America’s Lawyer E24: Employers are trapping their workers in a new form of indentured servitude – where it could cost you thousands of dollars if you quit your job. We’ll explain what’s happening. The US military has a new tool to spy on anyone on the internet – and the chances of that being abused are through the roof. And President Biden says he isn’t 100% sure he’ll run for President again in 2024 – and that’s some welcome news for a lot of Democrats. 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. Employers are trapping their workers in a new form of indentured servitude where it could cost you thousands of dollars to quit your job and we’ll explain what’s happening. The US military, well, they have a new tool to spy on anyone on the internet and the chances of that being abused are really all the way through the roof. And President Biden, well, he says he isn’t a hundred percent sure whether he’s gonna run for president in 2024 and that’s welcome news for a lot of Democrats. All that more it’s coming up. Don’t go anywhere. America’s Lawyer starts right now.
Companies in the United States are using contracts to trap workers in jobs that they hate, creating a new form of indentured servitude. I’ve got Farron Cousins from Ring of Fire with me to talk about that and a lot of other things. You know, this is, this of course, this takes us back to the, the, the indentured servants that we’re used to seeing in farming, immigrants that come in. They have the company store, you have to buy your food here, and then at the end of the month they don’t have any money or else they, in this situation, it’s a little more sophisticated, isn’t it?
Farron Cousins: Yeah, it is. What employers are doing right now in order to trap people in jobs that either aren’t paying well or jobs that they just simply don’t like, is they’re saying, okay, if you don’t work here for X number of years and you leave, you have to repay us thousands and thousands of dollars for your so-called training to even work this job. And this is happening across industries. I mean, we’re talking about, pet groomers. There’s actually a class action lawsuit about that.
Mike Papantonio: Pet, PetSmart is being sued.
Farron Cousins: Yeah. Truck drivers, nurses, all kinds of service workers in general.
Mike Papantonio: Yeah.
Farron Cousins: It’s terrifying for these people.
Mike Papantonio: Well, they call it specialty training. They say, you know, you can’t go anywhere and not get this kind of training where it’s not gonna cost money. So if you’re gonna cost us money and you don’t stay here more than 24 months, you owe us that money back. And it’s, it’s a lot more beyond that. I mean, you’ve got, you’ve got, where there’s advances, pay advances, and they say, well, we’re gonna give you an advanced paycheck. And that advanced paycheck is something that they never catch up with. It’s impossible to catch up with. So this value of training debt, that’s generally what it’s called. And right now, my, my take on it is the courts have, they have enforced some of them. But I think you’ve also got, you’ve got something that you have the unconscionability doctrine. A judge can look at and say, yeah, I see this is a contract, but I think it’s unconscionable. And they’ve got a lot of leeway to say, I’m not gonna allow this. I think that’s the way this is gonna go, to tell you truth.
Farron Cousins: Hopefully. And what’s really ironic, you know, disgustingly ironic about this program is that it’s called the Training Repayment Agreement Provision, which the acronym of that is TRAP. It’s literally called a TRAP that they’re putting these workers into to force them to pay back this training. And a lot of times, you know, this is something the courts have to take into consideration too, these employees are straight up told, we offer the free training. So they’re told it is free. There is no cost for this. So that, that could come into play as well.
Mike Papantonio: The idea is we’re gonna train you into something that has, it’s gonna have crossover value. You can go to this company, you can go to that company. But the word that they do use is come to work with us and we’re gonna take you through a course that’s going to gonna give you value.
Farron Cousins: Yeah.
Mike Papantonio: You’re gonna be able to use, to use this everywhere. Well, it’s just the opposite. I mean, it’s, there’s no really truth to it. First of all, there’s no special accreditation. They’re not getting a special license. You know, you’re not a specialized license groomer at PetSmart and that’s going to translate to big money somewhere else. It’s a scam. It’s just another scam and the courts have a way to do something about it. Like I say, if you have something that’s so unconscionable that it looks like slave peonage, what they call peonage, then they can do something about it.
Amazon has hired a former private prison executive to run their warehouse training. Wow. Is that poetic or what? So they get this woman that is a specialist in, in how to control prisoners. How do you put ’em in there and control them day to day in several different ways? Pick it up if you would.
