Jamie Raskin utterly HUMILIATES Lauren Boebert in MUST-SEE takedown

now we've got Congressman Jamie Raskin Congressman thanks so much for taking the time always great to see you the pleasure is mine to be with you Brian thanks for inviting me so we'll get into the politics in a moment but first you know you're going through treatment for cancer right now um How is how's that going what are what are doctors saying how much longer well the big picture is excellent news the doctors are giving me a very favorable prognosis for uh defeating um the lymphoma the large Grade B cell lymphoma triple hit um and um so that's the headline news but um you know I'm still slugging it out in the trenches with chemo and it is no fun I would not wish it on my worst worst enemies in the world you know when um Tucker Carlson came out with his propaganda reel about January 6th there was a flood of death threats I think I got 13 death threats the next day and I was thinking about um you know how low do you have to go to send a death threat to some guy going through of chemotherapy and but I thought you know even those people send me death threats I would not wish this upon them I mean it is just no fun and my heart goes out to all of my uh my fellow chemo uh Warriors across the country um because it is tough and it's you know tough on the body and it's tough on the mind and it can cause neuropathy which is like freezing tingling numbness in your fingers and your toes and so it's no fun but in the big picture we're living in a time where science has allowed us to defeat the dread disease and then that's an important thing you've been so present in these oversight hearings lately is that twice as hard given what you're going through with these treatments or does it actually help in the sense that you have something of a distraction yeah I mean but I've organized my chemo therapy around weekends and recesses so I'm not missing any hearings or votes or anything um and I would say that uh working has been um it would be effective for me I think if I were at home I would be focused much more on my symptoms and I would be even um you know drowning in a lot more um self-pity than I have been so well well you know first off thanks for you know taking the time to do this today and you know I know I speak for everybody in saying that that you know we hope that you get better and and wish you the best so uh so with that said let's jump into the politics here as of this recording we're still waiting on a slew of indictments to be handed down for Trump including at the doj for inciting the Insurrection on January 6 and in Fulton County Georgia for trying to pressure Brad raffensberger to find non-existent votes you were the lead impeachment manager for his second impeachment trial regarding the Insurrection you were on the January 6 committee uh what would it mean for you to see an indictment passed down on an issue that you've so obviously poured so much of yourself into which one are you talking about you're talking about Georgia yeah I mean I mean either one just anything encompassing anything encompassing the events leading up to the to the election including his efforts to overturn it and ultimately the Insurrection you know I'm a Believer in the Constitution and I feel like the House of Representatives really did its Duty twice um and in the second impeachment uh we had um a strong bipartisan Coalition you know we had um 10 Republicans who joined us all the Democrats in finding that Trump had incited a violent Insurrection and we went over to the Senate um and we ended up with 57 to 43 vote which is a pretty resounding majority but he beat the Constitutional spread we needed 67 in order to hit two-thirds um and that was unfortunate but a lot of the rhetoric of the Republicans was well you know um he can just be prosecuted later we don't really need to convict him and of course um McConnell's counterfeit um evasion at the end was to say well the impeachment managers had made their case he is factually ethically morally responsible for everything that happened but we don't have jurisdiction to try the case because he's no longer president which cut against more than two centuries of precedent um which said that you can both try and convict someone whether or not they hurriedly resigned from office in order to avoid it um so now we're in a situation where well all of these modern Republicans have the chance to say we're doing the right thing in the prosecutor's office by Prosecuting but of course all the die yards are saying oh how can you prosecute a next president how can you interfere in the next presidential election and so on so you know they've got an argument for every occasion in order to drape their guy in impunity um and it's frustrating people and I share people's frustration and you know people's sense of Injustice in the in indignation is so strong and the wheels of Justice turn so slowly and in such an ineffectual way that it makes people really mad but it is the price of living in a Democratic Society that has the rule of law and it it's infuriating that somebody who is you know a one-man crime wave and who's so consistently thumbs his knows that the rule of law gets the benefit of due process and gets the benefit of the presumption of innocence but that is the price that we all pay for being in this kind of society and let's just hope that everybody gets that same benefit of presumption of innocence and due process that Donald Trump has gone up until this point we're digging in specifically to the January 6th stuff what was your reaction to Trump's calls to violence against district attorney Alvin Bragg and his suggestion that the NYPD shouldn't defend anyone on the left I mean it's an outrage it's a scandal um it's it's a purely fascist form of political rhetoric about Justice I mean fascists don't accept that there's a rule of law that applies to them so anytime that a right-wing extremist is subject to the rule of law whether it's Donald Trump for um uh violating campaign Finance laws or other laws in order to pay off his Mistresses or Donald Trump not paying plumbers and small business contractors and electricians or Donald Trump inciting an Insurrection or uh insurrectionist assaulting Federal officers then they immediately turn attention to who the judge is or who the prosecutor is so they personalize it so they reject in that case the idea that there's a system of justice that um applies to