The Young Turks - War of Aggression

Episode Date: February 25, 2022

Russian President Vladimir Putin said in a speech announcing a military operation in Ukraine that countries that interfere with Russian actions will face “consequences you have never seen.” Steve Bannon and Erik Prince praised Putin and Russia for LGBTQ intolerance. A confused Trump told Laura Ingraham that U.S. Soldiers landed in Ukraine to fight the Russians. Stocks and energy markets reel after Russia attacked Ukraine. Last year, investors bought nearly one in seven homes sold in America’s top metropolitan areas, the most in at least two decades.  Hosts: Ana Kasparian, Cenk Uygur Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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down on Russia. And that's a super interesting story we're going to get to very soon. It turns out it has to do with 0.2% increase in inflation. Well, we wouldn't want to trouble ourselves. So we have a lot to say about that. And of course, the right wing is out there defending the motherland, Russia. So we will get to that as well. But good news in the second half of the show some more justice in the George Floyd case,

among other things, and a member of the LGBTQ community fights back in an effective way. We love that. All right, Casper, take it away. All right, Vladimir Putin has officially launched a full-scale attack on Ukraine. The invasion involves attacks by land, sea, and air. And he has already killed dozens of Ukrainian soldiers and civilians. The official death toll, of course, is constantly changing. But as it stands right now, it is in the dozens, if not hundreds.

Now, Putin announced the invasion in a speech and then went on to issue a threat to any country that would dare intervene. So let's take a quick look at that video. I've made a decision on for a special military operation. Its its goal, the security,

who are in the years, are they're indivation to genocid to the side Kyiv's regime. Who would

not be not even to make us for our country, for our people, to know,

that the answer Russia will be not meddlittling and will you to the consequences, with

you in their history, even never not ever not ever. So as you can see at the end there, he threatens to retaliate against any country

that dare intervene in this invasion. He, of course, doesn't refer to it as an invasion, even though it is a full-scale invasion. And in the beginning there, of course, he's gaslighting

everyone by indicating that he's doing this to protect people. He's not protecting anyone. As I mentioned earlier, there's already, you know, there are already lives loss as a result of this. This is not something that's contained in the breakaway portions of Ukraine. You know, this isn't just about the annexed portions. He has launched

a full scale attack in several different cities across Ukraine. And obviously I want to take a quick moment to note. I personally underestimated what Putin was willing to do. And I didn't rely on what Putin was saying. I relied on the intelligence community within Ukraine that was really downplaying the threat. And also, you can't really blame me for being skeptical of our Pentagon and State Department. But I miscalculated here. And what Putin is doing is obviously something that we're 100% against. And this is a terrible update and terrible news, which I have more details of in just a second.

Yeah, so real quick on those fronts. So every aggressive dictator, totalitarian leader, et cetera, says, I have to protect the homeland. They never say, oh, I'm starting the war. They never say, oh, we're the guilty ones. Oh, I'd like more territory because of my shortcomings. I want to make up for it because I'm insecure. They never say the truth. Of course, I'm not going to say that.

Okay, he's not going to get out there and say that, no. Can you imagine the humility? Yeah. I am feeling insecure, so I'm going to invade you. Yes, I have shortcomings, I have physical shortcomings. And I try to make up for it by invading more countries, taking more land, and getting a lot of other people killed. So they're not going to tell you the truth, they always say, I'm protecting the homeland.

I had to protect these people that were in that territory. They were, they were asking for my help. It's exactly what the Germans did when they took sedent land, etc., exactly what they did. So now second of all, Putin is threatening everyone else, and we're going to tell a lot more about that because he has some real threats. First of all, obviously he's got nukes, that's a hell of a threat. And he's beginning to wink in that direction, which is super scary times. And then he's got 40% of the energy going into the European Union.

So that is a massive threat. And we have not really responded that well to it, in my opinion, we're not strongly enough. Now, in terms of who's at fault, let's just cover that one last time here at least. We told you, for my part, I thought that America was needlessly antagonizing by constantly saying that we could put Ukraine into NATO and pushing up against Russia's border. I thought that was a mistake in the beginning, and I thought that Putin was trying to basically push back against that, right? Well, he was, that is a mistake, we were too aggressive, but he went further.

Yeah. And the actual invasion means that even if we had said, oh, we're not going to put NATO in Ukraine, he would have invaded anyway. Yeah, exactly. That was another miscalculation. You know, I felt that there was some credibility to his security concerns. But I'm now understanding more and more that there likely wasn't any level of diplomacy that would have prevented this from happening. Yeah. And the other thing is, you know, even when it comes to authoritarian and horrible people like Putin, you always, well, at least I always assume that at the end of the day, they're motivated by incentives and disincentives. And there are so many disincentives involved in invading Ukraine. And I know that you have a theory on this jank, which you'll get to in just a second. But let me give a few more details, if you don't mind, in regard to this invasion. Because, Because it might inform what you think about what's going on or why Putin has decided to do this. For instance, he has decided to take over Chernobyl, as is reported, it was reported earlier today. You know, the Ukrainian advisor to the Ukrainian president said, it is impossible to say the Chernobyl nuclear power plant is safe after a totally pointless attack by the Russians. This is one of the most serious threats in Europe today.

