Republican Announces Resolution To END Impeachment, Shut Down Pelosi's Obstruction Strategy
Republican Announces Resolution To END Impeachment, Shut Down Pelosi's Obstruction Strategy. Senator Josh Hawley has announced the "nuclear option" of amending the Senate rules to allow them to dismiss the impeachment of Donald Trump without a trial due to "lack of prosecution."Hawley is specifically targeting Nancy Pelosi's obstruction strategy of with holding the articles of impeachment against Trump. There is actually precedent in federal law for just that.But one thing Hawley isn't counting on is that Trump actually wants a trial and Republicans want to put on a show to provide support for Trump's innocence. This could help protect other vulnerable Republican senators as well.Meanwhile Democrats are upping the ante arguing that newly leaked emails prove Trump ordered the hold on Ukraine and that there were questions over the legality of the hold. This is not really new information though and just adds more evidence to the fact that this is a political impeachment based on an "orange man bad" narrative instead of serious legal concerns.
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Well, the holiday season is finally over, and that means impeachment is back on the menu, or at least the news cycle.
And I, for one, am sick and tired of talking about it.
But of course, it's going to be a major issue.
Super Tuesday is on the horizon.
They're now going to start figuring out what they're going to be doing, the articles of impeachment.
But if you're as tired of impeachment as I am, I have good news.
Republican Senator Josh Hawley says he's going to introduce a resolution on Monday to dismiss the impeachment charges against Trump.
But most interestingly, for lack of prosecution, he actually wants to update the rules, basically saying to Pelosi, if you're going to hold this up, well, we can just dismiss it outright.
There have been a few arguments about whether or not Trump has actually even been impeached, which is creating this kind of weird impasse, which many people are cheering Nancy Pelosi for implementing this great strategy of keeping Trump in impeachment limbo.
I, however, think the best argument so far comes from Noah Feldman, who's actually the Democrats' witness when he said, If Trump has already been impeached, then according to the Constitution, Senate can act.
OK?
But the real argument, he says, is that because they're not transmitting the article, they're not sending their managers for prosecution.
Trump has not, in fact, been impeached.
So Hawley wants to effectively end this by saying, if you're not going to prosecute, you're done.
It's bogus.
He's trying to, as he says, expose the damsel.
Read the story.
But there's a few interesting points.
There's a reason why I pull up the hot air column on this.
It's conservative commentary.
Well, they point out, in my opinion accurately, Trump wants the Senate trial for a variety of reasons.
He wants to use it to defend vulnerable Republicans, but Trump also wants, like, it's Trump, man.
He wants to get up on that stand, you know, I don't know if he'll actually do it, but he wants to tell his story, and he wants to defend himself.
Trump takes these things really, really personally.
You look at why he wanted to investigate Biden in the first place.
Again, just in my opinion, I think he's angry over the whole Russiagate smear nonsense.
He knows it's fake.
We now know the whole thing was basically fake.
And so Trump's like, I want to figure out who did this and why.
Trump takes it very personally.
At the same time, however, after we move on from this, I got another another big breaking story.
Democrats are upping the ante on impeachment.
They're saying because of newly viewed unredacted emails, we must get more witnesses.
Yes, they're actually doubling down.
This is in line with their calls for like You know, a second impeachment or new articles.
But I think there are some problems in this narrative as well.
Because if they're trying to claim that Trump was covering up the potential illegality of withholding aid, the problem is they didn't charge Trump with withholding aid.
OK, I've heard it from so many Democrats and leftists saying, You know, if Trump didn't have a legal authority to withhold the aid, well then why wasn't that included in the impeachment charges?
You can't complain about Trump potentially covering up that he knew he couldn't withhold the aid or there were concerns he couldn't when you didn't actually bother to charge him with it anyway!
Okay, but let's get started and read about what's going on with Josh Hawley.
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But let's read from Hot Air.
They first point out that Hawley is trying to get that 2024 Republican nomination.
I'm kind of thinking it'll be Don Jr., but they say this.
He's been running for the 2024 nomination since the day he was sworn in as a senator, aiming to win over Trump's base by picking fights with populist enemies like Big Tech.
This move won't hurt his chances.
Yep, I completely agree.
He said on Twitter, Dems said impeachment was urgent.
Now they don't want to have a trial because they have no evidence.
In real world, if prosecution doesn't proceed with the case, it gets dismissed.
So on Monday, I will introduce measure to dismiss this bogus impeachment for lack of prosecution.
This is a major stick it to Nancy Pelosi.
He's saying, you want to play this game?
I'll just dismiss it outright for lack of prosecution.
He goes on.
This will expose Dems' circus for what it is.
A fake impeachment.
Abuse of the Constitution based on no evidence.
If Dems won't proceed with the trial, bogus articles should be dismissed, and Donald Trump should be fully cleared.
Alright, and Trump fully cleared.
My proposal will take the form of motion to update Senate impeachment rules to account for this unprecedented attempt to obstruct Senate trials.
Stay tuned.
He goes on to say, Hey Dems, this is the guy who got you into this jam by recommending you withhold the articles from the Senate.
Now he's literally making up constitutional provisions.
Constitution says nothing about filing articles in Senate or otherwise giving House power over trial.
So he's referencing Lawrence Tribe, Tribe law, who says this loony idea.
I'm not going to get into the whole debate between the two.
He goes on to say, the Constitution says House has power to impeach.
Senate has sole power to try impeachment cases.
For the first time in history, Democrats trying to obstruct an impeachment trial.
Senate should update its rules to dismiss these bogus articles if House Dems refuse
to try their case.
I'll do one more for you.
Trump's not accused of any statutory crime.
I get it.
And we've already seen liberals push back saying, oh, but Trump obstructed.
Sorry, man.
Trump didn't commit any single crimes.
I don't know what you're obstructing him for.
And I'll get into that in the next part because I do want to read a little bit about this as to why Republicans actually disagree with Hawley on this issue.
But for the most part, no, no, let's just jump right in.
I want to save the segment on Schumer and the new emails.
So we'll read this first and talk about Trump's, you know, reasoning.
We'll stay on target.
They say Senate rules currently require the chamber to hold a trial once the president is impeached.
McConnell himself has cited them as a reason for why he can't simply toss the articles of impeachment in the trash once Pelosi delivers them.
In reality, he would want to hold a trial anyway for the simple reason that it helps vulnerable Republican incumbents like Cory Gardner, Martha McSally, and Susan Collins to show voters back home that they're taking the case against Trump seriously before they inevitably vote to acquit.
They're going to try to soften the political blow by doing the same prayerful shtick about their deliberations as Pelosi did for hers.
No need to make voters on the other side any angrier than they're destined to be by appearing arrogant and contemptuous of the Democrats' allegations against Trump.
Well, I'll tell you this.
I hate the posturing.
I hate the games.
We know the Republicans are going to acquit Trump.
In fact, there's even some Democratic senators who might do it because they're also potentially vulnerable as well.
And there are Democrats that are blue in majority red states as well.
So I think Trump's... Look, this is...
Trump's not going to be convicted on this, okay?
So I think it's silly that they're playing a game pretending to be objective.
And you've got all these Democrats now saying Mitch McConnell has already violated his oath of the Senate by saying he'll work with Trump.
Come on, man!
Are we really going to play these games?
We know exactly what the game is.
Now, first of all, it was the Democrats who defected to oppose impeachment, not the other way around.
We know where Republicans are going with this one.
And I'm willing to bet there are going to be Democrat senators who defect, not Republicans.
Okay, so you don't need to play a game.
We don't need a trial?
Fine.
We're gonna have a trial anyway.
It's a show trial, let's be honest.
But here's what they say.
Hawley doesn't care about that, though, in reference to whether, you know, people are trying to defend their seats.
His seat is in, uh, is safe-ish in Missouri, and he has his eye on the White House.
He'll be as contemptuous of the House effort as he can be in order to make an impression on Trump fans, even though his proposed resolution to change the rules would obviously be an uncomfortable vote for Gardner, McSally, and Collins.
The base wants to see Pelosi punished for impeaching the president and for her dopey delay strategy in refusing to send over the articles.
What better way to do that than to change the rules to empower the Senate to dismiss impeachment if it isn't brought in a timely manner?
Federal courts allow it in criminal cases.
Why should impeachment be different?
It's a really good point by HotAir.
I thought this was a great article, by the way.
Two problems, though.
First, Trump wants a trial.
I completely agree.
That's the only bit of leverage Pelosi has over McConnell in her delay strategy.
Mitch can't ditch the trial process, a la Hawley's idea, because Trump doesn't want him to.
The president's frustrated that his side hasn't had an opportunity to engage on the merits of the Democratic case, and now he's about to get it.
Gardner, et al., can and will cite that, too, when they inevitably vote against Hawley's resolution and Trump fans start complaining about it.
The president deserves to be heard.
Why does Hawley want to deny him that opportunity?
They go on to say that it's too soon for the nuclear option that Hawley has in mind, but I gotta say this.
I actually kind of agree with Hawley.
Listen, man.
I'm not saying this because it's about whether you like Trump or not.
I know I have to tell you that all the time, but it's true.
It's about process.
In an impeachment, it's my understanding, based on literally everything I've read from the Republican to the Democratic arguments, they need to appoint prosecution managers and announce the impeachment, and they're holding it up, and Democrats have bragged about it.
They've bragged about how it's frustrating Republicans.
Hawley says it's lack of prosecution, they do it in federal courts, let's do it.
I don't think Hawley's wrong on that one.
I don't think they should use the process for a political game.
That goes for Republicans, too.
You know, they're complaining about the early, early hearings.
I can understand why they were.
When when Schiff was doing the, you know, the basement hearings, because the Democrats were leaking information to make Trump look bad out of context.
I understand all that.
But now we've got the Democrats who have argued that they're attacking the process, quite literally using process to obstruct the impeachment trial because they know they're going to lose.
Listen, man, when the people of this country vote, that's what you get.
I'll throw some shade to McConnell over over, you know, Obama's appointees.
He says his argument is basically The Senate and the executive branch were of different parties, so we should have an election to see where the people stand.
I don't care for that.
No, I'm sorry, dude.
The President's the President.
Obama was in office.
He should have got his appointee put to vote.
That's how the game should have been played.
And now people are always trying to change the rules to benefit their side.
I'm not playing that.
I don't like what Pelosi is doing.
It's jamming up the system.
The Senate is controlled by Republicans.
The American people have already spoken.
Stop playing games.
Both sides have done it.
Both sides try to put up their argument for what makes sense.
In this instance, I'm done.
I like Hawley's idea.
Shut it down.
But I got more for you because of course Democrats aren't backing down.
Schumer says new unredacted emails show need for impeachment witnesses.
I disagree.
Oh man, you know what?
Listen, a big story is going around about newly unredacted emails.
They're basically saying that it provides evidence Trump was trying to cover things up because he redacted part of the emails, where the Department of Justice was basically saying, hey, you know, we can't do this right.
So Schumer is coming out.
I don't want to I'm not going to read through this for the most part.
I'll give you the gist.
All right.
They say, you know, Schumer is basically saying the American.
Well, he's literally saying he's a quote.
The American people deserve a fair trial that gets to the truth, not a rigged process that enables a cover-up, Senator Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, a New York Democrat, said Thursday.
Okay.
They're referring to a report from a liberal group, JustSecurity.
They say it reveals an email on August 30th from Michael Duffy, the Associate Director of National Security Programs at the Office of Management and Budget to the Pentagon, in which Duffy calls the legal aid security aid a clear direction from Trump.
Let me just stop you right there.
One of the first bombshells was they were like, newly released emails prove Donald Trump ordered the hold on Ukraine.
And I'm like, what?
And?
What does that mean?
So what?
Did you accuse him of withholding aid?
Of course.
