Via America’s Lawyer: Although the pandemic is far from over, ongoing protests in Kenosha and Portland appear to have taken political center-stage, as both Trump and Biden are scrambling to respond to recent violent clashes. Mike Papantonio & Farron Cousins discuss.
Transcript:
*This transcript was generated by a third-party transcription software company, so please excuse any typos.
Mike Papantonio: As American cities are rocked by riots, Donald Trump is hoping that voters are going to trust him to keep them safe. Joe Biden, on the other hand, is saying that everything happening right now is Trump’s fault. Joining me to talk about this honestly is one of the best progressive commentators in the business, Farron Cousins. Farron, what is your take? I value your take tremendously as you know. What do you think?
Farron Cousins: Oh God, it’s, it’s been quite an interesting couple of days, to be honest. What is so disappointing about what’s happening right now in these cities is that the actual message, the actual movement has been commandeered by these rioters, the, they, they, they, these are people out there in the streets right now, they don’t have an actual grievance. These are people who came out to cause problems, right and left. This is not black lives matter that, that’s doing this. These are people that have hijacked what that message was, what that movement was and now they are absolutely doing everything they can to hand this election to Trump because Joe Biden came out earlier this week, tried to say something about this, that turned into a bunch of gobbledygook, you couldn’t understand what the man was even saying.
Mike Papantonio: I didn’t understand it.
Farron Cousins: So, so, so that’s, that’s where I am with this, but, but I want to know where you are too, because everybody is trying to make sense.
Mike Papantonio: Yeah. I mean, well, you know, you and I’ve been working together what, 15, 16 years now, I know what’s on your mind. I think, you know, what’s on mine. You, you know, what, what’s happening is you have long time credible progressive’s saying pull the emergency cord now. And what they’re saying is that what we’re looking at is another Hillary story for different reasons. You know, the, the, the idea of the general public ignoring the polls that are tightening up right now in swing States, we’re going to have David Lamb on the show. He’s going to give us the details, but in swing States, things are really tightening up for very specific reasons. And so we’ve got very, I mean, friends of ours, people we’ve worked together. Michael Moore used to do a, used to do Air America with me back in the days, I’ve got tremendous confidence in him. He’s saying, pull the emergency cord right now. And here’s what he sees. He, not just him, but this is just as my take. Okay. Jump in any time, this is a discussion, this isn’t an interview.
But there’s this, you’ve got, there’s a pervasive belief among progressives that if we have MSNBC and CNN and Fox news attacking Trump every single day on every single story that that’s good. The numbers are showing, no, that’s not good. We, you have progressive’s believing that if people like Chelsea, Chelsea Handler or Rob Reiner. I mean, Rob Reiner, what did they call him meathead back when he did a show 40 years ago, All in the Family. Barbara Streisand out on front, these are the talking, these are the people talking for the Democrats. The progressive’s belief, oh gee, if we’ve got celebrities out there, we’re going to be okay. You’ve got the late night show hosts talking, it’s not comedy anymore. It’s how much can we, how much can we pile on Trump? I don’t mind that, but I’m a realist and I realize that it ain’t working. You’ve got to hate Trump boat book coming out every single week. It ain’t working and so what we’ve got, we have to rethink all this, you know, this progressive notion of these are the things that are going to work for us. Isn’t this exactly what we saw with Hillary in 2016?
Farron Cousins: It absolutely is and Joe Biden waiting a week to come out and finally give this address, which he did yesterday, I think Philadelphia or Monday it was in Philadelphia. Finally addresses this after Trump had been out there every day for a week saying he can keep you, he can keep you safe. He’s the only one who can handle this. Where’s Joe Biden? Where’s Joe Biden? Progressive’s out there begging somebody on the left to show a little bit of leadership Biden, finally dusts himself off and says, okay, I guess, I guess I’m gonna say this. But it, it, it was nothing. What Biden said was nothing. This is all Trump’s fault. Okay. That has a basic misunderstanding built into it about the systemic problems that some of these people have actually faced. Now, again, those aren’t the people in the street causing problems, the people in the street causing problems, like you have said so many times, these are the suburb kids.
Mike Papantonio: They dress up like Batman.
Farron Cousins: Right.
Mike Papantonio: They’re showing up, they dress in black helmets.
Farron Cousins: They’re anarchists, they’re anarchists.
Mike Papantonio: They think they are. They don’t even know what the hell an anarchist is, but they have some time off from college. Hey, let’s dress up like Batman, go to the streets and mixed in there are crazy people that shoot people, that hit people over the head with bricks. Listen, you know, here’s the problem. I, you know, you, you and I talk about this all the time and that is what is the right doing? You know what I did today before we came on, I looked at the headlines. Now this is what is happening. This is why the right is moving. These are the headlines from Breitbart, right wing news source. Daily Caller, you talk about them all the time, right wing. All, you know, all of these, Drudge, you know, in the middle now, I guess. Here’s the headlines. They’re, they want to show us chaos in the streets, right? This is what the right, this is what middle America, not just right wingers are reading every single day. And the, the, the progressives are sitting over there, scratching their heads, saying, oh my God.