And some Russian military massed in the Chernobyl exclusion zone before crossing into Ukraine early on Thursday, a Russian security source said, Russia wants to control the Chernobyl nuclear reactor to signal NATO not to interfere militarily, the same source said. So that's relevant because, as you guys can recall from the video we showed you, Putin issues this threat and having control over Chernobyl means that, you know, he could use that to essentially threaten all of Europe, if he manages to break like the concrete containment that's been built around the nuclear reactor, which is, you know, meant to protect people from radiation and all of that, well, he could cause actual damage and harm to people.

Like that is a serious threat and he's doing this to kind of amass some leverage. Yeah, so look, I think that it's fair to say at this point that American intelligence was right. So I think we were very right to question it. It has earned questioning, besides which you should always question the government. That's the job of reporters. And the whole world is right to be skeptical of it after Iraq and so many other failures of U.S. intelligence, which are largely on purpose. But in this case, now looking back at it, it looks like they were right.

The Russians did amass 190,000 troops. They were intending to invade all along. along and I'm now absolutely convinced based on the facts. And so if people say, hey, wait a minute, are you pro-Russia or anti-Russia, pro-America or anti-American? That's nonsense talk. The question is who's right and wrong based on the actual facts on the ground? And so the American intelligence said that they were, the Russia was going to invade almost

no matter what, and basically that's what happened. And that guys, why do I say that? Because if they were just worried about Ukraine being in NATO, they could have taken so much less severe drastic actions. And then you could have continued to negotiate this and he could have gotten the result that he was looking for. The French were already headed in that direction, they likely were going to give him the result that he was looking for if that was his real aim.

But he did not go down that path. He purposely chose a path that was far more belligerent and it made it obvious in hindsight that all of his talk about, oh, I'm just worried about my own security, golly G, was always a front and a lie, he had intended to invade all along, because you do not take this kind of massive drastic action unless you've game-planned it all the way out. Right. Now, some people are clowns and they act with it before doing an end game, but Putin is not among those people. Putin's very smart.

Yeah, and let me also add that in recent days, Vladimir Zelensky made it clear that he was going to drop any intentions in joining NATO. He referred to it as a dream. Like, it's probably best that we don't do this, I'm paraphrasing, joining NATO is a dream, you know? And so it didn't, that made it clear to me in retrospect that this wasn't really about Ukraine joining NATO. And so what is the real intention here? So one more graphic, and then I want to go to your theory, Jank. Now, the New York Times reported this, while the ultimate goal of President Vladimir Putin and his generals remained unclear, American officials assessed that the end game was likely the decapitation of Ukraine's government and the replacement of

its president, Vladimir Zelensky, with a Russian-controlled puppet regime. And so it's kind of being thought of as Russia's way of trying to rebuild like that Soviet block. And I just felt like, again, the economic interests that Russia may have really run counter to that. But, Jake, you have a theory that kind of goes against my thoughts. So what is it? Yeah, so Putin's playing chess and he's playing a very dangerous game, not just for the whole world, obviously specifically for Ukraine, but he's playing a dangerous game for himself because he's pushing all in here.

So how does it play out and why is he doing this? So he has a couple of great hold cards, if you will, in the poker analogy. He's got the nukes, so you can't attack back against Russia too aggressively because you're taking a certain percent of chance with total human annihilation. That's a hell of a card to have in your deck. Okay, now secondly, he has 40% of the energy that goes into European Union. So if you cut off the gas and the pipeline that goes in there to show the Russians that you mean business with real tough sanctions, well, Europe's going to be in a world of trouble.

In fact, prices from today based on what they were a year ago in Europe for that energy has gone up tenfold. So already Europe is suffering significantly because of this conflict. So Putin's gamble was the other side is weak. They don't have unified leadership and they're obsessed with money. They're not going to want to cut off their own money because a lot of people in the West make money from money. Russia, whether it's bankers who and some of our top finance people here in America, that launder Putin's billions, I mean billions on top of billions. You think they don't care about that?

