The Young Turks - War With Iran Avoided... For Now

Episode Date: June 21, 2019

Trump has pulled back on attacking Iran for now. Cenk Uygur, Nomi Prins, and John Iadarola, hosts of The Young Turks, break it down. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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or not. Oh, yeah, okay. For some reason, I thought there was going to be more. Donald Trump apparently took us right to the brink of war with Iran last night before deciding at the last second, eh, maybe not today. Maybe not today either, but the day is not done. So this is what the reporting was this morning. President Trump approved military strikes against Iran in retaliation for downing an American

surveillance drone, but pulled back from launching them on Thursday night after a day of escalating tensions. Planes were in the air and ships were in position, but no missiles had been fired when word came to stand down. Donald Trump added something like context in a tweet storm saying, on Monday they shot down an unmanned drone flying in international waters. We were cocked and loaded to retaliate last night on three different sites, spelled incorrectly, when I asked, how many will die?

150 people, sir, was the answer from a general. This is the present United States. Ten minutes before the strike, I stopped it, not proportionate to shooting down and on-maned drone. I am in no hurry. Our capital M military is rebuilt, new, and ready to go by far the best in the world. Sanctions are biting and more added last night. Iran can never have nuclear capitalized weapons, capitalized, not against the USA, not against the world. It's a consistent position he has, which is why he took us out of a treaty that was stopping them from developing nuclear weapons.

Yes, so I have a number of bones to pick, as everybody does. As usual, I don't think you should probably be talking about foreign policy in this level of detail and a tweet, let alone the mistakes, et cetera. I obviously agree a thousand percent with John that shouldn't have gotten us out of the treaty in the first place and we wouldn't have this problem. Having said all that, I'm pretty ecstatic about this. I think this is probably the best decision Donald Trump has made in his presidency, and I don't really care too much about the veracity of the timeline of whether it was in 10 minutes

to go or not. And when they told them, we'll just get into all those details anyway in a second. But I also like his reasoning, whether it's true or untrue, hey, you know, 150 people dying because they hit a drone is disproportionate. The fact that he can, we remember, whatever Trump says becomes Republican orthodoxy immediately. So I guess now the Republican Party, at least the voters and the base thinks, oh yeah, you shouldn't use disproportionate force on another country. Great, wonderful, I'll take it.

I totally agree. It's good that we're not having a war tonight. I think that's a good thing, and however Trump got to that. But the concern that I have is with everything that he does is that you cannot actually rely on it. So my concern is that he'll just wake up in the middle of night and be like, oh, wait a minute, it's 150. Well, what does that look like to me from a reelection perspective? I mean, I don't know. But I think it is good.

We should not have gone out of the treaty to begin with. He is consistent in being inconsistent and erratic, but that remains my concern about him. I feel like I'm taking crazy pills. I don't understand. Literally the only reason he could make the choice to not strike Iran was because hours earlier he'd made the choice to strike Iran. The only reason there were tensions in the air is because he and John Bolton and others in his administration are fomenting them.

The only reason the drone was either directly over Iran or close to it was because they put it there so that they could justify some sort of conflict. The only reason that any of this is here is because he pulled out of the deal. They said they pulled out of the treaty because the treaty wouldn't stop them from getting nuclear weapons. I don't believe that at all. They pulled out of the treaty because the treaty was stopping them from working to develop nuclear weapons, which provided no justification to invade them. Get rid of the treaty, maybe they start to develop it and that gives you an opening to attack them. All of this is their creation and him deciding at the last second not to do it is an invented,

manufactured as it says down here, a situation that he put together. I don't want us to go to war, but I'm gonna give him basically no credit for not doing what he decided to do earlier. Yeah, so, John, you're both completely right and totally wrong at the same time. So on the facts you're right, so for example, the Special Olympics, he did the same exact trick, you know what, I'm gonna take away all the money from Special Olympics, you know what, that didn't play well, I'm putting it back, I'm putting it back, I'm the greatest person to ever deal with Special Olympics because I put the money back in, which I had earlier

stolen, right? That's sort of what I'm saying. No, yeah, exactly. So I get it and I'm agreeing with you on that front. And we can get into an argument about whether he deserves credit for pulling the strikes back in history, right, at a later date. But today, the part that I don't agree with you on is I hear you, but nonetheless, the Republican Party is at best 50-50.

No, it's probably 85% yes, go to war with Iran, only 15%. No. They elected officials. They're elected officials. Not the voters. No, no, the voters don't want to go to war either, right? Again, I'm not a guy who's soft on the Republican base. Everybody on TV is like, oh, you can't insult Republican voters.

No, I insult them all the time. Okay, but on this, they're generally correct, they don't, and they're also correct on getting money out of politics. They don't like the war, they don't like the corruption, they're correct on those things. But at Republican officials, they're desperate to go to war. So when you have the president being an outlier in his own party and the 15% that are saying, no, I don't give a damn if he turned it around a second before they launched the missiles, right? And I know he's a child, he went on to brag.

He's like, oh, you know, it was me who made the decision, it was a command decision. Of course! You're the president and commander and chief. You're the president and commander chief. Who else do you think he's going to make the decisions? But do you trust that that's going to be what he continues to, that's his path? Or that someone else is going to piss him off and he's going to retract what he retracted that he shouldn't have done to begin with?

