Cenk Uygur yng turks

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11 26 knowledge fight crashed live 2016 rnc?

woman 180? ana

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Although Cenk Uygur — longtime co-host of "The Young Turks" with Ana Kasparian — was born in Istanbul, Turkey, he has lived in the United States since he was eight and is a naturalized U.S. citizen. But when Uygur got into a shouting match with MAGA influencer Katie Miller during a late October appearance on "Piers Morgan Uncensored," she threatened to have him deported.

Uygur and Katie Miller, wife of Trump White House senior adviser Stephen Miller, had a heated debate over Trump Administration policies. And Katie Miller told Uygur, "You better check your citizenship application."

On X, formerly Twitter, Miller's comment is drawing a scathing rebuke.

Journalist Sulaiman Ahmed, typing mostly in caps, tweeted, Stephen Miller's wife threatens to have Cenk Uygur deported after losing debate. [Cenk Uygur] is a naturalized U.S citizen."

Sam Stein of the conservative website The Bulwark humorously wrote, "Threatening to sic ICE on your cable news interlocutor is a new one. I should have tried that with [Jon Lemire]."

IFrame Content

X user Mike Young wrote, "There's a difference between defending immigration policy and performing cruelty. Katie Miller didn’t debate Cenk Uygur; she tried to intimidate him. Threatening someone's citizenship on live TV isn’t argumentation, it's authoritarian cosplay with a studio audience. We used to expect leaders to persuade, not provoke fear. The moment you weaponize the idea of belonging, you've stopped talking about law and started talking about hierarchy. America's strength has always come from people who became citizens because they believed in its promise, not because they feared its punishment. The line between patriotism and nationalism is accountability. One builds a nation; the other burns it down for applause."

X user Juicy Lee posted, "I heard that and thought, 'Oh, oh!' Did she just threaten him? Will she go home and cry to her husband about how mean the man was to her and now she wants him gone."

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Cenk Uygur, a naturalized citizen, has announced he is running for president. Under article II, section 1 of the U.S. Constitution, “[n]o Person except a natural born Citizen, or a Citizen of the United States, at the time of the Adoption of this Constitution, shall be eligible to the Office of President.” Since Uygur is not a natural born citizen, he is not eligible for president.

Uygur that the Fifth Amendment, which provides in relevant part that the government may not deprive any person of life, liberty, or property without due process of law, implicitly repeals the natural born citizenship requirement. However, the Fifth Amendment does not address citizenship, let alone qualifications for the presidency, and this exact argument (or a version of it citing the Fourteenth Amendment’s due process clause) has been rejected in multiple federal courts, including in a decision written by then-Judge (now U.S. Supreme Court Justice) Neil Gorsuch.

The natural born citizenship requirement may seem archaic, or to have outlived its usefulness. And naturalized citizens, unlike native-born insurrectionists, do not pose an inherent danger to the republic. However, unless and until it is repealed, the natural born citizenship requirement remains part of the Constitution and cannot be ignored.

Because Uygur is not a natural born citizen, he cannot serve as president. Therefore, secretaries of state or other election authorities should follow this constitutional mandate and not list him on presidential ballots.

busted, asks for a lawyer

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mwJ1HUEZ5Ds

54,756 views Jan 10, 2017

TYT's Eric Byler (htp://Twitter.com/EricByler) takes you behind the scenes of the counter-sting operation that exposed James O'Keefe, Allison Maass and their propaganda outlet, Project Veritas. Video and audio catch Maass offering to pay money for the incitement of riots at Donald Trump's inauguration.

Links referenced in this piece:

The Undercurrent's 2nd release of footage damaging to Project Vertias: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5WDWL...

Here is the video from The Undercurrent that first broke this story:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hLAPz...

Ryan Grim breaks counter-sting story for Huffington Post:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/c...

US Code barring solicitation of illegal acts:

https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/te...

James O'Keefe pays $100,000 to ACORN employee for fraudulent sting operation:

http://www.forbes.com/sites/rickungar...

Allison Maass caught after infiltrating Bernie Sanders campaign: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/a...

Trump funding James O'Keefe propaganda:

https://thinkprogress.org/trump-funde...

https://tyt.com/stories/7K5fbfFNXj9lcqTMpHEVRS

inside the family larsen

For nearly 70 years, and even in this moment of surging Christian nationalism, Democrats and Republicans have set aside their differences once a year to join in an event for fellowship and reconciliation: The National Prayer Breakfast.

The breakfast and the secretive religious group behind the scenes, popularly known as The Family, have been the subject of scandal over the years. Most notably, journalist Jeff Sharlet exposed the group’s theocratic, anti-labor origins, and revealed The Family’s role in Ugandan capital punishment legislation for gay people. More recently, the FBI caught Russian operatives using the breakfast to pursue back-channel connections with U.S. politicians.

But despite its dealings with international powers, The Family still enjoys the invisibility to which it attributes its influence. We’ve never had a full accounting of who works for The Family or even just who gets to attend the National Prayer Breakfast, let alone who decides. Until now.

Earlier this year, The Young Turks obtained a list of the 4465 people invited to the 2016 National Prayer Breakfast.The document identifies guest connections to The Family and names virtually everyone who works for The Family, as well as numerous volunteers and allies. It also identifies which Family insiders submitted each invitee’s name.