They care a lot about that. The oil companies that are now making money hand over fist and of course economic impact like inflation. So he thinks the West is too sensitive. They're going to be too worried about the stock market and their inflation and the money that they're making, the very, very rich people in America and Europe are making. taking off of Russia, and so they're not going to want to be too aggressive. So now if he pushes them around, takes Ukraine, now he knows his own country is going to get

hurt, but he's figuring that the sanctions are going to be weak. And so far, he's been right. The sanctions have been relatively weak for all the reasons that I just explained. So he thinks I can withstand those sanctions, and then once I have Ukraine, well, it's already over. What are you going to do? Invade back to take Ukraine? What are you going to do? Cut off the Europe's oil supply for how many years? You're not going to do that. I'm going to take Ukraine, then things are going to normalize, and then we're going to go back to business as usual. And then once I've taken Ukraine, I know I can take whatever I want, and you're not going to

do anything about it. Now, if it goes south on him, what would happen is his economy has hurt so badly. If we did really tough sanctions, the oligarchs get their money cut off, then they're mad. And if that lasts long enough and they're in enough pain, not the Russian people, he doesn't care about them at all. But his power base, which is the oligarchs in Russia, and they turn around and go, Vlad, it's enough. This is too much pain. And it's not worth taking, especially if he gets bogged down in Ukraine militarily. So that's the gamble. But as I laid out for you, you begin to realize it's not that bad a gamble for Putin. If he loses, he could lose everything because he can get pushed out in his own country

by the other power centers, the other wealthy people in Russia. But he figures he's got his bases covered, and I'm starting to worry that he's right. Yeah, and I think that it's evident in the response that we've seen from Joe Biden, Because Joe Biden responded to this invasion, he gave a speech earlier today, and in that speech, he announced some new sanctions. However, he is not banning Russia from Swift, which is essentially the global financing system. And so that was a little questionable. But more importantly, he decided not to sanction Vladimir Putin specifically. And so it seems as though there's a lot of fear in what Putin can do, not just in Ukraine, but what this could mean economy-wise

for the West. And so that worries me. And Putin apparently has done a calculation and realized that he has some leverage here, which really does put not just Ukraine, but European countries, former Soviet countries, at a massive disadvantage. And I'm terrified to see how this is going to play out. But with that said, why don't we move on to Biden's response and talk specifically, about the sanctions and what this all means. So President Joe Biden issued a speech to the American

people this morning in response to Russia invading Ukraine. As I mentioned earlier, Russia has launched a full scale invasion in Ukraine, including by land, sea, and air. And as Biden had promised, he is going to implement some new sanctions. The question is, how effective will these sanctions be. With that said, why don't we take a quick look at his address, and then I'll fill in the blanks. We will limit Russia's ability to do business in dollars, euros, pounds, and yen to be part of the global economy. We'll limit their ability to do that. We're going to stunt the ability to finance and grow the Russian military. We're going to impose major, and we're going to impair their ability to compete in high-tech 21st century economy.

We've already seen the impact of our actions on Russia's currency and the ruble, which early today hit its weakest level ever, ever in history. The Russia's stock market plunged today. The Russian government's borrowing rates spiked by over 15%. In today's actions, we've now sanctioned Russian banks that together hold around $1 trillion in assets. We've cut off Russia's largest bank, a bank that holds more than one third of Russia's banking assets by itself, cut it off from the U.S. financial system. And today, we're also blocking four more major banks. That means every asset they have in America

will be frozen. This includes VTB, the second largest bank in Russia, which has $250 billion in assets. So that sounds like a big deal, but there are major sanctions missing from what Biden is announcing there. So number one issue is that for some reason, Biden has chosen not to sanction Vladimir Putin specifically. And the US has not blocked Russia from being part of Swift, which is the global financing system, right? The way that financial transactions are done globally. That is referred to as the quote unquote nuclear option, no pun intended, you know, because we're dealing with the nuclear power here. But why? Why did he make that decision? And will the sanctions that he announced in that video be effective enough in getting Russia out of Ukraine? Look, we'll see what happens.

But I do think it's important to understand how Wall Street lobbying in the past has actually weakened the potential effectiveness of these sanctions. This is reporting from the Daily poster that I think is really important. Let me just go through some bullet points real quick. Biden faces a significant obstacle, they write, corporate lobbyist's success in shrouding the American finance industry in secrecy, which makes it far easier for Russian oligarchs and their business empires to evade economic sanctions. Law enforcement officials and sanctions experts have been sounding ever louder alarms over

or about weak transparency and disclosure requirements, specifically in the most opaque corners of the economy, private equity firms, hedge funds, shell companies and investment vehicles such as real estate funds and art assets. These are the things, guys, that these Russian oligarchs are laundering their money in. And so you can talk a big talk about these sanctions, but if you have these pro- Wall Street anti-transparency measures, then they're not going to be as effective. And if this, this is what you're going to rely on to try to persuade, you know, to pull out of Ukraine, I don't think it's necessarily going to work. Also from the daily poster today, according to the oil and gas lobbying group, the American

Petroleum Institute, what the country needs to be focused on right now, meaning the United States, in the middle of this humanitarian crisis is securing energy security at home and abroad by expanding more oil production, right? The United States is the top oil producing country, but this is the catch. They also are calling on the US government not to place sanctions on Russian oil and gas production. Yes. So guys, the efforts that we've done so far in sanctioning Russia, most importantly, their oligarchs and Putin are mediocre. They're not super weak. If they were super weak, the Russian markets would not have gone down about a third of their value. That's a significant blow.