I thought that was like canon in like the impeachment saga that Trump wanted to withhold aid from Ukraine.
They've even said it because they weren't convinced Zelensky, the new president of Ukraine, was on the level.
Now they're like, the emails show it came from the president.
And it's like, What?
What else is new?
Well, I'll tell you this.
The president himself has responded.
I will read his response before I move on.
Trump tweeted a quote from Christopher Bedford of the Federalist saying,
there is nothing new in these emails at, uh, in these emails at all. That's been discovered.
It's exactly what we knew before, which is that the white house and political figures
wanted to cut off aid. Trump wanted to question aid to a number of different places that he
thought were wasteful. And the career staff, as they always do, pushed back and made a million
excuses as to why they could not possibly stop spending us.
taxpayer money.
There was a back and forth over the legal arguments, and the White House decision was followed, and then it was withdrawn.
The Democrats' argument for impeachment has not gotten stronger over the last few weeks.
As Senator Josh Hawley just said, he's going to enter a motion to dismiss the impeachment trial.
Because it's never actually been brought to trial.
So here's the thing.
I don't know what we're learning from these emails.
I gotta be honest, right?
We have the story, an analysis from the Washington Post, new cover-up questions in Trump's Ukraine scandal.
And they're basically saying, you know, he opens with one of the GOP's main arguments is that Trump released the aid and there was no quid pro quo.
But he goes on to mention this story from Justice Security.
They say they were able to view unredacted emails in which the Office of Management and Budget and the Defense Department discussed the withholding of military aid.
The big new takeaway is that there was significant concern within the Pentagon about the legality and sustainability of the hold.
Despite that, according to one email from top OMB official Michael Duffy on August 30th, there was clear direction from POTUS to continue the hold.
Okay!
That may be very damning.
This may be the smoking gun.
Donald Trump himself ordered the hold.
It would be if they actually charged him with a crime.
It would be if they actually said withholding the aid is not, you don't have the legal authority to do it.
It is an illegal action.
They don't.
We know Trump did it.
So look, listen.
I'm not gonna act like Trump's, you know, and his administration are walking away scot-free here, but the worst thing we have from the story, I gotta say, at least in my opinion, because I'll show you some stuff.
Listen.
What we have here is that Trump and the Department of Justice redacted things for dubious reasons.
That's their main argument.
They're not arguing Trump committed a crime.
They're not arguing anything but beyond, why were these emails redacted?
We can't see it and say why.
Oh, so that's what you're ending up on.
You're going to add an article of impeachment because certain information was redacted when it didn't need to be or you don't understand why it was?
Listen.
All of this thing has been one big political posturing from both sides, and I gotta say, man, there's nothing here.
Of course, that means I'm biased, I suppose, but I just literally don't see anything.
I think I've fallen into that camp of independents who are like, I don't know what you're impeaching him for.
He's not committed of any crimes, okay?
This has been the principal point.
Every impeachment before him, there's been legit crimes.
Bill Clinton was perjury.
And I believe, actually, obstruction of justice.
Trump is like, they're going after the process.
You know what, man?
They accuse the Republicans of going after process, and they say, like, when the law is not on your side, attack the process.
When the process is on your side, cite the law.
They're literally doing the same thing!
The law is on their side.
Trump did not commit any crimes, so what are they doing?
Well, he redacted papers!
For dubious reasons!
Okay, listen, let me show you something.
Check this out.
Natasha Bertrand reports through a tweet, an entire draft letter from the Deputy Defense Secretary to the acting OMB Director warning that, quote, we have repeatedly advised OMB officials that pauses beyond August 19, 2019 jeopardize the department's ability to oblige USAI funding prudently and fully.
And this was blacked out by the DOJ.
So what?
Okay, listen.
The aid was released on September 11th.
We've known this.
This is an NBC story.
When is this from?
This is an NBC story from a month ago.
November 14th.
Nearly, almost two months ago.
A month and a half ago.
We knew when the aid was released.
It's not a secret.
It was released nearly a month after they were concerned.
Why is anyone bringing up that this information was known?
They didn't actually even go to the president for withholding the aid.
The only reason, listen, The only reason it matters whether or not they were concerned about the date.
They didn't even say it was illegal.
They said it would hurt their ability to obligate the funding.
Potentially and fully.
So I don't know why it was redacted.
Okay, great.
Trump, DOJ shouldn't have redacted it.
I'll tell you this, man.
There have been many circumstances where it seems Trump has kind of overstepped things, which results in this weaponization by the left.
Trump shouldn't have been on the call with Zelensky.
He should have just had the DOJ and the appropriate channels go through those motions and bring those things up.
Simply because he stepped forward and took action, they're now using it against him.
Okay?
Now we have this.
They were concerned about, you know, pausing it beyond the 19th.
Well, they literally did, and the Democrats haven't said Trump did anything wrong by doing it other than going against foreign policy.
They called it an abuse of power, not a crime.
So why does it matter if something was redacted?
I honestly have no idea.
All I can really say is like, oh, wow, the government was redacting information they shouldn't have.
What else is new?
It's what they've always done.
Listen, man, I frequently find myself in the position of stop making me defend Trump.
But literally right here, it's such a weak, weak play.
OK, man, I don't look in the end.
I don't know if Hawley's bill, his resolution will actually pass.
It'll be dismissed.
I don't think so.
You know, the House Democrats will just vote to impeach him again.
Nothing going on right now seems like legitimate use of our politicians' time, or like legitimate concerns over anything other than people not liking each other.
The Democrats abuse process in the exact same way they accuse Republicans of doing, and now the Republicans are once again, you know, Hawley's saying, I'm gonna change the rules.
Oh, did Trump do anything wrong?
Then why are you playing this game?
It's simple.
The Democrats won the House, they have the power to do so, and it's about politics.
We got serious issues going on in the Middle East.
We got serious issues going on in China.
And here I am.
Well, I gotta admit, I chose to do the story about holics.
I thought it was interesting.
But here we are.
This is the time being spent.
You know, they're like, these emails prove Trump, DOJ redacted things they shouldn't have.
And?
Did you accuse Trump of, like, you know what, man?
I made that point.
But here's what I love.
Here's what I love.
Take a look at this.
Here's the, well actually, I'll cite this real quick, the Washington Post.
The GOP's favorite new Trump impeachment defense, he isn't even accused of a crime.
Right?
He's not.
But while, let me show you this.
Vanity Fair says, damning new emails show Trump knew he was breaking the law on Ukraine.
Oh, he knew he was breaking the law.
Come on.
No, it's all dubious.
The left-wing outlets are going to frame it this way.
This is hyperbolic.
It's not the case.
Okay, it is not the case.
If it was, There would be headlines across the board.
Everybody would be screeching.
It's not.
I'm sorry.
This story's from yesterday.
Or how about this one?
Talking Points Memo.
Explosive new emails add to pile of evidence that Trump personally ordered Ukraine aid freeze.
Even Talking Points Memo isn't playing that line that Trump knew he was breaking the law.
Because it's hyperbolic and it's stretching it beyond recognition.
They knew there were legal concerns.
Was it completely illegal?
No, it was a process dispute.
Once again, Trump, they say he doesn't have the legal authority to do it.
Is it a crime for him to say don't do it?
Who's the one who actually held up the aid and who's going to be held responsible?
I don't know.
Okay, man.
Let me tell you something.
There is a system in place, okay?
There are checks and balances.
Trump should not have withheld the aid.
Is it an impeachable offense?
Honestly, I don't know, but I'll tell you this, the Democrats aren't actually charging him with doing anything illegal.
So I think the answer is, I have to lean towards no.
It was inappropriate.
Trump should not be doing this.
The argument from the right is that it's just, you know, once again, government officials saying, like, a million and one excuses as to why they shouldn't do something Trump wants to do, and I'll explain to you why.
But first, I'd like to show you the actual news headlines.
The NBC says this.
Newly released emails provide details in White House paws of Ukraine aid.
That's it.
That's the headline.
That's where we are.
And this is from December 22nd.
Okay, so I'll tell you this.
They're saying it proves Trump News it was illegal.
And look at what NBC says.
And NBC News is biased.
But here's the actual headline.
Exclusive.
Unredacted Ukraine documents reveal extent of Pentagon's legal concerns.
That's it.
Just securities.
Kate Brennan wrote this story.
It was published yesterday.
Legal concerns.
It doesn't mean Trump knew he was breaking the law.
It means they were asking whether or not the law would permit or not, and there were concerns that it would or it wouldn't.
There we go!
I love it.
I love it.
But let me tell you something.
You want to act like the pausing of aid to Ukraine is a big deal?
You're lying.
I'm sorry.
Trump cuts aid to Central American countries as migrant crisis deepens.
What's that?
March 30th, 2019?
Why would Trump be cutting aid to foreign countries?
What's this?
New York Times?
White House lifts mysterious hold on military aid to Lebanon.
The Trump administration will allow $105 million in aid package to flow after freezing funding without explanation, December 2nd.
Are they impeaching Trump for withholding aid to Lebanon?
No.
Did anyone bring it up?
No.
Did they bring up aid to Central America?
No.
That's why I don't believe they actually care about Trump withholding aid to Ukraine.
They are just using it for impeachment, because like Nancy Pelosi said, we've been working on this for two and a half years.
I am so sick of it.
So anyway, you get the point.
Let me make it clear.
Trump is withholding aid to everybody.
He's telling NATO, you gotta pony up the bill.
I see the game Trump is playing.
He's tired of spending American money on foreign countries that don't do anything in return.
And there was some debate between scholars where they basically said Trump is pulling back on the de facto American empire.
Yeah.
Yeah, he is.
Okay, fine.
You know what, man?
I'm not a big fan of the majority of the aid we send out.
However, I'm a liberal, not a libertarian, so I'm okay with a lot of the aid we do, and I understand why we do have some military presence in certain places.
I'm a very anti-intervention person.
The Middle East was a massive mistake, but I recognize we have a lot of military bases in a lot of places, and I understand the strategic importance of NATO, so, you know, so sue me, right?
Point is, Listen, man.
We gotta be real about what's going on.
Because when you play these games and you single out Ukraine while ignoring Lebanon, while ignoring all the other countries that Trump has targeted with withholding aid or pulling back support of, it makes me feel like you're just pretending like Ukraine is the scandal because Biden's name was mentioned.
Oh, what's that?
When it came to Lebanon, he didn't ask Lebanon to look into their corruption about Joe Biden?
No, it was Ukraine.
And Biden was involved.
Biden's son did have the job.
Trump mentioned it.
Boom!
There's our opportunity.
Let's impeach him.
If the impeachment was really about the withholding of aid, they'd highlight Lebanon.
They're not.
Not at all.
If it was really about the legal concerns over withholding aid, they would have included it in the articles of impeachment.
But Trump has only been accused of this nebulous opinion of abuse of power and obstruction of Congress, for which they never tried to alleviate by going to the Supreme Court.
So spare me.
However, I'll admit one thing.
While I am somewhat tired of talking about impeachment, I did choose to do this story because I do think this stuff is still rather interesting.
And, you know, I had something to say about it, so... Look, we'll see what happens come Monday with Josh Hawley's resolution to dismiss the charges.
I think it'll be voted against because there's vulnerable Republicans who will side with the overwhelming majority of Democrats who say, no, we need a fair trial.
But I'll tell you this right now, man.
I know I said it, but I'm going to leave one final note.
And remember this.
They say that Republicans were going after the process during the Schiff hearings.
Well, what do you think Nancy Pelosi is literally abusing right now?
She's abusing process.
Okay?
File the articles.
Bring out your managers.
Prosecute the case.
Let America move on.
Because I'll tell you who's going to really be hurt by this.
And it's Bernie Sanders.
It's Elizabeth Warren.
It's the Democratic senators who are running for president who are going to be pulled away from the campaign trail just before Super Tuesday.