Since then, TYT has been researching individuals named in that document and in others (including a list of 2018 breakfast attendees obtained last month). With assistance from organizations including the international journalism collective Bellingcat, the Military Religious Freedom Foundation, and the Global Network of Rainbow Catholics, TYT is assembling what amounts to an x-ray of The Family, and a map of its connections and endeavors around the world.

Although more remains to be learned, we can now draw some conclusions and begin reporting on what we are finding. (This is an ongoing project and we invite journalists and advocacy groups to contact us if they are interested in conducting research of their own.)

The prayer breakfast is, we’ve been told, an ecumenical, nonpartisan event for leaders of every stripe, run by prayer groups in the House and Senate. None of that is true.

The National Prayer Breakfast (NPB) is not run by Congress. The Family controls it, uses the breakfast for its own ends, and can do so thanks to the bipartisan fiction maintained by its remaining Democratic allies. (Democratic protectiveness of the breakfast may have its roots in the weekly congressional prayer meetings, which appear, like the breakfast, to offer members moments of genuine bonding and connection.)

Only a few congressional Democrats are even tangentially involved in the NPB. A handful of congressional Republicans play significant roles. But the breakfast itself is overwhelmingly a production of The Family. The event’s only significant financial backer is a well-known, right-wing theocrat.

The Family’s congressional defenders have served up portraits of the NPB that could never be refuted because they wouldn’t release the invitation list. (It has never been clear why an event ostensibly produced by Congress would be shrouded in such profound secrecy.)

Sen. Chris Coons (D-DE), The Family’s most prominent Democrat, said earlier this year that the breakfast “has brought together religious, political, and cultural leaders from all over the world.” But many attendees are not leaders at all; they are fellow travelers and friends of The Family. Others springboard off the breakfast to build anti-LGBTQ, anti-democratic networks in their home countries. International media portray the breakfast invitations as coming from Congress or the president, boosting the standing of the Family-allied politicians who get invited.

It’s not just Democrats perpetuating this. The Family operates in a penumbra of secrecy formed by the overlap of lax IRS disclosure laws and law-enforcement squeamishness about scrutinizing organizations appearing remotely religious.

And Coons’ implied diversity doesn’t apply to the delegations of guests from multiple countries. The breakfast is neither nonpartisan, nor ecumenical. The politics of the breakfast – its attendees and those who choose them – are a far cry from Coons’ claim. For instance, of the 20 individuals who invited the most guests in 2016, TYT was able to assess the politics of 13 – using voter registrations and political donations as gauges. Of those 13, only one was a Democrat: Grace Nelson, a former Family board member and wife of former Sen. Bill Nelson (D-FL). The top five inviters whose politics could be ascertained were all Republicans.

The Republicans who got to pick the most attendees are overwhelmingly Trump supporters. Their ranks range from a Chick-fil-A franchisee (who invited 38 guests) to former Gov. David Beasley (R-SC), a Trump supporter later appointed by Trump to run the UN’s World Food Programme. Many Family insiders are now actively supporting Trump’s election lies, the Christian nationalist movement undergirding those lies, and the movement’s leaders.

Two of the top inviters had no U.S. political footprint because they don’t live in America. One of them has ties to theocratic, anti-LGBTQ organizations. He got to invite 30 people to the 2016 breakfast.

The invitation list categorizes 253 invitees as non-entertainment media. Those invitees include a lot of local Washington, DC, on-air people -- even for traffic and weather. But the political media are overwhelmingly conservative: The Daily Caller, The Blaze, the Washington Times, Newsmax, the Weekly Standard, the Washington Examiner CEO’s assistant, Rush and David Limbaugh, Stephen Hayes, Laura Ingraham, etc.

Five media people are specifically noted on the list as Fox News (TYT identified at least 22 others connected to Fox News). Democratic media figures invited are likely to have appeared on Fox. CNN is mentioned in connection to one guest; MSNBC not at all.

Invited writers from mainstream outlets are often conservative pundits or cover a religion beat. Liberal and progressive names seldom appear, even from major outlets, let alone progressive media counterparts to the Daily Caller or the Blaze.

Sitting members of Congress are automatically invited, but of former members, The Family invited 20 Democrats and 38 Republicans, almost twice as many, plus former Democrat Joe Lieberman.

The invitation list reflects recurring religious discrimination, too. In nations TYT has looked at, a clear pattern emerges among who gets to choose the guests and, not surprisingly, among the guests they invite.

Christianity is favored over non-Christianity, Protestantism over Catholicism, and evangelicalism over non-evangelicalism. Non-evangelical leaders are vastly outnumbered by evangelical non-leaders.

What the documents do not show is intentional discrimination. If anything, The Family appears un-strategic in its operations, at times to its own detriment. The autonomy its associates enjoy mirrors the laissez-faire economic philosophies that helped give rise to The Family.

This makes it difficult to infer intent or to apply sweeping generalities to The Family or the breakfast. The organization is relational; if you’re friends with a Family insider, you might get an invite. Disparities in who gets invited arise less from a conscious plan and more from the vagaries of who becomes friends with someone inside The Family. Which, of course, is a textbook recipe for systemic bias. In some cases, invitations also appear to be tied to whether invitees might provide financial support for Family associates (who raise their own funds that are then administered by The Family).

It can be startling at times to come across the online ministries of Family associates. In blog posts and videos, they project inclusivity, joy, and distinctly un-Trumpian gentleness, humor, and even vulnerability.