Okay, so all great questions. Am I worried that he's going to flip-flop? Of course! He changes his mind every second depending on whether it's Tucker Carlson or Sean Hannity talking to him. Literally in this case, Hannity wants to go to war, Tucker Carlson doesn't want to go to war. That's why he's like, let's bomb around. Forget, don't bomb Iran, because I got a call from Tekra after I got a call from Hannity,

right? And so, but guys, look at the precarious position we're in. If we hit Iran, they will definitely hit us back. And when they hit us back, then of course, everybody will then say, we've got to show resolve, we've got to show stomach for the fight, and I can't believe it, et cetera, and there's a very important wrinkle here that I want to get to in a second. So when all that happens, we're gonna go to war. And when we go to war, we're gonna lose a ton of soldiers, so we're gonna lose a lot

of American lives. We're gonna have tens of thousands of casualties eventually, the wounded, et cetera. God knows how many hundreds of thousands of Iranians were gonna kill, innocent civilians, and the costs are going to be in the trillions of dollars. And then they're gonna say, we can't pay for your kids' college, we can't pay for your kids' cancer, because I spent all the money on John Bolton's war in Iran. So in a situation that precarious, under any circumstance that Trump, the flighty mercurial Trump, Manchild, makes the correct decision, we should all be going, yes, yes, keep going

in that direction, way to be a bold leader, way to be commander in chief. So later we can debate whether he gets a certain percentage of credit or not once he's out of office. But where's this close to war. I get what you're saying, I'm going to work my butt off so that someday I don't have to live in a country where you have to talk to our president as if we're training a puppy effectively. And thankfully, we didn't go to war with North Korea, we didn't overthrow the leadership of Venezuela only because in those situations he either developed a bizarre friendship with

a dictator. And as of reporting yesterday with Venezuela, he got bored and he moved on. And now maybe no Iran, maybe Iran. I don't want to be put in that position. The only way we got even close to those three conflicts is because Donald Trump won in 2016 and decided to surround himself with warmongers like John Bolton like we were predicting that he would. And so I get what you're saying about pragmatically or strategically trying to influence him,

but I can also see what he's doing. And really fast, in terms of the credit, some people online are giving him credit. Literal credit for saving lives. Now, granted, these are some pretty dim people. These are conspiracy there's, but they're very influential on the rights. So Bill Mitchell tweeted, President Trump was ready to strike three Iranian targets last night. He was informed this would cost 150 Iranian lives and called off the attack because one drone was not worth 150 lives.

That's leadership. I'm telling you, John, I want to encourage that, man. I guess, but how stupid is that? That he apparently authorized a strike on a country and didn't think to ask how many people would die until hours and passed. Right, before hand. You authorized it without knowing what would happen? That does not reassure me.

That scares the hell out of me. No, John, if you're going to break down the details, of course you're going to be right. That's the whole point of damage. My contribution to the show. I will break everything down until I'm right. Okay, no, guys, think about it, it didn't occur to him to ask how many people were gonna die until 10, while the New York Times reports, the planes were in the air, until 10 minutes, according to Trump's version of it, and the New York Times reporting of it, 10 minutes before the strike, he hadn't occurred to him how many people were gonna die, how many civilians were gonna die, or non-civilians were gonna die, and he's like, wait a minute, what happens when a bomb lands? Right? People die. Yeah, that's what happens with a bomb lands. But again, I'll take it. But again, he also did it. He also completely ignored the rest of the world. And this is sort of a part of the whole sort of psychosis of just just how he acts.

But everyone in Europe was like backing away from any possibility of like having a conversation. They were effectively letting him know that this would be a really dumb thing to do. That did not stir him. The fact that the entire rest of the world, who actually did not, you know, who actually supported staying in the Iranian agreement, decided to basically signal they're not going to be in this war if this war happens. That did not change his mind. That was insignificant in this whole chain of, I don't want to say thought, but like whatever the electrons happened.

Actions and in actions, right. So let me give a little bit more detail than that and then give you the really important other point here. So right now as it stands, none of the European nations are supporting, dropping a bomb on Iran, attacking around, any of that stuff. So the only allies we would have if we went to war are United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, and Israel. That's it.

It's those four, including half the Trump administration, versus all of the rest of the world, saying, no, that doesn't make any sense, don't do that, okay? And now the very, very important wrinkle. It turns out the Iranians shot down a drone, but according to reporting, there was a second plane that entered their waters that they did not shoot down. And that was a plane with 35 Americans on it, a military plane. If they had shot it down, would already be in the middle of a war. So that if the reporting is correct, the Iranians showed excellent restraint.

So thank God they did. They're not showing restraint now. After Trump pulled back the missiles, they're yelling at him and said, oh yeah, we're gonna get you, I'm like, shush, shush, you almost all got killed you idiots and got your civilians killed for no reason, shut up already. But good restraint on not shooting down the ship that had people in it, but most importantly, that means somebody in the Trump administration, probably without asking Trump because he's not in favor of it.

I don't know if it was Bolton or Pompeii or someone at the Pentagon or a combination of all of those people said, let's go risk those American service members' lives and hope that they get shot down and murdered so that we can go to war. That is a sick, sick calculation. They should figure out who the hell gave the order to have 35 of those guys die in order to start this war. Thank God the Iranians didn't shoot. But if they had, they were willing to sacrifice those guys' lives.

If you were on that plane, you should be furious that they use you for fodder like that. Yeah, if someone could tweet Ken Klippenstein to FOIA them, let's find out who authorized that. And the last point I want to make on it is overall, my goal is no war with Iran, no war with Venezuela, no war with North Korea, no war at all. And the way to get that is not to just hope that we're going to get through another day without Donald Trump launching one. It's to get him out of office. And so there's no necessary reason to tie this into the frustrations that we have with Democratic leadership, but Nancy Pelosi's strategy of, maybe he committed impeachable offenses, but we're

going to wait a year and a half and leave it up to the voters. That is not a strategy without a cost. That is a strategy whose cost is every single day, hoping that one of the most tempestuous, petulant people in our country decides not to follow their whims into a war with Iran, or God knows what other country. That is the situation that we have to deal with every day because she and others around her have made the decision that we're gonna take our constitutional responsibility and we're gonna throw it to the people in a year and a half.