Farron Cousins: Right. I mean, this is almost comically evil for, for Amazon to even do this because we already know, obviously there’s horrendous conditions at Amazon warehouses. Right.
Mike Papantonio: Mm-hmm.
Farron Cousins: We’ve had people die, their covid protections were non-existent. You know, the stories of people peeing in bottles because they’re not allowed to take lunch breaks.
Mike Papantonio: Mm-hmm.
Farron Cousins: One point, you know, whatever packages per minute they have to pack. So they’re like, how could we make this more efficient? Well, what if we just ran it like a prison?
Mike Papantonio: Mm-hmm.
Farron Cousins: Because that is what these workers are already used to. So we bring in this woman Dayna Howard, who used to be with the Corrections Corporation of America, which is one of the worst.
Mike Papantonio: Biggest, biggest private prison industry.
Farron Cousins: Yeah.
Mike Papantonio: I mean, it’s the biggest in that industry.
Farron Cousins: They are. And they actually had to change their name because they were doing so many bad things and had bad reputation. So they say, well, this woman was kind of overseeing a lot of these horrible things at CoreCivic, let’s bring her in so that she can show us how to treat our warehouses.
Mike Papantonio: Yeah.
Farron Cousins: The same way.
Mike Papantonio: Well, okay, so it’s not, it’s how do you control prisoners? I mean, how do you get ’em in line? How do you get ’em from point A to point B? I know all the secrets and I’m gonna do the same thing for Amazon. And so this, the other thing is her specialty was how do you prevent prisoners from stealing? Did you see that?
Farron Cousins: Yeah.
Mike Papantonio: You know, like they have access to a lot of stuff and they can put it out on the black market by way they send it out the prison. And so her thing was how do we prevent prisoners from stealing? And I’m sure that has some holdover to this, to this new job too, don’t you think?
Farron Cousins: Right, absolutely. Because obviously if you’re in an Amazon warehouse, there are all kinds of products, big and small, all up and down the shelves. So yeah, if you’re a big company, you do not want people stealing from you.
Mike Papantonio: Mm-hmm.
Farron Cousins: But you also need to understand the optics of running your warehouses like a prison.
Mike Papantonio: The optics are terrible. I just wonder who’s advising on this. You know, I’m sure she’s good at what she does, but it’s just, when you’re under the kind of scrutiny that this company’s under all the time, every week there’s a new awful story about Amazon.
Farron Cousins: There is.
Mike Papantonio: You know, what the hell? I mean, you know, why don’t you get somebody that hasn’t come from the prison industry?
The US military recently purchased a massive new surveillance program that could give them access to everything that’s online. Well, you know what, I, let me tell you about when I saw this story. I, I had been doing some reading that it really is troubling to me and it’s troubling because there’s, the millennials don’t seem to give a whether they’re being monitored or not. They, they, I mean, if you take a division in age groups, baby boomer, boomers, yes, they don’t like it. Older baby boomers, yes, they don’t like it even more. Millennials, maybe Xers and millennials, they think about it differently. They think it’s just a cost of doing business so they can have access to the stuff they want.
Farron Cousins: Right. A lot of them have the mentality, well, I’m not doing anything wrong, so what does it matter? You know, forget civil liberties, forget all of that. You know, let’s just, you can have my data. It doesn’t matter. It’s not important.
Mike Papantonio: It’s just, it’s amazing, man.
Farron Cousins: And we should be terrified that the United States military has bought this program, Augury is what it’s called.
Mike Papantonio: Yes. Yeah.
Farron Cousins: And they can use this, they can just pay and the company will hand them over data, email activity, website activity, cookie data that is on their computers. It lets them know every single thing an individual has done. And Augury was basically started for corporations.
Mike Papantonio: Yeah. Have you ever even heard of Motherboard?
Farron Cousins: A little bit, a little bit.
Mike Papantonio: Okay. I had not really heard. I, I knew that they had organizations, but Motherboard apparently is the king of this process scrape and sell, right?
Farron Cousins: Yeah. And, and so again, this was started for corporations so they can get your data and target you with ads and sell you stuff. And the military saw the application of that, they said, well, wait a minute. If you know what websites this person’s going to, you know who they’re emailing and what they’re saying in the email, maybe we should have that. Maybe we need to know that. You know, so, so we can, we can track the hackers, they say. We, we gotta make sure we’re cutting down on cyber crimes. So NCIS is actually the big military organization that is buying this left and right. And the scariest part.
