America’s Lawyer E05: The baby formula shortage is causing serious problems in America, and we’ll explain both the political and corporate failures that got us into this mess. Wall Street banks and hedge funds are buying up homes across America, pricing many Americans out of the market completely – we’ll bring you the details. And independent media is getting crushed on YouTube, and a pending piece of corporate-friendly legislation could be to blame. All that, and more is coming up, so don’t go anywhere – America’s Lawyer starts right now.
Transcript:
*This transcript was generated by a third-party transcription software company, so please excuse any typos.
Mike Papantonio: Hi, I’m Mike Papantonio and this is America’s Lawyer. The baby formula shortage is causing serious problems in America and we’ll explain both the political reasons and the corporate failures that led us here. Wall Street banks and hedge funds are, they’re buying up homes across America, pricing many Americans out of the market completely. We’ll bring you the details. And independent media is getting crushed on YouTube and a pending piece of corporate friendly legislation could be to blame. We’re gonna talk about all those things and more coming up. Don’t go anywhere. America’s Lawyer starts right now.
Baby formula remains in short supply in the United States and the Biden administration is struggling to come up with an answer about why. Ring of Fire’s Farron Cousins joins me now to talk about this and many other issues. You know, as I look at this story, we’ve been talking about the supply chain for a long time.
Farron Cousins: Yeah.
Mike Papantonio: There’s some very obvious things and that is, this administration wants to act like it’s not a problem. I don’t know why. They have Buttigieg out there. His, he was on the Sunday talk show saying, well, the reason we have a, a supply problem with baby formula it has nothing to do with government. He said, government, we don’t make, we don’t make this product. It was the craziest response I’ve ever heard. And I think he’s on his last leg. I really do believe this is the second hit for him.
Farron Cousins: It, it really is. And you know, he’s, he’s also come out later in the week and said, listen, you know, I, I have twins. It’s obviously a very personal issue for me. So he’s trying to do a little bit of damage control there, but people got the first impression there, right? They’re angry. They’re scared. I mean, people are terrified right now. How can I feed my baby?
Mike Papantonio: Right.
Farron Cousins: Without this formula. And for anybody that doesn’t have children that may not have gone through this formula for many parents is the only option. Especially if you’re having to send the child to daycare. You know, if, if you’re a father that has a child and, and the mother passed away or, or anything like that. There’s all kinds of situations where, you know, Bette Midler, I’m sorry to, Bette Midler came out last week and said, well, just breastfeed. That solves the problem.
Mike Papantonio: I know, it was just, so.
Farron Cousins: Just absolutely boneheaded response.
Mike Papantonio: Blind, it was blind.
Farron Cousins: Yeah. I mean, that’s not an option for many parents. So, they’re scared, they’re angry and they’re wondering, how am I going to feed my child tomorrow? And this administration, unfortunately, they didn’t cause the problem, but they don’t have any answers either.
Mike Papantonio: What’s really bad for the administration is that this is a microcosm. You see the GOP and they’re already doing, they’re beating Biden and Buttigieg to death. My disappointment in Buttigieg is not coming to the aid of Biden. It’s like, he’s protecting himself. He should be protecting the president.
Farron Cousins: Yeah.
Mike Papantonio: You know, if you really, you really think about it, Buttigieg comes out and says, well, we’ve been working hard on this since February. Well, you didn’t tell, you didn’t tell the president because he didn’t know about it until a week and a half ago. Literally that’s, it’s the first time it came to, came to his radar. But this is that microcosm that they can really beat the Democrats to death and they’ve, they’ve grabbed ahold of it already. Haven’t they?
Farron Cousins: Right. I mean, this is such a hard political issue to overcome just, you know, in the pure, you know, political standpoint of this. If your opponent is able to run an attack ad saying that because of your failures, babies are starving. It doesn’t get more powerful than that for an American family. I mean, this, this is a huge political problem in an already contentious midterm election race that we have going on right now. I don’t know how you undo this, especially with these midterms, these attacks, the administration, not having a good response to it.
Mike Papantonio: You can say it in 15 seconds.
Farron Cousins: Yep.
