Ann Coulter and Cenk Uygur clash over the Iran war, with Coulter blaming Trump's leadership for accelerating nuclear proliferation while Uygur alleges Israeli initiation to cover Epstein ties. They debate sanctuary cities as sedition versus crime protection, voter ID laws excluding legitimate Republicans, and dark money corruption within the DNC. The discussion highlights deep ideological fractures regarding birthright citizenship, military strategy, and election integrity, ultimately questioning whether current political narratives serve national security or special interests. [Automatically generated summary]
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Democracy Failing Us00:15:21
A functioning democracy are faltering and are failing us.
And that is why some people are concerned larger than the presidency about the state of things today.
I believe that the government of the United States has functioned reasonably well.
Think about this.
When this country was created in 1776, when really 1789 under the Constitution, we were a tiny little country and no one in the world thought we'd be a power.
And because of many things, natural resources, talented people, immigration, entrepreneurial spirit, a whole variety of things, this country became the most powerful country and most envied country in the world.
Watch our special edition of America's Book Club with an interview of our host, David Rubenstein, Sunday at 6 p.m. and 9 p.m. Eastern and Pacific, only on C-SPAN.
On Monday, it's remarks from Securities and Exchange Commission Chair Paul Atkins.
He's expected to discuss U.S. financial policy at the third annual International Monetary Fund and International Organization of Securities Commission's conference.
Watch live at 10.40 a.m. Eastern on C-SPAN.
C-SPAN now, our free mobile app, and C-SPAN.org.
And we are back with Ann Coulter joining us from an empty apartment in New York City.
Ann Coulter, welcome back to the Washington Journal.
Last time I talked to you was maybe four or five months ago.
And I'm going to start with the same question I asked you then.
Where are you today when it comes to President Trump?
How do you feel about him today?
You know, that's a question I think I should have been prepared for.
Not very happy with him.
Not very happy with him at all.
I think this Iran war is a fiasco.
I thought it from the beginning, and I think it's very hard for anyone to dispute that at this point.
I mean, the alleged war objectives start with knocking out their nuclear power.
If anything, the rest of the world has gotten the message now.
Oh my gosh, we better get a nuke, develop a nuke.
That's our number one goal for our entire country because who's Trump's best friend?
Kim Jong-il of North Korea.
And why is that?
Even though he's a much more brutal dictator, he has weapons that are capable of actually reaching the West Coast of the United States.
But, oh, he has a nuke.
So let's be really nice to him.
Changing the leadership.
Okay, I'll go along with the claim of Trump's that he's changed the leadership just so we can convince him, you've won.
Please stop now.
But don't really think that's happened.
Oh, the Kurds are going to help.
He's going to liberate the Iranian people.
None of this has happened.
Now our sole war objective is to open the Strait of Hormuz, which was open before he started bombing the crack crap out of them.
And not to mention, I think a lot of very bad things have come out of it.
I'm not a pansy when it comes to war, when we need a real war.
But this was an unprovoked attack, and we're killing little girls, Peter.
We're associated with an ally that is just wiping the crap out of civilians, pharmacies, Trump threatening to end a civilization.
This is a second-term president.
This isn't some weird fluke that this guy got in.
I think this is really diminishing our moral stature in the world.
And I think a lot of us thought this from the beginning.
And the main argument against the anti-war position was you hate Israel.
Well, I don't hate Israel.
I think this is the worst thing that's happened to Israel in my lifetime.
People are suddenly standing up and taking note.
I've never seen so many people looking at how much money do we send to Israel again, you know, that sort of thing, and Netanyahu's central involvement.
Sorry, this is a long answer.
That Maggie Haberman Jonathan Swan article in the New York Times a few days ago on the inside negotiations.
It's funny how, I mean, that shows you how the Iran war is going.
Now they're all claiming, oh no, I said it was a terrible idea.
It's all off the record.
It's all anonymous.
But, you know, John Radcliffe is supposed to have said it's farcical what Netanyahu is telling us.
Marco Rubio, this is BS, and he wasn't using the initials.
And just one after another advisor advising him against it.
But then Netanyahu comes in and makes his case and Trump says, okay, we're going to do it.
Do you think that this was a well, do you think there's a big split in the MAGA movement now because of this war?
Yes, but I think the anti-I mean, inevitably, this isn't some like secret reading the tea leaves thing.
Support for war is almost, I believe it's always, absolutely highest at the beginning of any war.
You'll get, you know, 90% support.
Remember when on the first George Bush, on the first Iraq war, which, okay, I was a kid then, but I was against it.
The first Iraq war, he had like, I don't know, 90% approval ratings.
Maybe you can look that up.
No Democrats were going to run against him, which is why it was all these like third-tier candidates nobody had ever thought of, one of which was Bill Clinton, governor of Arkansas, which no one had ever heard of.
And suddenly, you know, by the time the election rolled around, I don't know, 18 months later, 16 months later, Bush won't approval ratings were in the toilet.
And of course, he lost the next election.
So if approval is higher at the beginning of the war, and it was the lowest, I think, in my lifetime, the approval for a war has been at the beginning of this war, I think that will only go down.
And at least of the people I've spoken to, and I have friends and acquaintances on both sides of this, I mean, the main people in favor of it are, for one thing, baby boomers or above.
They watch way too much Fox News.
Wow.
Apparently, Rupert Murdoch and Wall Street Journal pedal to the metal for, well, they're also pedal to the metal for open borders.
So as long as you get Trump off his main campaign promise and start concentrating on an area of the world 6,000 miles away, I love how suddenly everyone knows about, you know, Corge Island and the Strait of Hormuz.
No, we're all concentrating on a part of the world 6,000 miles away when this country has a lot of problems right now.
And that's what we elected Trump to deal with.
So they tend to be Trump cultists and older people.
So I don't think that's really going to help Trump.
Well, it was just reported on the southern border.
It was like the third or fourth month in a row.
No catch and release.
Nobody's coming over the border.
How's the president done with that campaign promised?
Well, he did well term one, too, in terms of as long as he's president, nobody's getting across.
But then Joe Biden gets elected and millions come pouring across.
Until we have a wall and until we deport the illegals already here, he hasn't accomplished anything.
He's put a pause in these throngs of third worlders running across our border.
What's your take on Christy Noam and her stewardship of DHS?
I kind of wish we had her back now.
She was my least favorite of Trump's cabinet appointees.
Well, particularly because I consider Homeland Security pretty much the most important, I guess treasury.
I guess you could say that's more important, but I don't understand numbers or money, so I'm just saying that.
Homeland oversees not only TSA, which should be abolished immediately.
I can't believe he's dragging his feet on that, but it oversees the entire immigration apparatus, which both parties have been refusing.
People keep voting for it the world over, the entire Western Hemisphere.
Please give us less immigration, less immigration.
And politicians run, promising to give less immigration.
They get into office, and you're getting more immigration.
So you really need someone important to be heading or someone who understands the process to be heading Department of Homeland Security.
You know, why not Chris Kobak, the Attorney General of Kansas?
No one knows this better than he does.
He's brilliant.
Look up his resume.
He came up with the idea of self-deportation.
He came up with the idea of taxing remittances.
He was heavily involved in writing e-Verify.
Please put him there.
You could just, you could golf every day, President Trump, if you would just put Chris Kobak as head or Tom Cotton or Ron DeSantis, governor of Florida, senator from Arkansas, Tom Cotton, I should say.
They'd be fantastic in that role.
And they're really smart and they understand immigration.
And he picks some congressman from Oklahoma, which has, I don't know, the worst Republicans in the country, except possibly South Carolina.
And he's been a supporter of amnesty in the past.
Fantastic.
Fantastic.
President recently criticized a couple of people on the right, Candace Owens, Tucker Carlson, Megan Kelly.
Are they friends of yours?
All of them, I think all of them, at some point, we've been what you would call friends.
I haven't talked to any of them for years.
I don't watch any of them.
I hear about things they say.
And I mean, the only reason, whatever I think of them, I suppose isn't the point.
The point is the only reason he's attacking them all is because they are opposed to this crazy, pointless, unprovoked war in Iran that is distracting him from his real, the promises he made.
One more point on that.
I mean, this nonsense of, oh, we can't let them get a nuclear weapon.
A lot of countries are going to get nuclear weapons.
A lot of countries have nuclear weapons.
He's just accelerated the demand for nuclear weapons.
But I'm sorry, what happened six months ago when we obliterated their nuclear capacity?
What happened to that?
I mean, the lawyer's cliché is, were you lying then or are you lying now?
So yeah, of course, the only reason he's attacking any of these people is because they, like so many Americans, apparently 60, at least 60% of Americans oppose the Iraq war or Iran war.
And in many ways, the Ukraine war and Venezuelan President Maduro have fallen off the map of news.
Yeah, I mean, I think it's fine that Venezuelan president, I loved our Venezuelan adventure, I suppose you could say.
That has something to do with making America great again, not cleaning up some godforsaken of the world that I promise you in a thousand years, it's not going to be any different.
The Middle East is still going to be a problem area.
It's not our problem unless you let them immigrate here.
Not all of them.
Some can come.
But generally, we want the educated ones, pro-Western ones, the smart ones.
But Venezuela was crucially, it was one of three countries crucially involved in the drug trade.
Colombia makes the cocaine and Venezuela supplies the boats to get the cocaine from Colombia to Mexico where the drug cartels ship it in.
Well, drugs are killing, maybe it's gone down slightly, about 100,000 Americans every year.
Have Iranians, has Iran killed 100,000 Americans every year for the last 20 years?
No, the big argument that they are my enemy is that 20 years ago, Iranians were holding signs that said death to America.
If that's the standard, you can find somebody on the street holding some obnoxious, vicious, genocidal sign.
Well, there's no country in the world we can't start bombing.
When's the last time you talked to the president?
Oh, a while ago.
Though, I mean, probably, as I said four months ago, oh my gosh, I've been a huge supporter, even for some of the stupid stuff he does, right up until this Iran bombing campaign.
Surprisingly enough, he turned out to be really great second term.
And as I think I probably would have said four months ago, I think that's because liberals were so insane.
I mean, this was a theme of my last book, Resistance is Futile.
Liberals hate Trump so much they can't oppose him effectively.
Their brains just get frazzled and they will attack every little thing.
And first term, when I was kind of mad at Trump for not for not building the wall, for not deporting illegals, for talking about how he's going to, oh, the DREAMers, they're the illegal aliens who claim to have been brought in as children when it wasn't their fault, saying he's going to do great things for them, seemingly gearing up to give them amnesty.
When he wasn't doing any of that, I was very much opposed to him.
And then liberals would come out with some ridiculous, preposterous charge.
And I'd think, you know, I don't want to defend this guy.
Why are you bringing me back in again?
And I'd have to leap in and defend him.
And I think they're doing it again now.
They oppose him for so many stupid things.
Could you concentrate on the big things?
Oh, sorry, was it last time I talked to him?
