The Young Turks - War Party

Episode Date: March 17, 2023

Republicans accept no blame for bank failures after they voted to deregulate banks. Why the US is going full throttle on hypersonic missiles. Sean Hannity demands Joe Biden treat Russia's downing of US drone as “an act of war”. Big-brained Ben Shapiro says something really dumb about free school lunches. Hosts: Ana Kasparian 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. Woo! It's dumb! Welcome to TYT, I'm your host, Anna Kasparian, and we have a fantastic show ahead for you today. Although I must confess, my personal favorite story of the day is in the member's only bonus episode.

which, of course, you have to be a member to watch, James O'Keefe dances again. He dances again. And we will be talking about it with R.M. Brown in the bonus episode for our members, t.yt.com slash join to become one or just click on the join button if you're watching us live on YouTube. We also have actual substantive stories to get to today, including updates on the war in Ukraine and the war mongering that keeps coming from War Hawks, who, are heavily funded by the private defense contractors, people like Lindsey Graham wanting to

escalate the situation. So we'll tell you what is happening on that front, along with the civil war within Fox News on that very topic as well. In the second hour of the show, we'll talk about how Texas has decided to seize an entire school district. It appears to be a political move in an effort to push its public education system toward charters. We'll talk about that in more details in the second hour. Just a great show all around. I do want to start off with, well, updates on how congressional lawmakers are reacting to the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank. With that said, let's do it.

The regulators didn't catch it. There's been a lot of talk about Silicon Valley Bank wasn't being regulated. because of a bill passed back in 2018 or 2019. That's not true. Yeah, great speech by Republican Senator John Kennedy. He forgot to mention that he voted to deregulate mid-sized banks like Silicon Valley Bank in 2018. The oversight he's about to cite is complete BS and he knows it. Silicon Valley Bank was heavily regulated.

It had to file regular reports with the federal banking regulators. It was subject to stress testing. It was subject to McQuinnity stress testing. All the regulators had to do was read the reports that the Silicon Valley Bank was submitting and they would have seen the problem. I'm going to explain exactly why what you just heard from Republican Senator John Kennedy is complete and utter nonsense.

This idea that it was so heavily regulated and there was not. nothing else that could have been done. Obviously, he wants to provide cover for the fact that he was one of the many Republican lawmakers who voted to deregulate the bank, or mid-sized banks, I should say, back in 2018. But I also want to be fair and reiterate that there were Democrats who voted in favor of that deregulation as well, as many as 17 Democrats to be specific. Now, what did they do? Just as a refresher, let's go back to 2018 and discuss what the deregulation accomplished. The Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform Bill, Congress passed after the 2008 financial crisis, imposed special oversight rules on banks with more than $50 billion

in assets. That was good. But 10 years later in 2018, at the behest of the regional banking industry, meaning after taking bribes from the regional banking industry, the bipartisan bank bill raised the threshold for those prudential standards. so that they were only mandatory for banks with $250 billion in assets or more. Okay. So essentially the deregulations that were in place that would have impacted and for a short period of time did impact Silicon Valley Bank were then repealed for mid-sized banks like Silicon Valley Bank.

Now let me be clear in just noting that the deregulation on its own is very likely one of the factors for why this bank collapsed. I'm not saying it's the only factor, but it's certainly one of the factors. And that's not based on my expertise. That's based on the expertise of economists, which we'll get to in just a moment. But Congress at the time, back in 2018, as they were considering this deregulation, was warned that it would be a terrible idea. The Congressional Budget Office, for instance, specifically warned that the bill increased the risk that a mid-sized financial institution would fail. And that is what happened in the case of Silicon Valley Bank. Now, Republicans argue that they can essentially neglect their jobs.

You know, they could take the bribes from the financial industry. They could take the bribes for mid-sized banks. They could do the bidding of mid-sized banks in this case, particularly, as long as they get the funding, the campaign funding that they so desperately want and desire. And then they can essentially neglect their duty as individuals who are elected to protect the American people, individuals who are elected to ensure that banks don't do incredibly risky maneuvers with deposit or money. You know, they're just supposed to protect the American people from corporations and banks that seek to do one thing and one thing only, to maximize their profits.

But lawmakers who voted for this deregulation didn't want to do that. And instead said, instead of us codifying this regulation and applying it to mid-sized banks, we're just going to have the Federal Reserve deal with it. You know, the body of unelected officials, we're just going to have them, you know, if they want, they could take a look at what these mid-sized banks are doing. And if they find any type of issue, then they can deal with it. Except we didn't elect the Federal Reserve to do that. We elected congressional lawmakers to provide oversight into corporations into the banking system.

And they failed to do that because they were paid to avoid doing their jobs. They were paid to ensure that they deregulated mid-sized banks. And that is a problem. Now, there are other issues here. Now, I want to just give you a little sense of what they're saying about the Federal Reserve's responsibility here. Republicans focused on the fact that the bill still allowed regulators like the Federal Reserve to impose stricter standards on institutions with less than $250 billion in assets if they thought it would be a good idea. So when Senator Kennedy argues, like, I don't know what they're saying.

