Before this election, before the 2022 election, it will be the, well, I'm going to say the height of incompetence, but it isn't. Guys, the filibuster, if you want to know the reality, is a corporate democratic protection racket. It's the, why? Why won't they do the most basic things that their base and all their voters are screaming for? And that they literally can't win without the voting rights provisions.

So why won't they do it? because the corporate donors say, if you take away the filibuster, our corporate stooges will have no excuse on all the economic issues we care about. Then, oh my God, wages might go up. They might pass $50 million a wage because they have no excuse. They need the filibuster as an excuse on economic issues. That is why they betray not only their voters, but the entire country and allow the Republicans to take away women's rights and allow them to take voting rights away.

That is the cowardice and the corruption of the current day Democratic Party, and they can't cover it up anymore. No amount of Anderson Cooper and Jake Tapper is going to, and New York Times and NPR, is going to let you cover over the fact that you are obviously betraying all of us. What about all of that and Chuck Todd? Oh, okay, I didn't think about that. Maybe then. Unfortunately, we do have to take our second break when we come back, though. Ron DeSantis has a fun new organization he's launching. We'll give you the details after this.

All right, back on TYT, Jank, John, and Charles with you guys. All right, John, take it away. Okay, let's do it. Here's a headline you definitely didn't need to close out the week. Ron DeSantis is forming his own private paramilitary organization. But apparently, it's sort of true. The force of 200 selected volunteers would, quote, not be encumbered by the federal government.

And let me just say that anything that Ron DeSantis gets, involved with, I want to be heavily encumbered by the federal government. But anyway, it's a $3.5 million plan. And if it goes ahead, it's not guaranteed at this point, Florida would gain a state-run force alongside its National Guard, which is jointly funded by the federal government and the state. The bulk of the funding would fund the construction of three additional armories as well as expansion of a readiness center. The armories would collectively house more than 1,500 troops, which seems like a lot if the force is going to be 200 people. So that none of that is good. And Ron Asantis is a super questionable guy. I would put

him very high on the list of people. I do not want having their own private security force. But that said, this is not wholly unique. Florida has previously created a state guard back in 1941 to fill in for National Guard members who were fighting the Second World War. But the unit was disbanded shortly thereafter in 1947. Florida would become the 23rd state with a state guard. And for an example of how these state guards can be used in recent history, Texas has one, and back in 2015, Greg Abbott, the Republican governor, used the state guard there to monitor federal military exercises that were at that point going on in Texas because there was a conspiracy theory going around that this was the launching point for complete military takeover of Texas and possibly the entire country. I remember us covering this at the point. It was jade scorpion, jade fire, jade sniper, I don't know, something like that.

But Alex Jones was talking about it quite frequently. And this was useful to tie together Republican state government and the conspiracy theories of the right wing media. And now Ron DeSantis might have one. What do you think? Okay. So I need people to understand that Florida, as with every state, already has state police. They have local police, then they have state police, and then they have the National Guard. So they're covered in 18,000 different ways.

So if you got a security issue, you would use state police. If you have an emergency like hurricanes, et cetera, you use the National Guard. And they have many times. So then literally what do you need a state guard for? Well, it is for exactly what John pointed out in that example. And think about how dangerous that is, where the Texas State Guard goes to keep watch over the United States of military, what are they going to do, start shooting at one another? I mean, do you see the insanity of what's happening here? The right wing has convinced their

voters that the government is tyrannical in every way. Now they have the deep state. They have yesterday we found out through Lynn Wood and Doug Carlson and Bongino that there's a very, very deep state. Okay, well, I didn't know that. And so they've told everyone that government is super evil and they on Cawthorne has talked about if anybody shows up at your door from the government you know that's what your Second Amendment rights are for so by the way the post office postman who shows up at your door every day from the government please don't shoot them okay but but they're not going to send a dentist to your door they're going to send a cop or the military if you've done something wrong right military is very very very very unlikely most likely it's

going to be a cop right and they're telling people to shoot them and by the way in polling now it One poll had it a 28% and another poll had it at a 40% saying that of Republican voters saying it might be time for violence. So now they do this basically vigilante state guard in different red states and I, you don't need it for the hurricanes. That's what the National Guard is for and that's what local police, fire department, et cetera, is for. So that is obviously not why you're doing it. This is an incredibly dangerous development where we have like now kind of militias and and vigilantes backed up by right wing. What I would argue are fascist Republican politicians trying to get their own armed forces to use against God knows who. Yeah.

