>> TYT's very own Emma Vigeland joined some anti-war protesters in New York City.
They were, of course, protesting the potential build up to war with Iran after the Trump
administration okayed the killing of their General Soleimani.
So also the Working Families Party was tweeting out this is one of hundreds of other protests
that we're building up across the country, hitting many cities across the country.
To make sure that we make sure that the government knows there's a loud, vocal anti-war message
out there.
Let's listen to one of the protesters speaking with our Emma.
>> Hundreds of New Yorkers as a part of 180 other protests throughout the country have
come out to say no war with Iran.
Now, this comes on the heels of Donald Donald Trump escalating the conflict with Iran by
assassinating one of the top people in their government, Soleimani.
Their response, a commercial airline now going down over Iran under suspicious circumstances.
So this is a very precarious situation, and everyone here remembers Iraq.
Iran is four times the size of Iraq and they know this would be a conflict of untold proportions.
>> You have a president here, I actually think is not capable of complicated thought.
And so he really just is an impulsive person like as babies they see sugar and sweets so
they eat it.
He's like that, he saw someone he didn't like, he killed him.
Thought a war was good for him to run for reelection, so he did it.
That's the type of president we have.
So I'm glad that there are people here who are standing up and saying that we're not
gonna otherize our brothers, sisters, and family across the world.
And we're gonna push back on a needless war.
>> It's doesn't look very fun to be out there, but this is how important this is.
People were braving temperatures like this, and I'm gonna point out how freezing it was
there.
To make sure that people see what's happening.
I think I was mentioning a minute ago about how Trump was surprised that there's not enough
people behind him on this.
And people are tired of it, and I'm not sure if he's reading the pulse of the country that
much now.
>> Well, what I was gonna say is I go to entertain our troops every year.
And everywhere I go, I am faced with white, black and brown children alike that come from
poverty, that come from lower income neighborhoods.
So people are tired of losing their children, losing their husbands, their brothers and
sisters to these wars that are only for the profit and benefit of the top 1%.
I cried when I left Korea, cuz I went to Korea, I did a tour, I did ten cities.
And in those ten cities, there were Mexicans, Puerto Ricans were the top number of Latinos
that were there.
Young black men and poor white men, a lot of young white guys from the Midwest, they
had to go to the military because they needed the money.
What you're hearing are the cries of the people who are tired of having to get that American
flag in place of their child that they sent away in hopes that they would be able to go,
serve and come back and get an education or get a better life.
And I just don't think that Donald Trump is connected to that because his kids are not
going over there.
Those people's kids are not going over there.
It's the kids of the people who can't afford to sent their kids to Ivy League schools.
>> Yeah, Donald Trump Jr posted a picture of himself with a rifle, a dead crusader imagery,
a white nationalist imagery and locking up Hilary Clinton.
I think it was an assault weapon.
Hey, look, that's assault weapons shouldn't be on our streets, but they're perfect for
war.
Why don't you sign your ass up and get over there if you're so happy about daddy's war?
And that's what he was tweeting about Iran and etc.
>> And stop killing animals.
>> Yeah, and look, elephants, etc., can't shoot back, they don't have weapons.
But don't worry, tough guy.
I mean, unless you got the genetic bone spur issue that your dad had when he ran from Vietnam.
It's funny, he had bone spurs, but he was pretty good at running away from the war so.
Anyway, but there's an important development here, guys, that is different than Iraq.
So in lead up to the Iraq war, we had millions of people across not just the country, but
the world, Germany had a gigantic protest.
And Australia did and all the cities in America did.
Saying don't go to war and it didn't have any effect at all, why?
The Republicans were 100% locked in.
The media honestly was about 100% locked in and that was devastating.
And a lot of the corporate Democrats were locked in Joe Biden, Hillary Clinton, John
Kerry, they all voted for the war, right?
Now this time though, most of the Democratic Party is solidly against the war.
That's a big difference.
But this is the most important difference.
Now we have some right wing people and some of the most right wing people in the country
going, you know what, Ida's right.
It's our kids that are dying in these wars.
And it's generally poor, not just black kids and Latino kids, but white kids that sign
up to serve in the military and proudly so.
But they never saw any benefit of any of these wars.
Maybe a couple of American oil companies and oil service companies like Halliburton got
rich, maybe Dick Cheney got rich, but did any of us get rich?
No, and was that the point of the war?
No, we said to liberate Iraq.
Now Iraq said get the hell out, you killed not just Soleimani the Iranian general, but
you killed a military leader connected to the Iraqi government.
So you must now leave.
So okay great, they're liberated.
There's no logic, there's no logic.
And everybody knows it, and even the right wing now is beginning to go, not buying it.
And since the corporate Democrats have turned against the war a little bit, that leaves
the corporate media to go, hey maybe we shouldn't go to war.
>> And let’s not forget how we treat them when they come back.
Have you ever been to a VA hospital?
Cuz we go there to perform and the conditions are sub par.
All of you people who are so pro-war talking all this trash on social media about how you
wanna go over there and shoot.
Because it's your racism seeping through your pores cuz all you see is the killing of brown
people.
Why don't you sign up and go over there and fight that war.