They are regulated. No, they're not, though. They're not regulated. You're essentially offloading, outsourcing your responsibility to the Federal Reserve. But here's the funny thing. they knew where the Federal Reserve stood on this issue, meaning they knew full well that the Federal Reserve was going to have a complete hands-off approach. In fact, at the time, back in 2018, Jerome Powell and Randy Quails, the chairman and former top bank regulator at the Federal Reserve, told lawmakers during hearings on the legislation in 2018 that it would be a good idea to cut regional banks some slack. cut him some slack, too many regulations, let them go wild.

Is that the regulation that you were referring to, Senator Kennedy? I mean, how pathetic is this? Now, Senator Mike Rounds, who was one of the other Republican lawmakers who voted in favor of the deregulation, has no regrets. In fact, he says this, they, meaning the Federal Reserve, had the tools available. The question is, why didn't they use the tools? No, Mike Rounds, the question is, when the Federal Reserve made it clear that they had no interest in pursuing regulation of these mid-sized banks, why did you think that they would? By the way, Mike Rounds, of course, takes money from the investment in securities industry, much like every other lawmaker that I'm going to reference in this story.

Let's go to Senator Tom Tillis, another Republican. He says this, it was an option, meaning the Federal Reserve overseeing what, the bank was up to. And if they choose not to do it, it's going to be a really good question based on the activities of Silicon Valley. They're just going to, again, outsource this to the Federal Reserve, which made it clear that they had no interest in doing oversight of these mid-sized banks. Let me continue. Tom Tillis, by the way, received more than, it's a lot of money. 1.95 million in donations from the securities and investment industry between 2017 and 2022 in that short period of time. Could it be that that money made a little bit of a difference in how Senator Tillis feels about regulations toward the banking industry? Could it be? I don't know.

I'm just asking questions. The Federal Reserve has said that it will conduct an investigation of its oversight of the bank and produce a report by May, by the way, by May, when maybe all of us have already forgotten about this story and maybe they don't release any report at all. We'll see. But Senator Mike Crapo argues that the deregulation had nothing to do with SVB going belly up. The fact is, this is not a capital issue. This is a liquidity issue. It's an entirely different set of issues. Is it, is it Mr. Crapo? Because fact of the matter is, well, let me back up actually. What ended up happening was Silicon Valley Bank had invested the bulk of its depositor money into government bonds. When all of these depositors who were now dealing with

a rough economic situation as a result of high interest rates wanted to start withdrawing some money, all of a sudden you have this mid-sized bank having a little bit of difficulty in providing the funds to fulfill those withdrawals. They had to sell the government bonds, but they had to sell those bonds at a loss because as the Federal Reserve raises interest rates, the value of those government bonds go down. So they took a loss of 1.8 million as they decided to cash out those government bonds in order to, you know, fulfill the depositor needs as they were withdrawing money. Okay. Now here's the interesting part. Here's what actually I didn't even know. until fairly recently, I looked into what is considered liquid assets by the federal reserve.

Examples of liquid assets generally include central bank reserves and government bonds. So government bonds mean account for the liquidity of the bank. So if you have the regulation in place and the regulation, Yes, it included provisions that ensured that there was enough liquidity in the banks to deal with, you know, an economic downturn, should the depositors want to withdraw money. But the other provisions included stress tests. And the stress tests ensure that there isn't mismanagement of that money, meaning if you see a situation in which interest rates are going to go up and the value of those government

bonds are going to go down, well, regulators would look. into what SVB was up to and say, yo, you got to diversify. You can't, you're going to lose the value of these assets as a result of the Federal Reserve raising interest rates. But there was no watchdog involved because of the deregulation. So again, I'm not saying it's the only reason why Silicon Valley Bank collapsed, but the deregulation was certainly a factor. And how are you going to consider government bonds liquid when, honestly,

in some ways, it's much more complicated than that. If you know the value of that asset can go down significantly as a result of interest rates, that needs to be taken into account as well. Now, according to the Federal Reserve, all that money that Silicon Valley Bank had invested in government bonds, which lost value as the Fed increased the rates, was liquid. I just want to reiterate that. And by the way, it's not strange at all that Crapo, much like Tillis, much like Mike rounds would provide a cover for the sick ideology that allows banks to essentially get away with mismanagement and activities that really do put ordinary people at risk. So Crapo received more than $880,000 in donations from the securities and investment industry between 2017 and

2022. What would have happened if regulators actually kept a close eye on midsize banks like Silicon Valley Bank? Well, according to an economist and the director of the Roosevelt Institute, SVB would have had to report it to regulators monthly, and the signs would have been caught earlier. According to the experts, deregulation certainly played a role. And while these lawmakers, both Democrats and Republicans, want to make us all think they did nothing wrong, they did the right thing, and then we should immediately focus on woke ideology and how that allegedly contributed to the downfall of this bank, the fact of the matter is, what they really want to do is hide the fact that they work for

their donors as opposed to the American people. That's the real story here. All right, we've got a big block on the war in Ukraine. What is the right wing saying? You have some of the typical people that you'd expect banging the war drums and calling for more escalation. It's important to cover that and give you the details. So I will when we come back from the break. One of the most consistent mistakes I make on this show. And it's because I can't wrap my head around this amount of money is mistaking millions or mistaking billions for millions. So in that last story, I want to correct what I said. When SVB cashed out those government bonds, they did it at a loss of 1.8 billion, not million.