Okay, but are they really strong? No, if we did the strongest sanctions, they'd have been knocked out already. And so it is fascinating that they have not done that. Because you have to understand that in modern warfare, yes, there's bloodshed, as we're saying now, already dozens of Ukrainians killed and cruise missiles, et cetera. But it's mainly a financial battle. And so Putin has calculated that he is in good enough financial shape that he could withstand the battle. And that he thinks that the West is too weak to put on significant sanctions against them. So let's lay out why we have not done the strongest sanctions, including unbelievably, not even touching Putin himself.

No, come on, that part is obviously weak. Well, I mean, Putin has invaded and he is 100% responsible, but we don't want to offend him. Are you kidding me? Is this a joke? I mean, when are you going to offend him when he takes Germany? So, all right, so why is America not acting more forcefully? There's several reasons.

Number one is Europe's hooked on Russian gas and oil. They just are, it's 40%. And they don't, and they're super worried that if Russia cuts that off completely or more accurately in sanctions, the Europeans cut off their access to Russian gas, that they're going to have significant issues. They're going to have heating issues. They're going to have pricing issues. And it's going to massively affect their economy.

And Putin knows that. He goes, you want to do it? You want to do it? They're in a game of chicken. And right now, the West is saying, no, we don't really want to do it. So that's point one. Point two is we're worried about, and get a load of this, these are real numbers that Goldman Sachs came out with. We're worried that if we take stronger sanctions, that it will affect inflation by 0.2%.

And the GDP by 0.1%. 0.1%. Now you're telling me Vladimir Putin calculated wrong, we're worried about him and we won't take actions against him because we're worried about a 0.1% drop in GDP. We're hooked on short-term money. Yes. Oh, we got to get to 15% every year. The stock market's got to go up. The GDP's got to go up. GDP can't go down 0.0.1%. We can't. Okay, don't no, no, no, don't lay a glove on Putin yet. Okay, points three, what Anna read to you, American Petroleum Institute. Now they're like, oh, good, take advantage.

We sell more oil to Europe, that's great, but we don't want to destabilize the oil markets and we don't want oil sanctions that is very dangerous to our business. And we donate a ton of money to American politicians. So they tell their politicians in America, heal, and they do. And then the last point is the one from Daily Post and Anna mentioned. First, the most powerful people in this country are guys who run private equity funds, hedge funds, et cetera. If you don't think money is the real power, you don't know anything about politics, okay?

So those guys, some of them, not at all of them, but enough of them are laundering Russian money. Yep. You think Putin is going to invade and risk all of his hard-earned money, hard stolen money, But from all these years, no, if he, the minute he invaded, I was like, oh, his money is a hundred percent hidden, we're never going to get to it. And the hilarious thing is, it turns out, he hit it with us. And think about how smart that is, because then that hooks the richest people in America

to be his top defenders. Yes. So that's why we're not doing strong sanctions, that's why he's still in Swift. That's why we haven't touched Putin's actual accounts themselves. If Biden wanted to, he says he could pass a law, in fact, you could do it with an executive order and say, hey, you know what? I'm right now, there's a rule that protects all those private equity guys and the money that's going into them and keeps it secret.

He could easily say they're no longer secret. Right. You have to at least tell the government, right? He's choosing not to do that because he doesn't want to offend the bankers. And understand the sanctions that are being implemented are understanding. because of these, you know, secret banking and secrecy laws that Wall Street lobbied so hard for and accomplished, the sanctions that are being implemented are going to impact who the most, Jank, the Russian people as opposed to the oligarchs, as opposed to Vladimir

Putin, as opposed to the people who are either aiding and abetting or carrying out this humanitarian crisis that's now underway in Ukraine. And that's exactly what we don't want. We don't want We want innocent people to suffer, we want the bad actors to suffer. And so this is, this is corporate rule. This is how corporate rule ruins everything, including any type of humanitarian mission we might say that we want to be part of. I mean, come on. By the way, this is also not new.

