anti-Semitism is everywhere, and it comes from both ends of the political spectrum. But politicians sometimes sidestep calling it out when it comes from a member of their own party. We saw two examples on state of the Union yesterday, first with Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer, when my co-anchor, Jake Tapper, [00:00:18] asked about a Democratic congresswoman's accusation that the state's Jewish attorney general was letting her religion influence her job. What you just witnessed was one component of one of the most ridiculous smear [00:00:33] campaigns against a sitting United States congresswoman I have ever seen. And that congresswoman is Rashida Tlaib. Now, Dana Bash and other media talking heads are spreading an absolute lie about Tlaib to accuse her of being anti-Semitic, despite never saying [00:00:52] what they claim that she said. It is amazing. Hey, don't scroll away, come back, come back. Because before the video continues, we just want to urge you to lend your support to tight U power. Our honest reporting. You do it at tight.com/team and we love you for it. [00:01:08] Now this all started with an interview that Rashida Tlaib did with the Detroit Metro Times. Now, during the exchange with the reporter, she criticized Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel for filing charges against pro-Palestinian protesters [00:01:24] at the University of Michigan. Now, two people were charged with trespassing, which is a misdemeanor punishable by up to 30 days in jail because they refused to leave the encampment after repeated orders to vacate. And then seven more protesters were charged with trespassing and resisting [00:01:41] or obstructing a police order, which is a felony punishable by up to two years in prison. Now, in this article for the Detroit Metro Times, Tlaib also criticized Nessel. That's the AG who is the first Jewish person elected attorney general of [00:01:59] Michigan for what she believes is a biased approach to the protest. Now, that was the excerpt from the piece that has led to all of this drama, because what the smear merchants decided to do was take that, twist it, [00:02:15] and make it appear as though Rashida Tlaib was criticizing the AG because she feels that she carried out these charges because of the fact that she's Jewish. But she never said that. So the author of the article notes that Nessel is Jewish, but Tlaib [00:02:33] herself made no reference to her religion. In reality, she said this. We've had the right to dissent, the right to protest. We've done it for climate the immigrant rights movement, for black lives, for black lives, and even around issues of injustice among water shutoffs. [00:02:53] But it seems that the attorney general decided if the issue was Palestine, she was going to treat it differently. And that alone speaks volumes about possible biases within the agency she runs. No mention of the AG being Jewish. Nothing. [00:03:10] Nothing like that. She did in the piece, by the way, mentioned that she feels that the AG was pressured by administrators at the University of Michigan, but she said nothing of of, you know, the AG's religion now. Nessel accused Tlaib of anti-Semitism over those comments. [00:03:27] Of course she did, tweeting the following Rasheeda's religion should not be used in a cartoon to imply that she's a terrorist. It's Islamophobic and wrong. Just as Rashida should not use my religion to imply I cannot perform my job fairly as attorney general. It's anti-Semitic and wrong. [00:03:43] When I call you a liar, are you going to pretend that I said it because you're Jewish? So Jake's going to go off in a second. Just let me get all the facts out so everyone knows what we're dealing with here. Okay, so with that in mind, the mainstream media just parroted the take of the AG [00:03:59] here, and then Jake Tapper lied about what Talib had said in an interview. With Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer. Let's take a look at that. Michigan Democratic Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib, who is Palestinian. She called the charges from Nessel, who is Jewish. [00:04:15] Shameful. Do you think that Tlaib suggestion that Nessel's office is biased was anti-Semitic? Listen, Jake, you know what? All I can say is that I know that our Jewish community is in pain, as is our Palestinian and Muslim and Arab communities in Michigan. [00:04:33] But do you think Attorney General Nessel is not doing her job because Congresswoman Tlaib is suggesting that she shouldn't be prosecuting these individuals, that Nessel says broke the law and that she's only doing it because she's Jewish and the protesters are not. [00:04:49] That's quite, quite an accusation. That was a flat out lie by Jake Tapper following the interview. Gretchen Whitmer embarrassingly took to X to write the following the suggestion that Attorney General Nessel would make charging decisions based on her religion, [00:05:07] as opposed to the rule of law, is anti-Semitic. Attorney General Nessel has always conducted her work with integrity and followed the rule of law. We must all use our platform and voices to call out hateful rhetoric and racist tropes. Now, these lies and these smears were so outrageous that Steve Neibling, [00:05:26] who is the reporter who interviewed Rashida Tlaib for the piece, came out and clarified everything he wrote. I'm the reporter who interviewed Rashida Tlaib. She never said Nessel did this because she's Jewish. Never. You're spreading lies. He even published a follow up article, fact Checking them. [00:05:42] In it, he writes, Tlaib never once mentioned Nessel's religion or Judaism, but Metro Times pointed out in the story that Nessel is Jewish, and that appears to be the spark that led to the false claims. Now we're going to get to whether These journalists [00:06:00] corrected their errors, by the way. Jonathan Greenblatt with