Mike Papantonio: With, with no warrants.
Farron Cousins: Exactly.
Mike Papantonio: It’s completely warrantless searches. Now, again, let me come back to the basic concept that just should startle everybody, including millennials, if you’re a millennial. And that is that they’re willing to trade off this right to privacy because they, because the internet has functions that they want.
Farron Cousins: Yeah.
Mike Papantonio: In other words, I want this and I want it so bad, I’m willing to let you into every little secret of my life, my home, whatever, my job, whatever I do, you can have it, no problem, because I’m not worried about it. And then the second thing is they, they’ve always assumed, they’ve come up, it’s a generation that’s come up and has always assumed that this just goes on. Yeah. When I, when I go into that world, this is gonna go on. So what do I have to complain about, right?
Farron Cousins: Well, and another scary part of this too is that this is the government’s way of getting around the whole, I need to have a warrant, which means I have to have probable cause.
Mike Papantonio: Right.
Farron Cousins: Now it’s the same data where five years ago you would have to have a warrant.
Mike Papantonio: Yeah.
Farron Cousins: But now they go to Augury and they say, hey, I got a thousand dollars here. Gimme some data.
Mike Papantonio: What, what, what gen, are you an Xer?
Farron Cousins: No, I’m, I’m on the upper end of the millennials.
Mike Papantonio: Okay. Did you, did, did you have to take civics in school? Did they, did they teach civics, did you take it?
Farron Cousins: We, we did a little bit.
Mike Papantonio: Okay. Did they.
Farron Cousins: Mostly economics.
Mike Papantonio: Did, did they teach history about what happens when this goes bad? I’m, I’m really, I’m curious about it because when I was coming up, that was a big deal. You took civics and it was a big deal and they talked about things like right to privacy. They talked about the Fourth Amendment. They talked about searches and seizures and warrantless searches. It was a big deal.
Farron Cousins: Right.
Mike Papantonio: Did they not do that when you were coming up?
Farron Cousins: No. Really, they did not. You know, our, our history classes kind of ended right at the end of World War II. We dropped the bomb, we win. That’s it. You’re good to go graduate now. But, but I do, I do wanna point something else out here because this, this is actually truly terrifying here because we have.
Mike Papantonio: The whole story’s terrifying.
Farron Cousins: Well, yes.
Mike Papantonio: But if you think it’s particularly terrifying, then that’s terrifying to me.
Farron Cousins: You’ve got the CEO of the company, a man, Rabbi Rob Thomas. He’s the CEO that makes Augury.
Mike Papantonio: Okay.
Farron Cousins: He also sits on the board of the Tor software project. And Tor is a, is a online tool that allows you to basically not be tracked and not be searched.
Mike Papantonio: Okay.
Farron Cousins: So this guy has created the disease while also selling the cure for it.
Mike Papantonio: Oh my God.
Farron Cousins: Rabbi Rob Thomas is who he is.
Mike Papantonio: Rabbi Rob Thomas. Okay. Well anyway, this only gets worse before it gets better because when you have a generation that doesn’t care. I mean, if you say, I don’t care. This is worth it to me. All this stuff I want, this is worth it to me. You know, I, well, you know, you and I have been doing this together for 20 years. And the interesting thing is the age difference between me and you, the way we see it, the way I see it, the way you see it. We most of the time merge on that. But I think about it when, when, when somebody sees a story like this, they go, well, I care. Well, and I’m, I’m millennial. Well, that’s not what the numbers say. That’s not what the statistics say.
Farron Cousins: Well, and that’s not what the actions say either.
Mike Papantonio: Yeah, yeah.
Farron Cousins: Like, you know, Facebook’s selling your biometric data, you’re still putting your pictures up there every single day.
Mike Papantonio: Exactly. Yeah. I mean, I’m eating, I’m drinking a milkshake at, at whatever it is. You, you, you’re there showing them what your life is. It doesn’t seem to bother anybody.
