The Young Turks - William Barr Covering Trump's Tracks

Episode Date: October 5, 2019

William Barr is doing everything he can to protect his boss. Cenk Uygur, John Iadarola, and Nando Vila, 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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Thank you for listening. I think then drop it. All right, pop, pop, power panel, obviously, Jay Hugar, John Iroll, Nando, Nando, great you have you back. Thanks. That is such a wonderful brown suit. Oh, thank you. I'm bringing it back the brown suit.

Yeah. You could be impeached. It went out of it. It's true. I've got a brown jacket. I should bring it back. Yeah, you should bring it back. You are glossing over not only is in a brown suit, but it's double breasted.

Yeah, yeah, bringing it back. Oh, no, no, I'm bringing double breasted back. The new one I have that we talked about on the show a couple of weeks ago, double breasted. I never owned a jacket. You should get into it. It's like, it's in a way more comfortable. It's like you snug, you don't have to open it up and close it when you sit down. You just keep it closed.

I never thought. I thought about that. That's a selling point right there. Okay. Unless you weigh what I weigh, in which case it helps cover up the gut without buttoning up. That's true. Oh. Well, that'll benefit with you right now and in a year, it'll be too.

Indeed. All right, guys, you're gonna be shocked to find out that Trump's in Trump. We have more developments. Why do you this time? Right, exactly. One of my favorite stories today is the Justice Department's excuses for not investigating Donald Trump. Trump, I find them unsurprisingly hilarious. So, and then in the second hour, are we allowed to call people who can fly the Confederate

flag white trash, or are we not allowed to call them that? And so we will debate, okay? Interesting. Yes, indeed. All right, but let's get started with Trump trouble. I really just want to know, is that based on a story or is that just like, let's debate it. Yeah, just out of nowhere. Yeah, I don't know.

Yeah, mainly on a story, mainly. Okay, okay. Interesting. Okay, well, we're a slightly different topic to start off. Yes. Does it involve Trump and he is in fact in trouble. So ever since we found out about the Ukraine call and the whistleblower bringing to the attention of the whistleblower's concerns about what took place on that phone call, we've wondered

why is it that the DOJ didn't look more seriously into what was at least. at least initially, it seems like, by those superiors considered to be a serious matter, a credible concern that crimes might have taken place. Well, those concerns now are even more pressing because it looks like there was a pretty important referral to the DOJ. Weeks before the whistleblower's complaint became public, the CIA's top lawyer made what she considered to be a criminal referral to the Justice Department about the whistleblower's allegations that President Donald Trump abused his office in pressuring the Ukrainian

president. U.S. officials familiar with the matter to tell NBC News. That move by the CIA's general counsel, Trump appointee Courtney Simmons Elwood. That's how the deep state gets you by your appointees, meant she and other senior officials had concluded a potential crime had been committed. And according to officials, Elwood was acting under rules that a report must occur if there's a reasonable basis to the allegations to find as, quote, facts and circumstances that would cause a person of reasonable caution to believe that a crime has been, is being, or will be

committed, or maybe all three of those things. And yet, it was squashed. Yeah. So a couple of reasons why from the Justice Department, and I'm deeply amused. So the first issue that comes up is campaign finance violations, because there are two possible crimes here, and apparently the CIA's lawyer referred to campaign finance crimes predominantly because the first crime is just asking for a favor for your political campaign from a foreign country is illegal. We've explained that a thousand times now.

It still hasn't gotten through to a lot of people. Although Tucker Carlson today on Fox, well, on his own blog was like kind of problematic. Right? So it's getting through to some folks. Anyway, so the second part is, well, if it was a quid pro quo and something was, you know, promised in returned, then it could be extortion, bribery, fraud, and a lot of different other crimes. And so Justice Department goes, well, you only said campaign finance, so that's the only one we're gonna look at.

And normally what happens is you go to, once some issue arises, you go to investigate all the facts and determine if any crimes have been committed. They said, no, we're not going to do that, we're only going to look at the thing that you mentioned, and then we're gonna conclude 100%, no matter what the facts are, that it's It's not a crime. Now, why do I say that? Because when they move to the second stage, they're like, no, we're not looking at all the facts, we're not looking at all potential crimes.

You said campaign finance, that's the only thing I'm looking at. Now, when I look at that, I go, well, yes, he definitely asked the foreign government. There's no question about that. Yes, he definitely mentioned his political opponent, and at the time, Trump publicly had said five days after the Ukraine call that he thought Biden was going to win and be the nominee on the Democratic side. He very well might be wrong about that. I think he is wrong about that, but that is what he believed, right?

So there's no question about any of that. And he's soliciting help from, so it's a clear violation. So Justice Department is like, well, you have to solicit either money or a thing of value. And is a giant investigation by a foreign government a thing of value? No. No. And Baldwin-Dinkwood is $1. How are they gonna do a giant investigation of Trump's political opponent without spending a dollar?

It doesn't make any sense at all. They're like, ah, it doesn't have to. The attorney general is William Barr, his job is to cover Trump's ass. So they're like, and we're done with it, and they wrapped it up. Well, to be fair, the Ukrainian ruble, I don't know, it might be, it's unclear whether, you know, how, the dollar goes a long way in Ukraine. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, so one point just to raise really quickly before, I have a particular concern about

it being squashed in the way that it was, but isn't it just great that this criminal referral had to come from the CIA's top lawyer? That's wonderful. Yeah. What's the day-to-day work of the CIA's top lawyer, like outside of, you know, covering up Trump's crimes or the whistleblower or whatever? Yeah, someone could tell us, but then they'd have to kill us. Right, exactly.

Yeah. Well, look, but the reason the CIA's top lawyer is doing it is because the Justice Department isn't Normally it's the job of the Justice Department. And then normally the CIA's top lawyers covering up, you know, extraordinary renditions and kidnappings and torture, et cetera. But in this case, and it's a Trump appointee, they're like, yeah, but this is kind of really illegal and it doesn't look like you guys are going to do anything about it. So I have to go through a formal process here and at least report it as illegal.