Because when those people come back, you don't care anything about them.
I go to those VA hospitals, you know what I don't see, MAGA hats.
That's what I don't see at the VA hospitals when I go there to entertain those people
and to volunteer.
So when I hear all these people talking about this war with this cowboy mentality, it's
easy to do that with your Twitter fingers at home, that's not your kid you sending over
there to get shot.
>> You talking about the suffering that's going on.
And actually, it's a good aspect of this rally that Emma was at, they're noticing that it
goes beyond just the direct conflict of bombs and guns and shooting folks, but how it also
builds up.
So let's hear one more part about the protests we're seeing just even the sanctions on these
countries.
>> Something fascinating about this protest is that there is also an emphasis on sanctions
and the devastating effects that they've had to the Iranian people.
So just an interesting wrinkle, economic warfare is also being talked about, not just warfare
on the battlefield.
>> Normal medicine that every human being in the world has to have access to is scarce
in Iran.
It's affecting a generation of kids and newborns who will grow up malnourished.
A generation that will have a scary future because the most important time in their lives
for them to grow, development, and flourish, someone on the other side of the planet had
an illusion about nuclear weapons and decided that sacrificing their lives is okay.
>> The people in charge of this, this point is not lost on them, they know that.
So then once the suffering happens, they're using that also as leverage to be like listen,
it's their fault.
They're not doing what we told them to do- >> Mm-hm.
>> So therefore, we're gonna slap these sanctions and the regular people are gonna suffer from
it.
And until they bend to our will so they can stop this pain from everyone else, we're just
gonna let that go.
We don't mind.
>> Yeah, so the operative word there was illusion because it is.
Iran, because of the Obama deal, had no nuclear energy program.
Forget a nuclear weapons program, they never had a nuclear weapons program.
But they had a nuclear energy program that involves some degree of uranium.
It's gone.
The Obama peace deal ended it.
So the idea that we have to do sanctions when the Iran was complying with the deal is absurd.
It's a 100% lie.
Trump is the one that ripped up the deal.
And by the way, it's not about taking my word for it cuz I'm against Trump and you no.
Our European allies, I know now Trump says you should hate the European allies.
China, you should hate China, even your beloved Russia all agree Iran was complying with the
deal.
The people who were not complying with the deal was us.
But instead of us suffering the consequences, Iran suffered the consequences cuz Trump decided
who cares, let's just lie about it.
Let's put sanctions on them.
If their kids don't get medicine so what?
We're against Medicare for All, our kids don't get medicine.
>> But isn't it funny to you how people will roll with Trump and then be astonished when
he does dirty business, but he came in the game doing dirty business.
So that's the thing that irritates me.
It's like, no, not on this one, Trump.
This is not the way you do it.
You either roll with that program or you don't.
There is no gray with this because that man brought this street thug business into the
White House and he operates on every front that way.
Whether you see it or not is one thing, but that's the way he operates cuz that's who
he is.
So when they're like, that's not the way you do it.
Now you're wrong, Trump.
He's been wrong!
>> Doesn't surprise me, it does- >> This is so ridiculous to me.
Now we wanna pat people on the back cuz they're like, no, this is not the way to do it.
You know what?
Shame on you.
It should not take something so extreme for you to say that wrong is wrong.
You only say wrong is wrong when it affects your pocket or when you see that it's so wrong
that you saying it's right makes you look ridiculous.
>> So that's the right wing, but obviously, the overwhelming majority of these protests
are progressive that are saying-
>> No, I'm talking about countries like Russia is saying Donald Trump they were complying
with the deal.
>> Yeah.
>> Man.
>> Yeah.
>> Get out of here.
>> Well, look, this is the insane world we live in where our two hopes are Tucker Carlson
and Russia.
Cuz those are the apparently the only people that can talk Trump out of war, or any stupid
thing he's gonna do.
So Putin's against it.
Good, I'm happy that he's against the war.
I don't know if Trump got a call or anything from him.
I know there's reporting and he listened to Tucker Carlson show and changed his mind.
But look, the progressives out there, I love it.
>> Yes
>> And so thank you, because it makes a difference.
You guys go out there, you do a big protest.
You have the speakers, we cover it and the message gets out.
It gets out to more and more people about how hey, look, number one, war doesn't make
sense.
But number two, the sanctions are immoral, lead to people's deaths, leads to kids' deaths.
And in that particular case, they didn't deserve it at all.
It's all based on a total lie from Trump, and it's mainly because of his insecurity
about Obama.
We had a great deal, and Trump is the idiot who tore it up.
Because he couldn't stand that Obama got us a fantastic deal that the entire world was
happy with.
>> And one last thing I just want to say is that we talk about money and economics.
Cuz at the end of the day, this is what all the things we talk about how we need.
I got called a neoliberal the other day.
That was the first time somebody said that to me.
>> You?
>> Yeah, but it's new for me.
But it was just like, you guys want to take the money and you want to do this and you
want to do that.
We're always crying about how we don't have money for the homeless.
We don't have money for education.
We don't have money for medicine.
You people out there crying for this war, talking about you don't have money to pay
for your diabetes medication.
And look how much money we will spend to just kill people.
And that, to me, is just ridiculous.