A Republican senator recently blasted President Biden for being too woke. But do the voters feel the same way? Okay. You’re gonna have to answer the voters feel the same way. I, all I can look at is, is he’s killing the Democrats coming up to midterms. Now, voters, maybe, maybe there’s other polls that show it. But the good news to me in this story is woke is really on its way out. I mean, this whole culture cancellation, the, the whole, that whole idea is really become so offensive to so many people that these, you know, snowflake types that are still living in woke, woke world. It’s, it’s kind of disappearing on ’em little by little.
Farron Cousins: Well, I I think a lot of it has to do with the fact that people on the left are not doing what so many on the right want to accuse them of all the time.
Mike Papantonio: Okay.
Farron Cousins: Like, Biden’s a lot of things. But, but woke, I’m, I’m not seeing that coming out of this guy. He is not shoving anything down our throats the way that the Republicans would like it to be. So when.
Mike Papantonio: Well, this, this story came from the Daily Caller, right?
Farron Cousins: Right.
Mike Papantonio: Okay. And so their conclusion was that he, that this isn’t true, that he’s not as woke, because that’s not what I read.
Farron Cousins: They do think he is.
Mike Papantonio: Yeah. Okay.
Farron Cousins: But I’m telling you, based on what I see and based on what I see online, because I spend a lot of time on social media and you don’t see it to the degree that you did a couple years ago. Right. And.
Mike Papantonio: Do you think, do you think it’s disappearing? I mean, do you think that this, that you’re reading all people are so frigging tired of it. You know, you got Bill Maher attacking it. You got late night comedy attacking it to where this kinda snowflake image of wokeness. I mean, they’re, they’re kind of perceived as, you know, childlike spoiled brats that have, don’t, that have no ability to think critically. That if it doesn’t, if they don’t agree with it, we’re gonna tear the statue down. If I don’t agree with the person that’s coming to speak at my university, we’re not gonna let ’em come speak. You see, that is so dangerous, man.
Farron Cousins: It, it is.
Mike Papantonio: And people are seeing it.
Farron Cousins: Well, it is, but what, where they’re seeing it come from is mostly on the right.
Mike Papantonio: Okay.
Farron Cousins: We have Republican talking heads that have been melting down for weeks now because the Little Mermaid is gonna be black. They have done segment after segment. They have millions of people up in arms because oh my God, the Little Mermaid’s black. Those are the things that Republicans are freaking out about while people on their left are saying it’s, it’s, it’s a mermaid. You know what, what? It’s not a real thing. Why are you freaking out?
Mike Papantonio: So, so you don’t really think there was any wokeness hysteria that took place over the last couple years? I mean, I’m curious.
Farron Cousins: I mean, to a degree people have been pushing what would I guess be called woke. But when you see the attacks from the other side, you know, when anything kind of bursts their bubble, it’s that hypocrisy that really makes a lot of people say, well, wait a minute. You know, what, what actually is going on here? Is this being crammed down our throats? Or is this a bunch of reactionaries trying to get clicks and views?
Mike Papantonio: And so you, you think the Democrats don’t really lead that image. You think the Republicans have come in and created that image for the Democrats?
Farron Cousins: Yes.
Mike Papantonio: Okay.
Farron Cousins: And now that is a problem with some voters. Obviously, you’re not gonna attract anybody from the far right.
Mike Papantonio: Right.
Farron Cousins: When they’ve created this image. But some people in the middle may think, oh my God, all I hear about is woke, even though it’s all coming from the right.
Mike Papantonio: So are we just, are we just seeing the headlines that they, if you read the headlines, it’s almost as if you have this class of people, call ’em the woke group, whatever the hell that is. And they believe that, that, that the American public is too simpleton to un, to understand that there’s different sides to every story. Therefore, they’re so simpleton and so stupid that we as the woke group must tell them what they can think, what they can see, what statue should be up, what book they can read. Because that’s, that’s really, if, if, if, if the Republicans have accomplished that, that’s a pretty big deal.
Farron Cousins: Well, and I think they have, and I think the media has obviously helped push this a lot. And so it’s not necessarily that it’s a thing that’s happening, but it’s a thing they’ve created the image of happening. And, and even if they can’t necessarily prove this, like in this statement, you know, from Senator Kennedy over in Louisiana.
Mike Papantonio: Yeah. Let me.