This has been William Barr's MO his whole life. Like that's like, I mean, he covered up the Iran-Contra stuff when he was at AG over there. under Bush Padre. He's one of those guys, like, if you guys see the movie, the Vice movie, the Dick Cheney movie. He's like executive power absolutist, like legal theorists. That's right. That think that, you know, that basically the president can't commit a crime by definition. Yeah.

And that's probably why he's there in the first place. Yeah, and that's the thing. Like, it's very easy to get wrapped up in the news of the day, in the week, and the month, or whatever. But like, how many shows did we do sitting at this desk about why he could not become the AG? We knew why he was being selected, and we knew what he would do if he got into the position, and what do you know? Turns out that we were right. And especially in this particular

case, we've seen the whistleblower complaint. It names Trump, obviously, it names Rudy Giuliani, and it names William Barr. How could he, I mean, they're saying it was one of his subordinates that squashed it. He probably never even heard about it. Oh, no. How is that legal? That's the clearest conflict of interest. He destroys an investigation in which he is apparently a participant, A scandal that he's a participant in. How, like I've been saying since this first came out, like yes, push for impeachment of Donald Trump, remove William Barr immediately. How is that not a bigger part of this conversation?

I mean, at a bare minimum, he has to recuse himself from a case where he could be one of the people charged. I mean, it's like law 101. Yeah. There's no, but it doesn't matter because they've decided their own base doesn't care about facts, and then the Republican senators are so afraid of their own base, they don't care about facts. But there's one other funny part to this.

this, or actually two. So when basically folks inquired about like, did you guys look into whether Ukraine could do an investigation of Joe Biden without spending any money? Or how much money would they have to spend to look into Joe Biden? A Justice Department is like, no, no, we didn't wait a long of that, okay, it was inconvenient. But still not the funniest. Another excuse that they used was, well, the CIA's top lawyer called us and made this criminal referral, but she didn't put it in writing.

That's why you always send the follow-up email. Yeah. Just this is what we spoke about. The CIA doesn't send emails. They know that stuff's being read by those guys at the NSA. You imagine. They're like those guys to NSA, man, they'll read everything. A bunch of people looking into everything and outrageous.

Anyways, I like that the Justice Department is like, no, we're a stickler for the law. So it had to be in writing. By the way, it doesn't have to be in writing. That's not any part of the law. It's just another very, very flimsy excuse. Look, the only thing you could say anymore that's anywhere near honest if you're a Republican, and Tucker went half of the way there today. We'll talk about that later in the show.

It's just say, look, come on, it's obviously illegal, but I don't care. And say, like, yeah, it's a small crime. What's the big deal? You know, sure, ask Iran, North Korea, Russia, China, Ukraine, anyone you like, Venezuela, Cuba for assistance, and do as much. damage as you can to political opponents. Small crime, don't care. Okay, if you think it's a small crime and you don't care, that doesn't change the law.

We still have to uphold it. And part of that would be to say, yeah, the president's kind of above the law. And let's keep it real here, guys. Any regular person would have gotten charged on at least half a dozen things that Trump has done while in office already. I get that it's a higher bar for the president because you get into a political mess, et cetera. And I actually somewhat agree with that. So when Clinton lied on the record about sleeping with Monica Lewinsky, yeah, okay, there

should be some penalty for that because he broke the law. The penalty shouldn't necessarily be impeachment. But I would argue this is a very significant crime. Otherwise there are no rules. So the Democrats can go, like I said, say, hey, North Korea, can you bug my political opponents? Remember North Korea broke into Sony and got all their records? So we can bug them or you know what, just break into their computers like apparently Russia

did it to Hillary Clinton, but just do it to Republicans, who cares, let's bring into all their computers, steal all their fires, see if they got any naked pictures, see what they're looking at, because it's open season, there are no laws anymore. I think it's a pretty major law and he 100% broke it. Yeah, you want to move on to another story? Yes. Okay, this one's fun in a way, I guess, a little. Representative Alexandria Casas Cortez holds monthly town halls for her constituents, and so she did that this week.

And for the most part, it was what you would expect. But the topic of climate change came up, and the conversation around how we should deal with it went in an unexpected direction, as you'll see. The climate crisis, we only have a few months left. I love that you support the Green Deal, but it's not getting with a fossil fuel, it's not going to solve the problem fast enough. A Swedish professor saying, we can eat dead people, but that's not fast enough. So I think your next campaign slogan has to be this. We got to start eating babies. We don't have enough time.

There's too much CO2. All of you, you know, you're pollutant. Too much CO2. We have to start now. Please, you are so great. I'm so happy that you're really supporting a nuclear deal, but it's not enough. You know, even if we would bomb Russia, we still. We still have too many people, too much pollution.

Thank you. So I think- Yeah, no, so one of the things that's very important to us is that we need to treat the climate crisis with the urgency that it does present. And she goes on to say, thankfully we have more than a few months, so she's obviously not signing on to that plan. Now I think anybody seeing that thinks that one of two things is true, one that she went on Twitter and started talking about, that she wanted to do.

to be respectful of this individual because there's a reasonable chance that this person is having some sort of mental health difficulties, and it's not AOC's job to hurl a chair at her or get her dragged away by security immediately, so she wanted to be respectful of it. The other possibility, especially considering that this person is not just saying let's eat babies, but has prepared a t-shirt to advertise the cause, is that this is not an authentic constituent of AOC's, and what do you know, that's what it turns out to be? Yeah, so apparently she's from Lyndon LaRouche's group. Oh, they claimed responsibility for it.

Yeah, exactly. And so LaRouche group is conspiracy theorist, massively, insanely right wing, but actually these days that's probably, you know, mainstream Republican. Conspiracy theorist, massively right wing, does trolling on a regular basis, that describes an average Republican senator. Yeah, and look, some of the things that they push for seem pretty crazy. But they're definitely more sane than the QAnon people. But in any event, they also, by the way, recently have supported Donald Trump.