And he can do whatever he wants until then. And just a fun note to end on here. John mentioned our senior investigative reporter, Ken Klobenstein. The FBI apparently has him on a list of the people who ask for most freedom of information requests. And so that's how you do real journalism, you get documents that you have the rights to get to. on a top 10 vexum list.

They're vexed, very, very vexed by Ken Klippenstein. That is a list that I love that we are on, that Ken got D-YD on in some sense. And by the way, you guys funded our investigative reporters, so way to go, you have vexed the FBI. We've vexed them greatly. Nicely, John. Why do we take our first break before we come back with some of the effort to push him into war? All right. That sounds good, including Fox News hosts. Yes, they're split, but it's a lot of things are inverted. Some of the good guys are bad guys. Some of the bad guys are good guys. It's fascinating and it's a mess. But we are going to be winning with that mess when we come back.

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On Twitter, Greg Van Neat writes, and if Trump made a point of saying it was his decision, And that tells me someone, and he put Putin, question mark, told him to back off. That is interesting. Maybe, maybe. I don't know about Putin. I'm saying maybe someone told him, and that's why he's saying it was me, it was me, right? It's a good point. But on the other hand, he also did this with Air Force One, where he was like, you know,

it was me who picked the colors. It was me. And he said the design of the wall. Yeah. I think that he sees reelection perversely as lying in some sort of conflict with Iran, and I think he wants to drag it out longer. Yeah, all right. So the Beard writes, and Hey, Jen, can you, John, and Nomi wish my wife a happy birthday?

I told her I would try to get her favorite news source to wish her happy birthday live. Her name is Jessica Beard, and it would mean the world to her if you could do this favorite. Jessica, happy birthday. Happy birthday. That's awesome. Okay. And then Stewart says, Nomi Prince, this is perfect, I just bought collusion on audio book for my summer road trip. Oh, thank you.

That's a great audio too. All right, check out collusion. And the 88 other books that Nomey wrote that are all brilliant. Last one, Jara Wax in the member section says, I'm on team win win now, Jank. I like the sound of divesting my money from big banks because they're investing in everything I hate. So speaking of which, we've been doing this day long event for aspiration.com slash tywit. Now, if we get to, we just made up an arbitrary goal right now.

We're at about 80 signups. If we get to 200 signups, what we're gonna do is give you guys extra, including me maybe getting dunked in a dunk tank, okay? So that's gonna be at the end of the two hour show, there's gonna be a game show, and then we're gonna see if that happens, and there's other things like Jared's gonna eat really spicy wings, hey, Suez might get a neck tattoo, the crazy stuff. So make us do crazy things. And signing up actually takes very little amount of time.

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Yep. So God bless. Let's make that happen. All right. Okay. Fox News is hot for war with Iran. They want it bad, and remember, that is what Donald Trump watches. So what they say does matter. And since last night, those drums of war have been beating, we're to show you a couple different hosts from last night and throughout today on Fox News. We're going to start, though, with Sean Hannity, who's on one when it comes to Iran, as you'll

see. In coming days, we will know if the mullers are smart enough to take the opportunity, which is a small window. It may not even exist within five minutes. Because if they don't, the president will have no choice. He will bomb the hell out of them. No need for a long protracted boots on the ground kind of war. We have the greatest military, thank God, on the face of this earth. We have the most advanced weapon systems and a strong message.

It needs to be sent that a huge price will be paid if you take on the United States of America. Simple peace through strength, and it works. Simple, that's the good thing about it, that million person military that they have. You just bomb it for a day or two and you get everything that you want. Because that's worked so well in all our other recent wars. Yeah, Iran is four times the size of Iraq and they have a very capable military, not only in fighting a traditional war where we would obviously have a massive advantage, but in fighting a guerrilla war.

And they have Hezbollah and Lebanon that could strike different targets, including Israel. They have funded Hamas in the past, and they have a very capable revolutionary guard and a network of spies and people in their military ready to deploy all across the Middle East and all across the world. So this insane idea of, oh, we just bombed them. We don't even need boots on the ground. And what do you think happens next, Sean? You think they just surrender?

Is that what happened in Iraq? Why did we stay there a dozen years? Why are we still in Afghanistan? What happened? You always said these are all simple. Why doesn't anybody ever say, now for Sean Hannity, everybody knows he's full of crap, but there's plenty of Republican senators and administration officials who say similar things they go on TV and nobody ever challenges on him.

Hey, Lindsay Graham, you said Iraq would be easy. And Iraq was an absolute unmitigated disaster. Or main stuff. And so doesn't that prove that you're an idiot and that you should not be trusted in any of these conversations? And hey, Lindsay, and all of your Republicans, Sean Hannity, how are you gonna be? to pay for that? How are you going to pay for a tremendous war?

Iraq costs at least $2 trillion. What are you going to take out of the budget? Hey, you know what? The tax cuts for the rich cost $2 trillion. You want to bring those back? Do we have a deal? The rich give the $2 trillion back and then we could have a conversation about you bombing around.

Now I wouldn't take that deal anyway, but you know what would happen with the head? No, no, no, no, no, not the tax cuts for the rich, not that, not my beloved rich tax cuts. No way, right? Oh, you see, it's not cost free. And so please, look, even if you're a right-winger, you know that what Hannity said is total idiocy. You know what happened in Iraq, you know what happened in Afghanistan, you know what happened in Vietnam, this idea of, oh, we'll just carpet bomb them and everything will be fine.

And it's just about as dumb a thing as you could possibly say, which makes sense since Hannity said it. They're just sounding more and more alike. I mean, we know they connect, they chat on the phone, Trump and Hannity, but I mean, they literally are using similar words, which is really, really scary. It's super irresponsible of Hannity to say that. We know that he knows he does these things, he says these things, but we're talking about a war.