Charles. Jane, you know, you took a huge piece of what I was thinking about this story and basically brilliantly laid it out. What you have is the leader of local government telling people that they can't trust the government. And the absurdity of it in Ron DeSantis' quest to make America, Florida again, it is beyond alarming. because what we're seeing here is a thinly veiled attempt to appeal to a base that is on the fringes of American society as is. This is not someone who has not thought about who these volunteers are, what their backgrounds are, what their political affiliations are going to be, what their ideologies politically are going to be, what their political leanings are going to be. He is appealing to them in a way that is getting them closer and closer to the establishment. What do you have when you do that?

What do you get when you do that? I will tell you what you get. You get January 6th all over again, only they're more successful because they've had more opportunity. And they've had basically government license to watch over what's going on in terms of the operations. so they know the layout better than the people on January 6 who also got support from the government it appears and knew the layout as well. But my point is this is inviting an element that is very, very dangerous to mix and normalizing that element being a part of it. And I will be the one to say it. I don't know how anyone has missed this. It's also the cornerstone fascism.

Like how you get to this point where you are now sort of grooming this august military force that is able to enact and support violence or at least defense against or stave off violence or potentially be the aggressor of violence against that exists outside of established government, but sort of answers to this one dude who also, by the way, happens to be running the government that you all seem to be needing to pay so much attention to. So it is the height of absurdity, but it's also very, very dangerous and can head down a problematic road very, very quickly. And I think that you talk about state governments like Florida, you talk about state governments like Texas, you know, people are watching this. And if he is able to successfully pull this off, it's going to basically encourage copycats in other cities, in other states, in other local governments, and then we're going to be looking at bedlam. And I don't want to be the conspiracy theorist or the harbinger of doom and gloom, but what I have to point out is when you look at the people who are going to be most vulnerable when these things. continue to pop up in open states across the country. It's communities that don't necessarily

right now have the ability, have the ability to protect themselves in the ways that they would need to if this, and when this goes left. Yeah. And I want to add one last thing to that. Sandra Day O'Connor was a Republican and she wound up on the Supreme Court. So in almost 20 years ago now, in the Bush Cheney years, she started talking about the erosion of the rule of law. of being pushed by the right wing, her side, right? And she said at the time, we should avoid those beginnings so we could avoid those ends. And she was referring to fascism. She warned nearly 20 years ago that it was, it had begun.

We are no longer at the beginnings. And we are now near the end. Donald Trump had a three hour meeting after he lost the election with a certifiable lunatic, Michael Flynn, inside the White House, about whether they should declare martial law, have military law rule in America and redo the election, but only conducted by the military. And now, then when that didn't come to fruition, because literally everyone else threatened to quit, then they went to a full out riot to try to decertify an election in a way that it makes no sense according to the rule of law, and they nearly killed the politicians there.

Now, not only do we have disorganized vigilantes that Trump and the right wing have encouraged, like January 6th, we now are starting to have organized state guards that are unaccountable, except to individuals. That is definitely near the end of fascism. When Trump gets reelected, and he forms his own federal version of this, do you think it'll be a scandal for like two days, a day and a half? And then we'll move on, but they'll still be around in the background? Yeah, I mean, look, no, sorry, just to finish your thought, John, yeah, because if Trump is president and he starts a national national guard or a non-national guard, and he says, it only reports to me and no one else, if half a day later, he on Twitter, he says, oh, by the way, to cure coronavirus, pour acid into your eyes, people like, oh, my God, you can't pour acid into your eyes. And then they'll totally forget about the Trump's new guard. Yeah. And then every time they go to intimidate you or do worse, all they have to do is push you, get you to push back, and then shoot you and say, stand you around.

And so we're in super dangerous times. Five minutes after that tweet, people would be like knocking over shelves in Petco looking for their sheep acid. Anyway, with that, why don't we talk about one more story before we close out the hour? For a very long time, and especially accelerating during the pandemic and on into 2021, hate crimes have been on a rise. This should concern you. This should be a major cause of concern. Republicans can't have that, and right-wing media certainly can't have that. And so last night, Tucker Carlson, the most popular host on cable news, did a whole monologue about how hate crimes going up isn't something you should be concerned about. And in fact, the concept of hate crime is pretty stupid, too.