They seldom resemble servants of an angry God or the cartoons of televangelism. The modest fundraising conducted by Family associates appears largely untouched by modern marketing. By any measure, they appear genuine in their compassion and desire to do good. They “have a heart for Africa,” many say. Some literally spend their lives overseas in conditions materially wanting but spiritually rewarding. They dedicate themselves to helping others.

But their compassion is intuitive, not strategic. Few are experts or rely on experts to determine the best way to do the most good. God leads them.

As it turns out, God seldom leads them to assist the elderly or the sick. More often, Family missionaries are led to help those whose responses happen to be the most rewarding.

So you will find Family associates working with impoverished children or remote villages in Africa, southeast Asia, or Latin America. They build schools and they teach. Typically they teach lessons premised on belief in Jesus. If you believe Jesus is the answer to all problems, after all, what solution would not include Jesus?

Kids are taught English, for instance, by learning songs about how Jesus loves them. They learn the language, but also the love…as The Family sees it. It’s a love based on surrender, accepting God’s will and Biblical authority – including condemnation of homosexuality and even, for some, the subordination of women. The Family’s students learn to speak that language, too, overseas and at Christian schools where scholarships take them here in the U.S.

Because how unsatisfying would it be to make the world a better place by doing volunteer accounting in the back office of some bureaucratic (but effective and professionally run) monolith with exacting, quantitative standards? Family associates can be found instead at the low-profile, sometimes one-person nonprofits that proliferate on the IRS website like weeds in a vast orchard of Christian charities.

Some Family members have anonymous benefactors, wealthy enough to support mission work that jibes with their political inclinations. The politics matter, because The Family tasks its missionaries to bond with the leaders of their host nations – leaders who know full well, as Sharlet documented, that these bright-eyed missionaries have the ears of the Americans who hold the wallets and bombs of the U.S. government. These missionaries use their access to local leaders to help stand up miniature versions of both the prayer breakfast and The Family – iterations that share or even exceed the homophobic or theocratic leanings of their model.

Ironically, one could argue that The Family does not use its influence enough. In accordance with their famous slogan of “Jesus Plus Nothing,” The Family asks little of the leaders they minister. As we’ll report, The Family enjoys proximity to local and national leaders that entails virtually no accountability for their political decisions and accepts virtually any policy that can be seen as Jesus-based.

To The Family, accountability starts with Jesus; they seldom champion the checks-and-balances accountability that transparency brings. As one source close to The Family told me, its leaders might counsel a senator to work on his marriage, but remain silent on matters such as encouraging violent upheaval of American democracy. During a conversation with notorious Republican operative Lee Atwater, Doug Coe, the late Family leader, reportedly condemned adultery only when pressed.

And so these smiling missionaries, even those preaching inclusivity and love for sinners and enemies, end up arm in arm with unsmiling politicians feverish to squeeze voting rights, or reproductive rights. A smaller group inside the ranks of The Family flares with anger when LGBTQ rights are framed as an affront to religious freedom.

Historically, The Family’s rationale for serving leaders unconditionally is that reducing evil means engaging with it. Who needs prayer more, after all, than the worst among us?

As Rep. Thomas Suozzi (D-NY), another Family ally, said this year, “the Prayer Breakfast reminds us to both love our neighbors and even the more challenging love our enemies.” It was an irrefutable defense right up until we could check whether The Family engages its own enemies as fervently as it engages the enemies of others.

Now, however, Suozzi’s high-minded aspirations are hard to reconcile with the 2016 invitation list. The names present, and those omitted, suggest that enemies of human rights may come and break bread, but enemies of Republicans get left out in the cold.

The Revs. Al Sharpton, Jesse Jackson, and William Barber – some of America’s top religious leaders on the left – are all absent from the 2016 invitation list. Business leaders, however, appear in abundance (although yesteryear’s captains of industry have been replaced by today’s regional managers of industry).

Non-religious leaders who advocate for the disenfranchised are hard to come by. The late AFL-CIO chief Richard Trumka, invited by Beasley, was one of the rare labor leaders on the list.

Still, participating Democrats claim the breakfast somehow can foster reconciliation, regardless of the short supply there of LGBTQ people, socialists, and baby-killers with whom to reconcile. “After a very divisive time in our nation’s history,” Coons said in February, “it’s my hope that this year’s breakfast offers Americans of all faiths and backgrounds the strength and courage to unite as a nation and tackle the challenges we face together.”

Except now we know that Americans of all faiths and backgrounds aren’t at the breakfast. In fact, as our first report will show, the breakfast – and some Family leaders – helped fuel our current divisions. And their secret work today is at the heart of the challenges we now face.

Jonathan Larsen is TYT’s managing editor. You can find him on Twitter @JTLarsen.

With additional research and reporting by TYT Investigates News Assistant Zoltan Lucas and Intern Jamia Zarzuela, and assistance from members of the TYT Army.

If you have tips on this subject or others you can contact us using Proton Mail at TheYoungTurks@ProtonMail.com. Follow us on Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube to stay on top of exclusive news stories from The Young Turks.

9/21

Salon.com

How MyPillow guy Mike Lindell came to Jesus — and to ...