Billion, okay? So I misspoke. I apologize for that. I just want to make sure that I clarified that and didn't give you any misinformation. Welcome back to the show, Anna Kasparian with you. Let's do a little bit of foreign policy related news, starting with this. They shot down our drone. What should our answer be? Well, we should hold them accountable and say that if you ever get near another U.S. set flying in international waters, your airplane would be shot down.

What would Ronald Reagan do right now? He would start shooting Russian planes down if they were threatening our assets. Shooting down Russian planes is clearly a severe escalation of war with a nuclear power. Let's just get that part out of the way. But Senator Lindsey Graham loves escalations of war as he comfortably sits in wherever he is in the United States and does the bidding of the defense contractors who fund his campaign. But with that said, it is worth kind of going back to see what sparked that conversation, would spark that demand by Senator Graham.

What are they talking about? Well, there was, unfortunately, a collision between a Russian plane. And so it was a Russian plane and a U.S. drone. Okay? Now, after that incident happened, you have both sides giving you completely different narratives. You have the Russian side giving you one narrative, the U.S. giving you another narrative. But video has now been released, and it does appear that the United States and its argument, in this particular case was correct.

The video does show that a Russian plane crashed into a United States drone. Let's watch. Minutes ago, we just got dramatic new video from the Pentagon released by the military where you can see a Russian fighter jet as it was approaching the back of the American drone that has now been down for that 4 to 5,000 feet in the Black Sea. In this video that has just been released moments ago, you can see where this, this, The Russian fighter jet is going up to this American drone. It is dumping fuel on it.

That is what you're seeing in the video as it's approaching here. Then the jet goes away. It comes back. It dumps more fuel. And then it hits the American drone. It clipped the drone. One of the Russian fighter jets did. That is when you see the color bars there.

Ultimately, of course, this is what led up to the downing of this drone. We have been following all week since this happened. This interaction that happened on Tuesday, we were told lasted for over. half an hour. Now, of course, that U.S. drone was forced to be downed in the Black Sea. Now, we're talking about a U.S. drone. We're not talking about, you know, a Russian warplane, attacking a U.S. war plane. We're not talking about U.S. soldiers dying as a result of this. And I also want to, I can't believe I'm saying this because it's so incredibly rare. But I want to commend General Mark Millie, who says that he will not, that the military will not

consider the Russian jet colliding with a U.S. drone, an act of war. So luckily, the U.S. military does not want to escalate war with Russia over this incident. He says incidents happen. Okay, that kind of restraint is really important. And again, I want to commend Mark Millie for putting that statement out. But when it comes to people like Lindsey Graham, any excuse to escalate war, regardless of what the consequences may be. In fact, why don't we hear more from how Graham responded to that incident earlier this week? We know that Russian drones are flying over Ukraine. Yeah. Why don't we shoot down two of theirs and send a message? You shoot out one of ours? We'll shoot down two the first time,

10 the next time. Why don't we do it now and send a react, do it now? Well, what did Trump do when the Iranians were killing Americans all over the Mideast? He kills Soleimani, right? What did he do to take down the caliphate? He unleashed the military and the caliphate was destroyed in about three months. Do you believe for one minute that Russia would have done this on Trump's watch? Do you believe for one minute that Russia would invade Ukraine if Donald Trump was praising the United States? I think they had a healthy, realistic fear of Donald Trump.

There is no fear of Joe Biden. His policies are not working. We're being walked on. We're being crapped on. And we're about to have a major war because China is sizing up Biden. And they're going to go into Taiwan if we don't up our game in Ukraine. If Putin gets away with this, there goes Taiwan. The two are connected.

So the administration, the Biden administration, it's been slow and weak. Every time Ukraine needs a weapon system, we have to beg to get it. So earlier in that clip, Graham mentions how Donald Trump succeeded in assassinating Qasem Soleimani, the top general in Iran. And that was, of course, after Trump decided to rip up the Iran nuclear deal, which paved the way for Iran to begin developing nuclear weapons. They continued with their nuclear program as a result of that. How exactly was that a good thing? Donald Trump had ordered an airstrike against Iran. And luckily, in the last second, he was persuaded to call it off because beginning a war with Iran would have been a disastrous idea.

But if it were up to someone like Lindsey Graham, oh, we would be at war with Iran right now as we speak. Who knows how many trillions of dollars would be funneled into that war. And that would happen, of course, if Lindsey Graham had his way prior to Russia invading Ukraine. I mean, he's just so incredibly irresponsible and stupid when it comes to these issues. And then you have blockhead Sean Hannity. Like, I think if they shoot down one of our drones, I think we should shoot down two of their drones. What are you in middle school? What are you talking about?