And so, look, you can say she should have dealt with it in a different way if you didn't know that this was a plant, I guess. I think that she did a great job in that respect. But if you are a completely disingenuous right winger, you're not going to wait to find out a couple hours later if this was a real person or if this was a plant. You need to go, go, go, you got to use this right now. So that's what they did. Immediately videos of this, like Ryan Svedra or whatever, they were spreading it and getting millions of views implying that this is just what AOC supporters are like. Tucker Carlson immediately put it onto his show last night, Fox News with articles, all that.

And then Don Jr. tweets about it. No course. And let's see us. So let's jump ahead a little bit. He tweets about it. He actually gets his father's attention for the first time in a while, who quote retweets him with AOC is a whack job, that's not even spelled right, so attacking AOC there, because in that video, what I see is AOC being crazy, I guess.

What does you do? Yeah, and so look, she responded, I think, in a fairly reasonable way, saying better than being a criminal who betrays our country. Yeah, so look, I've been put in situations, and I don't know if they were plants or not plans or if they were just folks who were having issues, making outrageous, you know, statements purportedly from the left in a public setting. And I usually say, I love your brother, but no, we shouldn't do that, that's a bad idea, right? But you could take that out of context and cut it at I love your brother and be like,

see, Yugar loves people who eat babies. Because the whole point is propaganda. So of course they're going to use it as propaganda. And I don't know that Don Jr. and the president know that LaRouche did it, but what difference does it make? They wouldn't care. They wouldn't care if it was propaganda. They would love it.

And they'd say, ha ha ha. Yeah, we trolled you. We're living free inside your head. No, whatever. Like today that's Marco Rubio's claim for why Donald Trump is breaking laws because he wants to get on your skin. Okay, him killing people would also get under my skin, it's not a good idea, right? And so they don't care about the truth, so what difference does it make?

And people on the right now, there, a lot of them are like that. And in their town halls and in their public settings, people make insane, outrageous comments, like, oh, Obama was not born in America, he was born in Kenya with no facts at all. By the way, nowadays, that seems kind of mild, right? Yeah, and the speaker, including the president of the United States, are like, Bravo! That's right, your insane conspiracy theory is awesome. You don't have to trick the Republicans. The Republicans actually believe crazy things.

The weirdest thing about this is that this isn't even the weirdest right wing plant this week. I mean, the Elizabeth Warren, you guys saw the Elizabeth Warren story where Jacob Wall said that he had a Marine who was a whistleblower who was saying that Elizabeth Warren basically sex trafficked him to be her BDSM slave. And they did like a whole press conference about it and, you know, it's just, it's like this, This is like the new reality where, you know, any sort of public setting for anyone is vulnerable to these kind of, I mean, James O'Keefe kind of started it back in the day, you know, all that stuff

like that, you know, you can't really believe any of this stuff. And it's just, it creates this kind of ambient sense that nothing is really real. And it just, it's, it's, that's like the most harmful thing about it at the end of the day is that it just creates this like feeling of unreality, that everything's kind of a joke, that you can't really believe anything. Well, and that's what they want, because that does not benefit and hurt everyone equally. Exactly. That benefits, look, let's just cut right to, it benefits fascists, honestly.

That's the environment that you need to create for the rise of some form of authoritarian government. And you don't have to take it serious. So like Jacob Wohl and his Marine, they were like chuckling during it. They knew how ridiculous it was, but did that hurt Jacob Wohl? Do you see now, like, persona non grata on the right, they're not going to talk to him? No. Like the fact that this turned out to be a right-wing plant, does that matter?

Did Ryan Savedra or Don Jr. or Donald Trump, did they do a retraction? No. All over today, all over Twitter, it's, no, that's actually, that's a left-wing group. It's not a right-wing group, you're lying. It doesn't matter that they supported Donald Trump. That's actually left-wing group. And hashtag E-Babies was trending. Some, a lot of it was ironic, making fun of them, but not all of it.

And so, look, Fox News, let's jump ahead of the screenshot, had a, the, but a, the Big article, get rid of the babies, distraught woman at AOC Town Hall are just eating babies with climate change. Like hours and hours and hours later, they did have an update, what percentage of the people that saw that you think you're gonna see the update? No, is there like infinitescably small. Exactly. Yeah, so look, this is, unfortunately people that fault here is the mainstream media.

I'm gonna explain why in a second. First, quick divergence, to be clear, the Elizabeth Warren thing that they did. The guy showed the scar from the BDSM thing. We talked about in the post game yesterday, that's just for the members. Get all the details, t.yt.com slash join to become a member and get the extra half hour of the young Turks every day. Anyway, there's a picture of the guy from Instagram in 2016 and he got it like in a weed whacking accident or something.

It's from a swing. That's what it's from. Yeah, and you also get to see his triple X tattoo. Yeah, that's a big reference. That's a great movie franchise to immortalize with your body. And Elizabeth Warren went to University of Houston, so she did a hilarious tweet about that and went, go Cougars. So now back to why it's the mainstream media's fault.

Because if you practice neutral journalism, not objective journalism, but neutral journalism, and political correctness, and you're deathly afraid of calling out one of the political parties, or either of the political parties, that greatly advantages liars. Because if you say, if you equate the truth with lies, well, then lies win. Because no, the whole point of journalism is to give you facts and the truth. So, but they're afraid to say, yeah, one side lies on a consistent basis, on purpose, repeatedly, doesn't never retracts it and doesn't care about the truth. They just do it all the time.