Mike Papantonio: That’s the problem. Anything you can attack him with in 15 seconds, seconds, is a problem for him and the people around him need to step the hell up.
Farron Cousins: Yeah.
Mike Papantonio: And they need to take some responsibility. It’s not his job. It’s their job. Yes, he hired them, but it’s their job. And if they don’t do that, it’s gonna get worse and worse as the midterms approach.
A whistleblowers come forward with information about the negligence at Abbott that helped create the baby formula shortage. You know, Abbott is getting all this attention, but you know, Nestle is really the biggest manufacturer.
Farron Cousins: Yeah.
Mike Papantonio: And Nestle, you know, we know you and I have done a dozen stories on Nestle. They are complete psychopaths.
Farron Cousins: The, the worst corporation on the planet.
Mike Papantonio: There’s no, actually at one they may have been voted the worst. They certainly come up in the first, in the first five, every year when we look at their conduct. But pick it up from there, you know, pick up that first part of the story.
Farron Cousins: Yeah. So what we know now is that obviously there were major problems at Abbott’s processing facility, their packing facility, where they packaged all the baby formulas, shipped it out to the United States. And this was a plant in Sturgis, Michigan. They had a massive bacterial outbreak that actually killed two babies that were drinking their formula. And a whistleblower came out months ago.
Mike Papantonio: Yeah.
Farron Cousins: Before there was this shortage and warned regulatory agencies, they’re, they’re covering up their data. They’re lying to you. They’re falsifying records. They’re doing all of these horrible things. They fired me for calling them out on it. So you got retaliation there too. Do something because they’re killing babies.
Mike Papantonio: Yeah. I mean the list, the list comes right outta the book. Here’s what they found ’em doing. As you said, completely falsifying records, making stuff up and saying we did these tests when they didn’t do it. Releasing untested infant formula. There’s steps they have to go to before the end product is released. They didn’t do that. FDA 19, of the 2019 audit FDA got hustled. Of course the FDA always gets hustled. It’s not anything to pull, to pull the wool over the FDA’s eyes. The, the list is at this point has been out there since February of the things they haven’t done. Now again, this, the problem with this though, is that it ties into the, the whole thing we started this conversation about. It’s just easy to talk about. Abbott’s not gonna take the hit here. You have the Democrats trying to put it on Abbott. Really the problem I’m wondering about, and this hasn’t been discussed, this all seemed to start when a couple of things happen.
When the major lawsuit that we brought and some other lawyers brought in this country against the, against the formula industry for what they call NEC. It’s a, it’s where a preemie baby drinks the baby formula. Shouldn’t be given the baby formula because it’s a cows milk based and the enzymes cause their intestines basically to disintegrate and the baby buys, dies a horrible death. And, and you’re, you’re wondering, and this, this is a serious question. It’s not, this is not conspiracy stuff because we’ve seen industry do this before. Is the industry now saying, hey, you can’t live without us. How dare you bring this lawsuit? It’s a big lawsuit. It’s one of the biggest in the country right now. And it’s been brought in what they call an MDL. And we’ve seen it happen with other products before. We’ve seen it happen with pharmaceuticals where they say, you’re gonna attack us. Great. We’re gonna make the pharmaceutical disappear. What is your take on that? Is that, is that overreaching? Because that’s not just my theory. That theory is, you know, writers have talked about this.
Farron Cousins: I, I, I think it’s very plausible because right now the, these manufacturers of these baby formulas have the upper hand and to be perfectly honest, they have had the upper hand since about 2014, they put together this Infant Nutrition Council of America.
Mike Papantonio: Yeah.
Farron Cousins: They got their regulations weakened. Allowed to do all kinds of things without tests. So they have been exerting their power for many, many years and now that there is this shortage, everybody’s begging them. Please, you have to save us.
Mike Papantonio: Save us.
Farron Cousins: They get to emerge as heroes when they’re actually the villains. Democrats can’t package that in a 15 second ad. Republicans have their messaging. The truth gets buried.
Mike Papantonio: Yeah.
Farron Cousins: And, and it’s terrifying.