And those few seconds from his show to basically instigate the idea that we should have a war is so irresponsible from a media and journalistic standpoint, let alone the actual concept of it. Yeah. It's also bizarre, I know that this is a weird point, but it's bizarre that you get in trouble if you yell fire in a crowd of the theater, you get in trouble if you inspire people to riot and someone gets hurt. You can just lie viciously to start a war, and it's totally cool.

They'll pay you millions of dollars every year to do it. Like, does he, I would love for him to just, if you're hearing this, Sean, can you just acknowledge that you know that anti-air defense exists, that planes are not immune to any kind of incoming fire, that there are missiles, flak cannons, a variety of planes that Iran has? He really does seem to think that once you get above 20 feet above the ground, you are immune to any sort of counterfire. Yeah, they feel invincible.

And that kind of arrogance, you know how it ends. Well, actually, we're going to have a little bit more of the invincibility argument in just a second. But I want a little bit more of Hannity because Geraldo actually argues with him against the war with Iran, as you'll see. They shot an American drone out of the air. They're not getting away with it. Well, Sean, if indeed the drone was over Iranian airspace, then it's not a question of getting away with it. It's a question of self-defense. The president was very clear.

We pinpointed the exact location. Let's see their proof. Let's see their proof. Let the international community. See their proof. Okay, let them see our response. Truth matters here. Facts matter.

We should not rush into another disastrous military conflict. How many times do we have to go down this road? How many American lives have to be lost for nothing? Oh, you didn't listen to my law. I did 12 combat assignments nearby in Iraq, 12 others in Afghanistan. I've seen the suffering of our GIs in Congress. How bad, at least let's prove that they were in the wrong. Roldo, I never said boots on the ground.

I said just the opposite. And this president was clear. He does not want these foreign entanglements where young Americans, like 58,000 dead in Vietnam, and all these kids that died didn't even have up armored Humvees in Iraq in the early days, door to door. Those days are over because Washington can't fight a war without politicizing it. But if you shoot an American missile or drone out of the air and you attack tankers in the Straits of Hormuz, you're gonna get the living crap bombed out of you.

I mean, I know that he's stupid, I know he's a propagandist, but I love him invoking the specter of the war in Iraq to get us into a war with Iran. Does he remember who started that war? Does he remember how we were lied to to begin that war? How we were specifically told that it would be easy, couple weeks, in and out, no problem. And did he support that war? Did he do hundreds or thousands of broadcasts in defense of that war? I know who lied us in there.

We remember this, it wasn't that long ago. Yeah, one of the guys who lied us into the Iraq war was Sean Hannity. And he's doing it right now with Iran war you just saw it with your own eyes. So by the way, was the drone in Iranian waters or international waters? So the Iranians put out video of the drone parts shot down in their waters, okay? So then America said, oh yeah, we counted that with a flight plan of the drone that shows you that it was in international waters. And people looked at it and they're like, it doesn't show that at all.

This is a totally incomplete flight plan, and it doesn't show that you're in international waters. What are you guys doing? If you're gonna put out something, at least have it seem like it makes your case. It was clownish as always. And so he's lying that it was in international waters, and he's lying that the Iranians bomb those ships in the first ways, the Japanese and the Norwegian one. Eyewitnesses completely contradict the story of the Trump administration on how those ships

were bombed in the first place, again, lying us into war. And I just found myself nodding yes to Geraldo, because he's right. He's saying what we're saying in terms of like you need evidence to actually show anything. He's also not supporting a war even if there were evidence. And I think if he were given more time, given some of the things he said in the past, he would have also talked about how costly that would be in terms of lives, in terms of, in terms of financing as well. And so I'm glad he was on that show.

I kind of wish that he would have replaced Hannity or Ken in the future. That would be, that would be a good move of Fox. So, well, that's the thing. Fox has split on this as we're gonna show you more, but so is MSNBC. I wanna get to that at the end, but we've got more on Fox. Yeah, so we have, we were talking about the invincibility, that it's all just, it's just planes in the air, but an even more ridiculous and shallow version of that argument was provided, I believe, on the five by Greg Gutfeld.

This is now just a video game. And I think that's good news. We're in an ear, we're now in a time where it doesn't matter how large your population is because the population is no longer expendable in war. It's now about the machines that you have. Drones are now replacing bones, Jesse, yes, I like to do rhyming there. So it'll be stuff versus stuff. And fortunately for us, we have the best stuff.

And if we have the stuff up there, it doesn't matter what they have down there. We control them if we have a sky of drones. So then how do you retaliate, right? How do you retaliate to something that isn't human? Like we, you know, they took $160 million worth of machinery from us. We have to do that, which means either hitting some parts of their navy or refineries or whatever. You find that you retaliate with machines. But I think it's good news because I think we're moving away from hurling bodies and bodies.

That's a good, that's good. Can I discreet slightly? No, you can't. Yes, you can because there are people on the ground. There are actually humans beneath whatever could happen in airspace. Well, we see them as humans. I'm not sure that everyone on Fox News necessarily would. I also love an argument about the hypothetical inability to shoot down a thing in a conflict

begun by the fact that they shot one down, clearly not invincible because we're talking about it right now. And really fast, I know that people like to joke that like the level of the political on the view, like how is it so influential? They don't know as much as we would like. Look at the ridiculous morons that are paid millions of dollars, not just to discuss politics, but to tell the president what to do when it comes to domestic and foreign policy. I mean, look, Gutfeld shows you what monsters most of the right wing are.

They're like, oh, just drop bombs on them. Oh, like they die, who cares? Their civilians die? Who cares? They're not even people. It's a video game to us. His whole point was, we're not going to die, they're going to die, and who cares about them? And so, but a lot of, I'm sure a lot of Republicans agree with that.

