>> TYT reporter Emma Vigeland was at the SALT Conference in Las Vegas and she got an opportunity
to speak to former representative Darrel Issa and what's hilarious about this story it's
the SALT Conference and it appears that Darrel Issa got real salty during this interview.
>> Take a look.
>> Within the first month or two of President Trump's time in office, he authorized a strike
in Yemen that killed and eight year old American girl.
So that's not necessarily protecting American lives, no one looked into that.
There were no investigations like we saw with Benghazi.
Where do you draw that?
>> Look, I appreciate your premise and you have a right to be wrong, and in this case
you're wrong.
President Obama fired more drones, fired more weapons against targets that included women
and children, and in some cases Americans, than his predecessor.
>> I agree.
And Trump had already surpassed a number of civilian deaths in Syria and Iraq than Obama
did in his entire presidency.
You can always look at your numbers.
>> Okay.
>> You can always look at your numbers, what a great qoute.
>> Yeah, here is the thing.
Emma has looked at her numbers and she is absolutely right.
And I'm going to give you some of those numbers in a minute but first let me know.
Was a giant warhawk, warmonger and part of the reason why is because his biggest donors
came from the defense industry.
So for instance, Issa received $474,820 from defense contractors between 1997 and 2018
so he loves war.
He'll always defend war.
He does not care about the drone strikes, he does not care about the civilian deaths.
Yes he will try to politicize it to the advantage of Republicans if there's a Democrat in office.
But the reality is I don't care if it's Democrat or Republican, our actions abroad and the
deaths of civilians has been disastrous and whatever Emma was trying to get out was hey,
Obama had his flaws 100% but there are issues with Trump and you need to own up to them
and he refused to do that.
>> But actually there was a second point she made.
The first point was a really interesting question and I think he missed the point of it because
he went to his sub article right away.
Emma said Obama killed civilians with his drones strikes.
So she's criticizing Obama there, as we have done on the show.
And she said, but you didn't investigate that, including the killing of American civilians.
Instead, you investigated Benghazi.
It's a really interesting question, why?
And she's not even implying, you shouldn't have been investigated Benghazi.
What she's saying is when Obama killed American civilians in those drone strikes, why didn't
you investigate that?
So didn't ask about Trump in the beginning but he went to like, yeah, Obama is really
bad.
But that's what Emma said.
Not really bad but >> Right.
>> He's saying, look isn't that interesting?
And think about that, guys, because you can tell from Issa's reaction and we got more
of it, no fan of Obama at all and now making up numbers trying to pretend that Trump is
better.
Trump has actually killed more civilians, but Obama did kill several Americans in those
drone strikes, and that's important.
But guys like Issa who hate Obama totally ignored it.
Why did they ignore that when it could have been a big issue?
Because the reality is, they don't mind the drone strikes for the reasons that Anna gave
to you.
Check the numbers, as Issa would say, and the numbers show it's legalized bribery.
And they all make money off of those wars and conflicts, and that's how Issa stayed
in office for so long.
>> So let's watch a little more from the interview.
>> President Obama inherited wars that were coming to an end, but he made a decision to
withdraw completely allowed them to foment, allowed Syria to fall into other hands.
And he didn't do it because he's a bad person.
He did it because his interpretation of what was to be done turned out to be wrong.
We could have similar discussions about George W Bush.
>> What about Trump killing all of those civilians in Syria and Afghanistan?
>> Well, first of all that's your statement in a war in which nobody wears uniforms but
they kill each other.
A discussion of what is civilian is is very different.
>> Okay, no.
A civilians is a civilian.
>> That was amazing.
>> Right, and by the way, there are groups that track this and our own military tracks
this and he talked about it in other parts of the interview.
And by the way, we'll put the link down below if you're watching this later on YouTube or
Facebook, to the full interview.
Please check it out because he said he was in the room, as they would see.
And that the military would make a big effort to avoid civilians but sometimes they couldn't,
and so they would kill the civilians along with their targets.
So apparently even from incredibly far away from a satellite you could distinguish who
the civilians were, but you chose to kill them anyway.
And again the needless part is in bunker there.
Emma began by saying Obama did the wrong thing as well in killing civilians.
>> Right.
>> But he goes back to no, Obama.
Basically he said he created a wrong situation in Syria that made it worse.
In other words, Obama was withdrawing in Issa's opinion and we needed more war, not less war.
So he doesn't blame Obama for killing civilians, he blames him for not killing enough civilians.
>> So let's get to the final part of this interview, which I would argue is the most
combative and most interesting to watch.