Probably after the, I mean, I talked to him a lot when he was running in 2015, 2016.
And then, I don't know, I yelled at him a few times first term, or first year of his first term.
And then I pretty much communicated by Twitter when we had our own falling out.
Are you writing another book?
And where can people read you on a regular basis?
Oh, thank you for asking me.
I'm such a good salesman.
I'm an excellent writer, a very bad businesswoman.
I have a sub-sack, ann coulter.subsack.com.
It's called Unsafe.
I think it's fantastic.
I have my weekly columns will be delivered directly to your inbox.
I do an interview about once a week that, well, speaking of baby boomers, they're the only ones who will remember this.
I think are more like the right-wing Dick Cavett.
It's not the like breaking news.
I don't want a daily show.
I want to interview really smart people on things they know about, a lot of them writers, well, smart people.
This week it's Jacob Heilbrunn.
Strange Constitutional Vernacular00:06:28
I interviewed Robert Kennedy Jr. when he was running.
That was a funny one because, sorry, I'm rambling, but that was kind of funny.
Because everyone had been asking him about, he had answered one million times his position on vaccines.
And as an avid fan, devotee, and historical revisionist on Joe McCarthy, I happened to know that the Kennedy family was very close to Joe McCarthy.
So I began the interview kind of jokingly saying, You know, I was thinking of just doing this whole interview on Joe McCarthy.
And I think it was a joke, but I think he was so sick of talking about vaccines.
He talked about Joe McCarthy for like 10, 15 minutes, and it was really interesting.
Joe McCarthy was his godfather, wasn't he?
Godfather to his sister.
Okay.
All right.
And, okay, again, anncoulter.substack.com.
Is that right?
Yes.
Okay.
You had a recent article there that says, two wongs don't make a right.
What was this about?
About the Supreme Court case on anchor babies.
And before your viewers start sputtering, birthright citizenship, to be calling it birthright citizenship is utterly conclusory.
You're giving the answer, and that's all the New York Times calls it.
The case about birthright citizenship.
It's been in the Constitution forever.
No, no.
Up until a footnote in a William Brennan opinion in 1982 case Plyler v. Doe, no one imagined the children of illegal aliens were citizens.
That was about legal immigrants.
That was about citizens born here.
And technically, if you're going to talk about the 14th Amendment, well, those are part of the post-Civil War amendments.
And that was, as at least half a dozen, maybe a dozen Supreme Court cases have found, that was about freed slaves.
That's all it was about.
Civil War, big event in nation's history.
People should remember that.
So after the Civil War, I mean, to get an amendment passed, you need a huge, you know, mass feeling in the country.
And the concern was that the previously slave-owning states would not be giving now freed slaves full rights of citizenship.
And that was the point of that clause in the 14th Amendment.
The reason, as I described in the article, the reason it's phrased strangely about subject to the jurisdiction thereof, and they will be citizens of the United States and the state in which they reside.
A lot of our amendments and actually the original Constitution are written in this strange vernacular because the framers of both the original Constitution and the amendments were so appalled and embarrassed by the existence of slavery, they refused to mention it in the Constitution.
This was going to be a human rights document.
Kind of hate using that word, but for the entire world, for all time, this is how you set up a working democracy.
And I mean, it's clear from the Constitutional Convention, they're all embarrassed.
They had to start slicing stuff from Thomas Jefferson's original Declaration of Independence because, well, it was kind of flowery.
But it was just so obnoxious to be talking about, you know, all men are endowed by their Creator and half of them are saying, but you guys are still holding slaves.
So all these phrases in the Constitution about persons, persons free, and they had to get the message across without mentioning race or slavery.
It's almost like, you know, a quiz.
But it was only about African Americans.
Then in 1898, it was applied to the child of a legal immigrant.
And then in 19, and that's in 1898.
And lo, these many years, nobody thinks it applies to illegal immigrants.
And then in this footnote in 1982, Justice Brennan slips in this remark about, I don't see the difference in legal and illegal immigrants.
Well, there's the fact that one's legal and one's illegal.
You know, we vetted, in theory, the legal immigrants.
And people just started behaving as if the children, oh, it was always in the constitution.
It goes back to James Madison's pen.
No, it was the crazy delusions of a demented justice.
And the reason Anchor Baby is appropriate and not birthright citizenship is up until no Supreme Court has ever said the children of illegal aliens are citizens.
There has never been a law passed by Congress expressly stating that.
People just started acting as if it was true, as if it were true.
So anchor baby, there's nothing sexual, there's nothing racial about it.
It's a boating metaphor because by running across the border, dropping a baby when, you know, huh, that's funny.
You want to make this trip?
You're about to give birth.
Wouldn't you like to wait a few weeks?
Oh, I see.
So they come across the border when they're pregnant.
There's a birth tourism with who knows how many hundreds of thousands of Chinese ladies flying in when they're pregnant, stay at nice hotels, give birth, child's an American citizen, they go back to China.
But the big problem for America's social safety net is you drop the baby, the baby can bring in all of the immediate family, and then the immediate family bring in all of their immediate family until we have entire villages moving here, all because of the original baby who was allegedly born a citizen.
And that's also why they collect this trick about how Americans get more welfare than illegal immigrants.
No, that's not true because the main reason illegal or main way, pathway, actually the main way there's any social, any welfare distributed is on behalf of children.
So when they have an alleged citizen child, an illegal alien-headed family is what you want to know.
Because people are counting all those anchor baby families as American citizen, and they're getting a lot of money.
And it's way, way, way more than either legal immigrants, much less American citizens.
Ann Coulter is a graduate of the University of Michigan Law School.
Did you ever practice law?
Yes, but it's such a traumatic memory.
Welfare Distribution Truths00:15:15
I've blocked it.
Well, you've got to share part of it.
You've got to have something that's unblocked.
The only thing that's, I came to New York, practice law in New York.
The most interesting, I worked for a Senate Judiciary Committee under Senator Spencer Abraham from Michigan, and actually only for about 18 months.
And then I worked for a Center for Individual Rights.
And on the side, as is well known, at least to my generation of people, to Clinton generation of people, I was doing, I guess you'd call it pro bono work on behalf of Paula Jones, who was suing President Clinton for dropping his pants in a hotel room and saying, kiss it.
Let's go to calls.
For Ann Coulter, first up is Jeff in Fair Play, Missouri, Republican line.
Jeff, you're on with Ann Coulter.
Thanks, guys.
Good morning.
I just want to ask Ann one question.
Have we ever been at war when we are energy independent?
And I want to know if the Abraham Accords was set up for us to get out of the Middle East.
And I want to ask if what he's doing with this war is setting the rest of the world to take up and protect their own hemisphere.
That's Jeff.
That was Jeff in Missouri, Ann.
Okay, Jeff, those are good questions, but technically that is more than one question.
That was three.
Have we been at war when we're energy independent?
I guess Biden didn't take us to war, so we'd have to go back to Bush.
Were we energy independent?
To be honest, I have no idea.
I do know that it makes absolutely no difference that we are energy independent.
It's the world or oil price that matters.
And in order, I was wondering, so why don't these oil companies, if world oil prices do continue to go up, if I were an oil company, well, maybe I wouldn't.
I suppose I have some, I might be patriotic enough, but if they can sell it on the world market and make three times what they're making selling it only in the domestic market, why not do it?
You could sell a portion of it.
And if that were to happen, the government has the... the authority and it probably would step in and refuse to let our oil companies sell internationally.
Robert Pauling.
Robert's in Smyrna, Georgia, Democrats line.
Robert, go ahead.
Good morning, and thanks for taking my call.
I'd like to ask a question about the removal of the, I don't know, approximately 10 generals at the top of the military.
I want to set it up as a comparison, the model being.
I've heard as high as 5,000 members of the Justice Department have either quit or left.
It's possible, I've heard it said, that somebody at the top wants to reshape the Justice Department to fit their desires.
And why would you say that these folks at the top of the military have been fired?
Is somebody trying to reset the military to fit their desires?
In my very short and not illustrious legal career, I worked at the Department of Justice for a while.
And look, the permanent employees in Washington are a huge problem.
It was very obvious to me then.
You know, a new Republican president comes in, he appoints the head, you know, assistant attorney general for our tax division for criminal tax, the solicitor general.
But absolutely every one of the career attorneys is peddled to the metal Democrat.
Some were very good attorneys.
A lot of them were mediocre.
But they really, they can bollocks up the works.
It's a big problem.
They've been there.
They know how to work the system.
That's specifically about DOJ, Department of Justice.
And as for the military, I did a sub-sec interview on this.
I can't think of the guy's name.
This is when Biden was still president.
Very interesting article about the just utterly appallingly incompetent DEI generals that Biden was making and promoting.
A lot of the ladies, including the transgenders.
So, you know, as with Trump's immigration promises, first we have to make corrections on the absolute leftist lunacy of the previous administration.
I'm not saying all Democrats have to go, but incompetent ones should go.
You know, we haven't talked yet, Ann Coulter, about what's happening in California and the governor's race out there.
What's your short take?
Totally hilarious.
I think everyone involved really needs to go to AA.
If you read the stories, I mean, every, it's not that I don't believe it, but obviously Democrats wanted to take Swallwell out because he was considered the most moderate of the Democrats running.
There's a primary, they have ranked choice.
Democrats are terrified.
We have so many Democrats running for governor in California.
We're going to all split our votes and we'll end up with a final runoff between a Republican and a Republican if we're not careful.
So we've got to get some of these Democrats to get out.
You can never get somebody to get out of a race.
So it does seem like it was a specific hit.
A lot of these things took place a few years ago.
But go through the story.
CNN had a very good, very detailed report from each one of the, I think, the four girls.
I shouldn't laugh at it, but you know, come on, girls, don't get drunk and go to bed with some guy.
Oh, I don't remember anything.
There's a reason for these, what are they called?
Harietal rules.
I'm sure I mispronounced that.
Where the colleges were in the role of, this wasn't college, but still in the role of parents and not letting girls go around and get smashed and go home with frat boys.
And this was basically what was happening in story after story.
The girls couldn't remember what happened, except they got so intoxicated they didn't know what they were doing.
So that's point one.
Point two is apparently he was a prolific sender of pictures of his penis, which I just always find hilarious.
Man, no woman has ever, ever wanted a picture of your penis.
If a woman seems to be asking for a picture of your penis, I promise you it's a big hairy policeman at the other end.
Next call is Marie in New York City, Independent Law.
Marie, you with us?
Hello.
Yes, can you hear me?
We're listening.
Okay, great.
When I first saw that you guys put Ann on, I was like, oh, Lord, I'm going to hang up.
I'm just going to turn this off now.
But I'm actually very refreshed by and shocked at how honest she is this morning.
It's really refreshing.
Everything that you've been saying today and telling the truth about Iran was excellent.
I think that this war is really a personal matter for Trump because he, first of all, he didn't involve Congress.
I keep reading about how certain people are getting rich.
I think it was vulgar for him to go out last night to that fight in the midst of the war.