So Don, like John said, Don Jr. won't retract it. The president won't retract it. The president's lied 12,000 times, and it's not just him, I mean, even I read an old article today going back to McCain and Obama election back in 2008. McCain's ads were disproportionately false compared to Obama's ads. Obama's ads also had some parts that were false, but McCain's were far more, right? And those were in the benign times before the Trump era. So the correct journalism should be, one side lies way more than the other side, and

And here are the facts, here are the facts, here are the lies, et cetera, and you can compare the two. But they're definitely afraid of saying that. And if you don't say that, well then that gives fascists a giant advantage. Because they could lie with impunity and spread it out. Remember guys, they don't have to convince everybody. These elections are so close normally, and certainly the last one was, they just have to swing a certain number of people, like maybe 70,000 people at Michigan, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin.

And if the media doesn't do their job and say one side is lying way more than the other side, then people go, oh, okay, I guess so. I mean, that's, and the media could swing people not by being on the Democratic side, but by telling the truth and having the courage to say it. But instead we get Mambi, Pambi, BS, where they're deathly afraid to say that it is uneven. It is not equal. The right wing lies as a matter of course. Can we end on a positive note?

Yeah, because this is dark, rise of fascism and all that, and it's going to happen, so just get ready for it, but we at least will have this. So if you get ready with the second and last graphic, so AOC, you know, she stood up for herself, obviously, and it was great that someone else was watching this play out. This person was recovering from a surgery, is laid out in bed, but is watching, and speaks up in her defense, and I just love this, Bernie Sanders tweeting, it's going to be a real pleasure defeating you. I love that, too.

I just love him. He's just sitting there getting his energy back. Tweeting from the hospital vet, I love it. Exactly. Well, you know, Zuckerberg yesterday said, yeah, maybe Bernie's right, maybe there shouldn't be billionaires, right? Something along those lines. And I was like, this dude's kicking Zuckerberg's ass from a hospital back.

And they talk about like, well, has Bernie ever gotten anything done? Has anyone else ever gotten anything done? The only person pushing the national conversation is Bernie Sanders and getting one thing after another done. And so that's why they can't stand the AOC. That's why they can't stand the Justice Democrats. That's why they can't stand Bernie Sanders because they actually fight back and they actually get things done.

Yeah. Why don't we take a break? Yep. Let's do it when we come back. More conservative madness. We need to talk about a relatively new show called Un-Fing the Republic or UNFTR. As a young Turks fan, you already know that this. the government, the media, and corporations are constantly peddling lies that serve the interests

of the rich and powerful. But now there's a podcast dedicated to unraveling those lies, debunking the conventional wisdom. In each episode of Un-B-The-Republic or UNFTR, the host delves into a different historical episode or topic that's generally misunderstood or purposely obfuscated by the so-called powers that be, featuring in-depth research, razor-sharp commentary, and just the right amount of vulgarity, the UNFTR podcast takes a sledgehammer to what you thought you knew about some of the nation's most sacred historical cows. But don't just take my word for it. The New York Times described UNFTR as consistently compelling and educational, aiming to challenge conventional wisdom and upend the historical narratives that were taught in school.

For as the great philosopher Yoda once put it, you must have learned what you have learned. And that's true whether you're in Jedi training or you're uprooting and exposing all the propaganda and disinformation you've been fed over the course of your lifetime. So search for UNFDR in your podcast app today and get ready to get informed, angered, and entertained all at the same time. All right, back on the young turks. Normally I start with the members, but I'm going to start with on Twitter today. Kara Curley says that Bernie tweet so truly made a really bad day I was having a million times better. I just love it so much.

Yeah, there's a new ad out that's like five minutes of- Oh, it's so good. Yeah, the pundits trashing Bernie Sanders and the reality juxtaposed. I actually tear it up. I teared up when I watched it this morning. Yeah, yeah. No, and especially with him going to the hospital, mainstream media was like, oh, he's done. It's over, right? In unison. Meanwhile, I thought, Bernie, Bernie, Bernie. We'll see. Orpheus says, I'll win ahead of the story and discussion. I say that calling someone

white trash, no matter, the rationale is antithetical to being an open, unopened, honest, progressive. We can discuss the individual reasoning and query, their value system, but not sling epithats. Well, we're going to have a poll on that, although I now know which way you're voting. That's in the second hour. And thank you for weighing in, Orpheus. We appreciate it. Eddie O'Donnell says, thankfully, AOC has bartending experience and is able to handle these kind of situations. So what was that about being a bartender? Doesn't qualify you for Congress again? That's true. She knows how to do clapbacks. And then Bailey writes in in the member section, woo, what a great panel to Friday. It up with. I love hearing John's commentary

twice in one day. Whoa. Okay, you are alone, but I hear you. Johnny, two times. I can't argue with that. I'm not interested in hearing myself twice. No, I'm kidding. In fact, Jackson writes, and hey, Jank, my fiancé, Jessica and I are so excited to finally

be getting married next weekend. With John in the studio, I wanted to let you know that every night while we have dinner, we watch that morning's episode of the damage report. Thank you so much. John, you're responsible for their relationship, that's beautiful. I was assuming that I was responsible, it's good to have it confirmed. Thank you. And you're welcome.

Jackson continues, it's part of our day we both always really look forward to thanks to John J.R, Brooke Brett, and the Whole Damage Report team for being a joyful part of our TYT home and TYT marriage. Cheers. That is beautiful. Well, congratulations, Jackson and your fiancé, Jessica, Jessica and Jackson, you guys are awesome. Oh, and let me just quickly say that I can't speak for you, but you're right about to get married.

I'm in the middle of planning a wedding and so my heart goes out to you for that process. It's all about the flowers, man. That's where they get you. Yeah? I haven't looked at that for yet. This weekend, yeah. This weekend I'm going to go to a Kincerra and I'm just dreading going to one, let alone planning one because in the middle of the weekend I have to find a suit and I have

to put it on, I have to get the kids dressed up, I said I know, but I'm like, oh, hold up planning. Okay, anyways, all right, let's go next. Okay, we got a little grab back here, but some interesting information. Today this week, we found out that the Q3 fundraising numbers are in. Who amongst the Democratic primary contenders is doing better than expected? Who perhaps underperforming? And we know that Bernie Sanders destroyed the last quarter, bringing in $25 million, but we've

been waiting for some of the other frontrunners. Biden didn't immediately release his numbers. We wouldn't want to find out, how did Warren do? She's been doing better in the polling, and she's doing better in the fundraising as well. Well, former Vice President Joe Biden collected $15.2 million. in political donations over the last quarter. The average donation this quarter was $44. So remember that for when we compare to the others.