Mike Papantonio: Yeah. The corporation takes it, wow, we pulled that over ’em because now this lawsuit that’s been brought, now understand they’ve known for decades that the product they were selling were, was killing preemie babies. And it’s not just a, the, this is where I read a story where a nurse had to leave her job taking care of the NEC babies that were affected by this formula because she couldn’t stand the screaming and they have to basically keep ’em completely sedated the last days of their lives because it’s so painful. So I don’t know where this is gonna go. I do know that it doesn’t bode well for this administration. They, they’ve gotta dig themselves out of another problem. Along with inflation, along with gas, along with, you know, a pending recession potential.
Farron Cousins: Yeah.
Mike Papantonio: Along with a border issue. They now on top of that, they gotta deal with this. And it’s just, it’s, it’s like that last straw on the camels back, isn’t it?
Farron Cousins: Yeah, absolutely. And of course, when you’re talking about babies, when you have these kinds of problems, like you said, the Republicans already have the upper hand on the messaging. They’re using the messaging. It’s effective. You can’t package everything we just said with the whistleblower, the.
Mike Papantonio: No, you can’t.
Farron Cousins: The, you know.
Mike Papantonio: To answer it.
Farron Cousins: The nutrition council, it’s all true and it, it is the what’s happening. But to package that and sell it to the average, you know, working class American, their eyes are gonna roll back in their head and they’re gonna say, stop. I can’t, I don’t understand.
Mike Papantonio: Yeah. It’s the 15 second rule.
Farron Cousins: Right.
Mike Papantonio: The Dems, the Dems have lost the 15 second rule to the GOP on this topic.
The meatpacking industry helped push for an executive order that allowed them to stay open, but it resulted in hundreds of deaths of the workers. Remember we covered this.
Farron Cousins: Yep.
Mike Papantonio: When the, as soon as this all started happening, we started covering this story because we were getting people calling and, and they’re saying, look, I think I have COVID and they’re making it sound like I simply have a flu. And they would go to work and they would then infect everybody around them. And people died in these meatpacking, in this meatpacking the numbers were staggering compared if you just took their numbers to the normal population, the numbers were staggering.
Farron Cousins: Well, there was a time in this country when more than 10% of the COVID cases were coming from meatpacking plants. I mean, that’s how bad these conditions were for these workers. And so what happened here and this is a truly disgusting stories. All of these CEOs get together. You have Smithfield, you have Tyson, you have the national chicken group, whatever they’re called. They’re all having these phone calls with each other saying, what can we do?
Mike Papantonio: Mm-hmm.
Farron Cousins: We need to stress the importance of, of meat and getting it out there.
Mike Papantonio: Oh, we remember that. Don’t you?
Farron Cousins: Yeah.
Mike Papantonio: What happened there? Don’t you remember the meat shortage crisis?
Farron Cousins: Yep.
Mike Papantonio: Just like the baby formula shortage crisis. They hustled that. We caught ’em hustling it. We knew they had enough supplies, but they were saying to the American public and saying to politicians, if you don’t let us break the law, if you don’t let us kill a few people, we can’t deliver this product to you. And what they were doing is bringing people from over the border, right?
Farron Cousins: Yep.
Mike Papantonio: Immigrant workers, putting them in this meatpacking business. If they died, they simply shipped them home. Chamber of Commerce loved that.
Farron Cousins: Yeah. And you just replace them with the next man up in line there. And you got this endless supply of expendable labor as they like to look at it.
Mike Papantonio: Yeah.
Farron Cousins: And, and then of course it goes deeper. They’re having these phone calls, they’re saying, oh whoa is me. What do we do? And then I think it was the Tyson CEO came up with the brilliant idea. Let’s write the executive order ourselves.
Mike Papantonio: Yeah.
Farron Cousins: And send it through Mark Meadows because they had this, you know, direct line to Trump’s chief of staff. He puts it in front of Trump. And of course it gets signed because, hey, we’re in a meat shortage. Everybody needs to eat. And that’s how they framed it because the meatpacking industry made them frame it that way. They were allowed to craft the talking points. They drove the narrative and they put hundreds, if not thousands of people into early graves, just so we could have bacon back on store shelves.