And Trump will benefit from it in the end.
Keep playing your games.
I don't know what the point is.
That's how I feel.
I'll wrap it up.
Stick around.
Next segment's coming up at youtube.com slash timcastnews at 6pm.
It is a different channel.
And, uh, I'll see you there.
There's a lot to go through before we get to the Twitter trends of World War III and Franz Ferdinand.
Let me start by saying, no, Donald Trump did not just start World War III.
Chill out, woke Twitterati types who are ranting and raving about World War III.
I'm sorry.
That's just not the case.
And I'm going to show you some data to back up this claim.
It's not the first time the US has been involved in, you know, escalation of war and conflict.
It's certainly one of the biggest.
This is a serious deal.
So let me go back in time just a little bit and give you some simple context.
The U.S.
did an airstrike, you know, committed an airstrike against some Iranian militia types.
In response, pro-Iranian militia types then started trying to storm the U.S.
embassy in Baghdad.
Trump immediately calls in marine reinforcements, paratroopers come in, Ospreys come down, they secure the building.
Everybody apparently is safe.
And in response to this, Trump said, Iran, for attacking our embassy, we're going to retaliate.
Iran then gets bald and says, you can't do anything.
Trump says, hold my beer, launches a drone strike at the Baghdad airport, takes out what many people say is the number two in command of Iran, one of their top generals.
So this is a serious, serious escalation.
Let's not downplay the severity of this.
But is this World War III?
I'm gonna have to say this because, you know, I could be wrong, but most likely, no.
Absolutely not, okay?
I want to show you some data.
We got this story from BBC First.
France, Ferdinand, and World War III are trending.
Why is it?
It's because people say, this guy, his name is Qassam Soleimani.
They say he's like the number two in Iran, and he orchestrates a lot of the militia actions around, you know, the Middle East.
In an old story, going back to 2013, the New Yorker said, this is September 23rd, 2013, that he was directing Assad's war in Syria.
So this is a guy who's been involved in a lot of the militant conflict outside of Iran.
Many people in the US, you know, we had an interview in Fox News, they say he's a terror leader, he's very dangerous, he's responsible for the deaths of many Americans.
Is who this guy is.
So, now we're seeing World War 3 trend, Franz Ferdinand trend.
The lead singer, apparently, of the band Franz Ferdinand was shocked to find out.
But, um, I'm sorry, I'm sorry.
As much as a lot of people want to think this is the start of World War 3, it just can't be the case.
I'm sorry.
Well, it can be, okay?
I gotta calm down a little bit.
I'm all excited, you can tell.
I really can't stand this war stuff.
America is addicted to war, okay?
What happened in Baghdad could have theoretically happened to any of our embassies anywhere, but it's all in this long cycle of retaliation.
The U.S.
involvement in the Middle East, going back to, like, the Mujahideen in Russia.
It's a never-ending cycle of hate and violence and retaliation, and it's gonna keep escalating because I can't go back in time that far.
Russia goes in Afghanistan.
The U.S.
starts supplying weapons.
We then create this group of, you know, individuals who then retaliate against the United States.
And it's a never-ending cycle, man.
So you get people saying, you know, should we have retaliated against Iran?
And they say, you know, the conservatives saying it was right for Trump to do because this guy is a bad guy and he's orchestrating the attacks on Baghdad.
OK, OK, I got to slow down.
The point is, while this was a serious escalation, It's not the first, it's not the last, and I'm gonna prove it to you.
First of all, while many people, and it's true, it's mostly people on the left saying this is World War III, a lot of conservatives are praising Trump for doing this, the fact of the matter is, right now, black Twitter is trending substantially higher than World War III.
Now, I know, I know, I'm the trend list.
World War 3 is number one.
The number one trend in the United States right now is World War 3, followed by Soleimani, followed by World War 3 again.
Dear Iran, Friday Motivation, World War 3 again.
But take a look at this.
First of all, Rose McGowan is trending.
I'm not entirely sure why.
Geraldo is probably trending in relation to what's going on with Iran.
But Black Twitter is trending with 677,000 tweets.
So please, I think this escalation is really, really bad.
I think Trump was absolutely wrong to do this because if it leads to war, it's already being weaponized, first of all, by the Democratic candidate saying Trump was wrong to do this.
It's a serious diversion from what Obama was trying to do, trying to get Iran on board.
But let me just say something, okay, before we move on to some of these other stories.
I don't quite understand how you have so many people arguing that World War III is coming when you have many people on the left claiming that Donald Trump works for Vladimir Putin.
Okay, if Trump works for Putin, Then why would World War III start, okay?
Trump took out one of the top guys in Iran.
But Trump is also simultaneously being accused of working for Putin, ponying up to him, giving him whatever he wants.
You had Nancy Pelosi, all roads lead to Russia.
Okay, if that was the case, why would he be going after one of Russia's allies or China's allies?
It doesn't make sense, okay?
The fact is, it's a Middle Eastern conflict.
Trump, look man, Congress has the power to declare war.
I'm trying to avoid going on the massive war rant, but I do want to make sure I hit some issues.
The bigger issue here, for me, is the overreaction.
But let me tell you something.
Donald Trump was warned, okay?
Take a look at this story from back June 21st.
The New York Times reports, urged to launch an attack, Trump listened to the skeptics who said it would be a costly mistake.
I want to believe this is true.
I really do.
They say, he heard from his generals and his diplomats, lawmakers weighed in, and so did his advisors.
But among the voices that rang powerfully for President Trump was that of one of his favorite Fox News hosts, Tucker Carlson.
While national security advisors were urging a military strike against Iran, Mr. Carlson in recent days had told Mr. Trump that responding to Tehran's provocations with force was crazy.
The hawks did not have the president's best interests at heart, he said.
And if Mr. Trump got into a war with Iran, he could kiss his chances of re-election goodbye.
I want to believe it.
I really do, Tucker.
I want to believe it.
But this country is addicted to war.
The powers that be love the machine, the money that's generated from it, the dominance the America gets over the oil industry.
We want to build that pipeline.
We got the conflict in Ukraine with Russia, U.S.A.
It's all extremely complicated, but I want to believe.
I really do.
That the American people truly will vote against someone based on their propensity for war, but it's just not the case.
You know what I mean?
Look, George W. Bush won re-election, and he brought us into the Middle East, and it was a disaster.
And we had massive, major global protests.
I do not believe.
I do not believe for a second.
But, I say with a but, here's the thing.
We're in a new era.
Trump is not Bush.
Bush was an elite.
We're in the era of the populist.
Bernie Sanders is very, very popular on the left, though the left is fractured between the old school and, you know, the old school moderate corporate-type Democrats and the Bernie Sanders-type Democrats.
There's a fracturing, but Bernie has raised, you know, 35 million or so dollars in quarter four, and Trump raised 45.
So Bernie does trail Trump, but that, you know, the populists are more popular.
Like, that's kind of funny, but yes, that makes sense.
So here's the thing.
I want to believe it.
I really do.
Because this war is a disaster.
It's expensive.
I mean, I say this war.
I say the constant war.
But here's the thing, man.
It is entirely possible.
I would concede this.
In the new era of populist presidents, this may backfire horribly on Trump if this escalates into a full-blown war.
Now there are some people, this is a Washington Post article, it says this, and so I'm going to give some air to Tucker Carlson's, you know, statement.
Would Trump start a war to boost his 2020 chances?
And they show this tweet.
Trump said, in order to get elected, Obama will start a war with Iran.
It's back in 2011.
And so the general argument people had is like, oh, you know, Trump's going to try and get reelected.
He's going to start a war.
I don't think that's the case.
You know, first of all, I don't think Trump is sitting there, you know, twirling his mustache like planning these wars.
I think John Bolton literally does that.
But I don't I don't think that I think this was, you know, they tried to give Trump a Benghazi.
I hate to phrase it like that, but the left was saying that what was happening in Baghdad was like Trump's Benghazi, but it really, really wasn't.
Okay?
Trump reacted immediately, brought in Marines, secured the facility.
It's under guard now.
And I think Trump got mad that by doing this, they were trying to put him in that position.
And so he snapped his finger and a drone strike took out one of the top Iranian dudes.
That could potentially lead us into war.
Potentially.
I really don't think so.
Let me show you why.
So I... Check this out.
This is Trendogate, okay?
Trendogate archives the top trends, you know, whatever.
And I did a general search.
I didn't do search by location.
What you're seeing here is the hashtag, wwwiii.
And we can see that World War 3 was trending back in 2017 for about a day, and then the next time it started trending was 2020.
Okay!
Okay, you may be saying, so what, World War 3 has trended one other time, very briefly, and now it's trending like crazy in the United States?
Okay.
We can see that today, World War 3 is trending in a lot of different places.
But wait!
How about this?
The phrase, World War 3, not just the hashtag.
Well, this was trending across the U.S.
October 25th, 2016, okay?
And, I, I, I, it went, like, World War III trends every so often, then a couple months later it was trending, and then, what was this, because Trump got elected, people were saying World War III, probably to do with Hillary Clinton, and then it was trending in 2018, and if you do a search, for just the hashtag world war three you can see that you know twenty seventeen once again so it is trending more so now that has in the past but it's not the first time people have screeched that world war three is here i'm sorry it's just not the case
Will there be an escalation and regional conflict?
You betcha.
Could this bring us into war with Iran?
Potentially, but listen.
What you gotta understand is that a war with Iran would involve us going there.
They're not coming here, okay?
So while we have, you know, military bases and personnel in these Middle Eastern countries, and we shouldn't, the most we're gonna see is regional conflict.
I don't understand the argument... You know, listen, man.
If you believe that Trump is an adversary of Putin, I do not believe that.
But if you do, then sure, World War III is possible.
The left seems to believe that Trump literally works for Putin, in which case, World War III, not possible.
The reality is, I think Trump has been trying to calm tensions down with Russia.
For just this reason, okay?
You take a look in the past, and Hillary Clinton was very bullish on conflict with Russia, talking about a no-fly zone in Syria, and a lot of other issues.
Trump comes in, and all of a sudden he's doing phone calls with Putin, he's sharing intel to prevent, you know, certain attacks in, like, I think it was St.
Petersburg, and Putin thanks him for it.
The media really wants us to be at odds with Russia.
But Trump has been trying to simmer things down.
Now, they claim in the Democrats, you know, like Nancy Pelosi, all roads lead to Russia.
Dude, Russia's powerful.
Not the most powerful in the world, but they are.
And they got big ol' bombs and hypersonic missiles.
That's the new announcement.
They shut off one of their hypersonic missiles.
So yeah, if we're going to be engaging in conflict in the Middle East, we need to make sure that tensions with Russia have simmered down.
So here's the thing.
John Bolton used to work for Trump.
That dude really, really wanted war.
He did one thing where he said, like, we're going to be celebrating in Tehran in 2019 or whatever.
Well, he got fired.
But now we can see Trump has taken an action.
For one, without congressional approval, he took out a foreign military leader.
I know the conservatives have been posting, why didn't the Democrats ever call out Obama?
I'm right here, man!
I'm sorry, hold on, let me rephrase that.
I think I misspoke.
I said, the Democrats never called out Obama when he was sending drones to take out American citizens or otherwise.
And I'll be here right now to say the same thing about Donald Trump.
This is a dangerous escalation.
But it's not World War 3, dude!
Come on!
You know, I gotta admit, this is the last thing I really wanted to talk about, but it's inescapable.
And I'm pretty sure YouTube is gonna, you know, give me a banhammer, because you're not gonna talk about this stuff.
You're really not.
It's conflict, it's crisis.
The fact is, this dude that Trump targeted was a really, really bad dude.
The fact is, Trump should not be targeting foreign military leaders.
Congress has to approve of these things.
Yeah, well, the Democrats won Congress.