That is obviously a lot of money, but it is both $10 million less than Bernie Sanders and less money than he collected in the previous quarter, which is not indicative of a campaign on the upswing. Although that seems reasonable to me to say, I will check Nate Silver's Twitter account to find out why I'm wrong. Yeah, no, no, John, that's an aberration. And every poll showing Bernie Sanders doing well is also an aberration. Yeah, you really want cyclical fundraising up and down and down and down.

Yeah, and so, okay, seriously guys, let me tell you why Biden and Buttigieg's fundraising numbers are going down. Now, Buttigieg still had healthy numbers, you'll see all of them in a second. 19 million. Yeah, but they're both headed down. The reason is they have maxed out donors. So you give $2,800 in a primary, and they have really wealthy. donors. So whether it's executives at different companies that are giving to them, lobbyists,

et cetera. And so they max out, max out as soon as they can. They're like, oh, these corporate guys are awesome, right? And so they give all their money. And then they legally cannot give anymore. Whereas Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren have real people giving to them and at smaller numbers and monthly contributions as well. So they keep on giving. And they've got so much room before they get to $2,800, I don't know that a lot of regular folks have $2,800 to give to a politician, even if they love them, like they love Warren and Sanders. So that's why their numbers keep going up, because the monthly contributions get added on top of the new donations and the new monthly contributions, because they're all small dollar

donors, just tons of them, right? Whereas Biden has, let's talk about Biden in particular, he's tapped out the rich guys. So that's why his numbers are going down. Yeah, yeah, that is likely. I saw a number for, I don't have this number for all of the candidates, but Bernie Sanders campaign puts out that 99.9% of his donors have not tapped out, so he's doing okay so far. So that's Biden. So what about one of the other frontrunners? Warren's campaign reported that the Massachusetts Senator raised 24.6 million for more than half a million donors

in Q3. That amount is just shy of the hall by Bernie Sanders, who reported raising 25.3. So we We've $700,000 difference between them. So fairly close, but a benefit to Bernie both in the overall numbers. But also, Bernie had about twice as many donors overall. I mean, Warren had a lot, we could actually look at the numbers. Warren's average donation amount was $26. Sanders is 18. Her campaign said they have over 940,000 individual donations in the third quarter from about

half as many donors, while the Sanders campaign reported 1.4 million individual individuals. donations in the same period. That's so Warren and Sanders. They're both powered by a lot of small dollar donors, so that's great, and that's the way it should be. But hers are a little larger making up for the fact that he has more of them. Almost twice as many. He's in the most populous lane.

She's in the lane right next to it, so that's exactly what you would expect. And so they're both in great shape as those numbers continue to pile up. And if anything, those establishment Democrats are going to likely get. Given the dynamics we just explained, are going to continue to go down. Yeah. But overall, I mean, there's still a few candidacies that we're waiting to find out about, and I've got one or two more important details here. But it looks like, I mean, unless Delaney just hauls it in, it looks like Bernie's the winner.

I mean, I've tapped out my Delaney donations. I've given $2,800 to Delaney. I think a lot of people have tapped on this campaign. Most of the staff probably. The only one who hasn't tapped out yet is still Delaney. Yeah, I don't think he's hearts in it. But anyway, so look, that's the numbers. And we've got one more candidate who did surprisingly well that I want to get to in a second.

But in terms of future fundraising events, not personal fundraising, but involvement in DNC, fundraising, there is a potential issue for some of these candidates. Elizabeth Warren, Kamala Harris, Tom Steyer, and Julian Castro will be taking part in fundraising events in October that will benefit the DNC. has sworn off having her campaign take part in big money fundraisers, but tickets for Warren's gala start at $5,000 and others can gain access by raising up to $50,000 for the party. So I would assume that she will say that this is not benefiting her campaign, it's to raise money for the DNC, but it is objectively a big dollar fundraiser.

Yeah, yeah, I think that's a tough one. So she's saying I'm doing it to help the party, that's what you would want the candidate to do. On the other hand, the party is gonna mainly put it back in the presidential race later, right? And not completely though, and it does help at the state level, it does help other candidates. And so they will criticize Bernie for not showing up to help the party, but he doesn't do the big fund. They mostly wasted on stupid consultants and stuff.

It's mostly wasted. Yeah, well, you know, that adjective is probably correct, but the more accurate adjective is connected consultants, ones that worked at the DNC before or no people at the DNC, etc. So I don't know how you guys feel about it, I'm mixed on it. I would say the question is, who are you trying to appeal to at this thing? It is not suddenly wealthy, formerly regular people, it's the sort of people that you have banned from taking money from in your personal campaign and you're lending your name to an event to try to draw in those sorts of people.

And again, that money will likely maybe be spent on your behalf if you're the candidate. So yeah, I get that she's probably under a lot of pressure, but I wouldn't take part in it. And you wonder also like if the sort of the potentiality of a brokered convention plays into something like this. You know, you, I mean, who the hell knows what's going to happen if there's a brokered convention? And in that scenario, probably making contacts with connected party people will help you, delegates, super delegates, all that stuff, where that could become critical. But who knows?

Yeah. So last couple of things here. We should also note Senator Warren put in over $10 million from her Senate campaign into her presidential campaign. And in her Senate campaign, she had raised money from big dollar donors. And some of those guys are actually pissed, saying, oh, you liked my money when you were running for Senate, you switched it over to your presidential campaign. Now you say I'm not good enough for you to give, for you to appeal to me or call me back.