Mike Papantonio: Okay. Has that directive changed?
Farron Cousins: No.
Mike Papantonio: No. This administration has not changed the directive. The Chamber of Commerce again, we always, I don’t know why people miss this story. The border is not about compassion. Trust me. It is not about compassion. It’s about bringing in workers in the United States. If they’re on the job site and they lose an arm, no problem ship ’em back. If they’re working in a meat factory and they die of COVID that could have been prevented. No problem. Ship the body back. They don’t have to pay workers compensation for that. There is no lawsuit that they’re gonna collect on there. They, it’s, it’s expendable labor as you put it. And that’s part of the program that’s happening right at the border right now. And everybody’s looking at ,and the media is totally missing the fact that’s being driven by the Chamber of Commerce and Biden bought into that.
Farron Cousins: Well, and Tyson foods has been one of the leaders through the Chamber in making sure that nothing ever changes with immigration.
Mike Papantonio: Yeah.
Farron Cousins: You know, we had talked about that probably over a decade ago, Tyson foods being involved in that, crafting the narrative, it was with the Bush administration. They’re meeting with him, making sure he doesn’t close off the border so they can keep that supply of labor coming.
Mike Papantonio: Interesting. Republicans have always been that vacuum for, for Chamber of Commerce dollars. Big business, hell with consumers. That’s always been the mantra of the GOP. It’s always been what we brand them. It’s their brand. Hell with consumers. We need big business and we’ll do whatever you want. Now all of a sudden, the Chamber of Commerce is giving the big money to the Democrats. And that started, that actually started before Obama’s time was up as president.
Farron Cousins: Right. They, they kind of saw things shifting a little bit. They knew that Obama was trying to crack down on the border and said, okay, well we’ve gotta fix this.
Mike Papantonio: Mm-hmm.
Farron Cousins: Because typically Republicans use the border as a political rallying point.
Mike Papantonio: Yeah.
Farron Cousins: But they don’t ever do anything about it. And Trump started to try to build his wall. So they said, okay, well we’ve gotta get a friendly administration that’s just gonna let this come in. And so that’s what happens here and it’s all so they can exploit these workers.
Mike Papantonio: Yeah.
Farron Cousins: It, it’s not because, oh, we’re gonna, you’re gonna get a better life. No, we’re gonna pay you below minimum wage. We’re gonna put you in the worst conditions possible. And guess what? If you go and complain to the Feds about us putting you in an unsafe condition, you get in trouble and you get shipped back and we just bring in somebody else.
Mike Papantonio: You, you’re going back to El Salvador, man.
Farron Cousins: Yeah.
Mike Papantonio: Greedy Wall Street bankers well, they’re at it again. They’re buying up homes across the country and reselling them at ridiculous markups, creating a housing bubble and that bubble could pop anytime. Haven’t we seen this before.
Farron Cousins: Yep.
Mike Papantonio: I mean, and this is the same story. Pick, pick up, pick this story up. It’s, it’s, it’s crazy.
Farron Cousins: Yeah. What we’re starting to see and it’s getting worse every financial quarter is the percentage of new homes being purchased by big banks, hedge fund investment firms, whatever they are, keeps increasing to the point where you’ve got some cities, you know, big cities, Florida and Las Vegas and Georgia and North Carolina, where 30% of the market is going to these big investment banks. JP Morgan just spent $45 million on an entire neighborhood over in Florida, they bought all the houses. They bought the whole development. And what they’re gonna do is they buy ’em for, you know, X amount of dollars. They multiply that times two and sell it back to people at the inflated price because they, they’ve cornered the market.
Mike Papantonio: And in the process they have all of these tax benefits. They have regulatory benefits that for some reason we won’t change. It’s very easy to change these tax giveaways. That’s why they’re doing this. They’re doing it because as you point out, it’s a, it’s a double your money investment, but it’s triple your money when you add in the tax benefits that they get. The, the regulatory loopholes that they are forgiven. They’re forgiven if you go in and do this, it’s okay if you’re. You know, it got so crazy, they, they put together, most of these big banks put together these hit teams and the hit teams would go door to door in neighborhoods. They would call you on the phone. Can we buy your house? They would email you. They would write letters to you. We wanna buy your house. It was this massive influx of these hit, you know, these hit men that just wanted to buy up everything they could. Right?