The reason, part of the reason that we didn't go into World War II quicker as millions of people were being murdered was because a lot of our banker, had deals with the Germans so they didn't want to burn their Nazi allies that's literal that's historic you can read up about it okay so American bankers said whoa whoa whoa whoa I'm gonna lose money if you go into Germany let a couple more million people dying because I don't want to lose any money and from recent history last example in 2018 we actually did go after a Russian oligarch turns out he had cornered the aluminum market and so when we put

sanctions on him aluminum prices spiked all across the world And when they did, they put the fear of God into Western markets and Western politicians. They're like, whoa, we got to be really careful about sanctioning Russian oligarchs because it could affect us 0.1% and we can't have it. So we learned all the wrong lessons from that and the Russians and Vladimir Putin specifically learned a lesson, oh, these guys can be pushed around. And that's what he's doing right now. Well, we got to take a break. But when we come back, we have more updates on this crisis in Ukraine, including how Donald Trump and the right wing has responded to it.

Come right back. All right, back on TYT, Jane Canana with you guys. All right, and it's got more news. Well, our very own Jank Uger was trending on Twitter today because he apparently triggered the right wing with a simple tweet. Let me read that tweet to you. He says, right wing doesn't love Putin just because he's an authoritarian, tyrannical leader. They love him because he's a white authoritarian leader. Race has become more important than even nationality.

They've turned on democracy and now even America in favor of a white warlord. Now, that immediately led to all this backlash, because let me tell you something, the one thing the right wing doesn't like is you telling them exactly who they are. It happened when I said I was better than the racists that were, you know, comparing Leslie Jones to Harambe, the gorilla. They didn't like the fact that I called him out on their racism. So every time they want to like, come at me, they're like, are you better than me? I am, I am better than you. I'm saying it again, go cry about it. But anyway, Jank, I thought that your tweet was fine, you know.

I think that the reason why some people have a knee-jerk reaction to it is because you do have some elements of the Democratic Party weaponizing race to their advantage all the time. But in this case, I think that you actually have a lot of credibility in that argument, and we have receipts to show you. I mainly care about the receipts, but guys, Dave, the cultural wars are so. So prevalent now, Trump started it by saying how Putin, I like Putin, Putin's good guy, right? And Trump had a personal financial interest in it, and his, again, his sons have said it many times, not related to his presidential campaign, whether it was related to his administration is a different question. But his son said well before he even ran for president, we get all of our money from Russia.

So there's a reason why Trump has a personal affinity for Putin. That was the beginning, but now Tucker Carlson didn't have to do it, and all the other right wing pundits and media figures didn't have to do it. They're all choosing to celebrate Putin in different ways. And so I was wondering why, what a weird turn is Allison Wonderland. It's upside down where the right wing used to hate the Soviet Union and the goddamn Ruskis, the Russians were the worst. They're the ones who did the Red Scare. Now all of a sudden they're like, oh, Putin is strong and wonderful and it's just so great, right? You're like, what the world happened?

And they are desirous of a white leader who takes charge and is a strong man. And mainly, you know, you remember the right wing never cared about democracy. And they showed it on January 6th, but they've been showing it our whole history. They were like, oh, democracy and equality for black people, no, we're gonna do slavery, then we're gonna do Jim Crow. And we're gonna make sure that they don't have equality. for hundreds of years. Who did that? The right wing did that.

They've never cared about democracy. They just want to be in charge. And when they see Vladimir Putin pushing people around, they're like, there's a good white guy pushing people around, not taking any flag, not doing any of this walk nonsense, go get him Putin. That's why, because their identity has become not American, but white. So we have examples for you. So here's a quick mashup of videos featuring prominent right wingers.

wingers, philating Vladimir Putin. Let's watch. Putin ain't woke. He is anti-woke. The Russians people still know which bathroom to use. They know how many, how many genders are there in Russia, too. Since the day that Donald Trump became president, Democrats in Washington have told you have a patriotic duty to hate Vladimir Putin. It's not a suggestion, it's a mandate. Anything less than hatred for Putin is treason. Many Americans have obeyed this directive. They now dutifully hate Vladimir Putin. Maybe you're one of them.

And I said, this is genius. Putin declares a big portion of the Ukraine, of Ukraine. Putin declares it as independent. Oh, that's wonderful. Also remember the T-shirts we saw at Trump rallies, I'd rather be Russian than a Democrat. Has Putin ever called me a racist? Has he threatened to get me fired for disagreeing with him?

Has he shipped every middle class job in my town to Russia? Did he manufacture a worldwide pandemic that wrecked my business and kept me indoors for two years? Is he teaching my children to embrace racial discrimination? Is he making fentanyl? Is he trying to snuff out Christianity? Does he eat dogs? These are fair questions, and the answer to all of them is no. Vladimir Putin didn't do any of that.