I kinda like that they're pissed, but you should note that yes, she did transfer some money into her presidential campaign from those big donors. Now, I gotta give you the rest of the numbers because we don't wanna pull a CNN on MSNBC. Sanders was one, Warren was two, you wanna give it, John? That's what I'm getting to actually. Yeah, okay. I'm assuming this is what you're talking about, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah.

So, look, Bernie Sanders with the biggest individual hall in Q3, but not the biggest increase percentage wise, at a 257% quarterly jump from 2.8 million to 10,000. million in the third quarter, Andrew Yang posted the largest percentage gain in fundraising amongst all Democrats to report so far, and even topped the 19% quarterly gain by President Donald Trump's reelection campaign. So he jumped up to $10 million, and that is probably why if you're watching CNN, MSNBC, you've suddenly seen his face all over the place, but you can't deny it. They respect people who can raise money, and so you see graphics like this pop-up, showing

that yes, Bernie's got the most money, but hey, wait, he's not there. Even though he raised $4 million more than Cory Booker, they decided to go with Cory Booker on that. Now, he later tweeted that MSNBC corrected that eventually, but it wasn't just MSNBC. You can also see on CNN. They did effectively the same thing. And this graphic, they fit in one more person, but not one more Yang. So they put in an extra person, but still kept the Cory Booker.

And so I would be incredibly frustrated by that, especially coming, like a huge increase in your fundraising and they don't acknowledge it. This seems like a small story, but it's not. It's actually a huge story because it goes to the mindset of the mainstream media. They have great disdain for outsiders and they treat them as invisible and God, this is the perfect example of it. The guy is higher than Booker, but they're like, no, he's illegitimate because he's an outsider. As our beloved Senator Cory Booker, nice for bravo, six million.

Well, the other guy raised four more. And out of nowhere, and you guys never treated him with any respect. Now he's doing better than your beloved Senator Cory Booker. By the way, Klobuchar, where is she? Anyway, you guys all said Klobuchar was about to win, could win, could win, could win, Yang, right? And all of a sudden, Yang's doing great. And you still leave him out of the story.

It's not because they hate Andrew Yang. It's their mindset that the people in power are by definition legitimate, and the people outside of power are by definition illegitimate. And that affects everything they do. And part of the disdain they have for it is that they feel that power, that gatekeeping power that they used to have, they feel it slipping away from them more and more every day. And it only causes them to hate these people even more. I mean, if you look at, you know, there was like a funny Chris Zeliza tweet that everyone

was dunking on the other day where he was like, outside of Warren and Biden, who do you guys think has the best chance of winning the nomination? I think Buttigieg. And it's like, everyone's like, dude, like he's like so far below in the polls from the other guy that's, you know, neck and neck with Biden and Warren. And they feel this in their bones. They feel that they just aren't, they don't have the gatekeeping role that they used to. I mean, the media used to control this narrative so much more.

than they do these days. And if you look at the amount of fundraising, I mean, this is a huge story. The fact that fundraising for Democratic nominations and for the presidential campaigns has been so transformed by these small dollar donations because of the internet and because of a million things, that candidates can swear off big money donations and still lead the field in terms of money raised, that's a huge game changer. I mean, from what you guys talk about all the time, you know, like that this is a corrupting influence at the end of the day.

Yeah. So, because that's, that is what matters. The most, the most thing that matters is who do you owe your power to? And if you're getting your, if you're getting your money for your campaign from small dollar regular people, then you will owe your power to them and you will govern for them. If you owe it to, you know, executives at, you know, ExxonMobil, then you'll govern for that. 100%. Guys, I gotta say, look, there's, that bias is more important than any other effect on the

election. Russian interference. Yeah. 100%. All right, it's bad. As anyone knows, I'm a billion percent against it, right? No one has been clearer on the record on that. But this is billions upon billions of dollars where outsiders, people that are not yet powerful,

people that are not in the elite, people that are progressive usually, are left out of the conversation. And they lose out on something really valuable, which is free media. So, and then that's the beginning. And then the second part is where they attack you nonstop. So, you know, obviously the most famous example is Bernie Sanders. And this happened to him in 2016. Like Yang, with this remarkable rise. I mean, that is one of the most important, interesting political stories of this election

cycle. They're like, yeah, but he doesn't even exist. Last time, Bernie closed a 60-point lead on Hillary Clinton. One of the most miraculous political stories of my lifetime. They're like, barely had him on television in 2015 as he closed that 60 point lead. I mean, outrageous how they ignored him. And that cost them billions of dollars that Trump got on the other side. It swung the election definitively, definitively.

And then after they couldn't ignore him anymore, negative article after negative article. And now look, on Yang, a similar effect. So he has, and by the way, this is not about me liking one candidate more than another. I think Cory Booker has some good ideas, I think Andrew Yang has some great ideas. And there are parts of Booker and Yang that I don't agree with. So it's not, I'm not neutral on it, but I'm super fair on it, in that it depends on the policies, et cetera. So when Yang's one of Yang's great ideas is democracy dollars.

And he mentioned in a debate, I was in the media spin room, and you know what happened? No one asked them about it. No, no, not only that, they laugh. They literally, they laughed out loud, they're like, ha ha, ha, I do the card democracy dollars. And then all over Twitter, not people in the media, like they put Yang's face on monopoly money, et cetera, that's so stupid to try to empower people to give money instead of the wealthy and the elite, dumb, right?

In reality, people love that idea, it's a great idea. And so that's a different issue, that's the thousand dollars he's giving for universal basic income. But, and by the way, Kirsten Gillibrand also had. democracy dollars in her campaign, they're like, ooh, that is a beloved senator. That is very serious. I'm sorry, those are jillibucks. But that free media is single-handedly sustaining the Biden campaign at this point. If you look at the number of mentions that he gets on cable news, it's a factor of like four times

higher than the next person. And it's like, you know, you watch the debate, like we watched it the last debate. And then you see all the mainstream punits saying, oh, I think he won the night. And I'm like, he couldn't even complete a full sentence. I don't understand, like what are you guys are, am I watching the same thing? Yeah. And that's single-handedly sustaining his campaign right now, that era, that aura of respectability or inevitability or whatever.