We're talking about two nuclear powers here. It's just little boys. That's what they are, little boys on national television, pretending like they're playing with their GI Joe's or something. Step out of the way. Can we just have some adults converse about this very serious issue? Jesus Christ. So far, Lindsay Graham has happily brought up two wars. Okay, so the U.S. versus Russia, the U.S. versus China.

In that scenario, it would happen after China invades Taiwan. I mean, he's just salivating, just thirsting for that to happen. Can't wait. I mean, his defense contractors can't wait. I mean, they've been beating the war drum. against China for years now. But let's watch him add a third war to the mix. Here's the next war that's coming.

Israel is going to have to take military action to stop the Iranians from developing enriched uranium to the point it can become a weapon. They're at 84%. All they have to do is get the 90%. We're not doing a damn thing about the Iranians trying to develop a nuclear bomb. We had a plan and a deal in place. It was the Iran nuclear deal. It wasn't just between the United States and Iran.

There were other countries involved, European countries involved. There was oversight. There were assurances to ensure that Iran was not developing nuclear weapons. I just love how we rip up that deal and then turn around and say, oh my God, would you look at that? Iran is no longer following through with the Iran nuclear deal, which we reneged on, and now they're developing, you know, their nuclear program. And so now Israel has no choice but to attack them as a result of what they're doing. No, Israel did have a choice.

Israel's choice, a good choice, would have been to, you know, honor the Iran nuclear deal instead of whining about it constantly, instead of demanding that the United States government rip it up as Trump eventually did, if you're genuinely concerned about Iran developing nuclear weapons, then maybe you don't renege on the Iran nuclear deal. How about that? But no, the whole point was to renege on it to pave the way for a possible war with Iran. Okay, it didn't need to happen that way. It doesn't need to happen that way. Biden should fulfill his promise in renegotiating the Iran nuclear deal with Iran, right? But of course, that's not going to happen. Because God forbid the the United States engage in a more diplomatic approach.

The Obama administration did. That was when the Iran nuclear deal came into effect. It was one of the accomplishments of the Obama administration that I thought was great. But of course, Donald Trump ripped it up and Biden failed to put it back into effect through engaging in diplomatic talks with Iran. Now, with that said, I do want to just quickly talk about the funding that Senator Lindsey Graham takes, or I should say, the legalized bribes Senator Lindsay Graham takes from the defense industry. If you take a look at his top funders, the top industries that happen to fund his campaigns,

you'll notice that a pretty large figure comes from the defense industry. So between 2017 and 2022, Senator Graham received almost $400,000 in campaign contributions from the defense sector. Okay, but if you also take a look at the total amount, which includes money that was donated by defense to super PACs associated with Lindsey Graham, the number is obviously above a million dollars there. Now, what else do we know about Lindsay Graham's funding from the private contractors in this case? Well, the Super PAC supporting the presidential campaign of Senator Lindsey Graham, remember he ran for president for a minute? Well, that raised $2.9 million through the end of June, a significant portion of which came from defense contractors that stand to gain from Graham's advocacy for greater military intervention around the world.

and increased defense spending. Because we have, look, we have to do it, right? According to the defense industry, we absolutely must take what is left of the wealth at the bottom and just funnel it back to the top. Just a handful of defense companies, just raping and pillaging the American people. And of course, making the globe less safe as a result of their greed. But there's more. Graham's super PAC called Security is Strength received $500,000 from billionaire Ron Perlman,

whose company McAndrews and Forbes owns AM General, the manufacturer of Humvees and other products for the military. The super PAC also received $25,000 from Jeffrey Imelt, the chief executive of General Electric, which is, of course, another major defense contractor. But my favorite part of this is what you're about to hear, which is during an interview with USA Today, Lindsay Graham himself argued that the defense industry is pouring money into his campaign coffers because it's a great investment. I mean, they sometimes say the quiet parts out loud and it's incredible.

If I were a defense contractor, I'd be a big, I'd be big time for Lindsey Graham because I've been forward leaning on rebuilding our military. People come to you because of your positions. Come on. It's just, it's amazing how this system works. I'm curious what Lindsay Graham's positions would be. If there were a well-financed group of peace-loving Americans who also donated to his campaigns, maybe donated a little more than defense contractors do, I'm just genuinely curious what

unbrived Lindsey Graham would say about this war, how he would perceive the situation. Because again, I just want to reiterate, shooting down Russian planes, the United States, shooting down military planes belonging to another nuclear power is a clear escalation of war. He knows that. And he's calling for it, as if it's a smart idea, as if it's not belligerent, as if it's not responsible, but is that what he really thinks? If you take the money out of it, what does Senator Lindsey Graham genuinely want? Now, if we go to our international partners and actually listen to what they're saying, it's fascinating because it seems like there's this desire

for peace talks, peace negotiations. In fact, China, which is an ally of Russia, put out a list of, you know, where to start for peace negotiations. And you would think that. our Western partners would immediately brush that off and say, no, I'm not, I'm not interested in that. But it turns out that's actually not the case. You're not going to see this coverage in most U.S. media. But I do want to talk a little bit about Wolfgang Ishinger, who is, or he used to be the chair of the Munich Security Conference. He recently sat down for an interview with DW, which is a news organization based in Germany. And in that conversation, he specifically talked about the need for Western countries, the Western alliance, to come together