It's like missing the sensitivity trip here.
Also, America being great again has become America being messy, America being hateful again, and janky, as Michelle Obama recently said.
I'm just challenged by what Trump has, the decisions that he's been making over the last four years.
And hey, Marie, we got that.
We'll get Ann Coulter to answer, but can you explain a little bit why what was your perception of Ann before she came on?
That you were going to turn her off?
You know, everybody thinks of Anne as all the way, you know, like the far right.
You know, everyone kind of, you know, sees her as like far-right support.
And even she said today, you know, she supported Trump in some of the most like challenging situations.
And so then people are like, okay, we can't, you know, how seriously can we take this if she's defending this?
And it's time for America to air out the truth because that's the only way we're going to heal as a nation and get further ahead.
Thank you, ma'am.
We're going to leave it there.
We're going to let Ann Coulter have a chance to answer.
Ann Coulter, you are far right, and she wanted to turn you off before you came on today.
Well, first, I want to say I think that is not very open-minded of you.
And perhaps if you had listened to me before, you would know I always speak the truth, even if it's quite deleterious to my career.
Maybe I'm wrong sometimes, but I'm always telling you what I really think.
And I mean, I think I am the true MAGA.
I'm the one who hasn't changed.
How is it conceivably making America great again to be spending?
What are we up to now?
$100 billion on this Iran war?
In the first two weeks, we could have built the entire wall across the southern border.
I think it was, we were only at, I don't know, $11, $12 billion at that point.
And what was that?
Wait, what was the question about?
I was so distracted by her closed-mindedness about me.
Oh, I know the UFC thing.
I was thinking about that because I got up way too early because of you, Peter.
And I'm hearing people complain about Trump.
We've gone to war and here he is at the UFC fight.
And I realized a lot of the goofy stuff Trump does, I mean, it really depends on what you think of him as a president.
When I think he's keeping his promises and doing something no other president has done, though they all say they're going to, and that's, you know, seal the border, care about the working class, bring back manufacturing, no more stupid wars.
When he was doing those things, I don't care about, not only do I not care, but I think it's kind of funny.
The funny things he does, the funny tweets he sends, I will fully defend him on that.
When he's not doing that, suddenly I feel like a New York Times reporter thinking, oh, that juvenile jackass.
So it depends on whether he's doing the good stuff, in which case, you know, cut loose on Twitter.
I'm with you, sir.
Hey, now, that caller, Marie, was probably not the first person to have an impression of you before they heard you or got to know you a little bit.
Is that correct?
Yes.
Yes, I would say that's very correct.
The media is very powerful.
This guy, oh my gosh, am I going to get his first name wrong?
It's not Glen Glenn, Gross Close.
Could you look him up so we can get his name properly?
But anyway, he's an economist and statistician.
I met him when he was at UCLE and he did this big analysis that seemed like a clever way of doing it.
I'm not an economist.
And he determined, this was a few years ago, that the media bias, and most of the media, I guess it's changed a little on social media, is left-wing and you have to spot the Democrats about eight points just for the media bias.
And I mentioned that because, I mean, it is true how, yes, liberals have decided they're just going to portray the media in a particular way.
And I'm sorry, Marie, but non-readers do tend to have just lump anyone.
I mean, I consider myself a moderate and the rest of you are crazy, but someone slightly right of center they will treat as some lunatic white supremacist.
Next call is Joey in Columbus, Ohio.
Republican, thanks for holding, Joey.
You're on with Ann Coulter.
Hey, good morning.
Big fan of Ann.
I was going to get something a little different here.
I really loved your book.
My favorite of it was Godless, I think back in 2006 or so.
And I always held that same opinion that I thought the Democrat politicians and their media pundits were by and large godless.
But I always held out hope for the rank and file Democrat voter that maybe that wasn't so.
And that opinion changed in November when the Virginians elected Joe Joe Jones or Jay Jones.
And I'm really disappointed at this point, and I've kind of lost hope with Democrats.
And do you still feel the same way that you did back when you wrote that book?
And I figure when a party's whole platform is based on the murder of the unborn till the moment of birth, they don't have a lot of moral standing to ever complain about anything else.
Not a bad point.
Well, for one thing, the book Godless, I mean, it was about basically the Democratic platform, the issues being pushed by me.
It wasn't about rank and file Democrats.
That was my point.
I thought a lot of good, God-fearing Democrats were being misled by a party whose overall ideology was basically the opposition party to God.
And abortion, we've been losing on that.
I think we need to go back.
I used to make fun of President George W. Bush for saying, we need to change hearts and minds.
And no, you can change all the hearts and minds you want.
As long as Roe v. Wade was the law of the land, there's nothing we can do about it.
You couldn't vote on it.
We weren't allowed to submit that to a process of democracy.
Well, I'm sorry to say we have submitted it to a process of democracy after the Dobbs decision overturning Roe, which I don't know, right-wingers should have said, yay, we don't have this blemish on our Constitution anymore with something that is obviously not in the Constitution being called the constitutional right.
But it then went to state after state after state.
They would put it to a vote of the people.
And I'm very sorry to report that my side kept losing.
So weirdly enough, I think we're back at the George Bush part of changing hearts and minds.
New York Times headline this morning, as election looms, Washington wonders if Trump will get a new Supreme Court pick.
JD Vance in a Pickle00:10:51
Justice Alito is the subject of intense speculation about whether he will retire.
Any insight for us, Ann Coulter?
Well, I think that's wishful thinking.
Is that from the Washington Post?
New York Times.
Oh, it's definitely wishful thinking.
Yeah, actually, I saw that headline.
I thought, oh, yeah, you wish it's Alito, New York Times.
Well, please God, I hope not.
At least if it's Alito retiring.
I mean, if he's really sick of it, and I doubt he is.
Most of Supreme Court justices are very nerdy intellectuals.
And I mean, we hear about the big flashy cases.
Most of them are really, really, really boring.
But some people like it.
So I think for Supreme Court justices, this is weirdly a dream job for them.
If he needed to, I would guess, and this is just off the fly off the top of my head, maybe if he did it simultaneously, like Sotomayor and Alito or something like that, or if they think they can't make it for another five years.
Despite among the many strong supporters and allies of Donald Trump who've done yeoman's work making his first term successful is Leonard Leo, head of the Federal Society, who was mostly put in charge of choosing the Trump judges.
Otherwise, he wouldn't have known Brett Kavanaugh, Brett Kavanaugh was in his soup.
And Trump went on one of these blistering attacks like he did recently on, as you say, Tucker and Megan, I forget who else, for the Iran War.
He did the same thing to Leonard Leo.
I don't even remember why.
But as long as he has someone, if not Leonard Leo, someone as smart as Leonard Leo, choosing the replacement, I think that would be great.
Otherwise, we could end up with Justice Jared Kushner.
Okay.
You often go underground when you're writing a new book.
Haven't seen you out and about necessarily.
I read you weekly on Substack.
Are you writing a new book?
No, I'm sorry to say I'm not.
I actually am doing a lot of work on my Substack, which I think is great.
And it's really fun interviewing specific people out there on specific areas of their expertise.
So I was saying that's once a week, columns once a week, sometimes extra things I'll send out.
Sometimes I'll annotate a really interesting article out there, often by people like John Tierney or Heather McDonald, very, very smart, and others, weirdly, sometimes a New York Times article.
And then usually on Fridays, I do five stories of the week, either obscure stories that people might have missed that I think are important, or just a different take on maybe a story everyone's talking about.
Right now, that's audio only.
I may change that.
It's about 30 minutes.
And it's fun and I like it.
I think I need to be on social media promoting it a teensy bit more, but I don't like that.
I mean, I'm used to just writing, going on TV.
Well, going on TV, for example.
Used to be you get a car, you show up, they do hair and makeup.
There's somebody else doing the lights, the camera, everything else.
You chat for a while, you go home.
I don't like the technical stuff of running a sub-sack, but I still like all of the research, writing, and working part of it.
And I think it's pretty great.
Yeah, although you are known to have opinions, I will say, especially with your books, there's a lot of research that goes into them.
Yes, yes.
And I have written about so many, I mean, so many subjects that are absolutely crucially pertinent right now.
And people will email me and say, you know, you should re-release Demonic, which is about mobs, groupthink, mob behavior, which I do think is a little more prevalent on the left.
Sorry, Marie.
And Godless, I mean, was just brought up.
I brought up because it is eminently relevant, resistance is futile, how liberals can't think straight, and how all of their scandals against Trump, they were all such nonsense.
I may have told you this before.
I wrote that book because I was standing around at DePari Christmas time with a lot of reporters, including a lot of MSM, like New York Times reporters.
And I realized later, I'm haranguing them all, telling them, drop the Russia stuff.
Don't attack him on that.
Attack him on this.
Attack him on not keeping his promises.
This is what you should be going after.
And of course, Adios America, which he used to, he did use, and certainly the people around him used to run on that magnificent immigration platform he had in 2016.
It's funny, when that book came out, I was utterly persona non-grata.
As much as you could cancel me, canceled.
I have some very funny stories about that, but treated like, you know, I was David Duke for writing that.
And now, I mean, every tweet Elon Musk sends, could come from that book, 90% of Twitter.
And I'd say 90%, maybe more than that, of the commentary and coverage of Fox News, where I was particularly verboten for caring about Americans more than foreigners.
Tim's in Alabama, and he's a Democrat, and he's on with Ann Coulter.
Hello, and how are you today?
One of the things I wanted to make a, I noticed, is that JD Vance went over to talk with the Iranians.
And I was just a little surprised that there was nobody else but him.
You know, you could have had Wyckoff or Rubio or, But therefore, I looked at that and I didn't think it was really a serious effort by the United States to get some understanding or some agreement about anything.
You only got JD Vance over there representing the country.
The other thing is I notice people talk about, when they talk about Iran being a terrorist organization, they go back to 47 years, 47 years.
They bring that up a lot.
I would go back to 77 years when this whole thing actually started, when you had the Germans, Hungarians, Polish, Europeans who were placed over there in North Africa or what you call the Middle East.
That's where the real problem started.
All right, Tim, we're going to leave it there.
Ann Coulter, what's your response for Tim in Alabama?
Well, Tim, as for our negotiators in Pakistan on the ceasefire being unserious, I agree with you, but it's pretty much for exactly the opposite reason you say.
Good news, Jared Kushner and Steve Witkoff were with JD Vance.
And it was their failure to reach an agreement with Iran to begin with that apparently compelled this war.
I think this is very unfortunate for JD.
I just asked Jacob Heilbrun on my Substack, because he's written a lot about the Iraq war, how it's bad for Israel, bad for America, the breakup of MAGA, and he writes beautifully.
And one of the questions I asked him, this is the interview that's posted right now, I asked him, should J.D. quit?
Should I forget quit?
That isn't my idea.
Should he come out and go on Joe Rogan, oppose the Iran war?
Obviously, he can't go on Fox News because they're peddled to the metal for the Iran war.