them like everybody else now of course if one of their enemies is caught up in something or even one of their best friends is caught up in something like take Michael Cohen who was Trump's lawyer in consiglieri for all that time um and then took the heat for him um and then became an enemy of Donald Trump well then he's just a convicted liar they don't mention the fact that he was convicted of lying for Trump but they assumed the Integrity of the justice system because that works against someone who's now their enemy yeah you know I know this is more of a pundit question but it's along these same lines what are your thoughts on this notion that Trump is desperately trying to sell that any indictment would make him stronger I mean I suppose it's a a nichean concept that plays in with the general constellation of fascist Concepts that he's put together you know anything that doesn't kill me makes me stronger um and it will just you know deepen the animosity and hatred of his movement he might be right about that I mean he you know he got up and he made that speech to nickpack and um you know I think he's been going around saying there will be death and destruction if I'm prosecuted and um I am your revenge I am your retribution um again that that's a purely fascist form of political rhetoric and look we know who Donald Trump is I mean the question is who's everybody else on the Republican party I mean are they willing to walk the plank all the way down to the point of more fascist insurrectionary violence against the Department of Justice against the FBI against police how far are they willing to take this it's a remarkable experiment in human nature it's almost like you know real-time Milgram experiment yeah and we're watching the Overton window constantly shift and and the goal post constantly be pushed back and I guess we shouldn't be surprised that you know to answer your question it does seem to be okay for them every single time I mean there isn't a whole lot of pushback regardless of what he does I mean you know these Republicans would rather literally run away than answer questions and and you know respond to a bunch of this stuff but with that said I do want to to switch gears here to your oversight hearings and first off there was a moment in a recent oversight hearing where Lauren bobert tried to land some type of a gotcha question on DC city council member Charles Allen by accusing him of decriminalizing public urination in DC here's the clip Mr Allen based on these statistics I I would like to talk to you um about some some other things that are going on here in Washington DC specifically an initiative that you led in November of 2022 you led the charge to reform DC's crime laws is that correct I chaired the committee that that proposal came you led this charge yes sir and uh these charges these changes are now law here in DC correct do you mean the revised criminal code yes uh no those are not the law those are not the law did with the revised Revised Code was uh rejected by excuse me Mr chairman I talked to Mr Allen Mr Allen did you or did you not decriminalize public urination in Washington D.C did you lead the charge to do so no it the revised criminal code left that as a criminal charge did you lead the charge to decriminalize public urination in Washington D.C no ma'am did you ever vote in favor of decriminalizing public urination in Washington D.C the revised criminal code did you ever support kept it as a criminal offense did you did and you support this criminal I voted for it yeah you voted to keep it as a criminal offense that's correct the full council did we have records that show that you were in favor of removing that criminal offense and allowing public urination no the is that something that you intend to pursue in the future no the legislation you're referring to that came from the criminal code Reform Commission changed public urination from a criminal to a civil offense the council then changed that to maintain it as a criminal offense at the request of the mayor thank you I yelled so what was going through your mind at that moment like while you were watching this play out it was a dismal tawdry hearing generally um and it was inevitable that Lauren Beaufort and Marjorie Taylor green would would bring it further into the mud I mean of course they were fresh back from um their dramatic visit to the DC jail where they went to see the so-called political Prisoners the January 6 defendants of course they never name any of them you never they never tell you what their names are because then you would be able to look them up and see what they're charged with yeah there are 20 of them that are in there out of hundreds these are people who judges either didn't want to release or they've already been convicted I think about half of them have been convicted but 17 of those 20 um have either been convicted of or charged with violently assaulting Federal officers and these are the people that they're comparing implicitly to Nelson Mandela you know and Alexi navalny and Alexander Soldier Nissan and Andre sakharov I mean political prisoners are people who are in for political or ideological thought crimes against the state they didn't do anything other than write something or say something that offended the autocratic rulers unlike the January 6 defendants who participated in an attempt to overthrow the government and most of these people were um smashing Federal officers in the face spraying them with noxious chemicals hitting them with polls or Confederate battle Flags or what have you I mean what an obscenity oh and by the way they're also in the much nicer facility um and have access to computer tablets and 24 7 medical attention anyway so they come in to this hearing and they're all beating up on Washington DC because they think this is you know their best political play at this point and they have no agenda so they're beating up on Washington and someone has told her that DC tried to repeal the law against public urination which goes back a century or something and of course she got all the the facts mixed up it wasn't true she refused to take note for an answer then people started sending messages around about how her husband I think had either been prosecuted or convicted of indecent exposure and I guess his defense was public urination and then some people were saying that maybe she was trying to defend public urination and not attack it it you know you're