So, but their theory is that none of our guys are going to die. But John just pointed out, wait, they shot down a drone, so maybe they could shoot down our fighters. That never occurred to them. And according to their lies, the Iranians are able to take down any tanker they like. They could mine the Japanese, the Norwegians. Guess what? They could also mine us. And so now, I don't think the Iranians did that based on eyewitness testimony, but can they

mine ships? Absolutely. And could they put mines in the water to take down one of our ships and kill a ton of sailors? Yes, they can, unfortunately. So these children on Fox News blabbering, and both in a monstrous way with total indifference a human life, and of course, completely fact-free. Right. So there was another aspect of this that you wanted to talk about.

Yeah, so look, I'm just going to quickly run down all different people who are on different sides. So, and it's topsy-turvy because Shep Smith and Chris Wallace went on Fox News as well. And I feel like Chris Wallace is egging on Trump. And so we keep telling you, even when Chris Wallace holds Republicans accountable, don't forget, he's also a right winger. So he keeps saying on the air over and over again today, I don't know. I don't know if Trump's got the stomach for this fight.

And I don't know that he's got an appetite for this fight, I don't know. And Shep Smith said, hey, isn't he pulling an Obama and switching the red line on people? Like you could be criticizing Donald Trump, but he's watching you guys. And now you're joining the Hannity's and the warmongers and saying, hey, if you're not going to be weak, you better do something to Iran. And of course, Kilmead goes on. And here, we got Kilmead for you guys, let's show you that real quick. Before I do anything, Iran, let's talk a little bit.

And Iran's saying, according to this Reuters story, no, we're not going to talk to. Why would we talk to them? They're blowing up tankers of our allies. They've had seven weeks of unresponded, unresponded military attacks on us and our allies. All our enemies are watching. Of course, Assad is watching. And for seven weeks, nothing but provocations. There's a price to pay for inaction.

And that says a lot. And I think that we have put suffocating sanctions on them. And every day that passes by, they get weaker. However, every day that passes by when they blow up four tankers and we do nothing. When they blow up our drone, it costs $130 million and we do nothing. We know it's not going to end there. So at some point in the Middle East, no action looks like weakness. And weakness begets more attacks.

Now, look, Ainslie Earhart supported the president, supported in a weird kind of way, saying, yeah, he did have made the right decision. So they are mixed on Fox News, but Kill Meade and Hannity are the worst of the worst. Well, actually, Guttfeld as well, saying, oh, you're gonna be weak, you're gonna be weak. Having, giving, lying about the context of the so-called attacks, and then saying we must ruthlessly attack them and murder them, otherwise we'll be seen as weak, okay? And then finally, to MSNBC, unfortunately, Stephanie Ruhl jumped in and went along with the same kind of, in my opinion, things that are egging the president on towards war by saying he's acting like Obama. This is Obama like flip-flopping on the red line, et cetera. So I think it's totally irresponsible to do that.

I don't think Obama did that either, but for you to egg on Trump, you can't egg him on any more than comparing him to Obama, okay? And then, to be fair, John Brennan, who drives me crazy that he's a contributor on MSNBC, in my opinion, as right wing, a Democrat as you can get as part of the national security state has lied over and over again, but now he shocked me by saying Trump did the right thing and we should not go to war with Iran. So, and of course, Tucker Carlson saying over and over again on Fox News, do not go. It's a bad idea and apparently he's also calling the president and telling him not to go

to war with Iran. So it's a strange day in America when I agree with Tucker Carlson, John Brennan, and Donald Trump. And Geraldo. And Geraldo, that's right. Last thing, guys, there's a lot of progressives online who are like in an effort to criticize Donald Trump are backing some of the warmongers. Don't do that.

That's a really, really bad idea. It's one thing to have legitimate criticism as John did earlier in the show pointing out the timeline doesn't make sense, et cetera. It's another thing to prod them going, oh, you're weak, you don't have the stomach for the fight, ha, ha, no, this is not the issue to do that. If you're a progressive, we are against idiotic wars in the Middle East. that are going to get potentially millions of innocent civilians killed. Agreed.

Why don't we take our second break? All right, let's take a quick break. And then there's so much more coming up. There's a piece of hypocrisy. We'll want to cover so badly. We'll do that when we come. At TYT, we frequently talk about all the ways that big tech companies are taking control of our online lives, constantly monitoring us and storing our data.

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In the meantime, enjoy this free second. All right, back on TYT. So we keep rolling on this aspiration stuff. So it turns out if you're a member, you should check your emails because we've sent you something you might want to take a look at, okay? I apparently can't say anything more than that, but you're going to like it. So check your email from the Young Turks if you're a member. If you want to be a member, t-y-t.com slash trial, but actually today, you could also get a free

membership if you sign up for aspiration.com slash t-y-t. Now, that is a win-win, hence in aspiration.com slash ty-t. Okay. Just clear for a month. Just to be clear. Free membership for a month. For a month, yes, that's right. Now, speaking of win-wins, in the debates, we're going to have huge coverage for you guys. We're going to be in Miami. Me and and Emma Vigland, and we're going to be interviewing the candidates. We're asking you guys to come down. We just got a whole bunch of space for you guys. So we're gonna do a watch party on top of doing the rally before the debates.

I think you guys are gonna love it. And so we're trying to make it bigger and bigger. We're inviting some of the candidates to come speak, I'll talk, and I'll talk, we'll meet all you guys that come down there. So t.t.com slash rally to make sure you RSVP, because then we send you information on where to meet up, okay? And we'll text it to you or email it to you. Make sure that you sign up if you're gonna come through t.t.com slash rally.