Because he was the face of, I mean, those tweets are all over with him saying the difference between Kamala and Donald Trump is Donald Trump will not start a war with Iran.
If you vote for Kamala, you're voting for war with Iran.
Just over and over again.
And I do think in his heart, JD does have the true heart of MAGA.
I mean, just his entire background.
Of course, he cares about the average American and working class Americans, all of the left-behind Americans.
That runs through his blood.
But now he's tied to this guy who keeps running on making America great again and then gets into office and forgets that part, forgets the America part.
So I think JD is really, really in a pickle.
I mean, it may be, it does happen often that people, if Trump would just end the war, in a month there will be another story.
People will move on.
People will forget.
Even if there's inflation or continuing high oil prices, whatever the fallout is, people do move on.
So it's crazy to make a prediction about what public sentiment will be, you know, even a week from now, much less two or three months from now.
But if he doesn't get a ceasefire to stick soon, well, I already think we're headed for an absolute disaster in the midterms, mostly because of the Iran war.
Ann Coulter, what's your substack address again?
AnnCoulter.substack.com.
And we appreciate your spending a little under an hour with us here on C-SPAN.
Come back and see us in a couple of months if you would.
Absolutely, preferably in studio.
So, I don't have to set up this Zoom thing.
Good idea.
That'd be great.
Ann Coulter, thank you so much for being with us.
Thanks, Peter.
Well, we've got about an hour and 10 minutes left in the Washington Journal this morning.
At about 9:15 or so, we're going to be joined by Jenk Uger.
He is the Young Turk's host and founder.
He'll be here shortly.
Coming up right after this is open phones, what's on your mind?
What's that public policy issue you want to talk about?
You can see the numbers there.
Author Carla Kaplan Intro00:02:42
Dial in watch our special edition of America's Book Club, C-SPAN's bold original series.
Sunday, as journalist Evan Smith interviews America's Book Club host, David Rubinstein, about the presidency, Congress, and the state of the economy from the New Orleans Book Festival at Tulane University.
There's a lot of talk these days, David, that these necessary components of a functioning democracy are faltering and are failing us.
And that is why some people are concerned larger than the presidency about the state of things today.
I believe that the government of the United States has functioned reasonably well.
Think about this.
When this country was created in 1776, when really 1789 on the Constitution, we were a tiny little country and no one in the world thought we'd be a power.
And because of many things, natural resources, talented people, immigration, entrepreneurial spirit, a whole variety of things, this country became the most powerful country and most envied country in the world.
Watch our special edition of America's Book Club with an interview of our host, David Rubinstein, Sunday at 6 p.m. and 9 p.m. Eastern and Pacific, only on C-SPAN.
Tonight, on C-SPAN's QA, Northeastern University professor and author Carla Kaplan discusses her book, Troublemaker, about journalist Jessica Mitford.
She explores Mitford's aristocratic British upbringing, her famous family, including sisters linked to Adolf Hitler, and her eventual move to America, where she became a best-selling author, civil rights activist, and communist.
It was very difficult for her because she was the political outlier of, and very much so.
So even as a young child, she was somebody who looked around her, and she was alone in her family in this attitude.
And she said, wait, something is very wrong here.
I don't get this.
Why do we have so very much?
And everybody around us in the village has so very little.
Author Carla Kaplan and her book, Troublemaker, tonight at 8 Eastern on C-SPAN's Q ⁇ A. You can listen to Q ⁇ A and all of our podcasts on our free C-SPAN Now app or wherever you get your podcasts.
Epstein File Research00:14:17
Washington Journal continues.
All right, what's that public policy issue that is on your mind that you want to talk about?
Here on the Washington Journal this morning, 202 is the area code for all of our numbers: 748-8001 for Republicans, 202-748-8000 for Democrats, and 202-748-8002 for independents.
You can also participate via social media.
You can participate by sending us a text, 202-748-8003.
And you can participate on Facebook or on X.
The addresses are on your screen.
So join in the conversation.
This is the Washington Times this morning.
Trump's White House ballroom construction can continue for now.
A federal court of appeals is allowing construction to proceed for President Trump's $400 million White House ballroom, temporarily extending a lower court order.
So we may see some more movement on the ballroom in the coming months.
Chris Brothel Bothell, Washington, Republican.
Hi, Chris.
Hello, good morning.
I'll give you a third way to pronounce that.
It's bot hell.
But you got it right the second time.
Wait, what's the correct pronunciation?
And I apologize.
No, I'm satisfied with the way you're starting the call.
Baffle.
Baffle.
Got it.
So I think the reason for my call is to bring a term bulverism, and it's to drive a belief that's not necessarily true.
Labeling a serious effort to arrive at a truth was going to be my cult, and I hope to dance in the ballroom one day.
It's kind of an example of a non-temporary serious effort.
Also, banks make them with respect to know your customer.
And also, you know, cupboard members from both sides of the political aisle make it when choosing a wardrobe.
One other thing I was going to say.
Oh, yeah, I think foreign influence came into 2020's election, and that was going to be the crux of my call.
And then the last little item is: I believe that Greenland as a country could help us with national security, with election security, with world security.
I think a lot more needs to be brought into that negotiation.
And I appreciate your taking my call.
That's Chris in Washington State.
This is Yvette in Florida, Democrat.
Hi, Yvette.
Good morning.
I really wanted to talk to Ann Coulter when she was talking about birthright citizenship.
And a couple of weeks ago, I was watching a hearing on C-SPAN about that subject.
And one of the women on the panel that they were questioning, she said that we already have laws on the books to prevent what she was talking about, you know, the Chinese coming in and dropping babies.
People are running businesses now where they promote that.
And she said that the laws are already on the books that no administration, either the Biden or the Trump administration now, has implemented any of these laws that are already there.
And I wondered if someone could look into that.
And someone else on the panel, one of the men, was talking about how often this happens.
And hundreds of thousands of these people, apparently, huge numbers, are dropping babies here.
And he had all those numbers.
But when he was questioned about what the woman said, he said, well, he couldn't give any numbers about how often that law was implemented.
So I thought that was kind of interesting.
Yeah, I agree, Yvette.
Thank you for calling in and saying that out loud.
Scott is in Ithaca, New York, Independent Line.
Go ahead, Scott.
Hey, good morning.
So Iran, I'm thinking I'm pretty objective here, I think, but Iran is not like some of the other new holding countries.
And I think most independents and conservatives and maybe centrists, I'm really a centrist, would agree that we don't really want to dial back what President Trump has done already, what actually the military has done already, and weakened Iran.
And what we need to do is we need to get rid of the last remnants of the guard that are in Iran so that they can have a democratic country.
And without doing that, this war is going nowhere until they finish that part of the mission.
But I think nobody wants to dial back what we've done to really weaken nuclear and missile capability and all that other stuff.
And I just think that's the reasonable approach here.
Another Scott calling in from Illinois, Effingham, Illinois, on the Republican line.
Scott, go ahead.
It's your turn.
Good morning, American fellow patriots.
Thank you, Peter, for taking my call.
I saw a snippet on the news about bringing the draft back.
Now, I'm an old Vietnam veteran, and I was at the tail end.
Instead of two years in the Army, I did four years in the Air Force.
Okay, when we were young, we had to sign up for selective service.
Now, I don't know if that's still the law or for all young, young men.
The thing is, I went in as an 18-year-old boy, and I came out at 22 as a grown man.
And I just came back from the honor flight, and I saw my fellow buddies on the wall, and it was really heartbreaking.
But what I'd like to say is when you go into basic training, a lot of countries have mandatory service, okay?
A lot of them don't.
But us being all volunteer.
But my opinion is, and I'd like somebody to talk about this, when you go in at 18, they teach you how to fold your clothes and have respect, and you learn that.
It's embedded in your life, you know.
And this is things that you have for the rest of your life.
And I believe all men should serve.
Two years is fine, but it grows you up.
So what I like to know is the draft going to come back.
Okay?
Thank you so much.
That's Scott in Illinois.
And up next is Barbara in Avon Park, Florida, Democrat.
Hi, Barbara.
Hi.
My comment today is, and my information is according to this information gathered by the visual capitalists of the U.S., that the United States' share of global arms export is 42%.
The U.S. dominates global arms exports led by Boeing, RTX, and Lockheed Martin, which generate over $250 billion annually.
This goes back to what can we do to keep the U.S. military-industrial complex from taking us from one war to another.
That's a lot of American jobs making a lot of war equipment.
And the next country that comes up to that close is even France at 10%.
China is down to 2.6%.
So somebody's saying that China exports a lot of arms is not really that high on the list.
It just bothers me that we're just going from one war to another.
And sometimes you don't even have to have a good reason.
I don't know how this gets corrected.
And there's no one there at your end of the microphone to answer.
But I just wanted to get that comment out there.
Do you know what?
Thank you very much.
You know what?
Jenk Uger is going to be out here in about 15 minutes.
And I think that's, if my memory will last that long, I will bring up that question.
Because I think that's a worthy question to bring up to our next guest.
So I'm writing it down right here, and let's see if I can remember it for 15 minutes.
Okay, Barbara?
Thanks so much.
Okay.
Appreciate it.
Bye-bye.
Thank you.
Gary's in Connorsville, Indiana, Independent Line.
Gary, go ahead and make your comment.
Yeah, first of all, I want to say, sir, another thing you might want to tell your next guest is ask him about the draft that Scott mentioned in Illinois.
And Scott, I salute you for your service.
Long live the Air Force.
But three things I wanted to mention just really, really fast, I promise you.
Number one, I want to thank C-SPAN for all the book advertisements.
I've bought four books just recently, and I have you to thank for that.
Hey, Gary, name one of the books you bought.
It's Strong Floor, No Ceiling by Oliver Libby.
Good stuff.
Okay.
And the second one was to Miss Colder.
She brought up that point about the Founding Fathers mentioning that we're all created by, endowed by our creator, but they were slave owners.
That was a very interesting point.
And the third thing I want to mention is the fact that here recently, we're faced with a dilemma as far as drug prices.
And, you know, I do know that research and creating chemicals to create new types of drugs that enters into it.
But there's got to be some way of keeping the price level in moderation because a lot of those people out there, they're faced with a dilemma of do I take this $1,000 pill or do I eat my next meal?
So that's all I want to say, Mr. Selene, and thank you for your time.
Thanks, Gary, for calling in.
Appreciate it.
Stephen is in Fort Worth, Texas, Republican line.
Stephen, what's on your mind?
Well, Pam Bondi is required to come under deposition to answer questions about withheld documents they're still holding on the Epstein files.
One of those documents Donald Trump was actually prosecuted over was the AMI catch and kill case.
So 30 different stories.
One of them, according to journalist Rowan Farrow, was the 2016 case where Trump and Epstein were sued by Lisa Bloom.
That is one of the 60 that's stated in Newsweek and interviews and also in his book as being inside the AMI vault.