The year before Baldwin met Lindell, the Christian actor and movie producer started his own religious endeavor: Friends of Stephen Baldwin ...

https://www.salon.com/2021/09/03/how-mypillow-guy-mike-lindell-came-to-jesus--and-to-donald-trump_partner/

no lnx many

How MyPillow guy Mike Lindell came to Jesus — and to Donald Trump

Mike Lindell was just a guy who sold pillows on TV — until he met Dr. Ben Carson at the National Prayer Breakfast

By JONATHAN LARSEN

PUBLISHED SEPTEMBER 3, 2021

Michael Lindell, with My Pillow, laughs with President Donald Trump during a "Made in America," roundtable event in the East Room at the White House in Washington, DC on Wednesday, July 19, 2017. (Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post via Getty Images)]

This article originally appeared at The Young Turks. Used by permission.

One of a series about the Fellowship Foundation, the secretive religious group that runs the National Prayer Breakfast and is popularly known as The Family. This series is based on Family documents obtained by TYT, including lists of breakfast guests and who invited them.

Perhaps as much as former President Trump himself, MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell has become the public face of the Big Lie. Like the Jan. 6 Capitol attackers, Lindell is brandishing openly theocratic, Christian beliefs to secure a Biblically based autocracy led by a man he sees as divinely anointed.

Lindell wasn't always this way. But over the past several years, people with ties to The Family have played key roles behind the scenes in Lindell's radicalization, religiously and politically.

Family insiders and allies, for instance, have dominated the boards of Lindell's nonprofits. One man associated with The Family was part of Lindell's "legal offense fund" to challenge election results.

Lindell's faith journey often features in his speeches. As he tells it, God orchestrated a series of events that changed him from a casual Christian into the hardcore, autocratic evangelical who called for the U.S. military to install Trump in a second term.

"What gave [Lindell] the certainty he was looking for was evangelical Christianity," one Republican operative told Politico. "He was born again."

That religious certitude has proved infectious. A MyPillow employee told Politico, "There's a lot of people calling and saying Mike is a disciple of God."

Lindell's certainty rests on his conviction that God had a hand in key moments in his life. That conviction, he explains, arose from his inability to see any other explanation for those events. He called his memoir, "What Are the Odds?"

What Lindell appears not to know, however, is the full extent of Family involvement in the events that so profoundly changed him.

Publicly, Lindell has only addressed his Family ties in relation to one incident: The 2016 National Prayer Breakfast. And even there, he elides important details that we can now fill in. He has never said, for instance, who invited him or why.

Cue Stephen Baldwin

Lindell met actor Stephen Baldwin at a New York radio station. "I'd felt led to visit the station in early 2014, though at the time I wasn't sure why," Lindell wrote in his book. "Now I know it was to meet Stephen, who became like a brother to me."

In a brief call this week, Lindell told TYT how he came to attend the 2016 prayer breakfast: "I was invited at the last minute by my friend Stephen Baldwin." The Christian actor also attended that year's breakfast.

Baldwin, a Trump supporter, would be at Lindell's side for a number of important events. But, according to an internal Family document, it was not Baldwin who invited Lindell to the breakfast; at least, not directly. (Baldwin and others with ties to The Family did not respond to requests for comment, unless noted otherwise.)

The year before Baldwin met Lindell, the Christian actor and movie producer started his own religious endeavor: Friends of Stephen Baldwin Ministry. All three principals of Baldwin's nonprofit have had ties to The Family.

One of the three principals was Margie Frank, connected by court records to a Texas oil inheritance. A six-figure donor to conservative causes, including reducing reproductive rights, Frank more recently has backed Republicans pushing the Big Lie.

Frank's husband, Jonathan, was quoted in Philippine media as a spokesperson for the National Prayer Breakfast, in relation to boxer Manny Pacquiao's attendance in 2015. The religious, right-wing fighter ostensibly was invited by Congress, but the invitation reportedly was delivered by a Texas pastor named Wilfred Job.

Job, whose church had a significant Filipino population, was the second Family affiliate running Baldwin's ministry. The third principal at Baldwin's ministry was a Pennsylvania real-estate developer named Todd Hendricks. Both Job and Hendricks are connected to The Family.

A source close to The Family told TYT that Job did virtually nothing without Hendricks. Internal Family documents support this: The two men are listed as collaborating to invite 29 people in 2016. Job invited no one on his own.

(Job's nine other invitations were submitted in conjunction with two then-leaders of The Family: Doug Coe, now deceased, and former South Carolina governor David Beasley, now head of the UN World Food Programme.)

By contrast, Hendricks appears to have had more autonomy. Hendricks submitted names on his own for both 2016 and 2018. Aside from Coe, no individual submitted more guest names for the 2016 event than Hendricks did: 109. He had at least 59 people attend in 2018.

Three years after joining Baldwin's ministry, it was Job, with Coe's sign-off, who invited Baldwin's new friend, Lindell — best known back then as TV's pillow pitchman — to the 2016 National Prayer Breakfast, along with his girlfriend. According to the same internal Family document, Hendricks invited Baldwin and Pacquiao.

Asked about Job, Lindell said, "I don't know who you're talking about." Asked whether he was aware that the Lindell Foundation listed Job as its president on its 2017 tax filing, Lindell said, "No." Pressed for details, Lindell said, "Go to jail. Go somewhere and find yourself a nice jail cell because that's where you're going to end up. Goodbye."