dealing with um a twilight zone world over there moving on to another element of The Twilight Zone here uh you know and one of the hearings has been about the origin of covid now the department of energy has said that it's likely that kovid was leaked from a lab in Wuhan still for other agencies say that it was the result of natural transmission but regardless of you know the fact the fact is that we don't know what the answer is as of this point but still Republicans have seized on this as if it's some win for them notwithstanding the fact that we still don't have that definitive answer can you explain how Republicans would perceive anything coveted related as a victory well if I can reconstruct the contortions in in their thinking they recognize that everybody rightfully blames Donald Trump for America's catastrophically negligent response to covet 19. I mean he was a guy who was in complete denial for weeks about it and then you know began pointing fingers immediately and then told everybody to take hydroxychloroquine or everybody tried bleach or you know and so people so people generally understand that Trump was the source of the failure of the country to have a plan actually to defeat the disease and we've lost more than a million people so they think well if we can show that um that China was at fault um not by some natural transmission from animals to humans but rather by the leak from a lab or in the more extreme cases although I don't think there's any evidence for this but there's some evidence for the idea of a lab Elite but if there were a deliberate bio assault you know by China then that nobody would blame Donald Trump and his administration anymore everybody would blame China the problem with that as I've been trying to point out is that we have now identified 36 different episodes um either on Twitter or verbally or written When Donald Trump aggressively defends and praises the performance of his friend president XI and the Chinese Communist party and the Chinese government beginning in January saying they're doing a great job they're doing an excellent job they're on top of it we're in constant touch they're being extremely transparent they're showing us everything this went on and on and on um and you know part of that is just his you know natural fawning adulation for autocrats and dictators and part of it is he just wanted to say oh well we don't have to do anything we're relying on China so the then it's a very odd turn of events to have people say no this was a leak from China let's blame China instead of trump that this just deepens Trump's complicity with it because if China pulled the wool over his eyes and he's telling everybody they're being perfectly transparent and they're working together that just makes Trump's culpability worse another topic you've had what I'm sure is the privilege of covering in committee is the woke military this the issue that our military is woke have Republicans been able thus far to actually explain what wokeness is or is it just still some catch-all term for anything that they don't like well it's obviously that um you know and we go through phases where you know it's politically correct which is like the toxic phrase or it's woke or it's BLM or whatever but you know um or it's trans you know you know they will all turn their focus on that and then try to yeah just make the actual issue of the day is taboo exactly well you know we had a hearing yesterday about um the military's difficulty in recruiting people um uh to come and of course they don't talk about any of the real reasons um and they have no data at all no study no data showing that it's because the military has become too woke but that's the whole premise of their hearing that the military is too woke and there's no analysis of it and I said you know um you know here's a theory that actually has some support behind it the problem um isn't that potential recruits are afraid that they're gonna become uh woke the problem is that military potential recruits are afraid they're going to become broke and then it's all about how you know 20 of people in the military are getting food assistance or on food stamps or going to food kitchens and so on that's clearly got a lot more those material circumstances have a lot more to do with it than the fact that there's a sexual harassment training which is by the way desperately needed as sexual harassment and sexual assault continue to go up in the military and even one of their Witnesses who was brought in to rail against wokeness yesterday was a woman who agreed that there are studies showing that a third of young people say they would not go into the military because they're afraid of sexual assault and sexual harassment like that's real world stuff but I've been thinking about this woke thing because of course none of them can Define what they mean by it and I'm not even sure progressives can Define what they mean by it of course you know by the time the right wing picks up on one of these phrases is something to attack nobody on the left even uses them anymore so you never hear anybody saying I'm woke or you know but uh the one time I heard somebody actually say to me they said stay woke and I started thinking about that and I looked up the etymology of the word woke and awake and then the word vigilance and they have a a common source a cognet vigilance and weakness and awakeness and I think when people say stay woke really but they mean to stay vigilant because there's a lot of danger out there and there's a lot of people trying to undermine us and so somebody asked me what does woke mean I'm gonna say it means Vigilant stay vigilant and that's good advice to people I know that these Republicans are performing for the cameras but does your work ever happen behind closed doors with this committee and if so do they still spew that same nonsense about wokeness like do they actually believe what they're saying yes they they all believe what they're saying I mean high on their own Supply remember that you know Lincoln's party has now become um a cult of authoritarian personality and you know the the rank and file membership of a cult they are absolute True Believers and they believe it real strongly I mean as you get closer and closer to the top there are people who don't believe it they're manipulating it we have we have the Tucker Carlsons of the world Laura Ingram Sean Hannity is we have those text messages that reveal stuff