The reason why that particular one is very important was on 11-2, 2016, 0Hour One hacked Lisa Bloom's office, and he pretty much got away with it.
He's currently still working as an influencer online.
He was able to intercept a documentary.
You seem to have spent a lot of time researching the Epstein file issue.
Is that correct?
That is correct.
I had this since 2019.
So why, Stephen?
I wrote a book, and I had to discount that lawsuit because I didn't have all that information after Epstein was arrested.
What's the name of your book?
Donald Trump Explained.
It was put out by Dorritz Publishing.
Donald Trump Explained by Dorrance Publishing.
Stephen, thank you for calling in.
Chris is in Alabama.
Democrat.
Hi, Chris.
Hi.
I'm glad you got back to me.
I wasn't quite sure what was going on.
Basically, my question or comment is on your last person.
She was asking God or telling God what should be done about certain things.
And I was raised and still am in the church.
And we are taught to ask God what we can do for him.
And I wanted to have her feelings about that.
My feelings about other things are: we have made this country very good at making wars that have no end, and we're in one now.
And they're mostly just border wars against people that we don't want to be able to get into the rest of the world.
That bothers me.
Thank you, Chris.
We're going to leave it there.
We're going to talk to Jim in Iowa, Independent Line.
Go ahead.
Good morning.
Good morning.
I'm concerned primarily about the economy.
We have about $40 trillion in debt, hundreds of trillions of dollars in unaccounted in obligations that we can't supply.
We have the biggest bubbles in history in the stock market, and real estate, and bonds.
And I think if a debt can't be paid, it won't be paid.
So there's two ways to default.
You can default honestly or dishonestly.
Honestly, it would be to say we're broke.
There's no more military, no more Social Security, there's no more Medicare, there's no more Medicaid, there's no more roads, there's no more nothing.
Our government is broke.
But they can't do that politically, so they will do what most countries do when they find themselves in this predicament.
They will hyperinflate the currency and it will go to war, so the population blames some other country rather than the people who actually got us in this condition.
I recommend a book called The Great Taking by a guy who was a hedge fund director in 2008 and was the financial shenanigans and found that looking at the law that they've changed the uniform commercial code in all 50 states and now all of Europe, finally Sweden.
Swearing on Social Media00:06:32
And what people don't really know.
Hey, tell you what, Jim, we're going to let your comments stand right there because we've got a lot of people on the line we want to make sure that we get to.
And we also want to share this article in the New York Times this morning.
Angry at Trump, some Democrats are not deleting their expletives.
Once upon a time, the unwritten rule of American politics imposed a strict decorum on the way politicians talked.
Lately, you may have noticed the rules of change.
One particular four-letter word that would have shocked a 1960 audience is suddenly being tossed out with abandoned President Trump.
Trump has long been known for breaking norms with his crude language and used a variant of the word in a message to Iran on Easter Sunday.
But it turns out that Democratic politicians are now far more likely than Republicans to spice up their public statements with that particular swear word according to a New York Times analysis of social media posts made by governors and members of Congress since 2020.
Kathleen Hall Jameson, who studies political communication and is the director of the Annenberg Public Policy Center at the University of Pennsylvania, said the instinct to reach for coarser language was both an acknowledgement that society has become more accepting of it in recent years and an effort by politicians to raise alarm and relate to voters.
Now, they go ahead and they list, the New York Times has an analysis, F-word posts on X by target and posts by Democrats, number of posts targeting the Trump administration, 60 of those posts contained the F-word.
If they were targeting ICE and immigration, the Democrats used it 25 times.
Republican politicians, 41 times, one from a Republican.
And at Democratic politicians, Republicans used it 11 times.
Now they go on on this second chart and look at lawmakers who use the F-word on X the most.
Ruben Gallego, senator from Arizona, is in first place with 77 uses.
Derek Van Orden, a Republican representative in Wisconsin, 35.
Another Wisconsinite, Mark Pocan, 30.
Eric Swalwell, 29 times.
Robert Garcia, another Californian, 23, Brian Schatz, the Hawaii senator.
And then down at the bottom is John Fetterman of Pennsylvania.
Used the F word 11 times in different posts he put on X. Philip is in Springfield, Massachusetts, Democrats line.
Philip, go ahead, please.
Hi, I just like to say thank you for taking my call.
And I just listened to you about the swear words.
This is the first year that I ever heard politicians swear like that.
And I watched C-SPAN Washington Journal and the people calling in.
And sometimes they have speakers.
And everybody that I've seen is good with their language.
But some of the people are out of control.
And they always talk about your language, you know.
And I had another issue I wanted to bring up is the people that need help with the cuts and everything that they could, the people, Congress and the president could get a stimulus package like they did years, few years back, and help the people out because it's a lot of doom and gloom on TV,
you know.
All right.
Philip, thank you.
Thank you for sharing your views on those two issues with us.
Here on C-SPAN, we don't prohibit it language.
We try to stay away from it.
We try to be civil in our conversation because it could very quickly get out of hand.
So we do appreciate everyone calling in this morning and being civil and voicing a strong opinion.
And we'd love to hear those.
And we appreciate your being civil about it as well.
CNBC, new headline just coming out.
Trump says U.S. will blockade Strait of Hormuz.
After Iran, peace talks fail.
We'll get some more on that as the show goes this morning.
James is in Palm Beach Gardens, Florida.
Republican line.
Go ahead, James.
Good morning.
Thank you for taking my call.
I do want to focus on, I don't know why I have a frog in my throat right now.
So do I, and I apologize for mine.
Yeah.
I want to talk about the Iran war.
I'm a Republican.
I'm appalled by many of the things that President Trump does and says.
But on this issue, I think there should be clarity.
We are seeing in real time what Iran is capable of doing in terms of its missile technology, its refusal to agree never to produce nuclear weapons, its missile fires on its neighbors, its funding terrorist organizations.
Just imagine if it had nuclear weapons and a stable of ballistic missiles.
This had to be done now.
There may not have been an imminent threat, but there was an unacceptable risk.
And I applaud President Trump for taking action.
I just hope it turns out well.
That's James in Florida, Republican line.
And Tom is in Riverhead, New York, Independent.
Go ahead, Tom.
Hi, how are you doing?
Yeah, I'm watching the show.
Thanks for taking my call.
But I want to respond to the not really respond, but about the woman that called in about the about the military-industrial complex, about how we export a lot of arms and munitions.
Unbiased Franco Biography00:02:04
Well, there's a book I read, a couple of books, one by both of them by Chalmers Johnson.
One was Blowback that covers all the blowback of political influence in the Middle East and why the terrorist attacks occurred and also Sorrows of Empire, which covers the military-industrial complex and how we have our military abroad across the world and we spend so much money and how they privatized a lot of it.
All right.
Tom, we're going to have to leave it there.
Thank you for the two book recommendations.
Coming up next is Jenk Uger of the Young Turks.
We'll be right back.
Hi, Jenk Uger.
On this episode of Book Notes Plus with our host, Brian Lamb.
Giles Tremlett is a biographer, a narrative historian, and a journalist based in Madrid, Spain.
He was born in Plymouth, England in 1962, but since graduating from Oxford University, has almost continuously lived in Spain.
His latest book is titled El Heneralissimo, a biography of the late dictator Francisco Franco.
Supported by Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini, Franco rose to power by defeating the loyalists in the Spanish Civil War that lasted from 1936 to 1939.
He then controlled the Spanish government until his death in 1975.
He was a strong supporter of national Catholicism and a strong opponent of democracy.
A new interview with author Giles Tremlett about his book, El Generalissimo, a biography of Francisco Franco.
Book Notes Plus with our host Brian Lamb is available wherever you get your podcasts and on the C-SPAN Now app.
C-SPAN is as unbiased as you can get.
Mainstream Media Lies00:13:41
You are so fair.
I don't know how anybody can say otherwise.
You guys do the most important work for everyone in this country.
I love C-SPAN because I get to hear all the voices.
You bring these divergent viewpoints and you present both sides of an issue and you allow people to make up their own minds.
I absolutely love C-SPAN.
I love to hear both sides.
I've watched every morning and it is unbiased.
And you bring in factual information for the callers to understand where they are in their comments.
This is probably the only place that we can hear honest opinion of Americans across the country.
You guys at C-SPAN are doing such a wonderful job of allowing free exchange of ideas without a lot of interruptions.
Thank you, C-SPAN, for being a light in the dark.
Washington Journal continues.
And now joining us is Jank Uger, founder of the TYT Network and host of the Young Turks.
Mr. Uger, what are the Young Turks?
We're the largest independent news network online, and we're on YouTube and about a dozen other platforms at least at 6 to 8 p.m. Eastern every day.
Come check us out.
We do facts and then we do analysis.
And I happen to be on the left, and a lot of the folks on our network are, but we care deeply about the truth, and we do that first.
Use of the term Turks, does that have anything to do with the fact that you were born in Turkey?
No, not really.
It was founded by three people.
I'm only one of them.
And we decided young Turks was young progressives overthrowing the established system, which is kind of perfect for us.
So that's why we went with it.
How many followers?
Only 31 million subscribers.
And we've had about 32 billion views over the course of our lifetime.
We're actually the oldest show in internet history, longest running one.
And we're the first YouTube partner.
So that makes me the first YouTuber.
So that's 10% of the U.S. population, but you're worldwide, correct?
31 million people?
Worldwide, yeah.
And why do you think there's 31 million people who subscribe to what you do?
Because we do something that's different.
We give people an alternative to mainstream media.
And so, you know, I don't mean to offend, but if folks work in mainstream media, I probably will offend.
And so I think there needs to be an alternative.
I think that a lot of mainstream media is propaganda, and so does our audience.
And when they see our show, they go, oh my God, that's true.
They're saying things that are true.
And in fact, the thing that we'll get a lot, Peter, is, are you allowed to say that?
And the answer is yes.
If you're actually doing it online and you're independent and you're not wedded to the old system, we're allowed to say anything we like.
Regularly on this program, especially in the last couple of weeks, we've been getting calls from viewers who say the Iran war started because the Epstein files were in the news and this is a way to cover them up.
Yeah.
Is there a connection?
Is there a one plus one there, in your view?
Yes and no.
So no, I don't think it's just the cover-up to Epstein files.
Yes, the connection is Israel, and it's obvious.
So Israel started this war.
Israel's the only people who wanted this war.
We have no American interest there at all.
Iran certainly didn't want the war.
Lebanon didn't want the war.
There's only one country that wanted the war.
That's Israel.
And Israel is also connected to Epstein.
So that's not covered much in mainstream media, but drop site news has proven definitively that every single deal that Epstein did was on behalf of Israel.
He procured cyber weapons for them.
He was clearly intelligence.
He was, in fact, he was even involved in Iran Contra affair, which no civilians are part of.
So we're like ignoring the elephant in the room that he's definitely intelligence and definitely worked for Israel.
So are all of these things connected?
Yeah.
Through the one thing that seems to control almost everything in Washington, which is the country of Israel.