And here at the studio, John Brooke and Mark are covering the first night. We're gonna have these great teams covering both nights of the debate. That's on June 26th. I'm more excited about it than you'd think from that picture. It actually will be fun. So the three of them are here in LA and the three of us are in Miami and we're gonna do coverage together, including the spin room and asking questions of the candidates right after the debates, Live, so don't miss a minute of it.

You could watch it, of course, at t.com, no matter where you are, but we'd love to have you down at the rally, okay? So now, just a couple of quick tweets for you guys. Nicholas Ward says 160 million, it's actually 130, Nicholas. How many people could get healthcare for that amount of money? He's referring to what Brian Kilmey said, that's what just one drone costs. And they shot it down like that, no problem at all, okay? So Gutfeld and all those guys on Fox News are like, what's the big deal?

We just send the planes and the drones and we bomb the hell out of him. Apparently, it's not that easy. Apparently, if they knock out 100 of our Jones, do the math, okay? God, that is an insane amount of money. And no one ever asks how you're going to pay for that. All right. And Omega Res Sigma Infinity Proteus says, indisputable proof that we're ruled by spoiled rich kids. They want to kill people for shooting down a toy plane.

So unfortunately, that's also true. And by the way, I guess I hadn't thought that everybody had convinced themselves that drones are effectively having iron man fighting for us, I think that we need to do some more education. They have specific uses in surveillance, taking out specific targets. They are not replacements for most planes, not fighters, not bombers, they have limited uses. And they're acting as if it's like sending the Avengers, we got this thing. And I gotta tell you, the one thing that haunts me, West Clark Jr. said this a long time on the show, he said, you know, we think we rule the skies and we're never going to be challenged

on that. But now drones exist. So if we were in a war, he said at the time where China, but it's possible that Iran could do it too. What if they sent hundreds, thousands of their own drones into the sky to just run into our ships and to run into our fighters? They can knock out a lot of our planes, not only cost us a lot of money, but cost us a ton of lives.

And then all of a sudden we don't rule the sky anymore. And remember, no one agrees with us on the Iran war other than Saudi Arabia, UAE, and Israel. So if China says, here, Iran, you're in the middle of a messy war for a decade, why don't you have thousands of drones? And Iran's got enough money to pay for that. Uh-oh, this is a terrible idea. Yeah. So let's turn now to some more bad news, unfortunately.

As our country has a long, serious conversation about whether it was fair of AOC to call the camps at the border concentration camps, the Trump administration is in court trying to make them a bit more concentration-y. With the Trump administration arguing in front of a Ninth Circuit panel Tuesday that the government is not required to give soap or toothbrushes to children apprehended at the U.S.-Mexico border and can have them sleep on concrete floors in frigid, overcrowded cells despite a previous established settlement agreement that requires detainees be kept in safe and sanitary facilities. Now, thankfully, it seems like some of the judges on that panel are not currently

buying the argument with U.S. Circuit Judge Marcia Barzan saying, you're really going to stand up and tell us that being able to sleep isn't a question of safe and sanitary conditions? And U.S. Circuit Judge William Fletcher saying, are you arguing seriously that you do not read the agreement as requiring you to do anything other than what I just described? Cold all night long, lights on all night long, sleeping on concrete, and you've got an aluminum foil blanket. I find that inconceivable that the government would say that that is safe and sanitary. You know, 130 million for that drone, that could buy just a lot of toothbrushes and toothpaste. But beyond that, walking it back, we are talking about. talking about children of people coming here for asylum because they have untenable conditions

at home. And one of the things we are not doing is going to the root of that and spending any money of that. Instead we're we, I.E. the Trump administration is quibbling over the necessary basic human conditions that these children are put in. We have so much money and this is yet another credibly mean. evil thing to fight for them. Yeah, so now we gotta be fair and point out that this case originally arose about

actions that started under the Obama administration. The agreement that was established. Yeah, no, no, the conditions as well. The agreement- I know, that's what led to the agreement originally back in 2017. But they are arguing about current conditions right now. Yes, so those conditions existed under Obama as well. Now the Trump administration is saying we don't want to fix them. We don't agree with the agreement and we don't want to provide safe and sanitary conditions

or give you any indication of anything specific we're going to do to create safe and sanitary conditions. But this was a problem before. The Trump people are saying we like that it's a problem. We don't want to abide by the agreements, et cetera. So if you want to blame Trump, there is plenty to blame Trump on here. But we have not been treating these folks well for a long time. Now, one other thing that's super important though is that under Obama, we had less people

under these conditions. Trump has now said, well, I don't want to release them. So since he's not releasing them, they're piling up and piling up in these detention centers. And one other reason why there's a lot more kids under these conditions today is not just because the family separation policy that Trump did earlier, but because the immigration situation is now more out of control under Trump than before. He said he was gonna fix it. And it's actually now at a record high number of undocumented immigrants crossing the border.

Under Trump, people like, because he talks in such a vicious way, they give him a pass on the fact that there are more undocumented immigrants coming in now. But the reality is, he said he was gonna fix it, and he's done no such thing. All of his vicious talk did not work. It was vicious for the sake of viciousness, but not actually for the sake of viciousness. but not actually for the sake of effectiveness. And again, it does show that there is a reason that these people are coming over, and that reason has grown.

Their economic conditions, the negativity of those conditions has grown over time. So on a double basis, the Trump administration is not helping them to make that better, and they are taking away financing and economic help for things within their countries that could actually help benefit them on the ground. So his policy is actually negative beyond the border, negative beyond what's going on in terms of not supplying them with appropriate supplies to spend that time where they are. It goes to the root of him not wanting to help as a leader the source of the economic distress of these people.

Yeah, and just to double down on the context that you added, both under Obama and now we had at one point a spike in migrants across the border, and now it is justifiably higher. But with Donald Trump, it is a choice to hold on to these people. It is a choice to create overcrowding, perhaps in an attempt to justify the conditions you're holding them under. And we know that all of the barbarity that they're levying on these people is part of a, that is a part of a strategy. They want it to be monstrous to try to scare people outside of the U.S. from coming in.

