America’s Lawyer E27: President Biden said that he wants to re-evaluate our relationship with Saudi Arabia after the country decided to cut oil production. But this decision should have been made decades ago, and we’ll tell you why. A former manager at a Starbucks in New York says that higher-ups at the company told him to punish his pro-union employees – we’ll give you the details. And the economy is about to get much worse, and voters are about to take out their anger on the Democrats in the midterms. 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. President Biden said that he wants to reevaluate our relationship with Saudi Arabia after the country decided to cut oil production. But this decision should have been made decades ago. It’s only gotten worse and worse. A former manager at a Starbucks in New York says that higher ups at the company told him to punish his pro-union employees. We’ll give you the details. And the economy, well, it’s about to get really bad and voters are about to take out their anger on the Democrats in the midterms. The numbers are startling. All that and more, it’s coming up. Don’t go anywhere. America’s Lawyer starts right now.
President Biden appears to finally be willing to change our relationship with Saudi Arabia. You think? Ring of Fire’s Farron Cousins joins me to talk about what’s happening and many, many other issues. You’ve written about this so much. You’ve been a commentator about it for so long. About, what is it, what is this love affair that we have with Saudi Arabia? Besides they’re buying our weapons, you know, we have to have their oil. Let’s talk about this a little bit. There’s a turnaround because Biden’s been embarrassed. He’s been embarrassed on the international front.
Farron Cousins: Yeah, he, he went there this summer, essentially had to grovel, please do something about oil prices. Release more oil. Help us out here. We need it. The world needs it. We’re all counting on you. And Saudi Arabia finally came back within the last week or so and just said, no, we’re actually gonna cut production. We’re gonna, we’re gonna dry, artificially drive prices up because that’s in our financial interest. So go to hell, basically.
Mike Papantonio: Well, okay, so our go to hell with them is, we’re not gonna sell you anymore weapons. We’re not going to let your kids come over here and train how to fly F-35’s and use all our sophisticated aircraft. We’re not gonna allow anymore. We’re not gonna spend all the money we’re spending to defend you against all the people who hate your guts right there in your, in your backyard. We’re not gonna do any of that. And oh, by the way, if we find an alternative oil source, we’re gonna tap into that. There’s all kinds of ways we can punish ’em. I love to see Biden getting mad about it because they embarrassed him, Farron. It was the most embarrassing scene I can, that, that this guy’s, that he’s experienced.
Farron Cousins: Well, and, and it’s about time too. I mean, look, Biden, when he was campaigning, he said, I’m gonna make ’em a pariah.
Mike Papantonio: Yeah.
Farron Cousins: But he didn’t. He, he bowed down to them just like every president before him. And finally he’s back to that, okay, you know what? You want to get tough. Let’s get tough. And every single thing you pointed out should have been done 20, 22 years ago. It, it shouldn’t be happening now. It should have been something that was decades ago.
Mike Papantonio: How about if we found, how about it should have been done when they murdered 3000 people on American soil and we knew that the Saudi family was involved in the murder of 3000 Americans on American soil. We didn’t do anything. We should have done something when it was very clear that, that, that they’ve lost leadership and they murdered Khashoggi. We should have done something then. There’s time after time where we’ve said, why have we not taken steps? These, these people are awful.
Farron Cousins: Selling the weapons that we sell to them, to the Taliban and then the Taliban uses them to kill American soldiers.
Mike Papantonio: Yeah. Forgot that.
Farron Cousins: The, the money for the terrorists that they’re funneling through all these banks. The list is endless. The human rights abuses they’re doing to their own people. I mean, that should have been the massive, you know, red flag number one. There’s any one of these things that we could pick to say, we should be done with you forever.
Mike Papantonio: Farron, with all the stories that you’ve done on the Royal family in Saudi Arabia, is there any, is there any even scintilla of doubt in your mind that they feed that international terrorism machine, any doubt?
Farron Cousins: A hundred percent They do.
Mike Papantonio: Yeah.
Farron Cousins: I mean, I, I, there’s no other way to slice that. They are absolutely fueling a, a lot of it, as much as they can in the Middle East. They’re, they’re, they’re bombing busloads of children.
Mike Papantonio: Yeah.
Farron Cousins: They’re doing all kinds of horrendous things in their neighboring countries. And we, we allow it just because we want the oil and we want their money for the weapons they buy.