Well, a couple of weeks ago, you were on the Piers Morgan program.
We're just going to show a short snippet of that program.
It got a little fiery.
Here it is.
And I guess we do not have the Piers Morgan program ready.
Here it is.
Let's go ahead.
If you notice, before the war, people like Ben Ferguson were saying, oh, we're not necessarily going to attack.
Donald Trump's a peace president.
He's not going to be able to do that.
That's not what I said.
That's not what I said ever.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
I never said it.
Go find a video.
No one's debating.
Listen to anyone on my show.
I never said that.
Not one damn time.
Piers, this is why I shout on your program, because every time I start talking, some Israel First son of a bitch comes in and starts talking over me.
Hey, you made all your Israeli talks.
You're an American product, bro.
Be quiet.
Oh, yeah, yeah, my ass.
Okay, so you eventually died.
So 15 minutes.
Cheng, for 15 minutes.
Don't blow it down.
Yeah, okay.
Well, that's what Israel first does.
They just jabber, jabber, jabber.
Anyway, so here we go.
So then Ben said, and all the Israel First clowns said, oh, we're doing this for the Iranian protesters.
And once we start bombing them and murdering them, they're going to love us.
And now he's saying, well, this can't come out.
Never said that either.
We're bombing them.
We're bombing them.
That's what we said.
All right.
All right, here we go.
Will you shut the fuck up?
Will you shut up?
I'm stupid.
Israeli talks.
I'll never be quiet.
I'll never be quiet when you put words into my mouth that they're not.
That's why we have to shout on this show because these assholes won't make me.
Shut up.
Fuck off.
Jenk Uger, that got a little hot.
Yeah, yeah, it often gets hot.
So I never back down.
So a lot of the bad faith actors, which are almost all the Israel First pundits, which is almost all the pundits in this town, they love to talk over other people and they think, oh, this is a clever trick.
I'll get to talk and the other side is polite because they're good guys.
And then when they start talking, I'll just talk over them so they'll never get to make their point.
And when I'm on the air, that's never going to happen.
So they're never going to outshout me and they're not going to outbully me.
I'm an American and I don't run.
So he pointed to his flag there.
Ben Ferguson said, I'm American.
He pointed to an Israeli flag.
It was an American and Israeli flag.
So this town is so scared to death of saying, Israel, oh my God, it's shush, shush, shush.
No, it's definitely Israel.
They give to 94% of Congress.
So that's not an anti-Semitic point of view.
That's big pharma gives to over 90% of Congress.
Big oil gives to over 90% of Congress.
Defense contractors do, et cetera.
So they say, no, no, no, you have to make a special exemption.
You can criticize Big Pharma, Big Oil, defense contractors.
You just can't criticize the Israeli lobby.
Yeah, I agree to disagree.
Yes, I can.
I'm an American.
And so the control that they have over our Congress is disgusting and sickening.
That's why we're in this war.
This war is an absolute disaster.
And it's brought to you by Israel.
Every time you go to pay more at the gas tank, make sure you blame Israel.
Every time you see our American soldiers come home in caskets, make sure you blame Israel because we didn't do this war.
80% of Americans didn't want this war.
80%.
We were driven into it by the lobbyists that control this town.
We had a caller a little while ago talking about U.S. arms exports.
And she saw a report that the U.S. was responsible for 42% of all worldwide arms exports.
And sometimes we talk about the fact that China exports arms, including to Iran potentially, and they're responsible for about 4% to 6%.
I forgot the name of the report that she mentioned, but I told her that I would bring that up with you.
So, yeah, I mean, look, the core problem, Peter, is money in politics, right?
So that's why defense contractors are overwhelmingly powerful in this town.
And why do we sell so many arms?
Well, you know, some of it makes sense.
We want to, you know, build arms to defend ourselves, obviously, right?
So it's not a binary world where you either have no arms or endless arms.
But are we doing ourselves any favors by being seen as the weapons dealers of the world?
The people who are constantly starting wars.
No.
We have golden hearts in America and we don't want these endless wars.
And we voted against endless wars.
Democrats did.
I'm on the left.
We voted against the wars.
The Republicans voted against the wars.
But no matter who we vote for, we get John McCain, right?
And so endless wars.
And why?
Because just like AIPAC, the defense contractors spend billions of dollars bribing our politicians.
Anyone who says that those campaign contributions and the dark money aren't bribes is honestly a fool or a liar.
And over 90% of Americans agree with me.
Obviously, those are bribes.
Obviously, our politicians are crooks.
They take those bribes.
They don't serve us.
They serve their donors.
And we're all sick of it.
Don't you think, though, a politician could have a sincere view that, A, Iran is a threat?
No.
Or B, Israel is a threat?
That Israel's a threat?
Yeah, you could definitely have a view that Israel's a threat.
Right.
But that goes to the point.
You don't trust anyone who says Iran is a threat.
You do see this through the prism of money.
No.
So here's how it works.
So is Iran a friendly country to us these days?
No.
Why are they not friendly to us?
Because we're constantly backing Israel and they're against the occupation of the Palestinians.
Something never talked about in media is, oh, right, the Israelis have been enslaving the Palestinians for 58 years.
A brutal, vicious, I would argue, a fascist occupation of the Palestinians.
And we're all just supposed to let that go.
Like, oh, no big deal.
Why don't you enslave five and a half million people for another 58 years?
No, it's vicious.
So now, Iran and a lot of the Muslim world is incensed by that.
Obviously, right?
If you're a decent and moral person, you would be incensed by that.
So now, why is Iran in conflict with us?
Well, because we are supporting Israel's vicious occupation and they're against it.
And so does that mean Iran hates us?
No, Iran hates that we're supporting Israel.
Does that mean Iran is a threat to us?
No.
They're saying, for God's sake, stop the occupation.
Did Iran attack us?
No, we attacked Iran.
So it's not to say that the regime are good, guys.
The regime are fundamentalist Muslims that I totally disagree with.
I think they're oppressing their own people.
That's a significant problem for the people of Iran.
But that is not our business.
John and Kansas and Bob and Missouri don't have to go fight that war either on behalf of the Iranian people or the Israeli people.
They're supposed to fight defense for the American people, not go on military adventures aboard so that defense contractors can make more money and so that Israel can wipe out all of its enemies in the Middle East.
There is breaking news that the U.S. will be guarding or preventing folks from going through the Strait of Hormuz.
I don't know if you saw that yet or not.
I haven't.
That the U.S. will blockade the Strait after the Iran peace talks fail.
Yeah.
Is this a change to the world of free movement on the oceans?
Yeah, this is why this war was such a disaster.
So I saw that news from you actually just before I came on.
And I apologize that I'm just giving you a headphone.
No, no, no, no problem at all.
So I expected that that might happen.
So basically, U.S. is saying, well, all right, if we're not going to make any money off the Strait of Hormuz, then we don't want Iran and its allies like China to make any money off the Strait of Hormuz either.
But the problem is that's counterproductive.
Why?
Because the less oil that flows, the higher the oil prices are.
So when the markets open on Monday, it'll likely crash.
So Iran has got leverage there that is inarguable.
I wish they didn't have it.
I'm for America, okay?
But they do, whether we like it or not, they have the leverage of if they close the strait, we can double close it, but that's only going to make it worse.
It's leverage over the entire global economy.
The higher the oil prices go, the more the rest of the economy sinks.
And so we chose to sink our own economy.
Everybody knew they were going to close the strait.
Everyone knew it.
Maybe except with Donald Trump.
And then Yahoo, as we saw from the New York Times, went in there and said, oh, don't worry, big guy.
It's going to be easy.
They're not going to close the strait.
They're not going to attack your allies in the Gulf.
All lies.
Oh, you can get regime change easily.
Another lie.
Lie on top of lie.
Whenever you ask, why is Israel a special ally?
The only answer anybody ever gives back is, oh, they give us intelligence.
That intelligence is fake almost every time.
Their fake intelligence drove us into the Iran war.
Their fake intelligence drove us into the Iraq war.
So no thank you on their intelligence.
Their intelligence always says the same thing.
Bomb our Muslim neighbors, kill them so we can take their land.
And by the way, that is an empirical fact.
You can look at the map.
Israel keeps expanding and expanding and expanding.
West Bank, Gaza, Golan Heights.
Now they're in Western Syria.
They're in southern Lebanon.
Their greed knows no bounds.
They took 53% of Gaza.
They're not giving it back.
They're now ethnically cleansing southern Lebanon.
Corrupt Democratic Party00:15:48
Can I challenge the rest of the media?
Here, I'll look into the camera.
Rest of mainstream media, can you talk about how Israel is now ethnically cleansing Lebanon?
How they are destroying everything south of the Latani River, how they pushed out another million Arabs.
By the way, not just Muslims, but Christians.
There's tons of Christians in Lebanon.
They bombed churches in Gaza.
They even bombed a synagogue in Tehran.
There is no bounds to what Israel is willing to do, Peter.
So we have to get them under control.
And even if you love Israel, us enabling their worst instincts is not helping them.
I don't understand why Israel supporters can't see straight.
You're getting the whole world to hate you.
Why would you want the whole world to hate you?
Why do you want all of America to hate you?
No, we want more war and more land.
No, okay, well, if you act like that, obviously everyone's going to hate you.
All right, one more piece of video, and then we're going to go to calls.
Ennis Cantor Freedom is a Turkish-American basketball player, drafted fourth in 2011.
He wrote a book called In the Name of Freedom.
We interviewed him for that book, and here he is answering a question about Israel.
You write in your new book, In the Name of Freedom, that being raised in Eastern Turkey, you were taught to hate Jews and Americans.
Well, it's actually a very interesting story because, so if you are a politician in the Middle East, and if you want to be elected again, you do a couple things: you attack America, you attack the West, you attack Christian people, and you attack Jewish people.
And unfortunately, the base is so uneducated.
They're like, wow, look at our leader.
He's standing tall against America.
He's standing tall, strong against the West.
Let's vote for him.
And every politician uses that.
So that was pretty much like the case when I was growing up.
And I remember, you know, one day I went downstairs to play with my friends who are not even teenagers.
I was nine years old, as well as my friends.
So my little friends, they were burning American flags and they were breaking crosses.
And I remember asking one of my friends, I'm like, guys, what are you doing?
They said, well, we should hate America.
We should hate the West, hate Christians, hate Jewish people.
You should hate it too.
And they gave me a flag to burn it.
It was an American flag.
They gave me a flag, they gave me a lighter, and they said, burn it.
I literally looked down.
I'm like, this is not the right thing to do.
I threw the flag down.
I ran upstairs to my mom.
I was like, mom, my friends are telling me to hate America, hate Christian people, hate the West, hate Jewish people.
What do I do?
My mom said, I'm not going to tell you what to do, but do not hate anyone before you meet them.
So that day I gave a promise to my mom.
And going forward, I never hated anyone till I met that person.
And then literally eight years later, when I was 17 years old, I came to America for the first time.
I even remember asking my dad, when my dad said, enough is enough.