Farron Cousins: Well, and the, the problem is a lot of people felt like, oh, you’re offering me, you know, 20% more than what my house is worth.
Mike Papantonio: Yeah, yeah.
Farron Cousins: So I’ll make out like a bandit. They sell their home, then go to buy another one only to realize what I just got for my house, I can’t, I can’t afford to live here anymore now.
Mike Papantonio: Yeah. And you can’t go anywhere else.
Farron Cousins: Right. Because I didn’t, I didn’t bother to look to see if things were available when I sold.
Mike Papantonio: Yeah.
Farron Cousins: And so they get trapped in these. Okay. Well now you’ve gotta rent this house from the same bank you just sold your house to.
Mike Papantonio: Yeah, yeah.
Farron Cousins: For twice what you were paying in your mortgage, and this is a real crisis and, and Florida is actually statistically the worst in the country right now.
Mike Papantonio: Oh, Florida is the worst in the country. But it’s so easily solved. It’s just so easily solved. They can solve it in Washington in an afternoon. Take away these benefits. Take away these tax loopholes. That, that, that would make this.
Farron Cousins: Well, the city of New, well, the state of New Jersey has done that.
Mike Papantonio: Oh, that’s right. You’re right.
Farron Cousins: They have now taken the lead and they said, we’re, we’re not gonna let you do this. We’re not gonna let you over inflate the values of these homes. They’re cracking down on it in New Jersey because they see what it does to their people.
Mike Papantonio: How does a young couple trying to start a life afford what’s out there right now? They can’t. And that’s, that’s part of, that’s part of what New Jersey realized.
Farron Cousins: Well, they’re gonna do what I had to do, which was you wait for the market to crash. We found a foreclosure in a nice neighborhood, snatched it up at the time. And that’s where we’re headed because eventually you’re gonna have all these homes that will not sell. So you’ve got a glut on the market and that’s when the crash comes.
Mike Papantonio: Stick around. It’s gonna happen. Right?
Farron Cousins: Yeah.
Mike Papantonio: The Biden administration’s getting their lawyers ready for two years of investigations if Republicans win the midterms and I gotta tell you right now, all the numbers are looking like they’re going to sweep the midterms. So, okay. So the investigations it starts with, with Biden. It starts with, you know, that’s the first, the whole Biden family they’re trying to bring into the Hunter Biden story. Hillary’s, Hillary’s process of creating this Russian collusion story.
Farron Cousins: Right. With the, with the Durham type stuff, yeah.
Mike Papantonio: With the Durham. Yeah. The, the handling of COVID. That’s gonna be a. The, the targeting Fauci. That’s gonna be targeted. Messing, the messy withdrawal of Afghanistan. I mean, can’t you just see these?
Farron Cousins: Oh yeah.
Mike Papantonio: All the, this is what, and it’s a big mistake for the Republicans because when we saw the Democrats do it, they got their butts kicked.
Farron Cousins: Well and.
Mike Papantonio: Because of it.
Farron Cousins: And what’s interesting, is you’ve actually had a couple Republicans, I think Kevin McCarthy was one of them a few months ago, where he warned his members because they had started the rumblings, oh we’re gonna investigate you. Get ready we’re gonna subpoena everybody and everything. And McCarthy said, guys, hold up, listen, if we spend the next two years of doing this, we, I mean maybe we can get ’em on something.
Mike Papantonio: Can’t do it.
Farron Cousins: But, but he also said we’re setting ourselves up for failure in 2024.
Mike Papantonio: That’s right.
Farron Cousins: Because if we walk in and for two years we have no accomplishments kind of like this administration right now.
Mike Papantonio: Yeah.
Farron Cousins: We’re toast in 2024. People are gonna say, well, we brought you in to fix it and you, you wasted our time. We’re going back to the Democrats.
