Via America’s Lawyer: ExxonMobil lobbyists leak the names of senators who are helping the gas giant fight Biden’s green energy initiatives. Mike Papantonio and Farron Cousins discuss more.
Transcript:
*This transcript was generated by a third-party transcription software company, so please excuse any typos.
Mike Papantonio: An undercover video sting caught a top ExxonMobil lobbyist bragging about buying off US senators and fighting, fighting climate change. This is a disgusting story. This lobbyist is in there. He’s giving away all the secrets. A, we, the stuff we say is just BS. We say it because it calms the American public down. They, you know, when they come out and say, we want to help climate change, we say that just to ease the tension. Pick it up from there.
Farron Cousins: Yeah. He basically admitted that the company has been engaged, not only in climate denial, but this big greenwashing campaign, you know, telling this undercover Greenpeace operatives that, oh yeah, we always say we want a carbon tax, but we do that because we know it’s never going to pass. Yeah. We say we support the Paris Climate Accords, but that’s because, you know, we really, we can’t do anything about it. We’re going to keep doing business as usual. They’re not, the politicians are not really going to do anything about it. But one of the more disturbing things that, that this man, was it, Keith McCoy.
Mike Papantonio: Yeah.
Farron Cousins: Admitted to was the fact that, oh yeah, well, we’ve basically paid off enough people on both sides to make sure that whatever we need to get done, we get it done. We’re the ones who were fighting all the climate change stuff in the infrastructure bill, the corporate income tax increase. We fought that too.
Mike Papantonio: They admit that they were part of the shadowy groups.
Farron Cousins: Yeah.
Mike Papantonio: They admit that they had infiltrated corporate media to the point by just spreading around money. That’s what he was really saying. We give MSNBC money. They don’t cover the story. We give ABC money. They don’t cover the story. All of this came out and, and you know what, I, you know, we have a list of these folks, the senators, call these folks and really thank them for, for, you know, for not doing their job.
Farron Cousins: Right. I mean, the Gulf of Mexico was on fire just a couple days ago because a pipeline ruptured beneath the surface and this Exxon lobbyist is sitting there, laughing it up like, oh, we do all these things. You know, another part of the story when he talks about, you know, these other groups we work with, one of those groups and we know, because we covered this 15 years ago, was the American Enterprise Institute that was offering $10,000 to any scientist willing to put their name on a paper, challenging the well-accepted science of climate change.
Mike Papantonio: They’re called, they’re called biostitutes.
Farron Cousins: Right.
Mike Papantonio: Okay. They’re called biostitutes. They find some professor, somebody who’s got credentials, they’re at the end of their career. Would you please write this story? Oh, better yet. We’ll write it for you and we will not put our name on it, but you’ll write it. And then you’ll put it in one of these cover groups. One of these dark cover groups where it doesn’t look like it came from us, but we’re actually paying for it. And this has been going, this is elaborate, elaborate. I love that Greenpeace caught them. Greenpeace did what they needed to do. They knew this guy was a big mouth bragger talking about how talented he is. Talking about how he’s pulled the wool over the American public’s eyes on things like carbon tax. How about that? You know, I thought it was interesting. I don’t know if you caught this, but in the discussion about carbon tax, they said, they said we’re going to support a carbon tax because they actually knew that it would never pass anyway. Right?
Farron Cousins: That’s, that’s all part of their greenwashing campaign. So they can say, listen, we’re pushing for action on climate change. We’re pushing for a carbon tax. It’s those darn politicians, by the way, we’re not gonna mention that we’ve been paying all of them off, but it’s those darn politicians that aren’t doing anything about this. We’re just a little old company. We’re doing the best we can. But we’ve known all this has taken place for years. It’s just now public knowledge.
Mike Papantonio: Keep covering it in your articles. Your articles are great on this.
Farron Cousins: Thank you.