Farron Cousins: He doesn’t lay out any actual thing.
Mike Papantonio: But let me read it. Okay. This is from John Kennedy of Louisiana. You know, he’s the guy that’s always testifying, always has a, you know, always has pretty good shot on both sides. It says, well, it’s not exactly a news flash that President Biden has appointed thousands of uber wokers to his administration. Now, first of all, you don’t believe that’s true? I don’t know if it’s true or not.
Farron Cousins: I, I really don’t. I just don’t.
Mike Papantonio: I don’t. Okay. Wokers are easy to recognize. They hate George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln, Dr. Seuss, and Mr. Potato Head. I mean, that is a pretty good line, though.
Farron Cousins: Well, the thing is, it’s the Republicans who freaked out about Mr. Potato Head and Dr. Seuss. They wanted Dr. Seuss books off the shelves.
Mike Papantonio: Okay. Alright, well, let’s keep, let’s, let’s work on way through this. It says, Kennedy told guest, host Trace Gallagher, wokers respect no one’s opinion but their own. Wokers think that America was wicked when it was founded and it’s more wicked today. They think that most Americans, ordinary, ordinary Americans are stupid, ignorant and racist, misogynists. And that now the workers think that they are the only smart people left in the country. Okay. That, that is the sale.
Farron Cousins: Yeah.
Mike Papantonio: That’s the Republican sale.
Farron Cousins: Right.
Mike Papantonio: Now, the reason your point is so important and the, the reason your point is so precise and I think accurate, the more I’m listening to it is this is, this is the talking point.
Farron Cousins: It is.
Mike Papantonio: And it’s coming from the guy who usually does the talking for the, you know, for, for the, for the right. And that’s, that’s Kennedy.
Farron Cousins: Right. And, and so when he goes out there and he sells it to them saying they think you’re an idiot, they think you can’t understand this.
Mike Papantonio: Yeah, yeah.
Farron Cousins: They’ll believe it. And, and they think these things are true even though, again, he’s pointing out things that there was a panic over on the right, not on the left over.
Mike Papantonio: I, I saw some good news here. I, I did a little, little, took a look at a couple of other articles. It says that when capitalism steps in and they try to take this thing called woke because they think they can sell more Coca-Cola, they think they can sell more product. When that starts happening, it’s like, what, what is the, the one with Coca-Cola? We are the world that they came in with that deal and they tried to, they tried to attack, they tried to take the movement that we could all just get along and, and they killed the movement. So the same thing’s happening here with capitalism trying to adopt woke. We’re a woke corporation. When that starts happening, woke starts disappearing.
Farron Cousins: Yeah.
Mike Papantonio: So, I mean, you know, you’ve seen it time and time again through history.
Prosecutors at the DOJ are recommending no charges against Matt Gaetz. Now, I, I tell you this, I’ve never seen anybody. I, I’ve looked, and I don’t think anybody has done as many articles on Matt Gaetz as you have. And you have concluded he’s going to prison. I have concluded he’s going to prison. I’ve concluded that they certainly have enough to indict. You and I have done the same, you know, we’ve landed kind of in the same way. But you have a Department of Justice that I wanna talk about after, after you, after you give your thoughts on this.
Farron Cousins: Yeah. When this, when this story came out, it was, it was kind of a shock. So I had to, you know, look at first and say, okay, well what, what right wing rag is putting this, okay, it’s Washington Post.
Mike Papantonio: Mm-hmm.
Farron Cousins: Uh-oh. And, and they actually, they talked to people in the DOJ and they said, listen, this is obviously not the final decision, but we are not recommending charges because we’re having some credibility problems with two of the main witnesses.
Mike Papantonio: Yeah, come on, man.
Farron Cousins: One of them is Gaetz’s ex-girlfriend, the other is Joel fricking Greenberg, the very guy they’ve been working with for a year and a half.
Mike Papantonio: Giving deals, giving deals to.
Farron Cousins: Dropped 27 charges against him.
Mike Papantonio: Okay.
Farron Cousins: And now suddenly, oh, we can’t believe him. Uh-uh, That, that doesn’t, that doesn’t smell right.
Mike Papantonio: Okay. How, how many times have you and I come on this program and we’ll say that you will never fix corporate corruption because the DOJ has no courage.