Whether or not Lindell knows Job and Hendricks, that's how TV's pillow guy — not yet very religious, let alone political — ended up at the National Prayer Breakfast. It was at the breakfast where he would meet Dr. Ben Carson, and hear a prophecy that would change everything.

The prophecy

Although the president's Thursday morning speech is the public highlight, the National Prayer Breakfast is actually a four-day event. It's in breakout rooms and prayer sessions where the real work gets done.

The night before the breakfast, Lindell metretired Army Maj. Gen. Bob Dees.Dees told TYT he has attended a number of breakfasts over the last decade and "various other events with Fellowship members," but has "no direct association with the Fellowship Foundation."

A source close to The Family agreed with that characterization, saying Dees had ties to The Family, but was nowhere near the inner circle. Dees had, however, just started working very closely with someone who was in the inner circle.

Carson, a future Trump cabinet member, was already a Family star — having ripped into then-President Obama during a speech at the 2013 breakfast. Now, Carson himself was running for president. Dees was running Carson's campaign. And the campaign had just brought on a Family board member to head up communications.

Dees declined to reveal some specifics about his discussions with Lindell, but did share a few. "I can offer that we had a far-ranging discussion in a breakout room the day prior to the prayer breakfast," Dees said.

Lindell is only slightly more expansive in his book. "I talked with [Dees] for over an hour," Lindell writes, "in a discussion about the direction of the country."

Now the president of Resilience Consulting, Dees has worked with a wide range of conservative Christian organizations, including Liberty University and Military Ministry, which strives to convert members of the armed forces. He has also drawn scrutiny for his LGBTQ positions and views on Islam.

After the breakfast, Lindell says, he and Baldwin were "randomly" invited to a breakout room where a dozen would gather for prayer, including Ben Carson. Lindell doesn't say who picked him.

And it's not clear how random it was. Dees told TYT, "After the prayer breakfast, the NPB leadership asked me to bring Dr. Ben Carson to a small room for follow-up prayer with a small group of perhaps 15 individuals, including Mike Lindell."

Dees wouldn't say who asked him to bring Carson to meet Lindell and the others. "From my perspective," Dees said, "it was simply a courtesy to put a man of Dr. Carson's prominence together with a seemingly randomly selected group of NPB attendees."

Baldwin, however, apparently already knew Carson, because Lindell says it was Baldwin who introduced him to Carson in the breakout room. And Carson's communications director, A. Larry Ross, was also at the breakfast.

Whether Lindell knew it or not, Ross is also The Family's spokesperson and a key leader. A Texas public relations man who long worked for Billy Graham, Ross has been on the board of the Fellowship Foundation, The Family's legal entity, since 2011. If Job and Hendricks brought Lindell to the starting gate, it would be Ross who eventually got Lindell to the finish line.

It's in the breakout room after the breakfast that Lindell hears the prophecy. He loves the story enough to have told it many times since, but not enough to tell it consistently.

In June, Lindell told it this way:

[I]n that room we were praying, the, a guy in there prophesied in there. He said, "Two of you in this room are gonna become great friends and change the course of history." And Ben and I are great friends! And he said, and I'm sitting there, though, as they're praying and he's saying that, I go, I go, "If one of them's me, who would the other one be?" and this, things started happening to me.

In his 2019 book, he tells the story differently. It's not just two of them, and the prophecy isn't directed specifically at him. "Two or three of you in this room are going to become great friends," the unnamed prophet says. "And you will be part of a great change in our nation."

Either way, the prophecy hit Lindell like a thunderbolt with his name on it. What he may not have known was that The Family throws the exact same thunderbolt at pretty much everyone, even printing it on breakfast literature.

It's based on Matthew 18:20: Where two or three of you gather in my name, there am I with them. As Coe put it to journalist Jeff Sharlet, "Two, or three, agree? They can do anything."

What they would do was also a topic of discussion at the breakfast breakout room. And it wasn't just faith.

"I suddenly found myself surrounded by people talking about God and politics," Lindell says in his book.

The dozen people in the room gathered in a circle and began talking about the critical importance of the 2016 election. We agreed it was going to be a real spiritual turning point for the country. One path could lead us toward national renewal. The other could lead us down a dark path from which there might be no return, a path that had begun with the removal of God from the public square.

Lindell's discussion in the breakout room — with Carson, Dees, Baldwin and others — he writes, "opened my eyes to the impact of politics on ordinary people."

After dropping out of the Republican presidential race in March 2016, Carson tells Trump about Lindell, who then gets invited to meet with Trump on Aug. 15. The day before their meeting, Lindell donates $2,700 to Trump's campaign, $17,300 to the Republican National Committee, and $20,000 to Trump Victory. (Trump Victory was later accused along with state party committees of circumventing donation limits. The first federal donation of Lindell's life had been $527.27 to the Republican Party of Virginia on May 25, the day Trump Victory was formed.)

The Family had helped to open Lindell's eyes to Trump, but his soul still needed work. Within a year, though, Lindell would be on his knees.

The operation

In the months after bringing Baldwin and Lindell to the prayer breakfast, Family insiders expanded their sphere beyond Baldwin and his nonprofits to Lindell's.

Why the interest in Lindell — who wasn't yet an evangelical?

The source close to The Family said they weren't aware of the relationships with Baldwin and Lindell, but had heard of tensions between Hendricks and Job and the internal team, including Beasley, that oversaw much of the breakfast logistics.