the Anti-Defamation League also spread these lies. - Another giant. - Liar. Exactly. So we're going to get to them. And whether or not they retracted their statements in just a moment. But, Jake, I mean, this is this is so obvious. [00:06:16] And as someone who's been smeared by the media. Including Jake Tapper. Right. So, All right, look, guys, it's they've taken it to a different level. Before it was if you protest against Israel, we're going to find 1 or 2 people [00:06:32] in that crowd of hundreds or thousands, maybe even four out of 800 people, whatever the numbers are, right? And they're going to say something bad, of course, because that, by the way, does that also happen on the pro-Israel side? Yes. - In fact, far more so. - That happens in every protest. It happens in every protest. [00:06:47] Right? You could do it. You could do it for a pipeline protest. You could do it for the mega protest of the vaccines and the masks, etc.. Deranged people always show up. Okay. And then and by the way, in those masks, in those mass protests, you probably could have found just as much anti-Semitism. Right. Because that's everywhere. [00:07:03] Right? So that's then used as an excuse. Oh, four people, two people, one person says something, whether they're students, not students. What did they say? It doesn't matter. Shut the whole thing down. All the other terrible things that are said in other protests. None of them are shut down, but they really don't see it. [00:07:21] And I'm being super kind and fair to Dana Bash and Jake Tapper there. Like, I'm sure that they think that they're not biased. And there's and if you accuse them of bias, they'll say, oh, you're an anti-Semite. You're an anti-Semite. Everyone who's opposed to me, even if I'm flat out lying on television, [00:07:38] is an anti-Semite. Okay, you know why? Because that's super convenient. You get to sleep at night, right? So you shut down all the protests criticizing Israel. Do you shut down the pro-Israel protests, which have things said about Muslims that are ten times worse and said a lot more frequently, [00:07:54] and in fact, that did violence at UCLA that ran over a protester at Columbia, Etc.. Do you shut down those protests? No. No hearings, no shutdowns, no pressure, no nothing. They're not even condemned. Okay. But now they've taken it to a second level of not just smearing the protesters [00:08:09] and saying, don't you dare protest this. I mean, I found an anti-Semite. Wow. Okay, so. And I say, wow, because I can find you in my Twitter mentions, a thousand people who are hate Muslims. Say it openly. Nobody ever does anything, whether it's at a protest or anything else. [00:08:25] Now, the next level is we'll just pretend that the politicians that are criticizing Israel said anti-Semitic things, even though they didn't even say them. They didn't say, we'll just make it up. We'll just make it up. And then we'll ask other politicians, do you condemn their anti-Semitism? [00:08:42] And Gretchen Whitmer goes back home and asks the donors, what should I do? The donors tell her, go condemn her for a thing she didn't do. And then Gretchen Whitmer and then Jake Tapper before the kind of retraction he actually came out and said, he tweeted. [00:08:57] Gretchen Whitmer said it. Gretchen Whitmer put out a statement all confirming the thing that we were pretending that Rashida Tlaib is. Yeah, based. On the misinformation that you spewed to her while you were interviewing her. Like, that's not the the big get that you think it is. [00:09:13] That's so ridiculous. Come on. Yeah. Now, I've got to talk about the donors real quick, because this is where, again, the Jake Tapper's and the Dana bashes will lie and smear everyone. And we talk about it very clearly on the show every single day. The other day, we talked about how the pharmaceutical companies spent $372 [00:09:32] million to buy all of our politicians. That has nothing to do with religion. It has nothing to do with foreign governments. Everybody buys our politicians. If you say AIPAC spending $100 million in this election, spending 14 million against Jamaal Bowman, 8 million or more against Cori Bush, and winning those seats [00:09:47] does not affect politicians that they don't care about that at all. They're not affected by AIPAC spending and the fact that they just eliminated two politicians. Well you're lying. You're not a reporter. You're a propagandist. [00:10:02] Everyone knows whether it's drug companies or big sugar, any lobbyist. And yes, AIPAC doesn't have a special exemption like all other lobbyists lead to corruption. But AIPAC leads to morality and flowers and unicorns. No, it is obvious corruption. [00:10:17] All of these people go back to their donors, whether it's the universities or the politicians, and they go, what are my orders? Oh, you want drug prices higher? Okay, I want your drug prices are higher. Oh, you want Israel to be able to kill any Palestinian they like. And we send them a thank you note and a $26 billion. Well, that's what we'll do. Oh, you need Rashida Tlaib smeared. [00:10:35] And so, by the way, Jake and Dana, you guys know how racist you are against Arabs and Muslims. 