This is not a situation that they're not adapting to quickly enough or a situation that they bungled. It is a situation that they are crafting by their own design. And in terms of the actual human toll, remember that just since September, six child migrants have died after falling ill at detention facilities. And you can understand how they would fall ill if they're being kept in conditions where they have no soap, obviously no medicine, forget about that, and they're sleeping in cold conditions with an aluminum sheet as a blanket.

On a concrete floor, yes. By the way, Ken Columbus-Syne broke another story for us. The number of deaths got so large that the Trump administration stopped counting. So NBC news reporting that 24 people overall, including the six kids, have died so far because of the miserable conditions that they have been kept in. And so that should inform your way of thinking about how bad the situation has gotten under Trump. Yeah, and if you'd like more on Ken's reporting on how ICE is hiding that, you can go to

YouTube.com slash the damage report where I interviewed him about it earlier this week. Right, or go to t.com and you'll see all of our articles there, including Ken's Peace on Ice. That's fine, but TDR. Anyway, you want to get to one more story? Yes. Well, we can. Okay, Joe Biden's comments this week about his working relationship with some of the most vicious

segregationists in American government over the past century have drawn a lot of condemnation this week, but they've also drawn quite a bit of support with people defending him. Some you might not be that surprised by, but some you might, and we want to show you both of these. So first we have Senator Dianne Feinstein who said, I think everybody is picking on him, press as well as others. He's the frontrunner, so he's the one to shoot down, so to speak. I think it's a little unexpected.

I don't think he has figured for this. Gene Shaheen, also Senator, said, I think it's not helpful to Democrats to attack each other at this stage. Why would you attack another candidate during a primary? Madden this, I say. I'm gonna jump in already. So I remember Feinstein and Shaheen getting so mad when everybody was criticizing Bernie Sanders. Mm-hmm.

Oh, right, they didn't do that at all. In that alternative reality. Isn't that interesting? Bernie Sanders has been attacked from day one through today, every single day, 10 times a day. Feinstein didn't give a damn, never spoke up about it. They don't care about their so-called colleagues. You know that Bernie Sanders is technically in Democratic leadership in the Senate, okay? And that's their leader.

They're like, they don't give a damn, they're like Bernie Sanders. Of course, you just spit on them daily. attack Biden? How could you criticize our beloved establishment buddy Joe Biden? Somebody's gotta stop this. You gotta put an end to this. What is this craziness? I mean, the fact that they cannot see that hypocrisy is amazing.

And whenever you pointed out, they get doubly mad, they're like, oh, yeah, there you guys go again, pointing out things that are true, right? So you tell me how this is any different, because, and this is, they tweaked Biden on comments he made, there wasn't like 28 articles every single day and all, and Hickenlooper said that Bernie Sanders' ideas were like Stalin. None of the Senate Democrats said a goddamn thing about that. Nobody said, hey, hey, Hickenlooper, what are you doing? Bernie's the second place.

He could obviously be the nominee, let alone the fact that he's our colleague. You're calling him Stalin, you monster. Right, yeah. Not a word, not a word. Those Senate Democrats, they don't believe in. They don't believe in colleagues. All they care about is protecting their own ass. So I'm not interested in them saying, don't you dare criticize our beloved Joe Biden?

No deal. Yeah, I agree on that because the reality is, yes, if there is dissension among the Democrats, could it help Trump because then he can pick on them in a different way? Yeah, maybe, and that's some of their points. But the reality is, yes, they did not step up for Bernie Sanders. And they don't have to have agreed with him. They can consider him not to be part of their establishment, sort of like views, which is kind of true. But at the same time, they could have been less, yes, less hypocritical.

So I agree. There is a hypocrisy there. There's a tone deafness. And there's this desire to continue to push sort of the establishment side of the democratic agenda. And now one of the reasons for it is to be able to potentially fight Trump further. I think you can trump, you can trump by actually, you know, focusing on the more progressive side. of the party, if that is what voters are going to do and not try to swing it because they like a particular view of one of their candidates versus in general supporting their candidates

and the people who vote for them. A little bit more defense coming his way. Senator Doug Jones said the real point of Biden's comments was that, quote, when you're sitting next to a Senate colleague, especially someone who was at the time was in his own party, you've got to work together, you've got to figure out and find some common ground. To which I would respond, have you read the comment? from Eastland, they're viciously violent racist stuff. Worse than you probably are imagining if you haven't actually seen it.

You can add a little bit of criticism to your comments. And also, you cannot pretend, as Doug Jones is here, that Joe Biden just exists floating free with no context whatsoever on the issue of segregation. When you look at his positions on busing and topics like that, he is not clean in this area as well. And so him choosing to bring up the specter of segregationist past is certainly what we're worthy of criticism, considering how light the criticism was for him on his own positions on segregation.

We do have one other defender, though, that you might not have expected. There's a few tweets where effectively the argument is sort of similar with Tulsi Gabbard saying, adding Elizabeth Warren and Kamala Harris saying, Joe Biden did not celebrate or coddle segregationists. His critics have unfairly misrepresented his important message to score cheap political points. I agree with, that's Clyburn and Joe Biden, in order for Congress and the president to get things done for the American people, there needs to be civility in Washington and in the

country, the ability to work with those who we disagree, even those who hold some views which we abhor, in order for Congress to work for the American people, we need to find common ground with each other that is not possible without civility. We don't need another president who is going to continue to divide our country, we need a president who will unite us, united we stand, divided we fall. I appreciate the sentiment in a lot of that, but again, I don't think that Joe Biden is clean in this area, and I think that when you combine it with his incredibly naive comments about working with Mitch McConnell and Senate Republicans in the future, we have to be critical

of that approach at this point, even though I agree with a lot of what she said, they're in other contexts. Some of the Senate Democrats called it a gaff. They always call it a gaff. It's not a gaff, that's what Joe Biden believes, that you go work with the opposite side. And so here, Tulsi Gabbard is saying something that seems benign, well, hey, listen, we gotta work with the other side and we need civility, et cetera. But it's from a bygone era.