Farron Cousins: Right.
Mike Papantonio: The only thing that, now I, I could name, let me go through a couple of them. DOJ on HSBC, they were taking money, washing, HSBC and other banks were washing money for terrorists, which ended up killing soldiers. They, we could trace it right to, we’re handling the case.
Farron Cousins: Yeah.
Mike Papantonio: Nobody prosecuted. Matter of fact, you had, this was during Eric Holder.
Farron Cousins: Yeah.
Mike Papantonio: Eric Holder had ’em dead to rights. They actually signed a document, 16 page document said, yes, we washed money. Yes, it was for terrorists. Yes, we knew it was gonna kill Americans and nobody prosecuted. How about the opioid, opioids?
Farron Cousins: Yeah.
Mike Papantonio: They had ’em dead to rights in, in Colorado. Yes, we knew that the company was doing, they had a plan. They understood that they were telling a lie that the whole public, that this was absolutely a product that was gonna cause abusers to, to die. And so they had ’em dead to rights. They had the documents where they knew it.
Farron Cousins: Yeah.
Mike Papantonio: They absolutely knew it. Eric Holder again, Loretta Lynch also said, we’re not gonna prosecute.
Farron Cousins: Yeah.
Mike Papantonio: The Epstein case. How long did the Epstein case go on that they knew the guy was a perv, they knew that he was involved in trafficking young girls? They had all the information and they do nothing about it. Our DOJ. PFAS in our water killing people slowly with cancer. I know they have the information because we sent it to ’em. They have all the information that, that shows how bad this stuff is. No conduct. No, nobody prosecuted. Nobody even investigated. How about Factor VIII? This is where hemophiliac children were being, were, were taking a clotting factor. The company understood that it would, it had AIDS contamination in it. We got it off the market in the US. You know what they did with it? Shipped it all over the world, shipped it to South America, shipped it to Asia. You know, who, you know, how many prosecutions there were? Zero.
Farron Cousins: And, and, and honestly it looks like we’re seeing the same thing here because listen, I don’t doubt this report. I don’t doubt that this is what these prosecutors at the DOJ are saying because they’re afraid.
Mike Papantonio: Yeah.
Farron Cousins: It’s not because they suddenly think Joel Greenberg is not giving them accurate information. They specifically said, we just don’t think we could get a jury to convict.
Mike Papantonio: Well, you’d, you would have to be a moron as a prosecutor.
Farron Cousins: Right.
Mike Papantonio: You would have to be an absolute moron not to, not to say, well let’s take a chance. This flies in the face of every logical analysis I can give you from a legal standpoint.
Farron Cousins: I have seen high school mock trial teams that would be able to try this case and get a 20 year conviction out of this guy.
Mike Papantonio: You understand, DOJ these are career prosecutors. These are, if, if it’s not low hanging fruit.
Farron Cousins: Right.
Mike Papantonio: If it’s not a softball in somebody’s hands that they can knock outta the park, they’re not gonna do anything because they’re getting paid anyway. Don’t make any difference.
Farron Cousins: Listen, I’ve, I’ve obviously, as you said, we worked together almost 20 years now. I have seen you work on cases for months and when it comes to trial, you’ve said, I don’t know that we can do it, but guess what? I’m still gonna do it.
Mike Papantonio: Yeah.
Farron Cousins: And, and most of the time you do pull it out. But I’ve seen other lawyers do the same thing. Like, wow, this is, I don’t know that we can win this.
Mike Papantonio: Yeah.
Farron Cousins: But you’re not doing what the DOJ says and okay, well just throw it away then, throw away all the hard work. No, you still go and you try and you do prevail.
Mike Papantonio: I would recommend that anybody watching this program go back and look at every one of the stories you did on this. They’re all precise. There’s no, you know, there’s no guesswork. You based your, your analysis on stuff that was in front of the DOJ.
Farron Cousins: Yep.
Mike Papantonio: I would ask everybody go back and look at that and understand, maybe you can understand what happened here because I can’t.