100%. But hold on. I got to jump in on that. Jake. I'm chomping at the bit to say this. Why do you think they intentionally lied about Rashida Tlaib? Why do you think she's the only Palestinian-American congresswoman? [00:10:55] So why did you guys target her? Why did you guys decide to pull your little smear merchant trick against the one and only Palestinian-American congresswoman in the country. - To shut her. - Up? Well, but like but, Jake, there are other like, progressive members of Congress [00:11:11] who are also speaking out against Israel. Yeah, but they're not doing that with AOC. Interesting that they decided to do that with Rashida Tlaib and in the past, interesting that they decided to do that with Ilhan Omar. Now, one. Of the best fighters for sanity and decency in this whole conflict is Bernie Sanders. [00:11:27] But it's hard to call Bernie Sanders anti-Semitic because he's Jewish and he lived in Israel. He lived on a kibbutz. - So that's that's. - Victimized by the Holocaust? Yes. So that's very inconvenient because their one and only trick is anti-Semite. [00:11:43] Right. So since they can't do that to Bernie or Jamie Raskin or all these other wonderful people, Andy Levin, who AIPAC eliminated in Michigan, etc., they go, oh, Tlaib, no one will mind if we lie about a Palestinian. That's Tuesday. We'll just smear the hell out of her and go dirty Muslim. [00:11:59] Obviously hates Jews. And that's why. Do you think poor Israel has to do all of this? Because they're everybody's an anti-Semite. That's why we had to let them kill all those people and send them $26 billion. But you see how these Arabs are Rashida Tlaib? [00:12:15] Well, she didn't actually say it. Who cares? Let's just say it now. As you can imagine, Tapper and Bash did get a lot of backlash for smearing a sitting congresswoman and attributing a statement to her that she never said. And so they kind of sort of walk back their statements [00:12:36] after being pressured to do so. So let's take a look. I should note that I misspoke yesterday when asking a follow up of Governor Whitmer, who I asked about this. I was trying to characterize your views of Tlaib's comments. What do you make of those today? Noting that Congresswoman Talib never explicitly said that your bias [00:12:54] was because of your religion, and so it's unfair for you to make that allegation a. Clarification on a story we brought you yesterday concerning Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib's comments attacking a decision by Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel to bring charges against pro-Palestinian [00:13:09] protesters at the University of Michigan. Tlaib accused Nessel of, quote, biases. Tlaib did not reference Nessel's Jewish identity. Her office has not responded to our request for clarity. Her allies insist that's not what she meant. But Nessel still says she believes it is anti-Semitic [00:13:27] and repeated on CNN yesterday that, quote, clearly she's referencing my religion. Well, then Nessel's a moron. Somehow she made it all the way up to the role of attorney general, the major state. And she's a complete and utter moron because she is continuing to repeat [00:13:44] a complete and utter lie. Rashida Tlaib never brought up your religion. Why are you continuing to lie about this? Yeah, because. Because you don't like that there's a sitting congresswoman criticizing your decision. That's why. So you're just going to smear her as an anti-Semite? It's so pathetic, man. This. This country and the insane. [00:14:02] Like the insane lengths to which our elected lawmakers and even local politicians will go to provide cover for war crimes committed by Israel and then reign terror on Americans who might protest our support of those war crimes. Like, it is amazing to me, like the double standard that we're seeing here. [00:14:20] Yeah. So first of all, Republicans and Democrats, good moment of unity here. Let's unite to make sure that Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel never wins in another election again, not just because she's a racist and a liar, but because she thinks apparently, like just smearing a US congresswoman to [00:14:38] cover up the fact that she arrested people exercising their First Amendment rights. So if she can arrest a Palestinian protesters or peace protesters, can she arrest right wingers in a protest she doesn't like? Doesn't matter if you did anything wrong, she just call you an anti-Semite [00:14:55] and lock you up. I mean, you criticize Israel, you're a goner. That's that's baked in. Right? But once we say yes to that, yes, you can arrest people because at a worst case scenario, like or best case scenario for the people doing it, they said something that we don't like and we think is terrible anti-Semitism. [00:15:13] Right. So we lock them up. We put them in prison. Right. So bad things are said at every protest. You could use that excuse to arrest anyone who protests the government. It is the most unconstitutional, despicable, un-American thing you can do. And so, look, I will give credit to Jake Tapper and Dana Bash [00:15:31] for at least not continuing to lie. Fox News would have double down, quadruple down, they would have never admitted it, etc.. I mean, they are lying in that they're claiming they just misspoke, but okay, fine. They walk back the statements at least. Yeah, but it was look, you could see it with your own eyes. [00:15:48] It was the most. Dana Bash looked so half hearted and still, well, still charges charges of anti-Semitism. Right? Okay, okay. Well, I charge you with racism, I think. Dana Bash is a racist who thinks it's no big deal to smear Arabs. And if you get it later, I'll give like a oh yeah, clarification. [00:16:06] Okay, so look, go ahead. Keep protecting Israel and pretending you're doing journalism and and keep pretending that donors have no effect on politicians. Keep saying, oh, Israel had to do it. They had to slaughter 41,000 people, 25,000 dead women and children, but human [00:16:24] shields, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Okay, so this is what you get on television. Wall to wall propaganda. Thanks for watching The Young Turks. Really appreciate it. Another way to show support is through YouTube memberships. You'll get to interact with us more. There's live chat emojis, badges. [00:16:41] You've got emojis of me Anna John Jr. So those are super fun. But you also get playback of our exclusive member only shows and specials right after they air. So all of that, all you got to do is click that join button right underneath the video. [00:16:57] Thank you.