By the way, even in that bygone era, it was a bad idea working with terrible side. segregationists. If you were getting those segregationists to vote for the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act, great, no problem, right? But if you're going to their side, not a good idea. And in this case, Tulsi, how are you gonna give, if you're president, how are you gonna get Mitch McConnell to agree with any of your policies? He disagrees with at least 90% of your policies.

The only way you're gonna get McConnell to go at work with you is either you're gonna defeat him and get him out of the way, or you're gonna have to go to him because he's not gonna come to you. And so that is disappointing that it is unrealistic view of politics to think that Tulsi Gabbard or any Democrat or Joe Biden can go, hey Mitch, let's grab a beater like in the old days. Let's just talk this through. And then maybe we'll get Medicare for all.

Never going to happen. So but a couple of other things. So Trump, it'll give him fodder for 20 years. Trump's got plenty of fodder. Don't worry about that. And so by the way, when Trump was running in the Republican, it was. There were 17 candidates, if you remember last time around, right? And did the Republicans say don't attack Trump because it'll give the Democrats fodder?

No, they all attacked Trump. And he won anyway, and it made him stronger, and he wound up winning the general election. All of this is total nonsense. And then Tom Carper, Senator also from Delaware, obviously backing Joe Biden, said that Joe Biden has done more to advance the cause of civil rights in a lifetime than all other candidates combined. Not true, not remotely true. So Joe Biden has a mixed record on civil rights.

He opposed busing where you would bring black kids in the white neighborhoods. He still opposes it today, says it was a bad idea and he hasn't changed his mind on it. The crime bill was terrible for civil rights, he's done some good things for civil rights. So it's not just all bad, it's genuinely mixed. On the other hand, Bernie Sanders has a stellar record on civil rights, including being part of the civil rights movement at the time, including marching with King, including chating himself to African Americans when he was not a politician saying if you're going to arrest them, you have to arrest me with you, including doing housing discrimination stings when he was a student.

So no, Biden does not have a better record, first of all, than Booker and Kamala Harris, who are African Americans combined as preposterous. I know that his record goes back further, I understand that, and he just flat out on Bernie Sanders alone does not have a better record, period, that's a fact. But hey, the media, oh, I don't know, I don't know, Bernie. People love Biden, I'm saying it, so that's it. But what is it based on? It's based on the fact that Obama picked him, not on his civil rights record.

Do the actual fact checking. And the reality of Sanders is better on that. And finally, look at the arrogance of Feinstein when she said, as John quoted earlier. I think it's a little unexpected. I don't think he had figured for this. Because he's a politician not, right. You're the frontrunner, there's a 24 person field, and you think, you think, you're the frontrunner. And you think, well, I didn't expect that they would attack me.

I'm the establishment. How dare you attack me? And Feinstein backs that up. Like, oh my, this is unexpected. It's unacceptable to it. You can attack progressives all day long. But the establishment, how dare you? Well, sad day for you, Diane Feinstein.

I don't care what you think. You're also an establishment senator. And you're also deeply conservative. You voted for Bush's tax cuts and you voted for the Iraq war just like Joe Biden did. You voted for all the same heinous things he did. So if you're expecting a free ride, those days are over. They're over for you and they're over for Joe Biden. Let's have a real contest where we talk about different ideas and what are people actually going to do?

Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders, and to be fair, Marianne Williamson and Mike Greville as well. Those four presidential candidates have signed a progressive economic pledge saying we will fight for these. things, Medicare for all, Green New Deal, constitutional amendment to get money out of politics, higher wages, et cetera. Biden goes, I'm not signing anything, and I hate to went to it and told a bunch of rich donors, if you elect me, nothing will change. He said, I promise you, I need you very badly, and I'm gonna make sure that nothing changes. Said no fundamental change.

So look, your choices are clear, but if you expect us to lie down and say, oh yeah, we should put up someone just like. Hillary Clinton against Donald Trump. That promises no change, no deal, because I'm not gonna lose to Donald Trump. We're not gonna make those same mistakes again. And if you say, hey, why don't you just heal and have another establishment guy do nothing for four years as president? No effing deal, okay?

So if Biden is gonna say that he's the candidate of the status quo, we're gonna come for him. Okay, now everybody check out, No. Where can they find out all your wonderful books? My website, www. NomiPrints.com. Okay. They're real education and a wonderful read.

So definitely check them out. Check out damage report. There's so many places. Where's the main place you want them to go? YouTube.com slash the damage report. Okay, and for all of you guys that are following along with our aspiration events today, we've been doing it all day. Also, Twitter.com slash the damage report too.

All right, great. So, John and I did arm wrestling. If we get to 200 signups today, we'll re-show it to you guys. Don't give it away if you saw it earlier, okay? Aspiration.com slash TYT, as Nomi told you, it takes a little over two minutes and you don't have to put all your money, don't stress about it, okay? Test it out, see if you like it. Move a little bit of money in there and see if you enjoy the programs they have for you.

And if we're telling you the truth about how good their rates are and their fees are, etc. Asperation.com slash TYT. We'll be right back. Thanks for listening to the full episode of the Young Turks. Support our work, listen ad-free, access members-only bonus content, and more by subscribing to Apple Podcasts at apple.com slash t-y-t. I'm your host, Shank Huger, and I'll see you soon.