The CIA has launched a new podcast to help spread prop, propaganda about their agency. This is, this is the CIA’s effort to whitewash the idea that, yeah, we, we did kill Allende. Yeah, we did, we did kill Diem. We’ve, we’ve, we’ve carried out all these assassinations. We’ve put coups in place all over the world. And oh, by the way, now we’re messing with American politics. Now that, that one, that one gets real close to home. Whether, you know what I’ve, I think Trump was, honest to God, he was just a horrible, horrible person and politician. And I have worked everything I can do to, to, to, to, to defeat him in that effort. But I’ve also been conscious when the CIA gets involved in presidential politics in the United States, that’s very dangerous. And like him or hate him, I swear to you, they’re, they’re involved. They’ve been involved in this presidential process for several years now.
Farron Cousins: Yeah. And, and, and this new move, I mean, starting a podcast, this is absolute insanity because it is, you know, we know from the first episode that’s come out, it’s pure propaganda. They want to go out there and, you know, dispel some of the myths about the agency by having members of the agency tell us how great they are. They’re gonna go out there because they already have, they’re gonna tell us, oh, we’re killing these people in drone strikes. But they’re not gonna mention, oh, by the way, we also just murdered a hundred, 200, 500 civilians with the same drone strike because oops, we missed the first time. Which actually is what Kevin Gosztola pointed out from, because he’s done such a good, good job of covering things like this. But this is 100% propaganda from the United States government to whitewash a horrible agency with a despicable history.
Mike Papantonio: Whitewash 75 years of spook conduct that when you start taking a look at it, it should scare the hell out of every American citizen because it’s not just about taking care of, you know, it’s not just about taking care of us. A lot of ways it’s, it, there’s hustling us involved, there’s covering up that’s involved. And I gotta tell you something, I, the, the CIA, the CIA has had a free, they’ve had a free ride.
Farron Cousins: Yeah.
Mike Papantonio: For too long. Every now and then a politician will come along like Frank Church and say, I want, I want you to open your books a little bit. We need to start seeing what you’ve been up to. And I think, I think we’re almost approaching that time right now
Farron Cousins: Well, and a lot of people need to understand too, it’s not just what the CIA has done overseas. It’s what they’ve done here on American soil for 75 years. I mean, hell, they, they had files on Elvis. They thought, oh, well, his gyrations, I mean, literally one of their files said, well, his gyrations are corrupting a nation.
Mike Papantonio: Yeah.
Farron Cousins: So this.
Mike Papantonio: Or Martin Luther King.
Farron Cousins: Exactly.
Mike Papantonio: Or any civil rights movement or any, any cults.
Farron Cousins: Environmental activists.
Mike Papantonio: Oh God. You know, talking about targeting environment. Well, now, now again, I don’t take a stand on this pro-abortion or this is not a stand. But now you’ve got them going after pro-lifers in a way that I understand there’s gotta be some way to contain really crazy conduct, but it’s gotta be on both sides. You don’t just say, well, we’re gonna target these folks because it’s politically correct for us to target these folks. I, I don’t know, man. I, I just think that once the public starts really understanding, Howard Zinn was of course the greatest writer, Chalmers Johnson, Matthew Mintz, you know, those folks were great writers and they told the story about what was going on with organizations like. I don’t know who’s writing about anymore. Maybe Matt Taibbi. Who, who, who would you, who would you say is up there really following this kind of thing? I, I’d say Matt Taibbi for sure.
Farron Cousins: I, I think definitely Kevin Gosztola who is mentioned in this article.
Mike Papantonio: Yeah.
Farron Cousins: In fact, we’ve had him, you know, on Ring of Fire multiple times.
Mike Papantonio: Yes. Yeah, he’s brilliant. He’s absolutely brilliant.
Farron Cousins: And he’s very young and very smart. And so he’s been doing a heck of a lot of good stuff on this too.
Mike Papantonio: Yeah. Well, we, we need them in there because there are no more Howard Zinns. There are no more Chalmers Johnsons or Matthew Mintz or these people. And if nobody’s looking at ’em, that’s real dangerous.
Biden said in a recent interview that he isn’t a hundred percent sure he’s gonna run for a second term. Wow. Okay. So this ought to be a celebration by all Democrats moving into the midterms. He’s, the guy’s just, he’s DOA. I don’t, I don’t even think, I don’t even think he’s in charge of his government at this point. I think Susan Rice is running things, if you wanna know the truth. But anyway.