Maybe that's just how the system works.
You guys ever play the game Civilization?
When you choose the government of a republic, they stop you from starting wars and stuff like that?
There's a reason for that.
Trump is not a dictator, okay?
And I'm not saying that like in the leftist argument where they think Trump is like the worst of the worst.
Trump is not the first president to do this.
He certainly won't be the last.
I mean, I'd hope he'd be the last.
But we can see what Obama did.
Nobody cared.
Trump does it, now everyone's up in arms.
I can respect that argument from conservatives.
It still doesn't justify striking a foreign military leader without congressional approval.
Sorry.
There's gotta be limitations.
And if you don't like the Democrats in Congress, too bad!
Okay?
This is not a country of kings.
The fact is that while Trump and the Republicans can control the Supreme Court, the Senate, and the Executive Branch, the House went to the Democrats, and they can prevent him from doing things like this.
So Trump went and did it.
Don't like it.
Didn't like it when Obama did it.
Didn't like it when George W. Bush did it.
The AUMF has been long-standing problematic given its blanket ability because of the conflict in the Middle East.
It never ends, and it's not good.
So I'll tell you what.
I'd like to believe, I really would, that this is bad news for Trump.
But I don't think so.
I really don't think so.
When Trump fired missiles into Syria, the media started clapping and cheering.
They said, this is Trump's presidential moment.
So when Trump goes after Iran, there's going to be some faux outrage.
But this is what the war machine has always wanted.
It was inevitable.
The conflict between the U.S.
and Iran has been a long time coming.
And Trump resisted, initially.
And now this could bring us to that conflict.
No, it's not World War III, though.
I do want to give a shout-out, though, to Judge Napolitano.
Fox News' Judge predicts Trump will start a war with Iran and meet with Putin at Mar-a-Lago in 2020.
This was before it was announced that the drone strikes on the Iranian general.
This was a day before.
Judge Napolitano predicted Trump would start a war with Iran.
And I think he's right.
Because we've seen the signs.
It's not even about Trump.
It's not about Trump.
This is what people don't seem to understand.
The executive branch, the office of the president, is bigger than one person.
And there are aspects of it that exist beyond the election.
So Trump can come in and start slinging around domestic policy and bolster the economy.
But there is a war machine in play.
It's not even about whether or not anybody wants or doesn't want it to happen.
It's about the fact that dominoes have been laid out and someone's going to flick them.
Or they've been flicked a long time ago.
So like I said, when these pro-militia people come to Baghdad Embassy and start stomping on the doors and trying to start a fire, and they did, and they try to take out some American lives, this is because of a long-standing conflict, a cycle of violence and vengeance.
It's not going to stop now.
Tell you this though, the U.S.
is going to win it.
You know, it's going to be costly.
What people need to understand about Iran is this is not Afghanistan, okay?
This is not Iraq.
This is a massive nation that is developed with a powerful military.
This will not be like people expect it to be.
It's not going to be one of these things where we go in and, you know, well, I don't know how to compare it to anything else, but it'll be devastating.
It really will.
But let me highlight this.
There's a reason why I pulled up this article on Judge.
Notice that he said Trump will meet with Putin at Mar-a-Lago and start a war with Iran.
If this was going to be World War III and Judge is correct, Putin's not going to be coming to Mar-a-Lago unless it's to negotiate the end of World War III.
Thus it would be the shortest world war ever.
Trump starts it in January, ends it in November with a nice winter getaway with Vladimir Putin.
No, I'm sorry.
You can't claim that Trump is going to be meeting with Putin at his resort hotel in Florida while simultaneously starting World War III.
I think everybody needs to calm down.
Absolutely needs to calm down.
But I'm going to highlight a tweet from Mr. Gent Uygur back in June 21st, around the same time that Tucker Carlson was saying, like, don't do this, man.
Cenk said, if real Donald Trump keeps us out of a war with Iran, then he will have been a better president than George W. Bush.
Now, of course, many in the progressive left got really angry by this.
I also want to mention, there's a parenthesis there that I skipped over.
He says, and doesn't end democracy before he leaves office.
Calm down.
Trump's not going to end democracy.
Sorry.
Nobody was there to call out Obama when I was screeching about all the same stuff, the NDAA, the AUMF.
I was covering all the same stuff, like Obama's sending drones to countries we're not at war with.
American citizens were losing their lives under Obama's direction, okay?
So please, everybody, calm down.
This is not out of line with what America has always done and should always be criticized for.
So here's the main point I want to make, why I highlight this.
Even Cenk Uygur can point out that Donald Trump can be a better president than Bush if he just resists starting a war with Iran.
It may be too late.
But I don't necessarily believe this will result in a war with Iran.
I really am not confident.
I don't believe it.
I don't.
Like I said earlier, man, We would have to go to Iran.
Now it's true.
We've been sending soldiers, I think marines, to Kuwait.
So...
We're staring down the barrel of something dangerous.
And you gotta keep in mind, too, that while Trump may be, you know, inviting Putin to phone, you know, to Mar-a-Lago, if that's what the judge thinks, and having these conversations, again, I don't think it's because Trump works for Putin, I think it's because Trump is trying to de-escalate things, but China is still there, okay?
And China, Iran are still buddy-buddy, so there's still some serious risk.
At the same time, man, let me tell you this.
While I don't believe we're looking at the barrel of World War III, I do want to point out We're in the 20s, okay?
What happened 100 years ago?
Not just that.
I mean, this could be World War III.
I want to be fair, okay?
I'm leaning towards everybody needs to calm down, but it's possible when you look at what China's doing with the Uighur Muslims.
When you see what China is doing, when you see what, you know, the conflict between the U.S.
and Iran, it may be something that starts a greater, you know, a greater world conflict.
But my conundrum here is about, for one, I don't like the U.S.
taking these actions, going after military leaders without approval.
It's supposed to be Congress.
There's a lot of limitations.
I don't think I'm doing it in the first place whether Congress votes for it or not, because Congress votes for war.
But I gotta tell you this, man.
We got a problem.
You look at what China is doing, okay?
Even CNN runs a segment talking about what China has been doing.
They've been, like, desecrating, like, religious sites or something like that.
I don't have it pulled up, so you gotta fact-check me on this one.
But I have serious concern that we may be entering the fray of a greater, greater conflict.
While a lot of people are saying World War III, I just want everyone to kind of calm down about it.
So, you get the point.
I'll leave it there.
Stick around.
Next segment will be at 1 p.m.
at youtube.com slash timcastnews.
I will see you all then.
Yesterday on my main channel, which is youtube.com slash Timcast, my main segment talked about
blue states losing residents at alarming numbers.
We have a kind of update to this story and I want to follow up with a bunch of different
ideas as to why I think this is happening.
The Daily Mail reports, high taxes are driving people out of New York.
More people are leaving the state than any other with nearly 1.4 million residents moving
away since 2010.
They say census data revealed states' population decreased for a fourth consecutive year, just
one of ten states which has seen a decline in population between 2018 and 2019.
It's not just New York City, though.
Illinois is losing residents, and that's a huge, you know, blue state.
Chicago, it's massive.
And you also have California seeing a massive increase in what's called net domestic migration, meaning people who live in California are leaving California for other parts of the United States.
While California did grow a little bit, I believe around .4%, I'm gonna make a bold claim!
I believe that it's fair to say Failed liberal policies from these progressive bastions, you know, cities and states, are driving people away from them, and this means Democrats will be ceding political power.
Now, I know I did talk about this a bit on my main channel the other day, but I'm gonna, it's an addendum.
I gotta talk about these issues, man, because a lot of people are saying it's high taxes.
Let me just stop you right there.
High taxes are a contributing factor.
They are not the only factor.
I believe there's... I believe it's fair to say it is progressive laws.
I know, I know, now I'm gonna be told by the left that I'm being biased, but I tell you this, man, my position is always... Listen.
There's a lot to go through.
Minimum wage laws, Assembly Bill 5 in California, and I want to kind of break down a lot of the things I've said in the past in one segment talking about how these blue states will lose political power.
And let's start with high taxes.
Then I want to talk about these new laws and why I don't think it's necessarily taxes, it's the laws.
Before we get started, head over to TimCast.com slash donate if you'd like to support my work.
There's several ways you can give.
The best thing you can do Share this video, because there's a lot of people who don't want to hear what I have to say, but I'm going to say it anyway.
And you can help shatter some echo chamber bubbles, although most people don't care anyway.
I mean, people who believe that jacking up the minimum wage is a good idea will always believe it, even though it's an archaic solution from 100 plus years ago.
That doesn't necessarily apply today.
Ask Andrew Yang about that.
And even though progressives in California are screeching about Assembly Bill 5, which has basically ended the gig economy for the most part, People don't want to change their minds, okay?
So let me just do this.
First, high taxes, major factor.
California and New York have some of the highest taxes in the country.
Most of the blue states where you see people leave, or I'm sorry, most of the highest tax states are blue, and most of the lowest tax states are red.
Kind of makes sense, doesn't it?
So let's read a little bit from here, and I want to walk you through these points and explain to you.
This will result, in my opinion, in Democrats and progressives losing a lot of political power for a variety of reasons.
I don't want to rehash the population stuff.
We can see this graph here where domestic migration has gone down.
Oh, I'm sorry.
Thousands of residents leaving.
That's what it's showing.
And that migration is lower than... Migration into the state is lower than migration out of the state.
Like I said, California gained a little.
Illinois and New York lost.
They say, New York has lost nearly 1.4 million residents to the rest of the country since 2010, and largely as a result of this outflow, the Empire State's total population barely budged during the decade.
According to the New York Post, Andrew Cuomo's office said that Trump and the GOP were responsible.
He says these right-wing cheerleaders failed to mention that it was the Washington Republicans' asinine salt cap who raised taxes on New Yorkers at this time, not the state.
They say under Cuomo, middle class taxes were cut to historic lows, business taxes were lowered, manufacturing taxes were eliminated, property tax were permanently capped, unemployment was cut in half, and a record number of private sector jobs were created.
Let me just stop you right there.
You want to take credit for unemployment?
The whole country is seeing low unemployment.
You can't blame Trump for your high taxes.
Okay?
So let me tell you this.
First, let's address the issue of taxes.
California has the highest with 13.3 And New York with 8.82.
We can see most of the highest taxed states, it includes D.C., are blue states.
And most of the lowest taxed are red states.
Granted, you've got, what do you got in here?
You've got Washington in the lowest taxed states.
So, you know, that's a blue state.
But then, you know, over on the other side, you do have some red states with like Iowa, I believe Iowa's red, with some of the highest income taxes.
But I'm going to focus on the big blues, the ones that are losing residents, and the problem of taxes first.
New York City has its own income tax.
Did you know this?
So sure, New York might only be 8.8, but tack on the 3%, 3 to 4% about, I'm rounding up, forgive me for estimating, that you're going to pay when you live in the city with the highest population density.
So it's no surprise people are leaving.
We'll talk about population density in a second.
So you add that in, and what do you end up with?
New York has basically the same tax rate as California, a little bit lower.
So let's talk about taxes and I'll get into the bad laws hurting California and New York.
I know, I know.
I'm trying to keep this all in a nice little neat package for you guys.
First, increasing taxes does not guarantee an increase in tax revenue.
I know I've told you all this story many, many times.
I'm going to tell you again because there's probably a lot of people who haven't heard me say it.
I knew somebody who was a contractor.
This was in Cook County.
Cook County raised their sales tax.
There was a Home Depot.
This could be, like, apocryphal or just like an example, but what I was told was that Home Depot had shut down and moved a few miles away to reopen a new store in DuPage County.
Okay, that's just to the west of Cook County.
And I was talking to my friend's dad who was a contractor.
I said, why would they do that?
Like, that probably cost them, like, you know, hundreds of thousands, if not millions of dollars to create, like, to shut down your building, build a new one a few miles away.