Referring to Hendricks and Job specifically, the source told TYT, "Those guys were always hunting a big fish like a Mike Lindell that would support their stuff."

The source said, "If you can convince him, 'Oh, we're doing this amazing work,' he might just be the kind of guy that gives you $10 million. Or he might be the kind of guy that puts you on his charitable foundation board and gives you a salary."

Baldwin's ministry never filed any federal tax forms, so it's not clear whether anyone got paid. The Lindell Foundation, however, is another story.

Tax filings for the Lindell Foundation don't list any board members for 2016, but Lindell writes that Ross joined the board that year. The following year, the Lindell Foundation lists six people as officers or directors — half of them tied to The Family.

In addition to Lindell's niece and a lawyer from Texas (where Ross and Job are based), the four other people named are three board members — Lindell, Ross and Dees — and a new president: Wilfred Job, who takes home $55,385 that year.

Asked about Job by TYT, Lindell said, "I don't know who you're talking about."

In 2018, Lindell brings on a right-wing Republican from his home state, Doug Wardlow — a former intern of Family friend Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa — who soon becomes MyPillow's general counsel and is now enmeshed in the company's Big Lie legal battles. Job doesn't appear on the filings anymore.

Ross, however, the Family board member and former Carson spokesperson, expands his role in the Lindell-verse.

How much Ross's communications company makes from his work we don't know, but Ross ends up serving as a spokesperson for Baldwin, Lindell, the Lindell Foundation and MyPillow. And helping Lindell get Trump elected.

Three days before the Trump/Clinton matchup, Manny Pacquiao stepped into the ring with Jessie Vargas for the WBO welterweight championship. Lindell was ringside, along with The Family.

Lindell and Baldwin had flown to Las Vegas for the fight at the invitation of a "group of [Baldwin's] friends," Lindell writes. He doesn't name these friends, but says, "One of the men in our party was a prominent Democrat I'd met at the National Prayer Breakfast."

Wilfred Job — who had delivered Pacquiao's 2015 breakfast invite — reportedly traveled with Baldwin on at least two occasions. Ross was also in town and joined Lindell for a big group dinner.

During the meal, the Trump campaign called: They wanted Lindell back in Minnesota the next day to join Trump for a rally two days before the vote. The only problem: No flights.

The group — apparently all Trump supporters — start hunting online for tickets. "Suddenly," Lindell writes, "Larry called out, 'Got it!' ... Larry hustled me out of the restaurant, and we jumped in a car for McCarran."

At a meeting of the Lindell Foundation board that same month, Ross comes to Lindell's aid again. He encourages Lindell to attend a program for military veterans. The program, Lindell writes, had helped hundreds of veterans "come to a place of freedom by locating primary points of pain in their pasts, and inviting God in to heal them."

Operation Restored Warrior (ORW) has multiple connections to The Family. Ross had participated in the program, as had retired U.S. Army Lt. Gen. William "Jerry" Boykin, now a vice president at the Family Research Council.

The man who ran Operation Restored Warrior was Paul Lavelle, who had met Lindell at the 2016 breakfast. Like Dees, the source described Lavelle as well outside the inner circle, but having ties to The Family.

One of ORW's funders had invited Lavelle to the breakfast (along with six people from Compassion International, a Ross client that has been accused of trying to proselytize the vulnerable children it serves). At the breakfast, Lindell later wrote in his book, Lavelle "felt led" to invite Lindell to ORW.

Pressed by both Ross and Kendra, his girlfriend, Lindell agrees to go to ORW, but he's still reluctant about it. That changes at his second National Prayer Breakfast.

There, he writes, he was inspired by the "powerful, jaw-dropping message" of Senate Chaplain Barry Black. Lindell doesn't give specifics, but in his speech, Black argued for the existence of an interventionist God, still active in the matters of humanity, who takes action in response to prayers.

Three months after Ross's suggestion and just weeks after Black's speech, Lindell flies to Colorado and delivers himself up first to Lavelle, and then to Jesus.

"I went in there with hope," Lindell later told the Christian Broadcasting Network. "I said, 'God please, show me you're real, show me, you know? I want that personal relationship,' And on the second day, on Feb. 18, 2017, I did a full surrender on my knees."

"I can now," Lindell says later, "talk about Jesus Christ in the same way I used to talk about a pillow."

Today

As TYT reported earlier this year, a number of known Family leaders and backers have donated to Trump and other Republicans after they began telling Americans the election was stolen. Future reports will identify others, in addition to those named here.

Much as many Family leaders reject separation of church and state, Lindell observes few distinctions between his personal, commercial, philanthropic, religious and political pursuits. Ross has continued to represent not just the Lindell Foundation but Lindell himself and MyPillow, which has been an active participant in Lindell's Big Lie crusade..

On March 17 of this year, Lindell created a new nonprofit: The Lindell Legal Offense Fund. Its purpose: "Advancing legal efforts regarding election integrity issues …"

The three-man board includes Lindell and lawyer Kurt Olsen, a lawyer and special ops veteran whose assistance to Lindell included last month's disastrous election-security summit. The third man is Paul Lavelle.

Despite the summit's outcome — which Lindell blamed on outside forces — his faith remains steady, his political convictions unshaken.

A report this summer by the conservative outlet The Dispatch says that Lindell starts most of his days on the phone with his prayer group. But it doesn't say who they are.