and start discussing what the standards would be, what the asks would be for a potential peace deal. Like the fact that they haven't come together to do that yet, I think is pretty damning evidence that there's just been this, let's keep going, let's keep this war going environment, as opposed to, all right, what's the plan to actually push for peace? But nonetheless, I want to hear a little bit from this interview, so let's watch. I think we need to make sure that we are singing from the same song sheet. Are we singing from the same song sheet today, the United States, the Biden administration, the United Kingdom, France, the entire European Union, NATO allies, Poland, the Baltic states,

are we in agreement about how we want, if and when a negotiating scenario appears, how we want to conduct it, are we in agreement, what our position would be, let's assume Ukraine will unfortunately or might unfortunately not be able to re-liberate Crimea from their point of view, it's Ukrainian territory. And I would agree it's Ukrainian territory. So what are the options if they can't liberate by military, by the use of military? was Crimea. So the question that he's asking there is an important one, because when it comes to a peace deal, there needs to be compromised, clearly.

And so the question of Crimea should be debated, should be discussed among Western allies. What would a peace deal look like? What is an acceptable peace deal for Ukraine? What would Russia agree to? I get that they're far away from that right now, but the fact that they're not even having conversations about what a peace deal would look like is an issue. Because let's just keep it real, guys, if you have a superpower, a hegemonic force like the United States pouring hundreds of billions of dollars in military aid and weaponry

into your country, that leads to a disincentive to engage in potential peace talks that could lead to potential compromises, right? If you know that you have this unlimited support from a superpower like the United States, again, that does serve as a disincentive. You're going to keep asking for more military weaponry. You're going to keep the war going. You're going to keep fighting because you don't want to compromise. But I would just ask anyone who thinks that's the right path to move forward with. How many people need to die in Ukraine in order to see whether or not, Ukraine can somehow, with the help of the United States pouring hundreds of billions of dollars into the country through military aid, liberate Crimea.

But look, I'm not an expert on this issue, right? I think that the Western countries that are aligned on this issue, as you just heard in that interview, need to sit down and really determine what would a peace deal look like. And more importantly, how do we persuade both sides to sit down and at least begin negotiating this peace deal. There were failed peace talks in the very beginning. Now there are no peace talks at all. And I think that's a problem. With that said, I do want to go to how, you know, what his reaction was,

what Wolfgang Ishinger's reaction was to China attempting to broker a peace deal. And his answer honestly surprised me. So let's watch. I think it would be a big mistake, a diplomatic error, if we decided to ignore the Chinese paper. I agree. The Chinese paper is not a peace plan. It's just a list of rather abstract positions. And there are points, there is at least one point among the 12 points, which I think would be quite unacceptable to Western negotiators. That's the point about sanctions, where China argues that it is unlawful under international

law for the West to slap sanctions on Russia without proper UN Security Council entitlement. But when you look at the other points in the Chinese paper, I think that the other points, I think they are not totally useless at all. You're not going to hear that perspective in the United States. And that's the reason why I was surprised at how seriously Ishinger took China's letter. Right. So he doesn't want to call it a peace deal. He doesn't want to call it a peace proposal. I get it. But it's a good or a potential starting off point. That's how negotiations work.

you have both sides, you know, saying what they would like to accomplish what their proposal is. And through negotiations, there's some give and take, there's some compromise. But at the end of the day, if those negotiations are successful, we could see a day where the war in Ukraine ends. And so rather than brushing off China and saying, well, China's not an ally, China's adversarial, China this, China that, our Western allies seem to be more open to engaging in these negotiations and these conversations. Now, do we know whether Putin is open to those negotiations and conversations? We don't know.

But there should at least be some sort of blueprint where our Western allies are all in agreement as to what a decent peace deal would look like. And they haven't even done that. That is so incredibly concerning to me. Because again, it's not just about the weapons that get sent to Ukraine. It's not just about that. It's about the lives that are lost as this war keeps going. And it is shocking to me that there isn't more of a call, a more united front among those on the left,

in pushing for peace negotiations. Doesn't mean that you abandon Ukraine. It doesn't mean that you let Russia do whatever it wants to the Ukrainians. But so far what I've seen from the United States government in response to this is more military weaponry, more military funding toward Ukraine, and more of a disincentive for Ukraine to sit down and potentially work out a peace deal with Russia. Just keeping it real with you. We got to take a break.

When we come back, we've got more news for you, including the Civil War within Fox News over this very issue. Don't miss it. Are Sean Hannity and Tucker Carlson Frenemones? Maybe. Let's watch. What would Ronald Reagan do right now? He would start shooting Russian planes down that they were threatening our asses. What would Ronald Reagan do? Oh, good question, Senator Graham.