Here's what he told me.
Contractors do big orders, okay?
And they come in, and if you're going to spend several hundred thousand dollars in the year, and you do it in Cook County, where you're paying 0.1% more, that's a ton of money.
That's thousands of dollars you're losing.
That means these contractors, who have to haul things in by truck anyway, are more than willing to spend the half an hour to tow the materials when they do a project, if it means going to a different county.
Home Depot knew this.
And they knew they would lose customers because of the increasing tax cost, and so they left.
They went to a different county where the costs were lower.
And apparently it worked.
People, you gotta consider this.
This meant that Cook County was now losing tax revenue.
When these blue states think they're gonna raise the tax rate to make more money, it is not always the case because you could reduce trade volume, okay?
So think about it this way.
If there's one dollar, and every time someone trades it, the government gets a percentage, you could have a really low tax rate, but the trade goes back and forth a hundred times, and they extract more money that way.
When they jack up the tax rate, people trade less because they can't afford things, or they don't want to pay a high tax rate, and then your volume goes down.
Now I'll make another point.
Yes, high taxes do contribute to people leaving because, listen man, right now if you're in New York City, what are you doing in New York City?
Why do you need to be in New York City?
What job are you doing?
You're not manufacturing something.
You're probably working at an investment firm or a legal firm or you're writing blogs about Brad Pitt's junk for some listicle website.
Yeah, you can do that all by email.
So now, the opportunity for remote jobs is expanding.
The digital economy allows people to just do a lot of these jobs.
I mean, there are people who hire assistants in India, okay?
So now you can work from anywhere.
So now there's an incentive to leave.
You're thinking to yourself, why am I paying 13% in New York City when I can move to New Jersey and pay less and work remotely for my company?
In some circumstances, you can.
I lived in New York City for a long time.
I eventually moved to the Jersey side because I worked for myself and there was no point in paying taxes for New York City and paying ridiculous rent.
New Jersey was cheaper.
I never really went to the city anyway, so I eventually moved to South Jersey where I'm basically in the Philly area now.
But that was it for me.
I'm one of these people who left New York thinking it costs too much.
Why bother?
I don't need to be in New York to do this job.
So I left.
Now here's what ends up happening.
The infrastructure of New York, the infrastructure of Los Angeles, and there's other places.
Granted, Los Angeles is still seeing a slight net gain.
Even though they're losing a lot of residents, they're gaining more because of, I think, immigration and domestic migration.
But they are seeing a massive net migration out.
Anyway, the point is, states like Illinois, states like Michigan, New York, they lose residents.
But the infrastructure costs the same.
If it costs a million dollars to run your city's water system, then the tax burden of that million dollars is spread out among all residents.
As more people not only have the ability to leave, but are driven out by these high taxes, then the tax burden for that infrastructure is spread out among all residents.
To put it simply, a million people funding a million dollar system each pay a dollar per year.
500,000 people supporting Million Dollar System are going to pay $2 per year.
So the more people leave, the more your costs go up for these utilities.
The high taxes are not helping.
But again, it's also the digital economy.
But now let's talk about the real issue.
Failed progressive laws.
I know, bring it on left, calling me biased and all that stuff, but I tell you this is a reason why I like Andrew Yang.
Andrew Yang has pointed out increasing the minimum wage will not solve these problems.
Bravo, good sir.
Now, I'm not convinced that the freedom dividend he's proposing is going to solve any of these problems either, but he made a good point about the minimum wage.
It doesn't change the fact that housewives, for instance, don't have access to the economy unless they're married.
It doesn't change the fact that there are some people who lose their access to resources through no fault of their own.
It's particularly complicated, and again, I don't think giving everyone a thousand dollars solves the problem, because that brings me to the first failed progressive law.
New York City's $15 minimum wage increase.
Let's talk about it.
There are some good aspects to a minimum wage increase I agree with, but there's a lot of things wrong with it.
The second failed policy issue I want to talk about, which is causing an exodus from these states, is California Assembly Bill 5, which just shut down the gig economy.
First, If you give everyone at the lowest skill level of job, you know, production or service, a wage increase, everything above that has to go up.
Everything has to go up.
So, let's say it costs $5 of materials to make a widget, which is an arbitrary object, and you're paying $10 an hour And they can produce one widget per hour.
That means your cost for the widget is $5 for materials, $10 in labor.
Every hour you're spending $15.
Let's say you then increase that person's wage by $5.
Guess what?
Now the widget costs $20!
So you have to increase the cost of the widget.
Everybody above that tier who requires that service or production will have to increase their costs accordingly because of the increase in cost in the materials.
Increasing the amount of money people get paid doesn't change the value of their labor.
That's just the way it works, okay?
So what ends up happening?
So a new law, rolling into effect January 1st, is going to make it so that all workers in New York City get a $15 minimum wage.
What was that?
I thought Andrew Cuomo was blaming Donald Trump.
But we lowered taxes, so what if you lowered taxes?
If you just increased the cost of all labor for all businesses by 50%, Now, for most people, they're paying more than $10 an hour, so the cost increase is probably only 30 or so percent.
But I tell you this, man.
Businesses have already shut down.
First, let me praise minimum wages and why I could work in New York.
The cost of many goods are imported from other areas of the country.
Those goods don't change because the minimum wage in those areas doesn't go up.
It only affects the residents of New York, increasing their access and it lowers the amount of wealth the higher bracket will get and increases the amount of wealth the lower bracket will get.
But the cost of living in New York is mostly, mostly dependent upon the labor in New York City.
Bus drivers, baristas, you know, supermarket stockers, all that stuff.
Facers, they call them.
They gotta pull the food to the front.
I used to do that when I was 16.
So for the most part, this will not work.
Guess what happens?
As businesses close and taxes remain high, people will leave.
This is a failed policy.
Cuomo can brag about lowering taxes all he wants, but if you just jacked up the cost of basically everything in the city and, well, I believe the state, by 20 to 30 percent, people are going to be like, the cost of living just shot way up!
Sorry, it's not going to solve the problems you have.
It is an archaic solution.
This is my problem with the modern progressives, okay?
My policies are lean left.
I like Andrew Yang.
But guess what?
Minimum wages are an old solution to old problems.
There's no guarantee they will work when we have a digital economy allowing people to leave.
Okay?
You don't get it.
We are in a different era.
Okay, you want to raise taxes?
People can transfer their money to Bitcoin and send it overseas in two seconds.
They can easily transfer things to foreign countries.
It didn't used to be that way.
Raising taxes, people talk about how we used to have a 90% income tax bracket.
Yes, it made sense when it was very difficult to move money.
Now you can snap your fingers and send your money to China.
Now that it's so easy, taxes are harder to implement because people can now compete with all these other countries.
The point is, The digital economy, new technology, requires new solutions.
And progressives keep saying, I want to be the party of the New Deal, like, you know, FDR or whatever.
It's like, dude, that was a hundred years ago!
We can't just solve these problems by looking at the past and saying, that's what they did then, we'll do it now.
No, we have different problems today.
Okay?
So while I certainly think this can work in some capacities, And to a certain extent, it'll be great for imports from other countries.
It's going to massively drive up the cost of living in New York City.
And let me just bring it on home.
Again, I like Andrew Yang for being a forward thinker, but I don't think he's 100% correct.
California Assembly Bill 5.
You know what this does?
It basically shut down the gig economy.
Uber drivers and freelance riders, among other people, are being shut down.
And this is a progressive law.
It was backed by the unions.
And even though you have all of these riders, Uber drivers, freaking out, saying, you are cutting off our access to resources, they don't care!
So now we have created a new technology.
You can write from anywhere.
You can work from anywhere.
You can use Uber and be your own boss.
So what does California do?
Shut it down.
Look, man, they complain about Trump implementing old solutions to new problems.
They're literally doing the same thing.
This, in my opinion, is going to force Basically every single writer out of California.
I don't know what you're going to do, okay?
If you're a writer in California, these websites are already saying they're not going to hire you.
If you're an Uber driver, you're already in trouble.
And it's because of unions and progressives and Democrats, not because of the Republicans, okay?
I'm not saying Republican policy would work any better.
I'm saying we're looking at these states that are seeing massive exodus.
The first factor is likely the ability to work remotely.
The next is failed policies.
High taxes, combined with an inability to work, and what do you think you get?
So again, California's got a lot of good things going for it.
A lot of rich people live there.
They're still seeing slow growth, but some of the slowest, but they are seeing some of the highest net domestic migration.
Let me tell you why, man.
You pass a law telling people they can't work?
What are they supposed to do?
So I mentioned this before.
There's a website called Patch.
They do hyper-local news for different areas.
They've already said they're not going to hire people in California.
This not only means freelance writers in California are out of work, it also means California will not be getting local news.
They are quite literally implementing policies that are hurting themselves.
Not to mention California's got a massive homeless crisis already.
So now they pass a law making it harder to do a job What do you think's gonna happen to these people who are no longer allowed to work?
Vox.com, VOX laid off hundreds of people in California because of this.
All of these freelance writers, they write, you know...
This is what I'm talking about with failed policy.
You look at these blue states.
They are on a track and they can't course correct.
This is what the left tends to do.
And it's why people don't even call me centrist anymore.
They still kind of call me centrist.
But I'll tell you this.
I've shown you the graph where the Republicans go up and the Democrats go far left.
I'm in the cent... I'm actually where Obama was.
I'm not even... You know, 10 years ago I wasn't even a centrist.
I was a liberal.
Now, because the gap is so wide, and I'm still kind of where Obama was, I'm not even considered center anymore, because the left has gone so far to the left.
The problem is, when it comes to government programs, do they work?
The answer is yes, they do.
Okay?
And I will stand by that.
However, At what point does the left stop and think and purge these programs when they've become cumbersome or fail?
In the private sector, businesses work.
And then sometimes, after 10 years, a business goes under because it's become obsolete.
So the private sector works.
Does that mean that private business does not work because they failed 10 years later?
No, the private business worked perfectly, providing a service.
Times changed.
The business goes under.
They could have adapted.
Well, it didn't.
Blockbuster was huge.
So I look at government programs the same way.
Government programs do work.
They can provide relief and help people, and I'm a strong supporter of many of them.
The problem is they don't fail.
The government just doubles down and keeps going.
So the minimum wage worked for a variety of reasons.
It's a hundred years later, things are changing, and what do they do?
Just keep on keeping on.
Don't stop.
Don't reflect.
Keep going.
That's the problem of government.
And the left tends to be a proponent of these laws that aren't necessarily helping.
But I'll tell you what, man, you reap what you sow.
Because in California, what happens?
They passed this law because the unions wanted it.
And now all of these workers are going to be without work.
And California is going to see itself facing a much bigger homeless crisis.
All of these things are tied together.
I'll end with this.
Why are people leaving California?
It's gross, man!
San Francisco's got human waste all over the streets.
What do you expect?
Okay?
So I'll tell you what.
As much as the left doesn't want to hear it, yes, high taxes and failed policy are hurting your political power.
But that's the political marketplace, man.
As people flee these blue states into red areas, that's not going to change the makeup for the most part.
The Republicans will still dominate heavy Republican areas, and these bigger cities will lose congressional seats.
That's what it seems like may actually happen.
I think the internet is playing the biggest role.
It's providing relief.
But if the left doesn't learn to course correct and figure out when they've gone too far, eventually they will just lose their power and then the system will correct itself naturally.
Of course, it might cause a major swing to Republicans, which I'm sure many of the cultural leftists don't want to hear, but hey.
Money talks.
BS walks.
If you're going to increase the cost of basically everything and jack up the cost of living in New York City, people are going to leave.
If you're going to pass laws saying you can't work in California if you're in the gig economy, people are going to leave.
And then you will have less votes.
Welcome to the political marketplace.