With additional research and reporting by TYT Investigates News Assistant Zoltan Lucas and Intern Jamia Zarzuella.

JONATHAN LARSEN

Jonathan Larsen is the managing editor and executive producer of TYT Investigates.

MORE FROM JONATHAN LARSEN • FOLLOW @JTLARSEN

Early life, education, and career

Uygur was born in Istanbul, Turkey, and emigrated with his family when he was eight years old.^[8] He spent his adolescence in East Brunswick, New Jersey, and graduated from East Brunswick High School. Raised as a Muslim, Uygur became an agnostic later in life.^[9] He attended the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania where he majored in management^[10] and was on the Student Activities Council representing the Turkish Students Association.^[11] He also earned a law degree from Columbia Law School^[12] and worked as an associate attorney at the law firms of Drinker Biddle & Reath in Washington, D.C. and Hayes & Liebman in New York City.^[13]

Uygur first appeared as a talk show host on a weekend radio show on WWRC in Washington, D.C. and on WRKO in Boston. He later wrote for, produced, and appeared on the WAMI-TV news show The Times in Miami, then started The Young Turks on Sirius Satellite Radio.^[14]

Political views

In his college and law school years, Uygur espoused socially conservative views. He wrote a column in The Daily Pennsylvaniancriticizing Penn's practice of affirmative action.^[10] He supported the pro-life position on the abortion issue, criticized feminism, and argued that Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas was treated unjustly during his Senate confirmation hearings.^[15] He also criticized organized religion as based on mythology and as a divisive force between people.^[16]

Uygur has changed his positions in recent years^[when?][17] and is now a progressive.^[2][3] On social issues, Uygur is pro-choice onabortion^[18] and supports LGBT rights, including same-sex marriage.^[19] In 2009, he advocated the liberalization of drug laws, arguing that the War on Drugs has been a failure, as shown by the continuing violence in Mexico and the border region.^[citation ^needed] He also opposes imprisoning non-violent drug offenders for marijuana possession.^[20] He previously supported capital punishment, but now opposes it largely due to multiple exonerations of death row inmates since its reinstatement.^[citation ^needed]

Uygur has expressed support for a return to Clinton-era income tax brackets and has criticized the 2010 Obama–GOP compromisewhich provided for a temporary extension of the Bush tax cuts. Uygur has stated that he favored welfare reform as enacted under Bill Clinton. He has been critical of excessive regulation, but has argued that in recent decades, regulation of the financial sector has been inadequate. In particular, he faults the deregulatory policies of Ronald Reagan, Bill Clinton, and George W. Bush. He views the repeal(which Clinton signed into law) of the Glass–Steagall Act, as a major contributor to the late-2000s recession. However, on many issues Uygur maintains that many of his economic positions have remained similar (he still describes himself as fiscal conservative in some cases),^[21] that instead the right wing has shifted by becoming more extreme even since the end of Bush's presidency, describing Texasgovernor Rick Perry as "George Bush on steroids".^[22]

On national security and civil liberties issues, Uygur has strongly opposed the practices begun under the Bush administration, ofindefinite detention, warrantless wiretapping and extraordinary rendition, and believes that waterboarding is an illegal torture technique. Uygur has been a strong critic of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and the right-wing Israeli government and has stated that he is an advocate for a two-state solution in the West Bank and has repeatedly criticized the Israeli government for its failure to materialize.^[23] He has also repeatedly criticized Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper.^[24]

In a letter published by The Daily Pennsylvanian in 1991 Uygur asserted that "The claims of an Armenian Genocide are not based on historical facts. If the history of the period is examined it becomes evident that in fact no such genocide took place."^[25] He repeated this view in a letter to the editor of Salon.com in 1999.^[26] In 2012, Uygur's letters later drew criticism from the west-coast affiliate of theArmenian National Committee of America and the California Armenian American Democrats who subsequently staged protests during his speech at the California Democratic Party 2012 State Convention with the support of Charles Calderon and Janice Hahn.^[27][28][29]

At a progressive caucus of the California Democratic Party meeting on February 11, 2012, Cenk stressed that "The Young Turks" title referenced the phrase as it applies to any generic progressive political movement that threatens to upend the established order, and was not an endorsement of the Young Turks' regime in Turkey.^[30]

On Democratic politicians and officeholders

The 2000 election was the first time Uygur voted Democratic, supporting Al Gore. Uygur has supported Democratic congressional and presidential candidates ever since, though he frequently criticized the Democratic congressional leadership for insufficiently opposing the Bush administration on civil liberties and foreign policy issues. Uygur has criticized Blue Dog Democrats and other centrist andconservative Democrats, some of whom he has labeled as "corporatists". He has described former Wisconsin Senator Russ Feingold, a Democrat, as "probably the only guy in the whole entire Senate we can trust".^[31] When Feingold was defeated for reelection in 2010 by Republican Ron Johnson, Uygur said Feingold had been "the best Senator we had, and we no longer have him".^[32]

In part because of concerns over Bush's foreign policy and policies on civil liberties, Uygur said he would support an impeachment of Bush. Early in the 2008 Obama campaign, Uygur questioned Obama's suitability for the presidency, saying Obama lacked political experience at the national level and had limited achievements in the U.S. Senate. However, he strongly supported Obama later on.