like that yeah exactly I mean they are people who use propaganda in the the sense of using magic against people who believe in it by those who don't believe in it anymore and understand what a fraud it is and yeah Tucker Carlson goes behind closed doors they understand that Rudy Giuliani and Donald Trump and you know all of them are out to lunch with their claims about election fraud but then they're perfectly willing to go out on TV in order to sell that to the cult because that's that's the cult mine and they've got to stick with the official propaganda line I mean that's a terrifying thing when that's how a whole political movement and a whole political party operate yeah I mean I've said a hundred times that they don't view their their supporters as anything other than Marx and I think that bears itself out with these text messages I do want to uh end with this I want to ask about uh this recent shooting in Nashville I know obviously we just witnessed uh three nine-year-olds get killed in school and On Cue Republicans are talking about more guns arming teachers doors not enough God will this Congress pass legislation on guns or is there just too much pressure on the Republican party from the gun lobby to actually maintain the status quo yeah I mean they are owned uh Lock Stock and Barrel by the gun industry and by the NRA the the real uh GOP Doctrine was voiced by Congressman Tim Burchette who's actually one of the saner and more civilized Republicans you'll meet I mean he's kind of a beloved figure around here because he's a funny guy he's a real human being but when the the reporters got to him and they said what did he think he said this is horrible this is terrible and they said you know what are you going to do about it he said we're not going to do anything about it nothing can be done he said criminals are going to be criminals and so you know he speaks the party line there which is when gun violence happens there um their go-to motto is oh this was evil this is moral evil there's evil in the world suddenly they're all like cloistered theologians just pronouncing upon evil in the world as opposed to elected officials who are sent to Congress in order to get something done but they just throw up their hands and say well oh yes the good three more school children were assassinated in school there's evil in the world C'est La Vie what more can be done I mean it's obscene and future Generations will look back on this as a period where an entire political party basically adopted an implicit policy of mass sacrifice because they're basically saying we're going to sacrifice all of these innocent people who are being mowed down in massacres and just the daily toll of gun violence to our vision of the Second Amendment which is a completely twisted and distorted view of the Second Amendment the Supreme Court has said that you know we can pass reasonable gun safety legislation consistent with the Second Amendment you have a right to handgun for self-defense in the home you have a right to rifle for recreation and for hunting but you don't have a right to assault weapons and you don't have a right to get any of it without going through a background check all of that is consistent with the Second Amendment but my colleagues have adopted the insurrectionist view of the Second Amendment the reason they say we have a second amendment is so the people can attack and defeat and overthrow um a dictatorial repressive government and that is completely refuted by the text of the Constitution Article 1 Section 8 Clause 15 says Congress can call up the militia the National Guard in order to put down insurrections the Republican guarantee Clause says we owe everybody a guarantee of a republican form of government and we will help the states expel any Invasion and put down domestic violence in fact it's treason to wage violence against the government of the United States in Section 3 of the 14th Amendment if you're an elected official who's sworn an oath to the Constitution and you violated by participating in Insurrection you can never run for office again so the Constitution completely rejects the Insurrection they say that the meaning of the Second Amendment is the people can become a militia and overthrow the government and there's no Supreme Court precedent for that there is no basis for that at all what they're talking about is treason against the government and if they were right instead of being in jail where they have to go visit them all of these insurrectionists would be out because they would have had a second amendment defense which they do not and by the way if if those conservatives don't want to take your word for it they can just listen to what Antonin Scalia who is arguably one of the most conservative Supreme Court justices in modern American history said about the Second Amendment and that and that was that it's not unlimited and that you don't have you know unlimited rights to any weapon you want in any place you want uh whatsoever so let's let's end with this you know I know that you hear from people who are begging and pleading and crying for Congress to do something on this issue what do you say to those people well we're we're in your camp and we are fighting every day on it I mean my colleague Jamal Bowman exploded yesterday in the hallway as Republicans were leaving saying children are dying what are you going to do about it what are you know what is your answer um and I saw a couple of Republicans you know confront him and just utter the NRA dogmas um we're going to keep fighting them we've got to win back the house we've got to win back the Senate and it's number one we're gonna pass a universal violent criminal background check we are going to pass a ban on military style assault weapon the kind we had a few decades ago and we're gonna empower the ATF which has been so undermined um by the Republicans and we're not going to allow all of their lies about the Second Amendment to make life dangerous for our people we'll leave it there uh again thank you for for taking the time and uh and keep kicking ass we're all pulling for you as much as we can out here so thanks again thank you Brian keep up all your great work man [Music]

Channel: Brian Tyler Cohen

Views: 2,003,144

Keywords: Brian Tyler Cohen, Trump, Republicans, Democrats, brian cohen, politics, news, jamie raskin, lauren boebert

Id: MaafVwyGX-Y

Length: 28min 24sec (1704 seconds)

Published: Sun Apr 02 2023