Mike Papantonio: Okay. The punk prince, the mutt. I call him the mutt. The mutt says, well, we, we, we have to do this because we can’t let our profits fall too short, too, too far because I’m building a $500 billion futuristic city. Have you followed that part of the story?
Farron Cousins: Yeah.
Mike Papantonio: He says, that’s why we have to do this because I have to have money to build my $500 million futuristic city. Chances are lobbyists are gonna take over here on behalf of Saudi Arabia. He’s gonna cave in. It’s gonna be business as usual tomorrow. And the unfortunate thing is, for some reason, we can’t quit Saudi Arabia and we need to. We need to let, if the Iranians wanna come and bomb the hell out of them, we need to stay out of it.
Farron Cousins: You know, if we could switch to renewable energy, we could bankrupt that country in 10 years.
Mike Papantonio: Exactly. Isn’t that the best renewable energy argument?
Farron Cousins: It is.
Mike Papantonio: I mean, to me, when you look at everything, deal with the Saudis.
Bayer was recently hit with a massive jury verdict after they were found liable for poisoning an educational center. Wow. You know, my, my history goes back to, with Bayer all the way back to the Factor VIII case where we got Factor VIII, which is a blood clotting process for hemophilia children. Well, Bayer knew that it was infected with AIDS, so we got it off the market here in the United States, and then they took those sets, same stuff, sold it all over the world, hundreds of families affected by AIDS because of this product. That’s the company we’re dealing with. That’s the kind of company we’re dealing with.
Farron Cousins: Yeah. And, and of course, you know, Bayer bought Monsanto and Monsanto has their own, you know, absolutely terrible history. Almost just as bad as Bayer. Not quite as evil, but.
Mike Papantonio: It’s pretty bad.
Farron Cousins: Definitely a deadly corporation.
Mike Papantonio: Yeah.
Farron Cousins: So now Bayer is having to, to face the music for all the things this company that they bought did, Monsanto, putting out the PCBs in everything from caulk to fluorescent light bulbs. And, and that’s what had poisoned all these people at this educational center. They knew, we’ve known for how many years? 40, 50.
Mike Papantonio: 50 years. Documents go back 50 years.
Farron Cousins: Yeah.
Mike Papantonio: Where they knew how dangerous this stuff was.
Farron Cousins: Right. It, it’ll definitely give you cancer. Even the US with, with as defunct as our regulatory systems are in the seventies, they said, this stuff will kill you. It’ll give you cancer. You can’t sell it anywhere in the United States. But they, they never took the second step, which is, let’s get it all off, out of the buildings.
Mike Papantonio: Okay. Let, let me tell you a story that really, really, it should make you angry. Corporate media has known about this all the way back, easily 30 years. Okay. That what you, what, there’s documents that show that the way they’re gonna solve that problem is they’re gonna pump up, push more money into corporate media and they won’t tell this story that we’re telling right now.
Farron Cousins: Yeah.
Mike Papantonio: They also went out and hired an army of lobbyists to invade Washington, DC and say, look, all this stuff you’re reading, it’s nonsense. No. All this stuff they were reading was only a, the tip of the iceberg. Because the clinical data was even worse than we knew about. We knew, they knew it’d cause non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma. They knew it cause neurological disease. They knew it would cause leukemia in children. On and on, birth defects, and they hid this for 40 years knowing full well how dangerous it was. The other thing they did is they went out and they hired pretty people. It, it, it’s called the Pretty People campaign. It’s where you hire what they call key opinion leaders. And they went all over the world saying, ah, there’s no problem with this. This is just crazy bunch of, you know, a bunch of hysterical nut cases trying to make something outta nothing.
Farron Cousins: Well, and, and it’s funny you bring that up because this isn’t necessarily related to Bayer, but the whole pretty people thing, we saw that a lot firsthand on here with the BP Deepwater Horizon.
Mike Papantonio: Oh, yeah, yeah.
Farron Cousins: Rick Outzen, local reporter was talking about it a lot too, because suddenly you had all these gorgeous people come down in and tell everybody like, oh, it’s don’t, don’t worry. It’s gonna be okay. I mean, almost like BP was hiring supermodels.
Mike Papantonio: Yeah.