Since the fall of 2009, Uygur has taken an increasingly critical attitude towards the Obama administration, saying after two years in office, Obama is, "not a progressive [...] He is a consummate politician."^[33] Uygur has criticized the 2010 health insurance reform law as overly watered-down, owing to excessive concessions to business and conservatives in Congress, noting the deal made between Obama and the drug companies.^{[clarification} ^needed] Uygur has similarly criticized the 2010 financial reform law.^[why?]

Uygur feels the Obama administration has too readily conceded to conservative ideological arguments to the point of demonstrating an unwillingness to defend liberal positions. However, Uygur voted for Obama in the 2012 presidential election,^[34] despite his disagreements with the president.^[35]

Uygur heavily criticized Obama again in 2013 after the revelation of the domestic NSA spying program by Edward Snowden. Uygur called Obama Big Brother and a liar during both his then Current TV show and the online main show shortly after.^[36] Uygur called out Obama on civil liberties saying that he is trying to "one up George W. Bush" and gave examples of how the NSA program could negatively effect the American Public.^[37] Uygur has continued to be heavily critical on Obama and the Obama Administration on NSA related topics ever since.

Uygur himself has mentioned he would be willing to leave his post at The Young Turks if he were nominated to become White House Chief of Staff under a progressive leaning presidential administration.^[38]

The Young Turks

Main article: The Young Turks

Uygur created the talk show The Young Turks with the goal of starting a moderate liberal political and entertainment show.^[6][39] It launched on 13 February 2002. It later became a success online, and aired on the Sirius Satellite Radio network.^[40] The Young Turksclaims to be the first Internet video news show and states that it is now the largest online news show in the world. Collectively it has amassed over 1,000,000,000 (a billion) views on YouTube, and over 1,000,000 subscribers. Video of the show is streamed daily on its website and is available as a podcast.^[41][42]

On September 20, 2011, Current TV announced that The Young Turks would launch a weeknight TV edition of the show at 7 p.m. EST (M-F) on the network beginning sometime in the fourth quarter of 2011. According to the show's website, the show was introduced asThe Young Turks with Cenk Uygur to differentiate itself from the popular web series.^[citation ^needed]. The show on Current TV ended on August 15, 2013 with the end of all live programing on Current.

MSNBC

On October 21, 2010 MSNBC announced that Uygur had been officially hired as a contributor and substitute anchor for the network. On January 21, 2011, it was announced that Uygur would be hosting the 6 p.m. Eastern slot on MSNBC as the anchor of a new prime time edition of MSNBC Live, after the network parted ways with Keith Olbermann, resulting in a rearrangement of the timeslots of MSNBC's other prime time shows. Uygur filled the time slot vacated by Ed Schultz,^[43][44] from late January through June 2011, earning first among people 18–34 in the second quarter. His contract was ended when he did not accept a lower profile weekend slot.^[4] An MSNBC spokesperson expressed regret at Uygur's leaving.^[45]

Uygur gave his side of the story on Democracy Now!, saying that MSNBC President Phil Griffin had called him into his office in April and told him that he had been talking to people in Washington and that they did not like Uygur's tone.^[46] MSNBC denied the claim, saying that "We did have numerous conversations with Cenk about his style, not substance."^[47]

Radio and television appearances

Uygur has appeared on numerous occasions on MSNBC, CNN Headline News, E! Entertainment Television, Al Jazeera English, RT, ABC News, Voice of America, NPR and the Fox News Channel.^[48] He was a regular guest on The Dylan Ratigan Show for a segment opposite various conservative commentators. On several occasions, Uygur filled in for the MSNBC shows of Ratigan,^[49] Ed Schultz, and Keith Olbermann, both before and after becoming a regular paid contributor to MSNBC in October 2010.

Jon Stewart showed clips of Uygur on Comedy Central's The Daily Show in August and September 2010; in one instance Uygur spoke oninternet neutrality, and in the other, he commented on pastor Terry Jones and his Koran burning controversy.^[50][51] On December 22, 2010 Uygur interviewed Wikileaks founder Julian Assange on MSNBC's The Dylan Ratigan Show.^[52] He appeared on George Galloway's political radio show on February 11, 2011 as an American correspondent, explaining problems he perceives with American politics for a British audience.^[53] He hosted Good Day L.A. in March 2012.^[54]

Wolf-PAC

Main article: Wolf-PAC

In late 2011, after seeing the momentum of Occupy Wall Street, Uygur decided to launch a long term project of his, a political action committee named Wolf-PAC. Wolf-PAC aims to lobby state legislators to pass resolutions calling for an Convention of the States under Article V of the US Constitution. Its slogan is "A super-PAC to end all super-PACs". If this convention is formed the aim is then to pass anamendment to the United States Constitution that would end corporate personhood and publicly finance all elections in the United States.^[55]

Personal life

Uygur was born and raised in a Muslim family, but is now a self-described "fervent agnostic".^[56][57] In 2010, along with Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Uygur accepted the "Emperor Has No Clothes Award" from the Freedom From Religion Foundation and later the Humanist Media Award from the American Humanist Association.^[58][59] He is now married to Wendy Lang Uygur, a marriage and family therapist. The Uygurs are the parents of one son, born in July 2010,^[60] and a daughter, born in October 2012.^[61] Cenk has stated that he grew up a fan of theFenerbahçe soccer team.^[62]