So why does permanent Washington hate him so much? They don't have boys swimming in girls college swim meets. How backward? It's embarrassing, how savage, how medieval. How medieval? This is why this whole thing's a scam. So there you have Eric Prince and Steve Bannon talking about how awesome Putin is because he doesn't believe in treating people who are different than they are,

who have different lifestyles, different identities than them as equals. You have Tucker Carlson. Carlson listing off all the things that he loves about Putin, including the fact that Putin has never accused him of being racist. Yeah, so I want to talk about that. But part of the reason we brought up to tweet is because in so many of the responses from the right wing were, oh yeah, can you show one example? That's outrageous to say conservatives like Putin.

Yeah, we can show you examples. We just did it. Yeah. Receit up on top of receipt on top of receipt. Now I want to break down what Tucker said, because understand this. They do a scripted show. His script is in the teleprompter. He wrote it ahead of time.

His producers wrote it and sanctioned it, and so do the executives. Executives look at scripts on cable shows. They did when I was on MSNBC, okay? So everybody's on board. And he bothered to write down and wasn't off the cuff. So the first thing is what Anna mentioned, Putin's never called me a racist. Now why did he write that down? Why did he want to send that message?

He's saying, remember, the Democrats are the bad guys because they're not the same race as us. And they call us racist and it makes us uncomfortable just because we don't want them to be equal to us. On the other hand, Putin has never called us racist and he doesn't mind us being in charge. He knows how to take charge. And then you go to Steve Bannon and Eric Prince, they're like, Putin knows who to target. He's not going to let any gay people get away with anything or even allowed him to be on. He's going to regulate on bathrooms. He's not woke, they're cheerleading for him. Why? Because he's kind of a white, right wing hero to them. Look at this shirt that the guys were wearing in that picture. It's not about two randos.

They're getting that because right wing media is giving and feeding him that. And that's why those shirts are made in the first place. It's symbolic. Better, I'd rather be Russian than a Democrat. Why? Because in their minds, Democrats are the others. They're minorities. They're black. They're brown, they're Asian. And so I'd rather be Russian than a Democrat. Because their identity has become super focused on their race. And so that's the oldest right wing trick in the playbook, right? They've been doing this for hundreds of years.

One more. It was super curious that he said, does he eat dogs? Why did he write that? What is that in reference to? Are Democrats trying to get you to eat dogs? That's not a thing that's been in the news at all. No, that's a reference to Asians. So he purposely put an anti-Asian sentiment in there to say, remember guys, Putin is white,

Democrats are black and brown, and Asian, we don't like the Asians either. We like strong white warlords and everybody cheered, thunderous applause in the right way. Yeah, look, I just, I just, I'm tired of people behaving a certain way and then throwing temper tantrums when others judge them based on the way they're behaving. So they proudly spew their hatred, homophobia, xenophobia, racism, whatever it is, day and day out. They have proudly made that their identity. And then when something pops off and they get called out on it, they just get together and have their simultaneous Twitter meltdown over it. Have a meltdown over it. But But whatever you think about Jenk as a person, he was 100% right in that take.

I remember when Putin really started getting attention among the right wing in America, and it was around 2012. And I remember it really well because around 2012 was when Putin started implementing all of these anti-LGB policies in Russia. It was also around the same time he took that insanely goofy photo shoot shirtless on a horse and all that stuff. And I remember Fox News salivating over it, like, oh, he should. He's so strong, he's so strong.

Now, did they look at those flabby pictures of him on top of a horse and think, wow, he's so strong because of that. No, they thought that because of the fact that he was hateful, openly discriminatory, and didn't care, was unapologetic about it. They loved it. And if you want to deny what this is really about, if you want to deny why the right wing in America is so supportive of Putin, this is why. Look, sorry. Soon they'll get to a point where they'll say, oh, the left is just trying to cancel Putin. Whatever. Their defense is unbelievable.

So look, I have half tongue in cheek said pushed hashtag Anna was right on Twitter a lot because she called what Tulsi Gabbard was going to do three years before she did it. Or in the middle of her doing, she noticed the things that she was trending towards and everybody was like, oh, it's outrageous, she's such a good progressive. No, Anna was right, Tulsi Gabbard was always actually a right winger and she was faking it as a progressive. She was right about Glenn Greenwald, Jimmy Dorr, Graystone, she was right about all of it. So on this one, I don't mind hashtag Jenk was right, I don't mind it.

You were right. Okay, and so these guys, one thing else I have to mention, now back to her being right, but guys, it's important for you to know, we're not just saying it like, ha ha, we were right. This is matter of massive importance. They're turning half the country against the America and our allies. And they're literally supporting our enemy that is attacking our ally. It's unbelievable, right? So it matters who's right and wrong.