Farron Cousins: To come in and try to make people feel better about this. And yes, that’s what these corporations do. I hope everybody understands it’s whatever disgusting thing you could think of that a corporation would do, they’ll go even lower than that. Trust me.
Mike Papantonio: You know, you know the pretty people thing, the pretty people thing comes out of them doing focus groups and finding out that we have become such celebrity whores, such celebrity crazy people that all they have to do is put a celebrity in front of us, a pretty people in front of us, and we’re gonna be okay. We’re gonna believe it because that’s how shallow we’ve become as we look at the whole celebrity thing. Now there’s data, there’s documents that talk about it. It’s not, it’s, it’s not me just talking here.
Farron Cousins: Yeah.
Mike Papantonio: A Starbucks manager says that he was told to punish pro-union employees at his store. Wow. Isn’t this the feel good company where everybody, you know, everybody brings their little computer in and they sip coffee and they sit at a table and do whatever the hell they do on a computer. This was, this was, this was supposed to be the millennial heaven, right?
Farron Cousins: Yeah.
Mike Papantonio: That’s what, it was built as the millennial heaven. What’s, what’s going on with it right now?
Farron Cousins: Upstate New York, you have this former Starbucks manager who’s been cooperating with the National Labor Relations Board telling them these horror stories about what’s happening at the higher ups of the company. So he says, listen, I, I was managing a couple of stores up here in, around Buffalo. The higher ups came in and they handed me a list of employees and these higher ups, they hadn’t been in those stores. So that’s the thing we gotta talk about in a second. But they said, look, based on everything we’ve seen, here is your list of pro-union employees. Now, I’m sure all these people have done bad things, right? Fireable offenses. Go back through your records. And he did. And he said, listen, these are squeaky clean employees and they said, keep digging.
Mike Papantonio: Yeah.
Farron Cousins: Find anything you can to fire these people for
Mike Papantonio: Follow ’em around.
Farron Cousins: Yeah, follow them. And so what does get me though is how did the higher ups know this? Well, it’s because they’re doing surveillance on these employees. They sometimes will hire, you know, private eyes or whatever you wanna call ’em to follow people. They scour the social media. They look at the stickers that they have on the back of their car.
Mike Papantonio: See, isn’t this the warm and fuzzy business? I mean, this is supposed to be the warm and fuzzy corporation. And how about this, make these employees as uncomfortable as we possibly can, work till you find something bad. Okay. That’s, that’s this company. So, so maybe we ought to rethink, the Starbucks coffee ain’t that good to begin with. There’s a lot of alternatives.
Health insurance companies are gouging consumers while taking millions of dollars from the federal government every year. All right. This was supposed to be a program, ACA, right? The purpose of the ACA was to make health insurance more affordable. So the government starts pouring money. Here, take, take, take billions of dollars. Take billions of dollars. And oh, by the way, in addition to the billions of dollars, we’re gonna give you some subsidies too. It wasn’t just the billions of dollars they put in. They, they said, we’re also going to give you subsidies. What did the corporate, what did the corporate freaks do with that?
Farron Cousins: They raised the prices on everybody else buying health insurance. And we’re talking about $800 million that is about to be given to these insurance companies. That’s not even including the billions they’ve already gotten.
Mike Papantonio: Oh, they’ve already, they already have billions.
Farron Cousins: So there’s a plan right now saying, we’re gonna give you another $800 million.
Mike Papantonio: Mm-hmm.
Farron Cousins: In addition to your subsidies, in addition to your tax breaks, in addition to all the special loopholes. All you gotta do is keep providing health insurance for low income Americans.
Mike Papantonio: Truthfully, it was a good idea. It was a great idea until corporate sociopaths got involved with it. What’s your prediction when we give them 800, 800 more million dollars? What are they gonna do with it?
Farron Cousins: They’re, they’re gonna continue to raise prices on us because they can. There’s no controls in any of this.
Mike Papantonio: Yeah, yeah.
Farron Cousins: And, and, and look, these companies, we could be spending $800 million or $80 billion on providing health insurance for everybody in this country. But instead we’re taking that money and we’re just giving it to private insurance that continues to screw us over.
Mike Papantonio: Mm-hmm.
Farron Cousins: We keep being told Medicare for All is too expensive. No, this is too expensive to continue.