Anyway, there you go!
Stick around.
Next segment will be coming up at youtube.com slash timcast.
That is my main channel.
There's going to be some restructuring going on.
I am preparing a new show.
This channel is going to have an entirely new hour and a half of content every day.
I am doubling my workload.
I'm crazy!
We'll see how it works.
But stick around.
Next segment's coming up at youtube.com slash timcast.
Well, I'll elaborate a little bit.
I might be moving every segment from this channel to the main channel.
Then I'm planning to do a live show with user commentary.
Like, you can comment.
Because I haven't been doing live streams because of the way things are structured.
It's going to be a new show.
It's going to be, for the most part, no hard politics.
It's going to be more cultural politics.
Things like this, right?
I'm not going to talk about what, you know, Trump is doing or Bernie says.
It's going to literally be like policy, but it's going to be a lot of like cultural, political issues.
So I'll talk about movies.
The goal is to make two shows, a overtly political and then a more cultural.
And I want to have a lot of guests on this channel, so this one will become more of like a generalist podcast with political issues, science, and probably like cool, just cool, interesting, weird stuff that I think, you know, I don't get to talk about too much.
Like, I do the UFO videos here sometimes, and I know they don't do that well, but I love doing it anyway.
So stay tuned for that.
The work on my home studio is being done as we speak, and we are going to be at, like... Well, so the whole basement is finished, as of, like, next couple hours.
But then we gotta set up the backdrops and cameras and technical equipment and things like that, so... It's coming!
I'm excited.
But yeah, I'll be doing a live show, and it's going to be semi-produced, so I'll have a lineup of stories that are relevant, but the main political, big breaking news will be my main channel, and this channel will be more stuff like analysis on minimum wage, and like my personal opinions, and then like movies, reviews, and just like cool, interesting stuff, space, interdimensional travel, religion, just kind of like general.
And there's going to be a goal to have new guests as many times as possible.
So I'll be like booking guests, bringing out researchers and scientists.
One thing I really want to do is there's only like a handful of intellectual dark web people.
And I want to find more academics, you know, who are lesser known and talk about some of their research.
So yeah, I'll leave it there.
Stick around.
Go to youtube.com slash timcast and I will see you at 4 p.m.
Rose McGowan tweeted apologies to Iran in one of the weirdest tweets saying, please don't kill us.
We're being held hostage.
Virtue signaling gone wrong.
Okay, let me tell you something.
I am as anti-war as they come.
In fact, I'm probably not the most anti-war person because a lot of these people oppose war even when, like, you probably should.
I just think, like, foreign intervention is a waste of money.
We shouldn't be in the Middle East.
Very complicated.
But man, the people on the left are so mad at Trump over what's going on in Iran that they lose their minds.
And you end up seeing tweets like this from Rose McGowan.
She said, you ready for this one?
Dear Iran, the USA has disrespected your country, your flag, your people.
52% of us humbly apologize.
We want peace with your nation.
We are being held hostage by a terrorist regime.
We do not know how to escape.
Please do not kill us.
Whoa, whoa, dude.
Hold on, man.
I criticized Trump's decision to do the strike in Baghdad.
I do want to clarify, too, though.
I could be wrong.
I could have been wrong then.
I may be wrong now.
But I was talking to some people, and I think under the current authorization for use of military force, the AUMF, Trump doing an airstrike against a known enemy of the U.S.
in a country in which he was authorized to engage in conflict, Iraq, I think he technically was operating under congressional approval already.
The problem is that this was an Iranian official.
So it is complicated.
And I do have another segment coming up after this to break down why the context is missing.
But first what I want to do is I want to show you the absurdity of the virtue signal.
When you have no idea what's going on, so you tweet something insane like this.
Okay, let me read a little bit first.
Daily Mail says, Rose McGowan tweeted an apology to Iran after an airstrike ordered by President Trump killed one of the country's top generals.
The actress went on a rant on the social media platform on Friday morning after the news of the death of Qasem Soleimani.
She wasn't the only one.
Actors and actresses such as John Cusack, Alyssa Milano, and Debra Messing tweeted their disapproval over the airstrike.
Let me stop right now.
Rose McGowan also said, thanks a lot dickhead Donald Trump.
I'm saving, I'm going to break this up into two segments.
So stick around for the next segment where I actually show you the photographs and talk about how, no, 52% of us are not humbly apologizing.
I'll save that though.
You see, let me explain something to you.
The USA has disrespected your country.
Sure, that's true.
There's a lot of problems.
The United States engaged in Iran and conflict and, you know, the revolution, all that stuff going back decades.
But I'll tell you what, man.
It's not so simplistic to right now just be like, it's our fault, we apologize, we're being held hostage.
Let me explain something to Rose McGowan, and I'll show you her apology.
52% of us humbly apologize?
Nice try!
The Democratic establishment loves war the same as the old-school Republican establishment, of which Trump eviscerated.
I don't know what you'd call Trump now, because he's certainly engaging in an escalation of conflict, for sure.
But, dude, Bolton, the old-school Republicans, the neocons, the neolibs, they love war!
What are you talking about?
How much do you want to bet we're going to see a bunch of Democrats be like, well, you know, I think Trump should have consulted Congress, but it was very presidential of him to do this.
That's what's going to happen.
I'll tell you what, if you look at what happened with the media when Trump fired missiles on Syria, and it was very much, you know, Trump is being presidential and all this stuff.
So I want to try and keep this one focused to celebrity outrage and virtue signaling because I want to save the next real evidence, like a defense of Trump to an extent, show you what's going on.
So let me just show you what Rose McGowan then tweeted.
She said later, Of course Soleimani was an evil, evil man who did evil, evil things.
But that at this moment is not the effing point.
The United States is morally corrupt and acts illegally.
It is only logical to appeal to Iran's pride by apologizing.
I'm taking one for the team.
Oh, cringe!
The cringiest of cringe.
Virtue signal.
Then an attempt at a recovery.
Fail, man.
Fail, fail, fail.
Listen.
Apologize.
I shouldn't have said it.
Backtrack.
This is nuts.
She goes on to say this, and this is confusing to me.
Rose McGowan says, I'm a registered Republican in California.
What?
I loathe the Clintons.
I hate Trump.
I will not vote Republican, but I cannot vote Democrat.
I'd rather know what evil I'm getting, so I'll go Republican.
Wait, but you just said you wouldn't vote Republican, so what are you talking about?
There is a potential that it's a tit for tat that goes back and forth.
I do not think we will ever really see a World War 3.
I don't think so.
Because, well, actually, you know, if we do, it's going to be a cyber attack.
So it's going to be, you know, you might see a refinery blow up, I guess.
It's not going to be the same as it's always been.
But I will tell you this.
If you think that a war with Iran is a good idea, you got another thing coming, man.
All right.
You know, I'll keep this to the celebrities.
I know, I know, I know.
Let's go down and talk about their virtue signaling.
Because I'm going to break this up in two segments, like I said.
The United States is morally corrupt, as you said.
Here's John Cusack.
John Cusack, I don't know what's wrong with this guy.
Like, he's blocked a bunch of people I know who are, like, libertarians, not even pro-Trump.
Trump in full fascist 101 mode.
Steal and lie until there's nothing left and start a war.
He's so idiotic, he doesn't know he just attacked Iran, and that's not like anywhere else.
Man, it is so cringe-inducing.
To read from these celebrities who are only saying this.
They're only saying it now.
I'll tell you what's so infuriating.
Infuriate.
Infuriate!
It makes me angry!
I tweeted something about Trump, and I got a bunch of people saying things like, where was the outrage when Obama was doing this, Tim?
Wrong person, mother effers!
I'm not gonna swear.
I was ragging on Obama the whole time, okay?
I'm probably on my other channel, you can look at old videos of where I'm like talking about Obama, getting the NDAA ability, the indefinite detention provisions.
I've repeatedly ragged on Obama for all of this stuff.
He ain't playing that game with me, okay?
Now, I think what Obama did is, Exponentially worse than what Trump did.
Let's be real, okay?
What Donald Trump did is targeted an enemy of the U.S.
in a country in which, I believe, I could be wrong, we're authorized to use military force.
Obama was targeting American citizens, okay?
Multiple American citizens, thousands of unauthorized extrajudicial assassinations, especially in places like Yemen where we are not at war.
So I'll tell you this, John Cusack, Alyssa Milano, you know what, man?
I thank you for finally coming out and criticizing the president, but I don't believe it.
I'll tell you why I'm mad.
unidentified
A lot of people have said, it's not about whataboutism, Tim.
But I know the only reason they're coming out and saying this is because the Orange Man is bad.
Fine.
To an extent, I can recognize, call up the executive branch for their insane BS, but the only reason these celebrities are saying this is because it's a virtue signal.
The Orange Man is bad, therefore now we're against war.
You know what?
You know what?
Fine.
I'll take it when you're willing to offer it up.
But just know, the reason why I will not defend these people when they call out Trump for this stuff is because the moment the Democrat gets elected, they're going to do the exact same thing.
They will not come out, they will not call out Obama, they'll hold up signs saying George W. Bush is literally Hitler, Obama gets elected, ramps up extrajudicial assassination, gets the authorization for military force re-upped over and over again, gets the NDAA, the National Defense Authorization Act, indefinite detention provisions, and where, where might these celebrities be to be the moral conscience of America?
Oh, they're gone?
They still love Obama?
I'll tell you this, man.
A Gallup poll showed Trump and Obama are both tied for the most, you know, admired American.
Obama, who blew up kids.
You know what the Obama administration was doing?
They were sending drone strikes to the Middle East, blowing up young men and saying, but they were military-aged.
That means they're combatants.
Welcome to America.
This is what America does.
There's a 18-year-old dude carrying a couple buckets of water to his village, and a drone blows him up, and they're like, but he was military-aged.
Where were any of these people?
Nowhere to be found.
So yes, I'll tell you this.
I will criticize Trump, okay?
I will criticize him for potentially escalating a very serious conflict, and I will also recognize targeting someone who's leading a group that is recognized as a terrorist organization by the United States in a country in which the president has been authorized is infinitely worse than the targeting of American citizens, like Obama did, and the extrajudicial assassinations led under Obama.
I am not saying that, like, Trump isn't doing wrong.
I'm just saying Obama did bad.
Real bad.
Trump is doing pretty bad, too.
And he's doing worse in a lot of ways.
And he's doing slightly better, I think, in some ways.
But I'll tell you this, man.
This video, I'm keeping the moral outrage on the people pretending to care about war.
There have been many of us on the anti-war left, or moderate left, whatever you want to call me, for a long time.
And sure enough, these people come out with the most absurd virtue signal.
Please don't kill us like they could!
Calm down!
Listen, man.
A war with Iran is a really, really bad idea.
This country is much larger and much more powerful than many of these other countries, okay?
So, you want to talk about You know, we should go to war or whatever.
I know most people don't feel that way, but you get people like John Bolton, who said something like, in 2019, we'll be celebrating victory in Tehran.
Oh, great.
That's... No, I'm sorry, okay?
Not a good idea.
Not a good idea to get into a war with Iran.
And they're aligned.
I believe they're allied with Russia and they have good diplomatic relations with China.
So we do not want that escalation.
But let me just stress real quick, you know, because I'm going to do another segment.
I'm going to extend this.
A single strike does not a war make.
It's possible as an escalation.
But let me wrap this up because, like I said, I want to separate this.
What you're seeing from all of these celebrities is just them being like, whatever Trump does is bad.
That's it.
So to act like all liberals, 52% of us apologize.
No, they don't.
They're nuts.
The super wealthy, you know, democratic establishments are laughing all the way to the bank.
They're saying, this is great.
Can't wait for that military industrial complex money.
We can go into Iran, disrupt the oil industry.
Yeah, nah, I'm not buying it.