And final thing is, they are so biased that despite this overwhelming evidence, they say what bias? Right. I don't see any bias. Yeah. Oh, you leave Yang out, of course. He said, Yang. Of course you leave him out, right?

Bernie, closing his 60-point lead when we all thought he'd never get above 2%. Yeah, of course you leave that out. That's not an interesting story. And they're like, what bias? That's when you know your bias is as bad as it could possibly be when you're blinded by it. All right, we've got to take a break, guys. One more break. At TYT, we frequently talk about all the ways that big tech companies are taking control

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That's E-X-P-R-E-S-S-V-P-N dot com slash T-YT. Check it out today. We hope you're enjoying this free clip from The Young Turks. If you want to get the whole show and more exclusive content while supporting independent media, become a member at t-y-t.com slash join today. In the meantime, enjoy this free segment. All right, back on the Young Turks. Teresa says, I'm a restaurant server and never get to see the Friday Live show because

I'm usually at work. But I got lucky tonight and I got the night off. Now my house is clean, wine is in hand and I can smell the impeachment in the air. Happy Friday, everyone. Well, happy Friday to you too, Teresa, okay, have a drink on me. 1988's Turk of the Year writes in. It's also working against Yang in the other direction because the pundits on TV are soon. I'm super interested in how Booker and Klobuchar are doing.

They assume we feel the same way, we do not, that's why we're not voting for them either. Very good point, he doesn't get the free media, and they do, even though Klobuchar, for example, has not merited it at all. Nothing personal, she just hasn't, she has no support. And the last one, the Progressive Twins says the Democratic Party wants progressives to go and raise money for them, but why? So then corrupt Democrats can turn around and spend it to bash whatever progressives on the left are doing the rest of the primary process? No thanks. Okay.

I just want to mention one thing, just the fact that I happen to see. Jessica Cisneros raised $459,000. Wow. That's incredible. That is incredible. To put it in perspective across all of 2017, AOC raised $60,000. Yeah, it's amazing. Is that crazy?

House primary race, that's like astronomical. Average contribution, $32. Yeah, yeah. That's amazing. We're going to kick Quayar's ass. Keep it going, guys. Quayar has millions of dollars. He gets it from his corporate interests.

So, JusticeDemocrats.com slash Jessica. By the way, next week on old school, me, Ben, and Kevin Smith. So don't miss that. So members get to see it live and you get to see the whole thing. T.Y.T.com slash join to become a member. Yeah, I didn't want to be on that episode. I didn't love Jay and Sinal Bob going up. Haskim him if he likes the Return of the Jedi or Empire strikes back better.

Yeah, he's doing a reboot, by the way. Yeah, that's why he's on. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, that's awesome. Yeah, we figured you didn't want to be on. That's why we didn't ask you. Yeah, oh, yeah, yeah, I believe this story. You've thought of me. A friend of mine's an actress and she tweeted at him every single day for 478 days straight,

asking to be in the movie, and he cast her. Really? That's awesome. Well, I have an interesting, similar story, which I'll tell on also. Okay, all right. I'm going to start doing that for the next Star Wars movie. Anyway, let's have a little bit fun. Prepare for Jank and I to disagree because Tucker Carlson wants some cred in an article he wrote

that he's one of the Republicans that's actually holding Donald Trump semi kind of accountable for this Ukraine scandal. So we've got him on video, we'll get that a second, but we also have some excerpts from his article on the Daily Caller, where I go to lose a little bit of my sanity. The article says Donald Trump should not have been on the phone with a foreign head of state encouraging another country to investigate his political opponent, Joe Biden. Some Republicans are trying, but there's no way to spin this is a good idea. Like a lot of things Trump does, it was pretty over the top.

Our leaders, over the top. Our leader's official action should not be about politics. Those two things need to remain separate. Once those in control of our government use it to advance their political goals, we become just another of the world's many corrupt countries. America is better than that. Okay, so. I'll have a little bit more, but feel for you.

Yeah, first of all, look, I have been. I think sufficiently vicious to Tucker Carlson on many occasions, including on this issue, because this is just part of what he says on air on Fox News. He has said that impeachment is basically a coup. He said coup. Yeah, literally, that's the exact word he used. So basically in this article he's admitting, yeah, Trump broke the law and Republicans trying to spin it are absurd.

Look, the reason why John and I, I guess, will disagree is that I think that's really important for one of the top Fox News opinion hosts to say, yeah, it's wrong and it's absurd to try to spin it. Because they live in an absurd world and anything that pierces that bubble and has people going, wait, is it absurd? I thought facts didn't matter, I thought the law didn't matter. But now Tucker is telling me the law matters, that's weird. And so I think that that's potentially important.

On the other hand, he says, nah, don't worry about it, we're not gonna do anything about it. So, well, okay, then what other laws can he break? And I'm curious where he delineates, and I would literally like to ask him this, where do you draw the line? And it's an interesting question, I don't even think that it's necessarily an easy question. If Trump was jaywalking, I don't think we should impeach him, right? He, you know, maybe a serious traffic offense that might even be a misdemeanor. I don't know if you should impeach him, right? But this is a very serious law where you're jeopardizing the sanctity of our elections.

Because can then Democrats ask North Korea to bug people's phones, et cetera, or tap into their computers? So he doesn't answer any of those. He just basically goes, yeah, don't be absurd, of course it's wrong, but yeah, don't worry about it. Well, where they would draw the line is when it would actually affect a Republican being in power. That's where they'll draw the line. That's true of any of these sort of like, I mean, Tucker Carlson isn't one of these, but like the sort of quote unquote never Trump Republicans, you know, like they, they'll call

him out or they'll say bad things about Trump or whatever, but like when the rubber hits the road, like if it were to hit the road and there was an actual moment in which. He could conceivably lose power, they're not gonna, they're not gonna go through it. Yeah, and I think one of the reasons I think, maybe we don't disagree, but one of the reasons I think we disagree is, and feel free to correct me if I'm mischaracterizing what you're saying, is that he's saying on the one hand, don't do anything, but he's being big enough or independent enough or intellectually honest enough to acknowledge that it is actually wrong. Is that fair?