Mike Papantonio: Doesn’t the, doesn’t somebody sit ’em down in a room and say, here’s the deal. We have the right to regulate you and we will regulate you. Right now as high as 40%, 40% of all the profit these people are making is coming from the US government, taxpayers. And all we asked in return was, you make this available for people who can’t afford health insurance. But again, you get the sociopath corporate involved and there are no rules. And so somebody has to say, yeah, there are. They have to walk into a room and say, here are the new rules. I’m the new sheriff and here’s the new regulations.
Farron Cousins: But people have to understand too, okay, you get your paycheck, you see that your health insurance comes out of it. You’re also paying your tax for Medicare.
Mike Papantonio: Right.
Farron Cousins: So you’re paying for other people’s insurance there. And then as you said, 40% of the insurance company’s profit is coming from tax dollars. So you’re paying for three different kinds of health insurance.
Mike Papantonio: Right, right.
Farron Cousins: Why can’t we just put it towards universal healthcare? Free up the system, get these corporate price gougers outta here for good and, and be happy like the rest of the world.
Mike Papantonio: Was I wrong that Biden promised to create a public health insurance option?
Farron Cousins: He was wishy-washy on it. It was back and forth.
Mike Papantonio: Did he ever make the promise?
Farron Cousins: I, I don’t know if he ever actually said I am or if he was against it. I know we had, you know, Bernie and Warren.
Mike Papantonio: Yeah. Oh, Bernie was very strong on it.
Farron Cousins: That, that were all for it.
Mike Papantonio: And so was Warren. Warren said, yeah, this is what we need to do. All right, well.
Farron Cousins: And we’re left with this mess.
Mike Papantonio: The economic outlook in America is getting worse and it’s, it’s, it’s bad for Democrats. I thought it was powerful, powerful, when, when Obama came out a couple of days ago and said, you know what, Democrats are blowing this. He called, what’d he call it, buzzfeed? Is that the term that he used? He said, Democrats are involved in buzzfeed. Not sure about that term, but that’s what he said. And he described it as Democrats are spending tons and tons and tons of money still going after Trump, still going after bad Republicans, which we do every day. I mean, this is, this is what we should be doing. But he said, they’re not talking about issues that matter. They’re not talking about kitchen table issues. What do you think?
Farron Cousins: You know, I, I agree a hundred percent. And that’s something I’ve said plenty of times. You and I have both said it. Listen, there is a role for the media and there is a role for the politicians, but unfortunately the politicians have too frequently, especially in this cycle, tried to do what the media does. Like, oh, y’all are making fun of Trump. I’m gonna make fun of Trump. I’m gonna.
Mike Papantonio: That’s, that’s your job. Isn’t that your job?
Farron Cousins: Right.
Mike Papantonio: That’s my job. But it’s not a politician’s job, you know, the politician they’re talking. Now, look, you know, he even went as far as saying, abortion’s not gonna win this election. It’s not.
Farron Cousins: Right.
Mike Papantonio: The issue on abortion, like it or not, is not going to win this election. They gotta talk about the fact that they’ve had some really strong results. Economically, the job market is as high as it’s ever been. We’ve had some great economic improvement, but for some reason, Democrats don’t want to talk about that. They don’t wanna talk about the positive. It’s easier to talk about how bad Trump is, how bad the Republicans are. Look what they’ve done to abortion. Look what they’ve done to, to gay rights. You know, it’s all these social issues and the public is saying, hell with it. I, I don’t care about that because they can’t buy groceries.
Farron Cousins: And, and a lot of people may be, oh no, you can’t say that. Listen, the latest poll out a day or two ago shows that generic ballot Republican is now up six points over generic ballot Democrat. That is a bloodbath. I know people say, well, six points, six points is a, is the Grand Canyon between the two at this point.
Mike Papantonio: Why, why, look, they, the Dems have a great story to tell. Full disclosure, I’m not Democrat and I’m sure not Republican. So, so the, but the Dems have a great story to tell. If you’ll just listen to the story. If you’ll listen to the accomplishments that they’ve made economically, they’ve been pretty strong. The backdrop though, is a stock market that looks like a blood bath. Retail sales are down. Inflation is up. Gas is still up and now it’s gonna get up higher because of what, what they did with OPEC. Consumers are tapping into savings. They’re tapping into pension programs so they can live. I mean, it’s, it’s a bad, it’s a bad scene and the Democrats aren’t answering that. And if they don’t, they’re gonna get killed in the midterms.