Here's an excerpt from that. Now, a hate crime, by the way, is that even a real category of crime? How is it different from a crime? But it is, apparently. And it now includes something called discrimination-based on gender identity. Well, no one can quite agree on what that is, but it's a crime. Dude makes millions of dollars, has an entire staff of producers that doesn't know what any word means and can't find out. But after all, he's talking about things that people study and work in that area.

He never actually manages to book any of those people. I guess Alex Berenson took all of the spots on his show. Weirder of that works. I'm going to try to educate him a little bit, though. Hate crimes have been going up, and they are things. So, for instance, in 2020, the U.S. saw the highest number of hate crimes in more than 10 years, according to the FBI. Anti-Black hate crimes rose nearly 40% from 2019 to the next year. Hate crimes targeting the Asian community rose by 73% in 2020 when compared with 2019's numbers.

and hate crimes against Latinos surpassed 500 incidents in both years. And they do in fact come in a variety of forms. Now he's not actually interested in learning about literally any of this but let me show our audience a little bit what some of this looks like. So there was a school

board meeting in Washington that was aborted after what are called Zoom bombers interrupted a black superintendent by playing a looped recording of racial slurs. This is Dr. Sean Carey, who's a black man superintendent, was delivering his report to the public, at least two individuals on the Zoom virtual meeting platform

began playing a recording of the N-word on repeat. We have the public information officer of the district, Jessica McCartney, who said, during Dr. Carey's superintendent's report, one individual on the Zoom unmuted their microphone, displayed a picture of George Floyd, and played a track with the repetitive racial slur. We were able to quickly put the individual in a waiting room. As soon as we did, another individual with their camera on, appearing to be an elderly white male, unmuted himself and played the same track. These sorts of things were common on Zooms.

These sorts of attacks happened to Twitch streamers as well. Tucker Carlson doesn't know about this because he doesn't know about anything that doesn't happen in a place where you presumably wear boat shoes or drink champagne. And he has no interest in actually finding out, but these are serious things and they are becoming more common. And why wouldn't they be? You have politicians like Donald Trump normalizing this sort of hate. Politicians like Lauren Bowbird and Paul Gossar and Marjorie Green making it a daily part of our political discourse. And then you have cable hosts with audiences in the literal millions

spending their entire broadcast normalizing concepts like the Great Replacement Theory and telling people that hate crimes aren't anything they need to worry about. Yeah. What do you all think? So first on the comment about the crimes, he's like, how is this a different crime? Well, how's any crime a different crime? Like, oh, murder. Now that we already have crime. Why do we need murder? Why is that a different crime? Because there's lots of different crimes and that's one of them. What a weird thing to say. But it's sophistry, but his, he knows, and unfortunately he's correct, that his audience is not that bright. So he just has to say it in a way like, oh, isn't that weird? Like, oh, now people, I guess, like chocolate ice cream. And people go,

oh, yeah, that's so weird. Why do they like it? That's so crazy, right? And so now, look, hate crimes, though, can be complicated. And I'm really curious as to Charles' opinion. on this because, look, some are obvious. Somebody's getting beat down, and then racial slurs are used, and they're being beat down because they're a certain race, ethnicity, et cetera. That's a hate crime. So that Zoom call, now if you just shout the N-word of someone, that is not a crime. But if you do cross-burning on their lawn, that is a crime, right?

And this Zoom call, well, it's somewhere in the middle. So Charles, you know, you're a civil rights attorney and former prosecutor. What do you think? So the hate crime legislation that we have on the books federally comes from 1968. That's where it basically originated in LBJ in the wake of and height of the civil rights movement. And so a lot of the hate crime, the model behind federal hate crimes are basically. based on what was going on in that time. So when you look at, despite the fact that there's no federal anti-lynching law,

which is a whole other conversation. But when you look at cross-burnings, for example, the reason why those are qualified as a hate crime is because of the history of intimidation that is associated with them in a way that deprives a particular group of their civil rights based off of their inclusion in a protected class. That is the legal framework of how hate crimes actually operates and how hate crime legislation operates. Now, the question is going to become in a case like this with respect to the recording, does that rise to the level of intimidation in such a way that it would deprive the speaker or some attendee of their federally protected civil rights on the basis of a protected class, that membership in a protected class, in this case, race? I think an argument can be made in that respect.