So that's why I say Anna was right about the LGBT issues. In fact, TYT investigates tracked Marina Bucina, who turned out to be a Russian spy, and many Russian delegations being invited to the National Prayer Breakfast. The National Prayer Breakfast, maddenlingly, still attended by Democrats. It's insane, but run by right-wingers, and run right now solely funded by Franklin Graham, who's very right-wing evangelical leader in America, they kept inviting Russians over when? After Putin started taking the LGBTQ stance against them, right? And our Christian leader, so-called Christian right-wing leaders here in America were like,

We're like, oh finally somebody's looking to crush gay people. We love it and then the prayer breakfast sent out delegation after delegation to other countries to encourage anti-LGBQ laws in those countries using American politicians to do that. So they've been working, parts of the right wing movement in this country have been working with hateful rushing leaders for a long time now. So in a sense, this is the culmination of that where they get to come out of the the closet and say, yes, Putin is our hero. And they're in the middle of doing it right now. Well, one of Putin's biggest fans, of course, is Donald Trump. And when we come back,

we will share a moment of confusion for Trump while he was talking about this crisis in Ukraine on the Laura Ingram show. You do not want to miss it. Come right back. We've got that and more. All right, back on TYT, Jank and Anna with you guys, more news. Well, Trump has decided to continue his ongoing pro-Pooten campaign with a pretty gross speech at Mar-a-Lago. And he also continued criticism toward Joe Biden while posturing as someone who would somehow take a tougher stance on Vladimir Putin, which is hilarious. Now, he went on Laura Ingram's show, and not only did he continue to spew some pro-Pooten nonsense, he also made a fool out of himself by getting real confused about which country is invading which part of the world.

Let's watch. We're just learning that U.S. officials are looking at a potential amphibious landing now in Odessa, Ukraine. Again, a month ago, or three weeks ago, all the so-called experts were saying that, you know, Putin was probably going to just be content with staying in those separatist regions. But I think given what's unfolded, sadly, with a lot of weakness in the United States, they just decided to go for it. I mean, it looks like they're going for it. And where does that leave NATO, the NATO alliance? I think you're exactly right. I think that's what happened.

He was going to be satisfied with a peace, and now he sees the weakness and the incompetence of the stupidity of this administration. And as an American, I'm angry about it, and I'm saddened by it. President Trump, we actually have, just hold on, I'm so sorry to interrupt you, but we have, we're going to the Pentagon, I believe. Ukraine, sorry, Ukraine is speaking at the UN. Now we basically have the Ukrainian ambassador to the United Nations, nations looking like a defeated man, your final reaction?

Well, I think the whole thing again would have never happened. It shouldn't happen. And it's a very sad thing. But you know what's also very dangerous is you told me about the amphibious attack by Americans. You shouldn't be saying that because you and everybody else shouldn't know about it. They should do that secretly, not be doing that through the great Laura Ingraham. They should be doing that secretly. Nobody should know that, Laura.

And, you know, that was the Russian. Now, those are the Russian amphibious landing. No, I thought you said that we were sending people in. No, I did not, no, no, no, no, no, that would be, that would be news. No, but he didn't think that Laura Ingram said that the United States was doing that attack. Because immediately after she announced the attack, Trump responded to it by pointing out how weak Biden is. And if it weren't for this incompetent administration, Russia wouldn't be doing this. So at some point in the middle of that segment, he either completely forgot about who did that attack or just decided to like throw the truth out and move on with some other talking point.

I don't know what that was, but I think he just forgot. He literally responded to the Russian attack immediately after Laura Ingraham mentioned it and then forgot that it was Russia that did the attack. later in the segment. It's called dementia. And so I don't know if it's what particular, you know, ailment that he has, mental ailment, but he clearly has one. And guys, your only other explanation, if you're a right way, no, no, no, no, he didn't get, he's not a bumbling old fool.

He didn't get confused. He thought that Lauren Grimm had said that it was the Americans who did an amphibious thing. Now, break that one down. You think the former president goes on a talk show and finds out there that the Americans are in an actual battle with Russian soldiers. That would be massive news. That wouldn't be a little news. That would be gigantic news.

He doesn't even know that. He thinks like, oh yeah, I might have found out on Laura Ingraham's show. Like if I was on Laura Ingraham's show and she said the Americans have landed in Ukraine and are fighting the Russians, I'd be like, when the hell did that? that happened. That's insane. Oh my God, we're gonna go to World War III. That's a normal reaction. And I was never president. He was the president of the United States. Yeah. And he's like, oh yeah, American amphibious landing in Odessa. Yeah, that makes sense. What? No, okay, so your best excuses, no, he's the dumbest man alive and doesn't realize that that would be a

massive development in world news. Just doesn't even get it. Like, oh, maybe she just mentioned it in passing. Yeah, I mean, and also it reveals how little Trump really cares about this very issue. Every single time he's talked about it, he's used it as an opportunity to point out that he believes the election was stolen from him in 2020. And this is the ramification of him not being in charge. In every single interview I've seen on this matter, that is what he does. He immediately pivots to the election was stolen from me. And this is what you. get when I'm not in charge. But by the way, look, so on a normal.