You're going to America.
You're going to get your education there and play basketball.
I even remember asking my dad, Do you really want me to go to the devil's nest?
And he said, Go and see yourself.
And came here for the first time.
And I realized that everything that I learned when I was growing up was just false.
And that was Annes Cantor Freedom.
In the name of Freedom was his name of his book, Jenk Uger.
You were shaking your head.
And everything he said was a lie.
It's not even close to true.
It's not within a million miles of true.
So, like, they pay guys like Annis Canterbury.
Know if he's paid or if he's just this natural sellout, but to defame Muslim people, Turkish people, just like he did there.
Breaking crosses, absurd.
No one in Turkey does that.
No one hates Christians.
I've never heard of a single person in Turkey going, damn the Christians.
We barely even interact with Christians if Turkey's 99% Muslim.
So like there's no reason to hate Christians.
It's absurd.
They're burning an American flag.
I've literally never seen that or heard of it in Turkey.
So he's just making things up because he's trying to appeal to what he thinks is an old school right-wing audience.
And they want to hear, oh, the Muslims are dark and they hate America and they hate Christians.
So I don't know if he's working for the Israelis or who he's working for, but that's the kind of propaganda they do to get people in America to hate Muslims, to hate Turks, etc.
That was garbage.
When I grew up till I was eight in Istanbul, Turkey, we have Armenian friends, we had Jewish friends.
Some of the oldest synagogues in the world are in Istanbul, and we're super proud of the Christians and the Jews that live in Istanbul and in Turkey.
So I don't know where he made up those fantasies.
Back to that story that we showed the headline of: Trump says U.S. will blockade Strait of Hormuz after Iran peace talks fail.
President Trump said the U.S. will blockade effective immediately.
The U.S. Navy, the finest in the world, will begin the process of blockading any and all ships trying to enter or leave the Strait of Hormuz.
The announcement of a U.S. blockade of the Strait likely scuttles any hope that the war would end in the coming days.
President Trump went on to say, at some point, we will reach an all being allowed to go in, all being allowed to go out basis, but Iran has not allowed that to happen by merely saying there may be a mine out there somewhere, but nobody knows about them.
This is world extortion, and leaders of countries, especially the U.S., will never be extorted.
That's the story as reported by CNBC.
Yeah, we invaded them.
What is he talking about?
He's making it seem like, I can't believe Iran's doing this to us.
Yeah, after you murder their 49 top leaders and you kill 3,500 people, including tons of children, and you declare war on them and you drop thousands of bombs on them, they're going to retaliate.
Is Donald Trump so stupid that he didn't know that they were going to retaliate?
And the answer is, yeah, he might be that dumb.
That's why Netanyahu in the Situation Room said, oh, they'll surrender and grovel at your feet.
And Trump was like, oh, I bet they will.
I bet they will.
Well, they didn't, Donald.
They said they were waiting for you and they were waiting for you.
And of course, they were going to close the strait and they closed the strait and now we're screwed.
By the way, there is a way out, Peter, just before we do anything else, okay?
The way out is you make a deal with them.
Oh, reopen the Strait of Hormuz.
We'll stop attacking you.
You and Israel deal with the rest.
We got no business in this war.
So, okay, we already killed your top 49 leaders and wiped out most of your military, wiped out your nuclear enrichment facilities.
See, you wouldn't want to be here.
Bye, Felicia.
We got to go.
If Israel wants to keep fighting in Lebanon and Iran, that's their business.
It has nothing to do with America.
I don't want a single more American to die for a foreign government like Israel.
And we're talking with Jank Uger of the Young Turks.
The first call for him comes from Michael in Denver, Independent Line.
Go ahead, Michael.
Good morning, Peter.
Thank you so much for taking my call.
And Cenk, it's really an honor to speak with you.
Thank you so much for the courageous work that you do.
And I just had a quick kind of comment and question for you today.
So interesting Wall Street Journal article this past week about lawmakers' way reigning in Trump.
And it talks about how some Republican lawmakers have set a deadline that is approaching at the end of this month.
They say federal law requires the president to seek approval from Congress if military operations in Iran last longer than 60 days.
And, you know, there's been a lot of senators that have backed the president's actions in Iran, but wouldn't back funding for further military operations unless Congress formally declares war.
But the Trump administration and some congressional allies have argued that the War Powers Act is unconstitutional.
And so my question that I wanted to ask you is, what do you think about the Trump administration kind of implying that having to get congressional approval to continue this conflict after 60 days is unconstitutional?
And Trump kind of.
You know what, Michael?
We're going to take that question and we're going to get Jenker to answer that one.
Thank you for calling in.
Yeah.
So it's a great question.
No, it is absolutely clear in the Constitution that Congress must declare war.
Now, in this case, it's not just Trump.
A lot of presidents have ignored that part of the Constitution, but it's unacceptable.
I agree with Tom Massey and Roe Khanna, a Republican and a Democrat.
They are absolutely right.
No, you have to go through Congress.
And you can't tell the American people that you're going to totally annihilate an entire civilization, but it's not a war.
It's a skirmish.
No, it's definitely a war.
And if you want a war, you have to go through Congress.
And you know what that is?
That's called the American way.
That's what we believe in.
So that's why I voted against Trump, because one, I know he's controlled by his donors.
Two, he's a bit of a madman, to say the least.
And three, most importantly, he won't follow the Constitution.
After he lost in 2020, he said we should terminate the Constitution.
No, no, we're not terminating the Constitution.
Read it.
It is very clear.
Congress declares war.
If we're going to continue in Iran, I want to see those representatives represent their voters.
Go ahead, vote for the war, then you're on the record.
Or vote against the war, which is what 80% of Americans want.
But it's got to go through Congress.
Who on the left or the Democratic side do you have your eye on that you like as a politician?
So I wish we had more choices.
And, you know, I supported Bernie Sanders in the past and proud to have done that.
There's good folks like Jamie Raskin and others who do good work, right?
But right now on the national stage, there seems to be only one, Roe Khanna.
So Roe is everywhere.
He's fighting to get the EFSCM files released.
He's fighting to end the war.
And he's now saying something that I think is really important, not another dollar to Israel.
Enough.
They've taken $320 billion from us.
We've done $8 trillion worth of war for them, right?
Enough.
So whereas other Democrats seem to be largely hiding, to be honest.
So including progressives that I like, where are they?
I see Roe everywhere because, and is that a thing that's a bad thing?
No, that's a great thing.
That's getting your message out.
That's saying, hey, look, the overwhelming majority of Democratic voters are against this war.
Let's fight.
Let's fight tooth and nail against this war.
Good news, a lot of our Republican brothers and sisters agree with us.
Almost all of the independents agree with us.
So this is the time for all the Democrats to go out there.
And all the good guys like Raskin and some of the progressives, let's go, let's get out there.
Let's do TV.
Let's do podcasts.
Let's do radio.
Let's do newspapers.
Let's do every form of media.
We are against this war.
Sometimes I look at Democratic leaders like Hakeem Jeffries and Chuck Schumer, and I go, what cave are you hiding in?
Which country is it?
We're in the middle of a war.
Do you not realize that all of your voters are against this war?
And no, always no, no, no.
I don't believe they're against the war.
I think Democratic leadership works for Israel.
And you say, oh, that's outrageous.
No, Chuck Schumer's gotten $6.5 million from the Israeli lobby.
Hakeem Jeffries has gotten $5.5 million from the Israeli lobby.
His nickname is APAC Shakur.
Okay, so these guys, they're slow-walking resistance to the war because secretly they also want it.
And we're sick of Democratic leaders betraying us.
No, we said we're against the war.
It's not unclear.
You know, now on the issue of Israel, 84% of Democratic voters, I'm sorry, under 50, 80% overall, 80% overall, have a negative view of Israel.
And Hakeem Jeffries and Chuck Schumer say, no, we love Israel.
We revere Israel.
Gavin Newsom says we revere Israel.
Israel, Israel, Israel.
Now, why would any politician with any sense be against eight out of 10 of their own voters?
That's because of the donors.
This is super obvious.
And I don't say this as just a criticism of the Democratic Party.
If the Democratic Party is 80% corrupt, sorry to break it to you, Republicans.
Your party's 99% corrupt.
Thank God for Tom Massey.
Otherwise, he'd be 100%.
You know, Rand Paul's on the fence.
Sometimes he says the right things.
Sometimes he doesn't.
But guys, money talks.
You know, the old adage of journalism was supposed to be follow the money.
It's not complicated.
They're all being bribed and they're all doing whatever the donors tell them to do.
Yeah, I saw that the DNC at their spring meeting in New Orleans tabled or sent a committee a resolution condemning APAC and those funds.
So this is dark money.
Yeah, Peter, that's a great point.
Okay, so DNC, a representative from Florida puts out a great resolution.
We really appreciate her.
We'll have her on the Young Turk soon.
So saying, hey, let's condemn dark money groups like APAC, especially in our own primaries, because, hey, we want fair and honest compensation among Democrats.
So we pick the best Democrats.
Most logical thing you've ever heard, right?
And the Democratic Party is supposed to be against money in politics, supposed to be against dark money.
All of a sudden they go to a vote and political reports, two of the top presidential contenders called in and said, don't you dare?
We support AIPAC.
We support dark money.
Why?
They're going to use dark money.
They're going to use APAC money.
And they want that as an unfair advantage against other Democrats.
So they tell the DNC, no, we want to keep cheating.
We still want to be the party of corruption.
And we like dark money and we like special interests and lobbies.
And they defeat the resolution.
So the DNC has obviously, through that vote, made it very, very clear they voted for corruption.
So they're not our friends.
They're not our allies.
They're not neutral.
They always support the corporate Democrat.
They always support the establishment Democrat.
They were always against Bernie.
They were always for Hillary.
They were always for Biden.
Whoever takes the most corrupt money, whoever is like the worst politician there is in the Democratic Party, they always support them.
And by the way, here I can prove it.
With Joe Biden, I said a year and a half before the debate meltdown.
Not only is his mind obviously melting right in front of our eyes, he can't finish sentences.
He shakes hands with an invisible guy.
Are you guys mental?
Not only that, his polling is in the mid-30s.
No incumbent in the 40s can win.
You're telling me an incumbent suffering from dementia in the 30s is going to win?
Think about it.
They knew the same thing I knew.
They didn't mind losing to Donald Trump.
The only thing they minded was having a non-corrupt leader.
If you get rid of Biden, then a non-corrupt Democrat might win the primary.
If a non-corrupt Democrat like RoCanna wins the primary, that is the biggest threat to the Democratic leadership and the corrupt Democratic Party establishment.
So let's go, you know, ruin their day by picking an honest Democrat who is way more likely to win.
Stop believing the liars.
Did Kamala Harris win?
Did Hillary Clinton win after they guaranteed that they would win?
No, they're lying to you, and they're picking the worst candidates, not the best candidates.
Sanctuary Cities Debate00:11:54
Tom is in Newark, Ohio, Republican line.