I don't know how hard you would push as a prosecutor, but that is the framework that you have to apply in order to get to a conviction in a case like this. As far as Tucker is concerned, as you said, Jank, he knows good and well what he's doing. He knows good and well who he's talking to. And he knows good and well the answers to the questions that he purports to be so confused about. And it's dangerous that he continues to manipulate his audiences in this way, but he knows what he's doing. And at the end of the day, this is something that he's pretty much decided to hang his hat on, despite the fact that we have already seen how dangerous this can become once it actually manifests. Yeah. And so I want to build on that cross burning example, because the reason is you're terrorizing that family and you are implying an assault, right? assault doesn't have to be hitting someone, it could be threatening to hit someone.

And you're saying, hey, now if you step one more step out of bounds, we're going to do massive physical violence towards you. And they did. I read up on this recently. And because, you know, all the stuff that we were taught was so whitewashed when we were growing up. You know, when I grew up, I had a sense that there were, you know, some lynchings. And if you had made me guess back in high school, based on what we were taught, I probably would have guessed that there was a couple of dozen lynchings. If you told me a couple hundred, I'd have been surprised that it turns out there was tens of thousands of lynchings. They did it all the time, nonstop, for things such as he was sassing me. He looked the wrong way. I mean, you guys all know

about Emmett Till, but you have no idea the regularity with which they would string people up, and governors would attend, mayors would attend, senators would attend, they'd do a picnic, 15,000 people would sometimes attend ceremonial lynchings, okay? So when you burned across, it was a sign you are in massive physical danger, right? Now these days, they say, look, remember, I got self-defense, you pissed me off at all, okay, and you, you know, and I got even the thinnest excuse, people are shooting people and getting away with it all the time. And this is not one person saying one thing in the heat of the moment. This was planned, it was two different people, and it was meant to intimidate this superintendent.

And just for one second, if you're on the other side, if you're on the right wing, can you just not empathize with that guy? What else does he have to do? He has a PhD. He's a superintendent. He's successful. He's everything. But it doesn't matter. To them, he's just an N word.

And they're going to let him know. And remember, they've been showing up to school boards and threatening violence. over and over again. So in that context, when they say, oh, yeah, now get a load of this, it starts to get to the point where we're worried that it's, it's the modern day version of a crossburn. Yeah. And we're unfortunately way over. I just want to make one last point, though. So as Charles said, he knows that these things exist. He knows that there could be more common. He doesn't care because they don't target people like him. Generally, they don't target white people, although if there is a crime that they think that they can spin irregardless

of evidence into being some sort of anti-white crime, suddenly they're worried about racial hatred briefly. But he doesn't, and he certainly isn't worried on class terms. No one's going to even get to him. But we know that Asian Americans have been targeted throughout this entire thing, increasingly so attacked on the streets. Nope, don't worry about that. It certainly doesn't count because they're not white. Just yesterday, take a look Look at this tweet, someone threw an explosive device at the Islamic Center of Olympia. That was the third mosque targeted just in that state in the past few months, that definitely doesn't count because they're Muslim and he doesn't give a damn about that entire community.

But I also want you to bear in mind that there's supposed to be a couple of very specific groups that they pretend to care about that are not like them. So when a synagogue gets shot up, that presumably isn't worthy of any special attention. Because then we'd be acknowledging that there are hate crimes against people who are Jewish, that there are anti-Semites out there, violent anti-Semites, who are targeting Jewish individuals. We see that in the UK this week as well. And so the ideology that he is preaching to millions of people every night includes if all of the rest of this doesn't bother you, and he would prefer that it not, that you also cannot

care about anti-Semitic hate crimes, violence, attempted murder, attempted arson, all of those sorts of things. But for some reason that just gets lost in the wash, and nobody is claiming that what he is preaching is anti-Semitic when he tells you to turn a blind eye to those sorts of attacks becoming increasingly common as well. Yes, we are massively out of time. All right, Charles, thank you so much for joining us. As always, you're brilliant. We appreciate it. And I think the intersection between brilliant and cool, you've kind of maxed out. So you can't do much better than that. All right, guys, in the second hour, we've got so many more stories, including more

right wing treachery but also one of the funniest stories you'll see in a long time so and everybody check out damage report obviously every day one o'clock eastern uh well the best shows period in media we'll be back thanks for listening to the full episode of the young turks support our work listen ad free access members only bonus content and more by subscribing to apple podcast at apple dot co slash t yt i'm your host shank huger and i'll see you soon