Ronald Reagan's two-term presidency was notable for the fact that he did not declare war on the Russian Air Force and therefore the United States did not go to war with Russia. And millions of lives were saved as a result. You just watched Tucker Carlson attack Lindsey Graham for openly calling for war with Russia over the fact that a Russian plane collided with. with a US drone. Now luckily the United States has responded to people questioning whether we're going to escalate war with Russia and General Mark Millie's like, incidents happen and no, we are not

going to do that, which is the right way to go. But what Tucker failed to mention in his monologue there is that Graham made those comments on Sean Hannity's show, his colleague on Fox News. And Tucker's colleague Hannity was incredibly receptive to that pro-war. war message. Fox News now stands divided on the issue of how to respond to Russia, which is fascinating. You have Tucker Carlson taking a more, for lack of a better word, populist approach with the story. And if you look at the voter base for the Republican Party, there's a slim majority that's still supportive of the U.S. supporting Ukraine. About 51% in recent polls want to

continue providing aid to Ukraine. But that number has gone down considerably when you compare it to where Republican voters' minds were at in the very beginning of that war. So my view of this is that Tucker Carlson is just following where the voter base is and he's pandering to them. I don't really think he has a genuine ideology on this issue. But it doesn't matter. For the sake of this conversation, let's pretend like he does. Okay. Hannity and Brian Kilmey though, openly cheerlead for the United States to engage in a hot war with Russia. So let's watch Senator Lindsey Graham's full comments, followed by the rest of Tucker Carlson's commentary. They shot down our drone. What should our answer be? Well, we should hold them accountable and

say that if you ever get near another U.S. set flying in international waters, your airplane would be shot down. What would Ronald Reagan do right now? He would he would start to. shooting Russian planes down if they were threatening our assets. Ronald Reagan's two-term presidency was notable for the fact that he did not declare war on the Russian Air Force, and therefore the United States did not go to war with Russia. And millions of lives were saved as a result. That's not a small thing, but one in the Reagan win column there. Another president they told you was a crazed warmonger who actually kept us out of war,

but won the Cold War anyway. And how did Reagan do that? Well, simple, he kept the American economy strong. Remember that? Seems like a long time ago, it's pretty much the opposite of the approach being pushed right now by Lindsey Graham and his friends in the war party. Their plan is to ignore our borders in the United States, but to defend Ukraine's. They're even funding the Ukrainian pension system, not kidding, as our own American banks collapse. What would Ronald Reagan do? He'd probably vomit if he saw it. We're glad Ronald Reagan is not here to watch

Lindsey Graham invoke his name to justify anti-American stupidity. So while you have Tucker Carlson taking a clear anti-war approach to this issue and clearly calling out a Republican senator for his views on it, behind the scenes you have Hannity yucking it up with Senator Lindsey Graham on this issue and essentially cranking up the militarism to 11. Let's watch. Now Putin's thugs, as we talked about last night, they took down a U.S. Reaper drone over international waters, which in most cases, most presidents would view as an act of war. There would be some military response. What did Biden do in response?

Pretty much nothing. Actually, worse than nothing, the White House started to make excuses for Putin's risky behavior. Now get this. Russia is now attempting to retrieve our drone from the Black Sea that they took out of the sky before our Navy can get to it. Where is the pushback? Joe, where are you? You're the commander in chief.

Where is American leadership? Why are you going to take this? Can I just ask you guys something real quick? Because this is a U.S. drone off the coast of Russia. what would the United States do if there was a Russian drone off the coast of, you know, the United States? Just a genuine question, hoping for a genuine answer. And I think you guys know what the answer is, okay?

I think we'd go even further than Russia did in this case of shooting down, not shooting down, but colliding with a U.S. drone. But nonetheless, you also have Brian Kilmead, who backed Sean Hannity's calls for an escalation. And he did so in an interview with Republican representative August flugger or flugger. Let's watch. People say, well, we don't want World War III. Who does? But with the Russians, weakness get you there quicker.

They cannot afford to confront us. They cannot handle the Ukrainian army. Do you think they can handle NATO? Why don't we think boldly and strongly? You're exactly right. The only thing that Russians respect is strength. And this is the thing that our foreign policy, it starts at the top. You know, we should have a strong approach in every aspect of foreign policy.

And now you see the weakness that's coming out of the response here. The Russians respect strength? How so? The Ukrainian response to Russia's invasion has been incredibly strong. And Russia doesn't appear to respect it. I mean, it's just incredible to me how these neocons have learned no lessons from all of our foibles, our foreign policy foibles over the last several decades. And they just want more war. But here's the thing. You'd be naive to think that this is what they have organically come up with, that they've done their due diligence.

And they've read all the details. They've researched the matter. They're getting briefed on the matter. They really, really care. They know what they're talking about. No, don't be naive. Let's go to the representatives campaign contributors in this case. And if you look at the defense industry, one of his top donors when it comes to, you know, defense.

So even if the issue has to do with escalating war with a nuclear power, I don't know if people really fully understand that. Okay, mutually assured destruction is a possibility if you ramp up war with a nuclear power. But since their campaign donors demand them to escalate the situation, they're going to do it. They're going to do it knowing full well that it could lead to the destruction of the United States through the use of military, through the use of nuclear weapons. It is out of this world. It is insane. They don't care. When you're greedy, you're willing to destroy anything for that money, anything.