Why is nobody excited about Biden, but everybody’s excited about Trump? Here’s the headlines. St. Louis police officer, after being shot in the back by, by, by rioters dies. Portland killer 100% Antifa. These are the headlines. Kyle Rittenhouse hunted down like an animal before he was forced to use his rifle. Taxpayer funded unemployment given to Antifa riot, Antifa rioting thugs. Headline: LA SWAT team called after shots are fired at the Trump caravan. Headline: 46, 46 people shot in Chicago this weekend, 10 of them dead. Headline: Armed residents standing guard to protect their children, to protect their neighborhood in Kenosha. Headline: Auto Zone stabbing suspect says he felt he needed to find a white male to kill. Headline: Kamala Harris, police officers, it’s time they face the consequences, Democrat VP. Rand Paul and wife, headline: Rand Paul and wife believed they were going to be killed by black lives matter and Antifa mob. Headline: Biden blames police for violence and rioting. And the, and, and progressive’s go, gee, I don’t understand why the polls are moving. This is Nixonland all over, isn’t it?
Farron Cousins: Well, well, progressives don’t say that, we understand it. It’s the actual Democrats who don’t know why it’s moving. And see, here’s the thing though, the right wing media has such a powerful grasp and they are very well coordinated. I mean, we have had plenty of headlines that have fizzled over the years of, you know, just earlier this year, the QAnon woman that loaded up her car to go kill Joe Biden. Where’s that big story? You know, the guy who loaded up his van with guns and explosives to go destroy CNN, because they were mean to Trump. You know, there’s plenty of things that you can counter all of those with, but there is no coordinated message and even if there was, the Democrats are so weak at messaging, they couldn’t put it together if their life depended on it.
Mike Papantonio: They’ve got celebrities and night talk show hosts trying to tell their message.
Farron Cousins: Just making fun of Trump and these people, that’s all they do.
Mike Papantonio: Exactly. You’ve got, you’ve got, you’ve got CNN and MSNBC who have gone hysterical. The announcers on those programs are frigging hysterical and rather than important, than doing the news, they believe this is helping Biden. It’s killing Biden.
Farron Cousins: It is, it is.
Mike Papantonio: And I just don’t know what else to say other than the fact that Michael Moore’s right. Bill Maher, he said he had he’s, it’s his first time he’s ever been real concerned. He’s right. I’m real concerned too. People watching this program right now will say, oh my God, how is Papantonio and Farron saying all these terrible things, because it’s the truth. Not because I want Trump elected or you want Trump elected, but the, the, the Democrat regime has become so frigging hysterical that we can’t even talk about these obvious things. Those headlines that I just read, those are all today’s headlines. And it’s every single day that middle America is getting this headlines and to tell you the truth, it’s scaring the bejesus out of them.
Farron Cousins: You know, I have to point out too, you have Yvette Nicole Brown, who was, she was on a show called Community. She’s a big Democrat. She actually came out and said, we never had anything like this. We didn’t have riots or protests while Obama was president and Biden was vice president. She said that three days ago, and everybody pointed out, the progressives did, they said, have you not heard of Ferguson?
Mike Papantonio: Yeah.
Farron Cousins: This, this, this didn’t just evolve under Donald Trump. This isn’t a thing that only happened because of Donald Trump. But that’s why I bring up, there are systemic problems that have to be addressed and that is what initially the actual people that were, were protesting peacefully, that is what they wanted. These movements got hijacked.
Mike Papantonio: Yeah.
Farron Cousins: And we see it happen all the time. They either get hijacked by the grifters, the people who think they can make money off it.
Mike Papantonio: Yeah.
Farron Cousins: Like the we build the wall guy.
Mike Papantonio: Or the, or the celebrities who believe.
Farron Cousins: Yeah.
Mike Papantonio: These forgotten celebrities who want to be heard. Rob Reiner, who in the hell’s Rob Reiner? Meathead back in All in the Family. You know, Barbara Streisand, the way we were. That was the last thing I can ever remember she sang. These are the people talking or, or, or, you know, I could go on forever. These are people most people don’t even know who the hell they are.
Farron Cousins: Right.
Mike Papantonio: And you got middle America, reading headlines juxtaposed with that.
Farron Cousins: Right, at the same time, the, the economy is collapsing. We’re still in the middle of a pandemic. It’s not even safe to send our kids back to school, but this has become the thing. You know, Portland, Kenosha and Chicago, these three cities and this is now that they’ve let it get away. The Democrats let it get away from them. They let it become the issue.
Mike Papantonio: Projection. I did the same thing with Hillary Clinton and I got so much hate mail. I got so many hate comments. I said, I said, four months before the election, we could see it happening Hillary was going to lose.
Farron Cousins: Yeah.
Mike Papantonio: I’m telling you it is Trump 2020, just like Nixonland, it is going to be Trumpland. And just like Michael, Michael Moore said, everybody’s sitting back fat, dumb and happy believing that Biden can babble away in the basement and that everything’s going to be okay.
Farron Cousins: No, no. Biden’s lack of leadership, his inability to come out and actually give a, a unifying message, a coherent message. It doesn’t even matter if it’s unifying anymore. Just string words together that make sense.
Mike Papantonio: Pray to God that the Dems figure out that Pelosi and Schumer is not leadership at all. Shut down the riots, shut down the riots, shut down Antifa, shut down Kenosha, Portland, Seattle, Chicago, and New York. Shut it down now, and maybe we have a chance. What do you think?
Farron Cousins: If they can pull those things off then absolutely, we go back to where we were a month ago, talking about Trump already having to pack his stuff. If they can’t do that and I don’t think they can.
Mike Papantonio: What’s your call?
Farron Cousins: We’re, we’re, we’re Trump, Trump reelected.
Mike Papantonio: Yeah. They’re going to hate, we’re going to get more hate mail. That’s okay. I, look, I welcome it. We’ll, let’s start responding to some of the haters. Okay. Farron Cousins as usual, right on spot. Thank you for joining me. Okay.
Farron Cousins: Thank you.