Mike Papantonio: They can’t help themselves, Farron. They, they can’t help themselves. It’s, it’s genetics. It’s DNA that’s gonna make ’em do it. And you know, it’s good news for Democrats. It’s the best, it’s the worst thing these guys can do. It’s good news for Democrats.
Farron Cousins: So, so you lose the battle of 2022, but maybe you win the war in 2024.
Mike Papantonio: And, of course the media loves it. The media loves it.
Farron Cousins: Oh yeah.
Mike Papantonio: And they encourage it. They encourage the investigations. But it’s terrible.
Farron Cousins: You get televised hearings and, you know, maybe Hunter Biden’s laptop finally shows up somewhere.
Mike Papantonio: Yeah. And we find out what, what was his password? I can’t even, it’s just so crazy.
A former Arby’s manager has admitted to urinating in milkshake mix. Wow. Is, it’s being investigated. He’s also being investigated for child pornography. This guy was, now you can’t blame it on Arby’s. Although I can’t even, what is that mystery meat that they? I don’t even know what it is that they put in an Arby’s sandwich. But now, okay. Now the milkshakes. Pick it up from there.
Farron Cousins: Uh, this was a truly bizarre story just because obviously it started with this former manager getting investigated for distribution and possession of child pornography. And he admitted to cops he’s like, yes, I’m, I’m sexually attracted to, to children. And then as they’re conducting their investigation and questioning of him it’s oh, by the way, um, I also would pee in the milkshake mix a couple times for, as he said, sexual gratification. But then he says, oh, don’t worry. I’m, I’m almost positive that I threw those batches out.
Mike Papantonio: Mm.
Farron Cousins: And they, they looked through the security footage at Arby’s. They found him actually peeing in the milkshake mix. They didn’t see him throw it away though. So.
Mike Papantonio: Where this story lands to me is, what does an employer do? I mean, really. You, you’re, you’re first of all, there’s an employment shortage. People are not wanting to work. I mean, what does Arby’s do? I mean, how do they identify this guy? It’s virtually impossible and it’s almost caveat emptor nowadays, isn’t it? Well, whatever you’re doing buyer beware, whether it’s a milkshake now. You gotta be careful.
Farron Cousins: Well, and it is a really interesting story because, because of that angle, how do you screen for this? Right.
Mike Papantonio: I don’t know.
Farron Cousins: You can’t potentially go through everybody’s computers in the interview process to see if you’re hiding child pornography on there. So there has to be a better way for companies to kind of make sure that you’re not hiring a milkshake pee’er, I guess. But you know, if you’re, if you’re going anywhere just.
Mike Papantonio: Well, you know, if you’re gonna eat that weird sandwich, you know, God bless you.
Independent media outlets are getting destroyed by YouTube and a pending piece of legislation could be why that’s happening. You and I did this story a while back and it, it, the, the reason it’s such an important story is where you have this corporate media cartel run by three owners, the big three that own all of corporate media. And the, what they’re trying to do is put independent news, programs just like this out of business. And they’re, they’re doing a pretty darn good job of it right now by spreading around billions of dollars to Google and YouTube and saying, hey, we want to pay our way in and we want you to minimize the impact of independent media.
Farron Cousins: Right. This is a very weird piece of legislation because it’s being sold to the public under a completely false pretense.
Mike Papantonio: Mm-hmm.
Farron Cousins: It’s the journalism competition and preservation act, JCPA. And what the JCPA says it wants to do is we just wanna level the playing field. We wanna make sure if, if Facebook or Google, if they’re sharing the story from your outlet that you get compensated accordingly.
Mike Papantonio: Mm-hmm.
Farron Cousins: And so who’s gonna determine what appropriate compensation is. Oh, well, let’s put together a panel of these big multimedia companies. You know, you got your New York Times, your Fox news, your NBCs, they’re gonna be the ones who create what they’re describing as the media cartel that gets to set these rates and of course, directly negotiate with these big tech giants. And we know how that will end if this becomes law.