You're on with Jank Uger.
Oh, thanks for taking my call.
Now, what I want to do, this guy really runs his mouth, I want to make a short paragraph.
I want to make a comment, then I'll listen for his response because he is a Democrat.
Sanctuary cities are an act of sedition against our constitutional laws.
Until the Republicans grow a pair and the Attorney General starts charging these perpetrators with treason, it will destroy our sovereign nation.
By the way, the new governor of Virginia is calling for sanctuary cities.
And you, sir, you are of a loud mouth and you don't know what the hell you're talking about.
All right, we're going to leave it there.
That was Tom in Newark, Ohio, talking about sanctuary cities.
All right, Tom, you are right.
I do run my mouth.
In fact, I get paid to do that.
I'm a talk show host.
And I can be loud from time to time.
You got that right too, brother.
You know what really agitates me?
Corruption.
So that's what agitates me.
When people are not pro-America, but they're for another government or a bunch of corporations that are robbing us blind, that gets me agitated and I get loud.
Now to your question about sanctuary cities.
Guys, this whole left-right paradigm is often just meant to divide us, okay?
So what's the correct answer on sanctuary cities, in my opinion?
Everybody's got different opinions.
So there's one thing the sanctuary cities did wrong, in my opinion.
So they said, even if someone is convicted, we are not going to turn them over to the federal authorities after their sentence is completed.
No, that's wrong.
You got to turn them over.
They committed a crime.
They're undocumented.
They got to go.
And if you say they don't have to go, then federal agents are going to come in and it's going to get ugly.
Don't do that.
Make it a smooth process.
Make sure you turn over the criminals.
That's obvious, okay?
On the other hand, if you're against sanctuary cities, there's something you might not know.
Sanctuary cities also protect victims.
So if a victim is, for example, sexually assaulted, they come into the police.
If you don't have sanctuary cities, the federal government says, I don't care that she was raped.
Turn her in if she's undocumented.
Well, if you do that, nobody's going to report the crime.
So that's really dangerous to public safety in your cities.
So some of what sanctuary cities do is really important, but nobody ever told you that is my guess from watching right-wing shows, et cetera.
They never talk about the nuance.
And to be fair, our left-wing shows don't talk about the nuance enough either.
If someone is convicted, they got to go.
That's not in question.
Over 90% of Americans agree with that.
So there are reasonable middle grounds here.
We just never get to them through the shouting.
I shout on behalf of people, not to shout them down, but so that they do not get shut down and they do not have their voices and their opinions snuffed out.
Republicans claim that 80-90% of Americans support voter ID as well.
New voter ID laws.
Do you agree with that?
So voter ID laws are nuanced and complicated like sanctuary cities are.
So do I want any voter fraud?
Absolutely not.
Voter fraud is an anathema to democracy and to America.
I hate it.
We have very strict punishment against voter fraud and I'm thrilled about that.
And good news, the Heritage Foundation did a study and they looked at about 20 years or so and the voter fraud that they found was microscopic.
They tried so hard to find it and they couldn't, they barely could find any, right?
It was like 0.01%.
I think there were six zeros for this is the Heritage Foundation.
Heritage Francis, very right-wing.
Okay.
So you're not wrong to be concerned about voter fraud, but it just doesn't happen that often.
It really doesn't.
So all these like mythology you hear about like all these undocumented immigrants are voting.
If that was the case, I'd be 100% against that's not happening.
Now, in terms of voter ID, you say, well, yeah, but it's simple, Jenkins.
Why don't you just give them a driver's license and here we go?
Because a lot of people don't know that people that live in cities, about a quarter of them, don't have driver's licenses.
They use public transportation.
In order to get a passport or a thing that you need, especially in the SAVE Act, a driver's license doesn't even do it.
You have to get a birth certificate or a passport, which costs money, which costs a lot of time.
And in fact, a lot of Republicans who are older don't have those things either.
50% of Republicans don't have passports.
I want Republicans voting.
I want Democrats voting.
I want everybody voting.
That act, unfortunately, is way more restrictive.
And then they stuffed a whole bunch of provisions that have nothing to do with voting in it.
So there's tons of problems with that particular bill.
If you had a clean bill that said, hey, with driver's license, maybe that's workable.
I'm open to compromise, but you have to be cognizant of the folks who get shut out of the system as well.
Jenk Uger, do you ever talk about data privacy on the Young Turks?
From time to time.
Do you worry about that?
I think, honestly, on that.
I saw your phone on the table, and that's what reminded me.
So on that one, I mean, I would be shocked if anything on my phone was private.
But for me, that one sailed a while back once I started criticizing Israel.
Anyway, no, kidding aside.
Look, data privacy is super important, but I'm worried that the ship has sailed.
And what I'm worried about now is not even data privacy.
I feel like, you know, we all know it.
You talk about, hey, I wonder if we should go to Poland and there's a vacation for Poland as an ad for it on your phone the next minute.
So I'm worried about the next level, the surveillance state.
I'm worried about Palantir.
I'm worried that they said that they had a nice test run in Gaza.
Oh my God.
No, Do not bring anything that happened in Gaza to America, right?
Don't brag to me about how you did great surveillance and used AI to kill people in Gaza and tell me you're going to do it here.
No, I don't want it.
Surveillance state is big brother.
When they tell you, oh, don't worry.
Give up your freedoms.
We're here to protect you.
Okay?
Don't believe them.
It's a lie.
It's a lie.
You know, the old quote from Benjamin Franklin, if you give up your security, if you give up your freedom to have security, you'll have neither.
Rob is in Phoenix.
Democrats line.
Please go ahead.
Yeah, good morning, Jenkin, and thank you so much for what you're saying.
It's a breath of fresh air, especially after Ann Coulter.
I just wanted to say that last night I went to see the movie.
Your screener told me it's a year old, but I saw it at my theater last night, Palestine 36, about the settlement of Palestine.
And it was just a shocking view.
It looked like something like out of Vietnam with the American GIs terrorizing villages, which was a shameful operation in the United States.
But the British terrorized the Palestinians in this movie.
And just in summary, I just want to say thank you for standing up for the wrong directionness of the United States.
We got that.
Yeah, you started off by saying you're a breath of fresh air following Ann Coulter.
I would argue, and we'll ask our guests, but I would argue that both Ann Coulter and Jank Uger could be considered iconoclasts.
Not necessarily what you'd predict them to say.
I'm sorry.
I think Jenk is an iconoclast, too.
And I would have thought of him that earlier.
But hearing today what he had to say.
But Ann Coulter, of course, she came against Trump, but then she poses this Kansas Secretary of State as the head of Homeland Security.
This is far-right politics.
And Subscreen says ceasefire.
I don't think you're into ceasefire.
I think we're a polarized country.
And I'm just thankful that a thoughtful man like Cenk is talking.
I know he's an iconoclast, but Ann Coulter is just an alley cat.
And we're going to give Jank the final word here.
By the way, that ceasefire at the bottom of the screen, that's promoting the next program that's on tonight.
On today.
It has nothing to do with what we're doing here.
So that's a promotion at the bottom of the screen that you see.
Jank Uger, our friend in Phoenix, gave us plenty to work with.
Yeah.
I like that we're going from crossfire to ceasefire here on television.
So that's good.
So, Rob, I appreciate everything you're saying.
So, first of all, Palestine 36 is from a company called Watermelon Pictures, and they also did the voice of Hin Rajab.
And if you could make it through the movie The Voice of Hin Rajab and still not think that what the Israelis did to Gaza is a genocide, that is remarkable.
And I challenge Israeli supporters to watch all of the voice of Hin Rajab.
See if you can make it through.
So it's obviously the story of a six-year-old Palestinian girl trapped in a car with a bunch of dead relatives who had been killed by the Israelis earlier.
They try to rescue her desperately, the Palestinians do.
The Israelis give permission for an ambulance to come through after so long, the entire day, and the girl is crying.
They have a real tape of her.
Please, won't someone rescue me?
Won't someone rescue me?
So, okay, thank God the Israelis let the ambulance through.
Then they bomb the ambulance, kill everyone inside, and then kill the six-year-old.
The Israelis, it breaks my heart, but they've become a terrorist state.
And so, and we're being forced to fund Rob.
They're taking money out of your paycheck.
And by the way, Tom, the earlier right-wing caller, they're taking money out of your paycheck to go send money over to a genocide and to wars we don't need and wars we didn't ask for.
So the reason why the picture or the symbol of the Palestinians is a watermelon is because a lot of people might not know this because American media is so biased in favor of Israel.
Honestly, they do propaganda and lies on behalf of Israel.
So the reason why it's a watermelon is because the Palestinian flag is banned in the occupied territories because it is a vicious occupation.
So then they, Palestinian artists started painting in the colors of the Palestinian flag, red, green, and black.
And then the Israelis came in and destroyed all of the art galleries that had any of those paintings.
And the general, after he burned the place down, said to them, if you so much as draw a watermelon, we'll bury you.
And the Palestinian response was, go ahead and bury us because we're seeds and we'll come back up and we'll be stronger than ever.
The Palestinian people have been so strong and courageous and fighting through this disgusting, horrible occupation.
Thank you for caring about it.
And I don't like that Israel is putting this moral stain on us.
We didn't ask for it.
We don't want to pay for it.
And we think every human being is precious and equal value.
That includes Palestinians and that includes Israelis.
No, we don't want to do harm to Israelis.
Please stop lying.
We want peace.
We want Israel to go back to its borders.
We want the Palestinians to have a state.
And we want everybody to be safe and independent and free.
The Israelis say no, only the Israelis are free.
The Palestinians should be forever occupied.
By the way, they voted in the Knesset overwhelmingly, unanimously, to say the Palestinians shall never be free.
What kind of a vicious people say that other human beings are never allowed to have their freedom?
And we have to fund that kind of vicious tyranny?
No, not another dollar to Israel.
They're taking our money and using it for evil.
Jank Uger, in 10 seconds, how can people find you online?
Live Stream Wrap Up00:03:50
So you could find us at 6 o'clock Eastern, almost every platform there is.
We have a 24-hour channel on Samsung, LG, Roku, YouTube TV, now Amazon Prime.
But a lot of people watch us on YouTube.
It's really simple.
Go to the Young Turks channel on YouTube and our homebases, TYT.com.
Jenk Uger has been our guest for the last 45 minutes.
We appreciate your coming in, talking issues, taking calls from our viewers.
Well, thank you all for spending the last three hours with us.
We had very interesting guests, Ann Coulter and Jenk Uger, today and some great callers.
We appreciate you being civil and playing with us.
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There's a lot of talk these days, David, that these necessary components of a functioning democracy are faltering and are failing us.
And that is why some people are concerned larger than the presidency about the state of things today.
I believe that the government of the United States has functioned reasonably well.
Think about this.
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House Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries spoke at the National Action Network Convention in New York City, urging attendees to imagine new methods to get out of what he described as a challenging moment for the country.
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