Farron Cousins: Well, for Biden to actually say this in this recent 60 Minutes interview, to me, that’s kind of a big deal. You know, he could have easily just said, well, yeah, why wouldn’t I seek a second term? That’s ridiculous. But he, he said, you know, I’ve always said it’s my intention, but only an intention.
Mike Papantonio: Mm-hmm.
Farron Cousins: You know, we’ll get down to it later on. And I do think he is leaving himself that window instead of boxing himself in. Remember when he first started running, he said, I’m only doing one term.
Mike Papantonio: Oh, he definitely said that.
Farron Cousins: He made it clear.
Mike Papantonio: He definitely said that. Anytime.
Farron Cousins: He got in trouble for saying it.
Mike Papantonio: You know, anytime we say this on this program, they say that’s, that’s, that’s nonsense. He didn’t. Yes, he did say that. He got.
Farron Cousins: He, he walked it back because they got mad.
Mike Papantonio: But he said, I’m gonna do one term and then I’m gone. So everybody said, okay, well, anything to get rid of Trump, that’s great. But you have to understand he’s not even in charge of government. I mean, take a, take a deep dive on this, maybe you and I outta to do a show, a segment on this. Take a look at how many decisions Susan Rice is making right now. I mean, big decisions. Now, Susan Rice, if you remember, was the person at the heart of the Iran, of Iraq. You know, she was part of the big lie.
Farron Cousins: Yeah.
Mike Papantonio: The big lie about weapons of mass destruction. We knew that was a lie. She promoted it. She promoted with New York Times, she was the voice. And then she got Powell involved and tried to convince the American public that this is real. That there’s weapons of mass destruction. Susan Rice, you can hang all of that around her neck. That’s the person making decisions, I believe, for, for, for Biden right now.
Farron Cousins: Well, and so we have to ask the question too, if Biden’s not gonna run, then who’s it gonna be? Gavin Newsom is chomping at the bit.
Mike Papantonio: Yeah. He wants to run.
Farron Cousins: To throw his hat in to run for president. He’s challenging Ron DeSantis to debates already.
Mike Papantonio: I know.
Farron Cousins: And that would be.
Mike Papantonio: I think.
Farron Cousins: That would be a hell of a fight.
Mike Papantonio: I think it’s gonna be DeSantis versus Newsom. And I think that the, the pro, and we’ve talked about this before.
Farron Cousins: Yeah.
Mike Papantonio: DeSantis is gonna, is gonna, is going to sweep Middle America. He’s gonna sweep the South and you’re gonna have that division of East Coast, West Coast, California, you know, New York, Eastern Seaboard. And I just don’t think, I don’t think Newsom can win. I think there’s a hank about California that has developed, right or wrong, it’s this, this attitude that people, I mean, my God, people trying to move from California to Montana or Colorado, you ought to hear what the locals out there think about California. And so I think Newsom’s got a tough, he’s a good politician. I think he’s a good candidate, but I think he’s to beat DeSantis, it’s gonna be, it’s gonna be an uphill battle.
Farron Cousins: Yeah. I mean, that, a race between those two would probably end up coming down to Ohio, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin.
Mike Papantonio: That’s exactly right.
Farron Cousins: And.
Mike Papantonio: That’s exactly right.
Farron Cousins: They don’t have a good history and, you know, for going for Democrats recently, so.
Mike Papantonio: Well, and again, they don’t like California. I mean, that’s not just me talking, it’s just this thing, this pervasive idea about California. And it’s not my idea. There’s tons of people who have written about it. And so you’ve got Newsom versus DeSantis and I think, I think DeSantis, unless he really screws up, takes, takes that.
Farron Cousins: Well, we’ll see what happens after, after Ian here.
Mike Papantonio: Yeah, exactly.
Farron Cousins: That’s gonna be a big task for him.
Mike Papantonio: Yeah.
Farron Cousins: That hurricane.
Mike Papantonio: Exactly, exactly. Farron, thanks 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 this channel. And you can follow us on Twitter @AmericasLawyer. I’m Mike Papantonio and this has been America’s Lawyer where we tell you the stories that corporate media won’t tell you because their advertisers won’t let them, Their political connections just don’t allow for it. We’ll see you next time.