Anyway, I gotta split this up.
Stick around.
The next segment will deal with, dare I say it, a defense of Donald Trump.
While I'm still being very critical of him, I think it's important to point out even BuzzFeed is providing a tacit defense of the president on this one.
What you need to understand is the severity of what happened at the embassy in Baghdad.
This is not a joke.
They're acting like some protesters came out, so Trump went nuts.
Nah, man, you got to see these photos.
Stick around.
Next segment's coming up and we're going to talk about it.
I want to follow up on the segment I just did.
If you didn't watch it, go check it out.
It's uploaded already.
It's about Rose McGowan and the celebrity virtue signal around Iran and Baghdad and this Qasem Soleimani thing.
And I gotta say, man, the main reason I did that segment first and why I'm breaking it up is that this is a more serious, you know, political issue.
I want to focus on some of the photos published.
BuzzFeed says these photos show how destructive the U.S.
embassy attack in Iraq was.
Listen, man, I do not like the fact that the United States is in the Middle East.
I do not like the fact that we're building military bases and maintaining them all around the world.
I do not like the fact that America is intervening.
But one big piece of context missing from all of this is the severity of the attack on the embassy and what's happening.
We are not talking about a hundred protesters waving little flags and doing an antifa, you know, mishmash with some rocks.
We're talking about fires being set, rooms being blown out, people nearly losing their lives, Trump calling in, you know, intervene—marine intervention to defend the embassy.
We're talking about an attack on an American embassy, which is sovereign American territory.
This is an escalation.
Now listen.
It doesn't mean Trump is right.
I'm still very critical of him because escalation isn't always the answer.
Conservatives like the fact that Trump, you know, he put up instead of shutting up, Obama would have shut up.
I think escalation is a bad, bad idea.
But I think regardless of your opinion, people are not looking at the actual photos about what happened.
These virtue signaling leftists like Rose McGowan don't realize What actually went down?
Like, this was basically a militia assault on American territory.
Okay?
I get it.
We're not supposed to be in Baghdad.
We shouldn't be there.
It's all really, really bad.
Okay?
One thing leads for another.
It's a never-ending tit-for-tat, and I oppose it.
But I gotta point out, we're not talking about some protests and then Trump losing his cool.
We are talking about an actual assault on American soil.
Even BuzzFeed, okay?
The attack, prompted by protests over American airstrikes, destroyed the reception area but caused no injuries.
The siege ended on January 1st.
I saw this from BuzzFeed, and I was really surprised, because showing these photos and talking about the severity of the attack, it's like a tacit defense of military action.
I'm not surprised, they say.
The U.S.
embassy compound in Baghdad was attacked on December 31, 2019, by crowds protesting the American airstrikes against bases of Kataib Hezbollah, a Shiite military in Syria and Iraq.
The airstrikes were in retaliation after American troops were wounded and a contractor was killed in a rocket attack in Kirkuk on December 27th.
Let me just tell you, man, it's never, it's a tit for tat, okay?
We're not talking about Trump being like, a bunch of protesters showed up, we better send a bomb, you know, and blow up this guy.
No, no, no, no, no.
Americans were targeted, so the US retaliated.
This has been a long time coming, okay?
A contractor was killed, so Trump said, take out the militias, you know, in retaliation.
So then, they're calling it a protest.
Full stop, man.
These were militia supporters trying to Like, they were trying to, like, destroy the embassy.
I'm not gonna sugarcoat it, man.
They tried to burn the place down.
And Trump immediately called in reinforcements.
This has been a long time coming.
We are not talking about, like, all of a sudden a protest popped up.
No, like, this is back and forth for a while.
They say the attack further fueled tensions between the U.S.
and Iran, which is a primary backer of Kataib Hezbollah.
The U.S.
military issued a strong warning that would preemptively strike Iranian-backed militias if there was any indication that more attacks against American personnel were planned.
Early on Friday, a powerful Iranian general was killed in a U.S.
airstrike near Baghdad's international airport.
Okay.
I don't like the idea of preemptive assaults in no way.
So let me just condemn the targeting of an Iranian general.
I know he's, I think he's the former leader of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard.
Now he leads a different group.
He's basically one of the highest ranking officials in Iran.
Listen, man, I understand this guy is doing bad things.
He's planning bad things.
But there is a lot more strategy to be considered beyond targeting this guy in Baghdad because you have the AUMF and you can.
That's just my opinion, okay?
I'm trying to be fair here.
I think this is bad, bad news for us in the long run.
Now, I get conservatives are saying we got rid of a really bad guy, but don't think it ends here, okay?
Somebody targeted our guys, so we targeted their guys, so they target our embassy, so we target their guy.
Where do you think this ends?
All right?
Ending the cycle of fate can be difficult, and I understand this guy was really dangerous.
He was working with Syria and other countries and Hezbollah.
I get it, I get it, I get it, man.
I'm not the president.
I don't know what he knows, but the point of this segment is to try and be fair, even though I'm I seriously will say it a million times.
It's bad moves.
Okay, but even BuzzFeed is showing these photos.
So if you're listening, I'm just going to try and describe some of what we're seeing.
These are people who are wearing, you know, camo gear.
I don't know if you want to call them like They're not just in military fatigue, necessarily.
Some may be wearing body armor, I'm not sure, but they're flipping vehicles, starting fires.
You can see, you know, some dude being carried.
The next photo is, I believe, of Americans.
I'm gonna try and skip over some of these photos, because it's just showing, like, you know, American soldiers.
A lot of these people are wearing masks.
And then we can see the fires being started.
The booth entry to the embassy burned down.
Windows shattered.
We have to be careful that people don't use subversive tactics to target our embassies.
Okay?
Let me make another thing clear.
This wasn't like a protest in a country we retaliated against.
It's not necessarily about Baghdad.
American embassies are everywhere.
Attacking an embassy could happen at any time.
It's not like a military base was attacked.
It's not like a bunch of soldiers were attacked.
They targeted the embassy.
So I want to make sure that's clear because, like, let's say a bunch of protesters showed up in France and targeted the embassy, okay?
It can happen anywhere.
But here's what I want to show you.
They tried bashing out the windows, and it looks like the windows are seriously reinforced.
They used fire, they used pipes.
I am seriously impressed with these photos that these people got, because this is war, okay?
We got burning trash on top of a wall with barbed wire around it.
We can see they were throwing what looks like mud or feces at the windows.
But that's not the serious issue.
Okay, people got injured.
They show us how they were throwing objects, breaking the windows.
This wasn't like...
This is not a protest, okay?
This is essentially a retaliation, an act of war.
Take a look at these photos.
They ripped off the signs, U.S.
Embassy service entrance.
These are Iranian militia supporters or militias themselves.
They pried off the sign of the embassy.
If Trump didn't call in reinforcements, I believe Americans would be dead.
They stole the emblem for the embassy.
They took photos of the building burning.
And then we have some photos of the totally burned out area.
We've got a metal detector.
It's all destroyed.
I think we're lucky American lives weren't lost in this.
I'm showing you these photos and explaining this because I want to make sure it's clear, okay?
It's BuzzFeed highlighting this.
This was not a group of, like, Occupy Wall Street people in masks.
This was a serious attack on a facility with the intent to kill people, alright?
That being said, that context is very important understanding what happened in Baghdad and why Trump retaliated.
Now, I don't like the retaliation that Trump is engaging in because it's going to make things worse, but I think it's fair to point out the severity of the attack on the embassy and apparently so does BuzzFeed.
I get it.
We're the centrist types.
We're not strong enough to resist the war machine.
Man, I am very anti-war.
I am very concerned about what's going on here.
But I'm sick and tired of these people on the left, for one, not caring that Obama was doing the same thing, and acting like this is Trump being willy-nilly.
No, this is Trump, in my opinion, stepping too far, but I can understand why.
Okay?
I'm worried about it.
I wish he didn't do it.
But you gotta look at these photos, man.
This is from Military Times.
Photos reveal damage to U.S.
Embassy in Baghdad following attack by supporters of Iran-backed militia.
Let me stress, if Trump didn't react the way he did, we would have dead Americans.
And this is an embassy.
We are going to be in an endless cycle of war.
Okay?
That's just the... America is addicted to it.
They attacked our embassy.
It's not a military installation.
It's the embassy.
And they did it because they're targeting us by any means necessary.
That's the problem.
You know, it's an attack essentially on, to an extent, diplomacy.
But I think it all goes back indefinitely.
That's what I said earlier today, man.
America does something overseas, so people get mad, they retaliate, so we retaliate.
It's never gonna stop.
It will never stop.
I don't know what to tell you, man.
And if you can only look back so far, then you'll... Here's what happens.
A lot of the conservatives are going to back Trump no matter what.
A lot of Trump supporters will back him no matter what.
But you also have a lot of people saying, look what happened in Baghdad.
This was a justified assault on a terrorist leader.
Totally understand it.
I totally get it.
That's why I'm showing these photos.
I'm trying to be fair.
You go back one more time and you say these are people who are outraged the U.S.
invaded Iraq under false pretext and are continuing to occupy this country.
I get that too!
We should not be there!
We were lied to about WMDs, now we got our people over there, now we're wasting money on this, and it's resulting in a never-ending tit-for-tat, get out of Iraq!
End it!
Okay?
It's not going to stop.
You go back in time and people say, yeah, we were there because, you know, certain groups were being harbored in Iraq and, you know, September 11th and all that stuff.
It will never stop, dude.
We can go back forever.
And depending on how far you're willing to go back, there will always be justification for some side's excuse for why they're going to engage in war.
There is no excuse for what these people did to the American embassy.
Period.
Okay?
None.
Attacking the embassy had nothing to do with, you know, I'm... You know what, man?
There's no excuse for it.
I'll just leave it at that.
Plain and simple.
And there's gonna be a bunch of leftists saying they were protesting America's occupation.
They were fighting back.
Okay, dude.
You know what, man?
Saddam Hussein was not a good dude.
There were a lot of problems in the Middle East, and it goes back well before that.
America should never have gone into the Middle East.
And here we are.
And now we should get out.
It's going to get worse.
You want to justify Trump's attack on this guy, Soleimani, because he's been leading attacks against us?
We shouldn't be there!
They're not coming here!
Well, now they're gonna.
So, I don't know, man.
Listen, I try to be fair, because I recognize the argument as to why people support what Trump did with targeting Soleimani, alright?
But I'm warning you right now, it's not World War III, okay?
Let's calm down.
It's just not going to stop.
There's going to be retaliation for this, to which we are going to retaliate back.
What are we supposed to do?
We are not going to get into a ground war with Iran.
That would be insane.
Absolutely insane.
The best thing we can do is GTFO.
You know what?
And they say, oh, but now that we've already gone in, it's going to get worse if we pull out.
Yeah, too bad.
Too bad.
It's time to leave.
They say it'll devolve into chaos.
I don't care.
You know what, man?
I feel for the people who are there.
I'm upset the U.S.
went in in the first place.
We shouldn't have been in the first place.
We were lied to to get in there, and now it's only getting worse.
America is on a drug that we were injected with back in the 2000s, and we can't stop because we're scared of the withdrawal.
The literal military withdrawal and the figurative drug addiction withdrawal.
So you know what, man?
I don't know what to tell you.
But it's not gonna stop.
It will not stop.
It will only get worse.
The only thing I can see is it's time to get the F out.
But far be it from me to know, there's very few things that I will screech this loudly about.
You know, because I don't know.
I really don't.
There's so much I don't know.
I'll tell you this, though.
It's like every day we hear about, oh, it's getting worse.
Oh, it's getting worse.
It's not getting better.
We're not winning.
We're losing.
Why are we there?
What are we doing?
We securing the poppy seeds, the poppy fields in Afghanistan?
We securing the oil fields?
Don't care.