Including the country you live in, it really is amazing to watch it. So we'll see how this disagreement within Fox News is going to play out. It really is fascinating to watch. But I do agree, I can't believe I'm saying this, with Tucker Carlson's take on this, we absolutely should not escalate war with Russia over one of their planes colliding with one of our drones off the coast, you know, off the coast of Russia. It's insane. All right, well, let's move on because this story is, you know what?

This story, in my opinion, is a perfect example of how people can only see through their own lived experience and can't understand the plight of others. Let's do it. If there is a problem of children actually starving, that is a child endangerment scenario to which CPS needs to be called. If you're talking about actual child starvation, the truth is it does not take that much money to feed a child. I know I have three of them. You should be feeding your child before you feed yourself. Ben Shapiro had fascinating and strange take on what should happen to children who are

suffering as a result of starvation, suffering because their families don't have enough money to feed them. And so let's listen to more of his argument in context. And then I'll break down what the reality is. If government can protect kids from the sick radical election, they also protect kids from hunger. When it makes sense to strengthen food stamps and have school lunch be free since some kids are in school lunch debt. Well, I mean, if you are a parent, school lunches are not going to solve the problem of child hunger at any serious level. If there is a problem of children actually starving, that is a child endangerment scenario to which CPS needs to be called.

If you're talking about actual child starvation, the truth is it does not take that much money to feed a child. I know I have three of them. You should be feeding your child before you feed yourself. It's that simple. There's a much deeper problem at work than school lunches if kids are legitimately starving. So I think the deeper problem with Ben Shapiro's argument is that he immediately thought of this issue through the lens of his own experience in life as someone who is incredibly wealthy, as someone who has never had any issues in providing food for his three children, which is great.

I wish every American was in that position, but they're not. A lot of Americans are not in that position. In fact, child hunger declined in America during the pandemic, thanks to the universal school lunch program that was implemented. That meant that school lunches were free for students. And believe it or not, there are many students across the country who rely on free school lunches in order to get the nutrition they need to survive. It sounds crazy to someone who might be incredibly wealthy.

But it is the truth. And this is the result of a system that has led to stagnant wages for several decades since the 1970s. This is the situation that we deal with when we have no labor power in this country and Congress that refuses to represent the best interests of its constituents because they're literally paid by corporate interests not to. I mean, it's so obvious when you look at the reality of the matter when you look at poverty in America, even before the pandemic, before the pandemic, the Federal Reserve put out a report indicating that nearly half of the country, half of Americans couldn't even afford a $400 emergency. So while it might be super easy

for some people like Ben Shapiro to provide the food their children need to be happy, healthy and thrive, unfortunately there are a ton of Americans who are not in that position. So let's get to the details. What's really transpiring with hunger in America, particularly hunger toward children? And what would it look like if we just snatch children away from their families if they were too poor to provide the food their kids need? Because let me tell you something, with all these abortion restrictions in red states, they're going to be a lot of poor people ending up with children they can't afford. And what's the proposal here to take the kids away and put them in foster care? Which, by the way, if the concern here is government resources

going toward social programs or government programs, how do you think child protective services is funded? So instead of putting more funding toward child protective services, we could, you know, make sure the kids have the food they need to survive. But anyway, let me give you the details. So school lunches are carried out in the United States by the national school lunch program. They provide both low cost or free lunches to children, and they operate in 100,000 public and non-profit private schools. Now, in fiscal year 2019, before the coronavirus pandemic, the program provided 4.9 million lunches, I'm sorry, 4.9 billion lunches at a total of about 14.2 billion Now, you have to be extremely poor in order to qualify for free school lunches.

How poor exactly? Well, according to the USDA, students from households with incomes at or below 130% of the federal poverty line can receive a free lunch. That is incredibly poor. What do I mean by that? Well, 130% of the poverty line for a three person family is two. $2,495 a month, or about $29,940 a year. The poverty level is higher, obviously, for bigger families, meaning if you have more kids,

you know, the number could be higher in terms of your annual income and you'd still qualify, but obviously you have more kids and that's an incredibly heavy expense, as we know. Raising children is very, very expensive. Now, with that said, how far does $29,940 go in a country that is grappling with inflation? Now, prior to these inflationary pressures, you can imagine that income is incredibly low and incredibly difficult to get by on, particularly if you have children. Now, prices of goods and services are currently at a 40-year high, leaving consumers with less money in their budgets for things like savings and debt repayment.