All the other details, all the other details are irrelevant to him. Yeah, he doesn't care. But guys, if you've had loved ones that go through this, and I feel terrible for almost anyone but Trump going through this, because he's got half, 40% of the country following him when he's lost his mind. What people going through this kind of mental decline go through is a lot of different symptoms. And one of them is constantly going back and talking about the same thing over and over and over again. again and being obsessed with themselves, telling stories about themselves over and over again. I mean, Trump already was a nuclear level narcissist.

But when you've got the mental decline, sometimes people get further detached from others and get into their own world. And so that's what Trump does in every interview, like, okay, now back to me, back to, oh, we're gonna have World War III. He thinks, not us, but he thought in the middle of that interview, Russia and America might be in a hot war where they're firing us one another, which endangers the entire planet and he thought back to me and about how those, oh, I was a victim here. What we're talking about Ukraine. Oh, the election, the rigged election.

It's always about him. Yeah, that was in another part of the interview. And it's now gotten so embarrassing. Did you notice why we kept that part in the clip? Laura Ingram went to something else. They went to a Ukrainian diplomat talking while the former president was on the Yeah, I know, that is pretty breathtaking. Yeah, because they're like, oh, it's clown Trump. Yeah, he's calling a cry again. He's not going to talk about this issue. Our audience likes him.

But hey, you know what, diplomat, XYZ, the undersecretary is talking. Let's go to him because this guy's a natural embarrassment. No, it's totally true. In fact, look, we obviously, because of time, we had to shorten the video, and we cut out the diplomat portion of it. But when I was choosing the time codes for that video, I was like, we should include some portion of this guy's speech, but it wasn't, it wasn't good. Yeah, no, it wasn't relevant.

It wasn't really. And I remember thinking to myself, wow, they cut away from Trump to go to this guy, it's a little weird. And they stayed on him for a while. For a long time, it wasn't like, hey, they went for 30 seconds, came right back. It was almost like they were trying to run the clock out on Trump, get him to get off the phone. And by the way, she couldn't do it. And then he comes back and he's like, I can't believe the Americans have gone ambidextrous against the Russian.

Okay, and at the end she laughs at him. She's like, no, no, no, no, that would be big news. Oh my God, get him off. Get the senile old fool off. Now, we would never think of people in that terms, but she's a right winger. She probably does. He probably thinks, oh, he's got dementia. We hate him now.

Move on, move on. Go back to the Ukrainian undersecretary of the undersecretary. Right. Okay, we got to get the former president off the line because he's so deeply embarrassing for the right. And last thing is, guys, if Biden made that. mistake what do you think the entire right wing would say dementia dementia they do they do right they say it all the time so when Trump says it they're like oh no I follow him only he's my beloved hero he doesn't even know what planet we're on or which

country's attacking which but I love him well okay that says a lot about you doesn't it well we do have a pretty amazing story on the show today involving a new poll this is Republican voters get, they were asked, who do you prefer Donald Trump or Ron DeSantis? And Trump is losing, losing his credibility among Republican voters, so. So that is in some polls and that last one was in Florida, but it is indicative. People are, the decline unfortunately did not begin with any of his idiocy or his actual dementia or whatever that is or any of his horrible, horrible statements. They love that stuff. The decline in his polling began when he said he took the vaccine.

Let's be honest about that. And now DeSantis is surging and in a poll in Florida beating Trump. So now Trump is flailing even more, apparently furious about DeSantis, furious about everything, especially about the 2020 election. Right. And I think even Republicans, even diehard Trump supporters are starting to get a little tired of the endless crying. I mean, who wants that?

Who looks at a man who cries incessantly about being a massive loser and thinks, I want that guy to be my leader? It's pathetic. I mean, I want to believe that Republican voters have some standards. Yeah, remember the thing they're most obsessed about is appearing strong. Not actually being strong, but appearing strong. And so when Trump looks strong, they loved him. But now he looks weak. And in the beginning, they thought he was a martyr.

Right. But now they're just starting to see him as a victim. And remember, most of them still think the election was stolen, but even so, how long are you going to cry? And that is why now Trump is slipping. All right, well, we got to take a break. When we come back for the second hour of the show, we've got more news for you, including some pretty great updates in regard to the other police officers involved in the murder of George Floyd. A jury has handed down their ruling on these guys. And then later in the show, we'll talk about that poll regarding Donald Trump versus Ron DeSantis.

Come right back. Thanks for listening to the full episode of the Young Turks. Support our work, listen to ad-free, access members-only bonus content, and more by subscribing to Apple Podcasts at apple.com slash t-y-t. I'm your host, Jank Huger, and I'll see you soon.