Trump has made, well actually it was Obama, into the Trump administration.
America's now the larger producer of fossil fuels.
Okay?
How about we GTFO?
Yeah, people are saying Russia and China will move in, so you know what?
We're doomed.
Is that it?
We're on a path to just everyone hating and killing each other?
I guess so.
Because apparently, not even Trump Not even Trump can muster, whatever is needed, the political force to get us out of these wars.
A lot of people thought Trump was going to be the guy who was like, I'm going to end these wars, but Obama said the same thing.
That's why people don't get it.
Why I don't want to vote for Obama again, and why I'm not interested in voting for literally anyone other than Tulsi.
Because even Tulsi, in my opinion, is gambling that she would actually pull out.
I trust her.
I'm hoping she would end this psychotic behavior and ridiculous waste of money.
But even Trump didn't do it.
So, no, I'm not, I'm not, and this is what I always complain about.
I'm not going to rant for a million years on this one, okay?
I'm just sick and tired of it.
You guys ought to understand, man, it never will end.
Because I'll tell you this, those strikes on those people who die, their kids grow up, and they vow vengeance, and they target us, and then our kids grow up and vow vengeance back.
It will never stop.
Unless you stop it.
Unless someone finally says, we're stopping.
You know, it's not going to be- and nobody wants to back down.
I'll leave it there.
Alright?
The point of this segment was to say I get it, man.
I'm willing to look at these photos and tell you how bad it really was and what they were trying to do at the embassy.
I'm also willing to say retaliation is not going to make things better.
I got one more segment coming up in a few minutes and I will see you all shortly.
government, is now enacting one of the most, I don't know what you'd call it, but this is, I don't know, it's hard to say, I want to say callous, I really do.
is now sending asylum seekers across the Arizona border to Mexico to await court hearings 350 miles away.
This is, in my opinion, a bureaucratic workaround to basically be like, you're not going to be getting asylum in America.
So first, the Remain in Mexico policy, in my opinion, absolutely makes sense.
The general idea is, if you come to the United States, you apply for asylum, you wait in Mexico until your court date.
And this is because most people do not have legitimate asylum claims, and It's especially if they're coming from third nations.
I think that's from other countries.
I think that's actually the rule.
If you come from a country through Mexico to the U.S., you gotta wait in Mexico.
It makes sense, okay?
If you're fleeing Guatemala, you're in Mexico, you're fine.
I was just in Mexico City.
It is beautiful.
Okay, Mexico City, great food, not dangerous.
I think Chicago's more dangerous than, like, downtown Mexico City for the most part.
I understand there can be dangerous areas, but there are seriously dangerous areas in Chicago.
Anyway, the point is, You want to apply, you come from a third country, through Mexico, you wait in Mexico.
Now what they're doing is, they're moving them 350 miles away, so they can't actually get to their court date in America, and that is, this one is where it becomes completely overt.
That it's like, we're trying to make it difficult for you to actually appear in court to get your asylum.
I'll tell you what, man.
For my tastes, this one goes too far.
Absolutely.
I'll tell you what.
If you want to argue that people come here with dubious claims, and then they're released into the interior of the US where they just disappear, yeah, man, it happens.
The data shows it.
But if you now want to take asylum seekers and say, we're going to send you 350 miles away, and then you've got to figure out how to get back, I get it, man.
It's an effective way to cancel even legitimate asylum claims.
But I'll tell you what, man.
That's a bit too much, to say the least.
So let me read.
The U.S.
government began sending asylum seekers back to Nogales, Mexico yesterday to await court hearings that will be scheduled roughly 350 miles away in Juarez.
Authorities are expanding a program known as Remain in Mexico that requires tens of thousands of asylum seekers to wait out their immigration court hearings in Mexico.
Until this week, the government was driving some asylum seekers to Nogales, Arizona, from Nogales, Arizona, to El Paso, Texas, so they could be returned to Juarez.
So, here's the main point, because I'll be fair.
I think the main issue was that they were effectively picking up these asylum seekers and then literally providing them the travel service to where their court date would eventually be, and they're ending that now.
So let me walk back a little bit what I said, because I have heard the arguments.
There's always some other side to this.
Here's the problem, man.
Okay?
There are legitimate asylum seekers.
Most of them are not, I get it.
But if they have to travel 350 miles for court, it's just never gonna happen.
We might as well just end asylum.
That's why I think it's a bureaucratic workaround.
But I do think it's fair to point out we shouldn't be providing a ferry service, okay?
So, milk toast fence-sitter, what do you expect from me?
They say now asylum seekers will have to find their own way through dangerous Mexican border roads.
About 30 asylum seekers were sent to Nogales, Mexico on Thursday, said Gilda Luerrero, director of the San Juan Bosco Migrant Shelter in Nogales, Sonora.
Larrero said the migrants hadn't made it to the shelter yet, but that it was prepared and has a capacity of about 400.
We're going to take up the capacity we have.
Critics say the Remain in Mexico program, one of several Trump administration policies that have all but ended asylum in the U.S., puts migrants who fled their home countries back into dangerous Mexican border towns, where they are often kidnapped, robbed, or extorted.
In my opinion, I'm sorry, I'm not trying to be cold, but that is just not our problem.
Listen, man.
We wanna help asylum seekers.
We wanna help refugees.
If you choose to come to Mexico from another place, there's danger even in America.
This is what bothers me.
They're like, they get extorted and kidnapped and robbed.
Yeah, and if you're in Chicago, the same thing could happen, okay?
Is your argument that Mexico is dangerous?
Well, then I think you're being, I don't know, what's the word for like, national cyst?
It's not racism, but it's like, look, If people are running away from, like, imminent danger, then they're facing less danger, aren't they?
I mean, look, I get it.
It's complicated.
But just because crime exists in Mexico doesn't mean it's our responsibility.
This is the big challenge, man.
We want to help, but how much are we supposed to give?
Till our fingers go numb?
Till we bleed?
Let's read a little bit more.
They say a Human Rights First report released in December documented at least 636 public reports of violence against asylum seekers returned to Mexico, including sexual assault, kidnapping, and torture.
Human Rights First said that was a steep increase over October when the group had identified 343 attacks and noted the latest figure is surely an undercount because most crime victims don't report.
The government calls the program Migrant Protection Protocols.
Nogales is now the seventh border crossing through which U.S.
authorities returns migrants to Mexico to await court hearings.
The policy was introduced in January 2018 in San Diego.
More than 56,000 people were sent back to Mexico by the end of November, according to Syracuse University's Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse.
Of the more than 24,000 cases that have been decided, only 117 or less than 1% have been granted asylum or some other form of relief, allowing them to stay in the United States.
So I'll stop here, I'll make this point.
This is why I'm like... Let me first make this clear.
The story's been a bit confusing to me from the get-go, because I'm wondering, it's like, are they picking them up in El Paso and then driving them 350 miles?
That makes no sense.
The issue is that they're apparently driving them from Nogales to Juarez or to El Paso or whatever, where they can schedule their court hearings, where the court hearings will actually happen.
If they're in Nogales or in some other area, that's where they're getting dropped off, well, that's too bad.
The other issue is, If majority, 99% of these cases are not approved, it stands to reason that we would err on the side of saying, look, you're not getting status here.
I think it's particularly troublesome that people who are from, you know, say Africa or South America skip over all of these other beautiful countries to come to America.
I do not believe it.
And then when we see that only 1% actually get it, makes sense to me that they're not legitimate claims.
Let me stress one point.
When the migrant caravan crisis was in full swing, there was a story from Vox.com, V-O-X.
They said that one of the migrants traveling was interviewed, and the reason they came to America was because they said they missed Buffalo Wild Wings.
Apparently, they had illegally entered the U.S.
before, they were kicked out, and they were coming back.
They were deported, now they're coming back.
I'm sorry, Buffalo Wild Wings is not a reason to cite for getting asylum.
And I know it's unfair to take that one anecdote, but I'll tell you this, man.
A lot of these people interviewed were talking about luxury.
They were talking about America for the American Dream, not because they were fleeing violence or danger.
This is the important context you need to understand when we talk about what's going on with remain in Mexico.
Only 1% are legitimate.
Now, here's my concern and why I'd say, like, I didn't want to necessarily say callous, but look, man.
117 people out of 24,000.
Those 117 people are individuals who need to be treated as such.
And herein lies the big problem.
You know, it is better that 10 guilty persons escape than one innocent suffer.
Ben Franklin even said 100.
It is better 100 guilty persons escape than one innocent suffer.
I personally believe it is worth hearing 24,000 cases if it means we're going to save the lives of 117 people, because I believe one individual is priceless.
There's no value you can assign to a human life.
And if there are legitimate people who need our help, that just means we've got to do a good job to make sure these illegitimate claims are stopped and disincentivized.
So, here's the thing.
To an extent, what Trump is doing with Romania and Mexico will disincentivize those who have illegitimate claims and help clear the way for those who really need the help.
I do not like it when the left argues, like, you know, Trump is, you know, being cold to a certain degree, because I do agree, like I said.
To a certain degree, it is callous.
But a lot of these people act like we should literally just let everybody in.
No, no, no, no, no, no.
There are legitimate people who are afraid for their lives, LGBTQ people who will be murdered in their home countries, and we need to protect people.
It's what good people do.
But we are being exploited.
So, you know what?
Let me read a little bit more.
They say U.S.
authorities have lauded the program, saying it's helped to significantly reduce illegal border crossings.
The Border Patrol apprehended just over 33,000 people along the southwest border in November, compared to 144,000 in May, when border crossings peaked.
In a statement, Acting Department of Homeland Security Secretary Chad Wolf said the program has been an extremely effective tool.
I am confident in the program.
I am confident the program's continued success in adjudicating meritorious cases quickly and preventing fraudulent claims.
A three-judge appeals court panel heard arguments October 1st in San Francisco on a lawsuit filed by the ACLU to block the policy the court has yet to rule.
So let me make this one thing clear and I'll wrap it up.
I'm a bit confused as to what they're trying to argue, but if it's true that the US government was providing a ferry service to the court hearings, that should not be.
Sorry, no dice.
If it's true that Americans are putting them as far away as possible, that is cold as cold can get.
But I think it's actually, you know, because I was listening to one of the interviews and they said something like, ICE or CBP should not be providing a taxi service to these migrants so they can attend their court hearings.
It's up to them.
And it is.
You know what, man?
There's no simple answer to how we save lives and help people and avoid exploitation.
And that's the big back and forth.
I would be willing to bet a substantial amount of money that 99% of conservatives are totally in favor of legitimate asylum claims.
I'd be willing to bet you go to any Trump supporter and ask them, if somebody was facing, you know, execution or assassination due to their, like, race, gender identity, religion, do you think they should be allowed in?
I'd be willing to bet almost all of them would say absolutely.
The problem is only 1% are legitimate.
And that makes it very difficult for us to save lives.
So, you know what, whatever.
You know, I got a lot going on.
I really do apologize.
This one maybe might have been a bit wishy-washy because I was kind of unclear until, you know, based on what I've been reading.
So, I've got so much going on right now.
I tell you this, we're going to be launching another show.
I've got to hire people.
No excuses.
Whatever.
I'll just leave it there.
Stick around.
Next segment will be tomorrow at youtube.com slash timcast.
There is a big change happening to my content for the new year and it's going to be a whole lot of fun!
Politics will be centered, for the most part, at youtube.com slash timcast.
Major political news and world stories.
This channel is going to become more generalist, science, cultural politics.
So I'll still talk about, you know, like the social justice, SJW, you know, kind of cultural issues and movies and stuff.
I'll still talk about some of this stuff for sure.
But it's going to be a live, pre-produced, scheduled, like, nightly, like everyday, like 8pm with guests.
Lot of work to be done, okay?
I'm nuts.
I'm gonna be increasing my workload, so stick around.