Yeah, I think that's not what I think he's doing. Oh, okay, what do you do you do you do? I think he is very specifically saying, here is why I think it's wrong to then re-contextualize it in a way that ensures that his viewers or readers or whatever will never think that he should have any consequences for it. I think that this is just a rhetorical trick to bamboozle people into supporting illegal activity. Yeah, then we do disagree.

I don't think it's a rhetorical trick. He's not, remember guys, it's on the daily caller, it's not on Fox News. He does, I'm curious to see if he does it tonight or if he ever does it on Fox News, because That'll rile people up. This is a way, I'm also skeptical of it, but in a different way. This is for him later if Trump gets impeached to say, hey, I wrote it was wrong. That's a possible. I wrote it was wrong.

I didn't say it on Fox News. On Fox News, I called it a coup, right? So I can get my ratings and I can get my, and I don't want to burst anyone's bubble. We're all in the insane bubble where things are upside down world, and that's totally fine. But hey, look at me, I once wrote it in a blog no one reads. Tucker's very clever. I mean, Tucker is way more clever than someone like Hannity, who's just like a meathead I agree, yeah.

Tucker's not a dummy by any stretch of the imagination. And he very, he knows how to very selectively cherry pick left points of view to then sort of put him through his like weird processing in his mind and then spit it back out to Fox News viewers in a way that sort of benefits the right wing agenda, always time and time. time again. Yes. He's very clever about doing that. I mean, you've seen him when he's criticized capitalism on his show and it's like, I'm

like, what? You know, like, but that's what he's doing. He's using selective arguments from the left here and there to sort of position himself as an independent voice when reality, you know, he is just as much of a propagandist as anyone else. Yeah. Yeah, and he is doing that to get his viewers to support as he will support every Republican president for the rest of his life.

We can call it independent, it fulfills the same political objective. Here's the issue. He might be clever, but he's also a massive liar. So you're going to see in the next paragraph. So we're skipping a little bit with some what aboutism about Obama spying on Trump or whatever. But then he goes to the key question with Trump's Ukraine call, though, is whether the president's actions advisable or not rise to the level of an impeachable offense. It's hard to argue they do. The president did not, as was first reported, offer a quid pro quo to the Ukrainians. That is, at the very least debatable, he did not condition any U.S. support on a Biden investigation.

So look, we can go to the summary of the call, and I would make the case that it's pretty clear from the way the argument proceeded that he was conditioning it on it. But we also know furthermore that from all of the texts that have come out, that the other people who were dispatched, diplomats, members of the State Department, they were raising concerns over the fact that this was obviously quid pro quo, that a trip for the Ukrainian president to come to the White House was explicitly conditioned on them investigating Biden. Tucker Carlson, what, did he just not pay attention to the news for 24 hours? He knows that. He's lying to his readers here. Yeah, totally. Look, of course, of course. So Pence was then sent to Ukraine to say, hey, I'm not giving you the aid yet.

And remember, the thing we really care about is corruption. And like with the president, he never mentioned any Ukrainians in the corruption, okay? The only time that, I mean, guys, look, this is why Tucker is being disingenuous, and if you're, unless you're in the Magna cult, everyone knows we're right about this, because you're telling me that Donald Trump has a genuine interest in the corruption happening in Ukraine and China. And he's really worried about it, it keeps him up at night. He's like, I wonder what's going on with Porchenko, right? And what's going on with Jingping?

And to pick random names from those countries, right? Or not so random. And say, oh my God, have they gotten corruption under control in China? I'm really worried about it. Now, as it turns out, the only person I'm going to mention when I talk about corruption is Joe Biden and Hunter Biden, you don't believe that, nobody believes that. Of course he's trying to investigate his political opponents, and he doesn't give a damn about corruption in Ukraine, and of course the money's held up because he wants them to

investigate Biden, and the text from the State Department prove it, you know who broke that story? Fox News. So Tucker knows it, everybody knows it. It's just they're playing games, and that's all. And this is Tucker, the upside is maybe it penetrates the bubble a little bit and have people go, well, yeah, I mean, common sense, I mean, it was wrong, right? And that would be a big development.

The other part of it is a CYA operation, cover your ass. Probably, yeah, and we'll see if it gets through to some of his readers, it won't get through to his viewers because last night, we can't play the full video, but he claimed that the Ukraine scandal is manufactured. So the same thing that he said in that graphic is, it's really concerning. He then goes on air and screams, this whole thing is manufactured by the Democrats. So a little bit of mixed messages there. And also, in terms of you mentioned the fact that he only brings up his political opponents,

he was asked this morning, did you see on Chopper Talk? So he was asked by a reporter, have there been any cases where you asked them to investigate people who weren't your political opponents? And he said, you know, we'll have to look into that. That's amazing. And by the way, okay, if when this story first broke, if he couldn't come up with one, fine. It's been like two weeks. He hasn't done any research to even come up with one to imply that he cared about.

Too lazy and too stupid. That's why I always say, tick, tick, tick, tick. Okay, by the way, they asked Larry Cudlow, are you guys going to bring up Biden in the trade talks when you're meeting with the Chinese? And he said, to be determined. He said, it's not going to be front and center, but I can't tell you whether it's going to come up. In other words, I can't control Trump.

Of course he's going to go in there and tell the Chinese, if you want to do a trade deal, give me Biden's head on a stick, right? Because he knows that the president is corrupt and uncontrollable. Yeah. Okay. All right, we gotta go. Nando, thank you for joining us. Thank you, brother.

Everybody check out damage report. And when we come back, one of the writers of Veep on the power panel. How's that for fun? 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.