Americans devoted 9.1% of their incomes to expenditures in 2021, then in 2020, according to the most recent consumer expenditure survey. And that's according to reporting by bank rate. And inflation hit food prices pretty hard, something we've been talking about on this show a lot, something that the right wing actually loves talking about because they want to blame it on Biden. So when it's convenient, they love talking about how crippling inflation is, especially at the grocery stores. But then when it comes to funding government programs that help starving children, all of a sudden, I mean, if you can't provide food for your kids, maybe we take them away. Think about that. Now, in 2021, households in the lowest income quintile spent an average of $4,875 on food representing, get a load of this, 30.6% of their income. That is insane.

while households in the highest income quintile spent an average of $13,975 on food representing 7.6% of their income, meaning the wealthiest individuals in this country, as a result of their extreme wealth, obviously, spend a far smaller portion of their earnings on groceries. So the food prices have obviously hit the poorest Americans, the hardest. Now, why don't we take a look at the price changes for food at home categories, okay? So this is from the USDA, the Economic Research Service, using U.S. Department of Labor and Bureau of Labor Statistics data, and here's what they found. Average annual food at home prices were 11.4% higher in 2022 versus 2021. Now, for context, the 20-year historical level of retail food price inflation is 2% per year.

But in 2022, prices for all food categories increased faster than their historical averages from 2002 to 2021. Prices for nine food categories increased by more than 10% in 2022. Egg prices rose most sharply by 32.2% percent. prices for fats and oils increased by 18.5%, poultry increased by 14.6%. Other meats increased by 14.2%. You guys get the point, right? You guys get the point. So the economic situation for most Americans, nearly half of Americans, was already precarious, already awful prior to the pandemic. The pandemic made things far worse. In fact, here's a profile on one family, and what they've experienced.

Is there a night that you and your husband go without food just to make sure the kids have food? Most of the time. We will make sure that they have had their portion and maybe another portion before we would eat. And me and dad have kind of gotten to the point of now that we only eat maybe once a day. All right, y'all. Let's set us settle down. Meet the Gray family, three kids with special needs, dad, a dishwasher, and Shana, a server.

So just to get a little bit of food is a hard deal nowadays. Both of them lost their jobs when restaurants were forced to close. Sun milk this morning. Entering their apartment is humbling. Inequality exploded further during the coronavirus pandemic. Americans now have record consumer debt, record household debt. And we keep hearing about like, oh, but they got the, that stimulus money, though. But if you take a look at their finances, they're struggling.

And so the idea of punishing them by taking their kids away due to their inability to afford food, enough food to keep them happy and healthy is insane to me. And also would be a massive expense. If that's all you care about, if you care about, oh, we don't want to fund more government stuff, how do you make the case that taking kids away from their parents and having child protective services deal with them is cost effective. I mean, it's incredibly cruel and wrong. You're punishing the poor by taking their kids away. But on top of that, it would also be incredibly expensive. With that said, let's also talk about other cost burdens that everyone has to deal with in this country. But it's particularly difficult if you're only raking in a little

more than $29,000 a year in a three-person household. A report from Redfin, for instance, shows that nationally listed rents for available apartments rose 15% between June of 2021 and 2022, and the median listed rent for an average apartment rose above $2,000 a month for the first time. So let's just quickly do the math. $2,000 a month for rent. How much are you going to spend on rent in one year? $24,000.

So if you are bringing in household income of $29,400, whatever the number was, $29,940, I believe it was, if you're spending $24,000 of that on rent, how do you have anything left for all the other expenses, including food? But look, I mean, that's average, that's the average cost of rent. So let me be fair, let's get to some specifics on. the cheapest rent you could possibly find in the United States. If you're really poor, you can't afford food for your kids, maybe you move to a place that has cheaper rent. So you've got Houston. Here's the top 10 places to go if you're looking for the cheapest rent. In Houston,

Texas, on average is about 1,349, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, 1,322. Let's go all the way down to the very cheapest place to live, according to Clippinger, which compiled this list. That's Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, $892. And that's if you can find the absolute cheapest rent in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. Okay. So if a family living 130% below the poverty line is somehow able to score the absolute cheapest rent on average, they would still need to spend $10,000, $10,000. $10,000. $7,704 on rent per year when they're only bringing in, let's just round it out, $30,000 a year. You get what I'm saying? Like, okay, so that housing expense is out of control.

Food prices, thanks to inflation, out of control. All of this is out of control. You got to deal with utilities. You got to deal with transportation, clothing. And yes, food. So believe it or not, if you're well-to-do and you think like school lunches, What does school lunches do? School lunches aren't saving people from hunger. You'd be mistaken. A ton of students rely on free lunch at schools.

I'd love to live in a country that doesn't have a rigged economic system. I'd love to live in a country where the Federal Reserve doesn't get to put its thumb on the scale and drive some of the insane inequalities that we've seen in this country. I'd love to live in a country where labor unions have a seat at the table and are able to, to negotiate for far better working conditions and wages so people don't need to rely on government programs to close the gap. But we don't live in that country, partly because of the policies that the right wing, and just let's just like corporate Democrats as well, like corporate politicians have fueled

that favors the wealthy, that favors corporations, and puts all of us at a disadvantage. We got to be real and we got to take care of our fellow Americans. and it just really pains me to see that anyone would advocate for taking children away from their parents if they have this inability to provide sustenance for their kids. Why do they have that inability? Maybe we need to address that in the first place. All right, we got to take a break when we come back. R.M. Brown will be joining me for the second hour.

Don't miss it. 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 at apple.com slash t-y-t. I'm your host, Shank Huger, and I'll see you soon.