Mike Papantonio: Well, okay, look, I’m, I’m gonna date myself. Air America, you were working with me all the way back to the Air America days. You were a producer for Air America. It was Al Franken, Janeane Garofalo, Bobby Kennedy, Chuck D, just this really, Cenk Uygur, just incredible lineup of, of people that were trying to introduce progressive radio into the vast market. All right. When we saw, saw this happening back then, the people who got nervous was corporate media, because we weren’t telling the corporate media stories. We weren’t worried about advertisers that are telling us, no, you can’t, you can’t do this story about this product that’s killing people. We, we didn’t worry about it. And so corporate media has been dumbed down to where not only do they not tell those stories, but now the American public is seeing that they’re not getting really good news from places like CNN or MSNBC or Fox, because it’s so jaded and it’s so, it’s so arranged. So there’s cable cutting taking place all over the, all over the country right now.
Farron Cousins: Yeah. And those networks do, you know, to a degree, they walk on eggshells. We can’t say anything hyper offensive or else we’re gonna turn off the advertisers. And more importantly, we’ve gotta make sure it’s YouTube ready. That’s the point of these segments. Short, quick, make it to where YouTube cannot object to any of it, make it broad enough to where it’s gonna show up in your suggested feed, no matter what you’re watching. And that really is what is killing the independent media here.
Mike Papantonio: Because we talk about details.
Farron Cousins: Right.
Mike Papantonio: We talk about stories behind the story.
Farron Cousins: And it is all connected too, with this JCPA, because these outlets understand these corporate media groups are now going to be the ones who are gonna be negotiating. We gotta keep ’em happy so they don’t demand a high price.
Mike Papantonio: Right.
Farron Cousins: What better way to do that than to push their content and push out independent media. Now.
Mike Papantonio: It’s already happening.
Farron Cousins: Well, it is.
Mike Papantonio: If you go, if I go to one of your segments on Ring of Fire, whatever you’re talking about, you would think, okay, Farron is talking about this story. Right. So, so behind there, if you look at the lineup that comes behind you, it’s gonna be MSNBC, MSNBC, MSNBC, CNN, CNN, CNN, Fox, Fox Fox. Why is that? They’re not talking about this topic, but they’re buying their way into, as soon as your video goes off, they are, they’re put up there. Whether somebody wants to, to follow their stupid story or not, it’s automatic pilot. That’s what Google and that’s what YouTube is doing right now.
Farron Cousins: Right. And, and, you know, I’ve talked to all sorts of people that do this on YouTube every single day as well. They’ve all seen their traffic decrease. And a lot of it is because you’re not showing up in those recommended videos anymore. We have had plenty of people email us over the last years.
Mike Papantonio: Saying, where are you?
Farron Cousins: Saying I was watching your video. I stepped away. Now it’s CNN. Why, why is this happening?
Mike Papantonio: Right.
Farron Cousins: So it is this algorithmic shift that takes place every so often with YouTube. But every time it shifts, it’s more and more corporate.
Mike Papantonio: It’s, it’s not, look, it’s not an accident.
Farron Cousins: Right.
Mike Papantonio: Oh, you got, you’ve got the big three spreading so much money around. Google is eating it up. YouTube is eating it up and they say, oh, we, we don’t wanna say this, but oh, by the way, we’re gonna put you as the next related story. MSNBC, you’re the next related story. CNN, you’re the next related story. Doesn’t matter whether it’s related at all. And it, you know, doesn’t it make sense if you do a video and you’re doing a story that your next video should come up? No.
Farron Cousins: That’s how it used to be many years ago, yeah.
Mike Papantonio: It used to, it used to be like that. But now corporate media is in charge. Keep, keep cutting your cable. That’s the best advice I can give you because CNN obviously couldn’t do this. They, they stream for what? 48 hours or something like that, then they were gone. All right. Farron, thank you for joining me. Okay.
Farron Cousins: Thank you.
Mike Papantonio: That’s all for this week, but all of these segments are gonna be available this coming week right here on YouTube channel. And you can follow us on Twitter at America’s Lawyer. I’m Mike Papantonio and this has been America’s Lawyer where we tell you the stories that corporate media simply won’t tell you because their advertisers won’t let ’em or their political connections don’t allow for it. We’ll see you next time.