>> I think you have to take the politics out of it and for those of us, Republicans and
Democrats, and you could talk to Jane Harman or any of the other people that I serve with
on the Intelligence Committee, those are hard decisions.
And those decisions are not made by the president, they're made by men and women who are trying
to get the bad guys and not kill innocents.
Thank you.
>> We can agree to disagree but thank you very much, thank you for your time.
>> We agree to disagree, those are all facts.
>> I mean I would also say that restraint is lacking deeply in the United States government.
>> You go to a liberal college.
>> I did, I did thank you.
>> Okay I want to give you some context about that comment in a second and what he said
afterwards, and those are awesome, okay.
But she ended it cordially.
She said thank you- >> No, she's amazing.
>> And we can agree to disagree on some of these issues.
And he said, no, my opinion are facts.
And she said, well I think we can show more restraint in killing civilians, that's an
opinion.
He's like, no.
Okay, well you went to a liberal college, where they taught you not to kill civilians,
liberal.
Well I guess everyone should go to liberal colleges because killing civilians is so bad
that I'm pretty sure we've invaded countries over them killing our civilians.
When you do it to us it is horrific, horrific and every time you talk about it you must
say it's monstrous, horrible.
If you even use any neutral terms, we'll claim that you're in favor of killing civilians.
Well, we killed their civilians.
You went to a liberal college, didn't you?
>> Yeah.
>> So in the beginning, before they began the interview, apparently Issa asked her where
she went to college but not in like a friendly, cordial way
>> Like a confrontational way?
>> Like, hey, where did you go to college?
And she was like kind of out of the blue like, what?
And she just said a liberal arts college.
And so remember that confrontation with John Kerry and the Republican congressman where
he was like, so you studied political science?
That sounds a fake science, right?
>> So I don't know why he asked that in the beginning and then he went back to, maybe
was because he wanted to set that up like, ha ha, liberal colleges lead to not killing
civilians.
Losers, right?
So anyway, Steven Moore the guy who was appointed to the Federal Reserve by Donald Trump, he
wanted him to have that position, recently withdrew because he was of course part of
a three ring circus and he apparently went even to the Republican senators and squeezed
water out of his lapel, the flower on his lapel into their eyes.
So they were like this guy's a clown, so he withdrew.
Anyway, Steven Moore was supposed to come on next with Emma which would have been awesome
and apparently Issa told him, no, don't go into that lion's den.
>> I love that!
I love that so much.
>> Look, that's what's great about Emma.
She's actually incredibly polite, just sit down, have a normal conversation.
Nothing wrong with disagreeing, and we do the same thing here.
I've had 1,000 people on, in fact conservatives, a lot of them, with the exception of David
Duke, say that they get the best, fairest hearing at the Young Turks because we actually
have a long enough conversation for you to make your point and for the audience to get
a sense of where you stand and where we stand.
>> But they're so used to reporters playing patty cake with them.
They're not used to reporters who actually know what they're talking about and who are
at least to willing to ask these questions.
And so I actually wanted to look into drone strike numbers because for a long time and
I bought in to this as well, there was this belief that Obama was much more aggressive
with drone strike as opposed to Donald Trump.
And he, look to be fair, Obama expanded the Bush foreign policies and did do a lot drone
strikes.
Trump has not been a dove.
I mean, Trump has been terrible when it comes to drone strikes.
I want to give you those numbers.
Let's compare Obama first, so in 2009 and 2010, so first two years in office, Obama
launched 186 drone strikes on Yemen, Somalia and especially Pakistan.
Now if you look at the first two years under Trump, 2017 and 2018, Trump launched 238 drone
strikes there, right, in the same countries.
>> Yeah, I'm surprised that it's not dramatically more.
It's just more than Obama.
>> Right, exactly.
And also the Air Force budget documents show a 63% increase in Hellfire purchases in Trump's
2017 budget and another 20% increase in the most recent budget request.
This is a piece that was written in the Daily Beast in 2018, so just understand that it's
a little dated but it gives you some insight into how much the spending has increased when
it comes to these Hellfire purchases and how much the drone strikes increased under Trump
as well.
>> Well what I love about this, there's so many great parts to it, is that Emma has a
new nickname, or maybe I guess Rebel HQ does, The Lion's Den.
>> I like it.
>> Okay if you like that, you'll love whats going on in Rebel HQ.
They cover all of the progressive news so go to Facebook.com/rebelHQ or YouTube.com/rebelHQ
get more of Emma's videos, more of her interviews.
But also progressive events, rallies, and hearings as well.
So definitely check that out.
Go to the lion's den now.