Farron Cousins: Something people need to understand, you know, we, we recently actually traveled for, for a conference. There were 10 empty flights on my seat. I honest to God, couldn’t tell you the last time I was on a plane where you didn’t hear the announcement, oh, we’re, we’re fully booked.
Mike Papantonio: Yeah.
Farron Cousins: Make sure you, there were empty seats, and it’s because the economy is getting bad. Workers, average Americans, they have less money than they have in many, many years. And we are starting to see that, we’re seeing it in the flights, we’re seeing it in the stores. You’re seeing it at restaurants.
Mike Papantonio: You know the, you know last time we had these conversations on a regular, real, real very regular basis was Trump versus Clinton. We talked about Hillary. Stop talking about Trump.
Farron Cousins: Yeah.
Mike Papantonio: Talk about the great things that Democrats have done. There were a lot of stuff that they’ve done. There’s a lot of stuff they’ve done this time. And again, I’m able to do that because I am not a Democrat and I’m sure as hell not a Republican, but I can look, I’m the out, I’m on the outside looking in and saying, this is what’s happening to you guys on both sides.
Farron Cousins: Yeah.
Mike Papantonio: So.
Farron Cousins: It, it, it is nice to be able to take the step back, which is what some of the actual Democrats do need to do. Step back, take off the partisan blinders and realize your party sucks at messaging. They always have.
Mike Papantonio: Oh, terrible, terrible.
Farron Cousins: And they’re gonna continue to do it and that’s what’s killing ’em right now.
Mike Papantonio: They put the flakes in charge of messaging.
Farron Cousins: Yeah.
Mike Papantonio: Okay. Podesta, what an utter flake. Mook, what a flake. But they were in charge of messaging in the last, well, you know, with, with Hillary, that told you the story. They only got by the skin of their teeth this time because the flakes are in charge of Democratic messaging. I don’t know how it gets any better.
Farron Cousins: Well, and why are we still going back to the same people who, who did Hillary? Who, John Kerry and Al Gore.
Mike Papantonio: They’re back.
Farron Cousins: They’re losers.
Mike Papantonio: They’re back.
Farron Cousins: Yeah, they are. They’re, they’re getting more power and they’re all political losers.
Mike Papantonio: I know.
Governors across the country are furious about President Biden’s cannabis pardon, but only because the private industry, the prison industry is gonna suffer because of it. This, this story is so clear. Biden is doing exactly what he should be doing. Biden should be talking about, do you realize that fentanyl is a Schedule II? Okay, people don’t understand. You got cannabis, Schedule I, you got Fentanyl, Schedule II. And Biden is saying exactly what he should be saying. What the hell? Why are we putting people in jail over marijuana? Why wouldn’t we grant them a reprieve because of their use of marijuana? And, and, and the, the, the problem is the Republican governors are so upset, right?
Farron Cousins: Yeah, because Biden’s pardons are only gonna go obviously to federal offenses. So it’s up to the governors of the states to pardon anybody on the state level offenses. So you have these governors, it’s a group of ’em according to David Sirota.
Mike Papantonio: Yeah, name ’em.
Farron Cousins: One of the best.
Mike Papantonio: I think, I think he’s good.
Farron Cousins: There’s Texas governor, Greg Abbott, Bill Lee from Tennessee and Asa Hutchinson in Arkansas.
Mike Papantonio: Who, oh, by the way, got $270,000 from the private prison industry. So what are they gonna do?
Farron Cousins: Yeah, it, it, it is, the private prison industry has been very open about how these, you know, minor marijuana arrests are basically what keep them in business. Listen to this, the demand for our facilities and services could be adversely affected by the relaxation of enforcement efforts, the expansion of alternatives to incarceration and detention, leniency and conviction. So they’re telling us like, listen, we’re screwed if we don’t arrest people for marijuana.
Mike Papantonio: Wait, wait, wait. It’s, it’s stronger than that. Our prophets rely on harsh drug laws. Okay. So, so that’s what it’s all about. God bless Biden for saying, you, you need to take a look at the way we look at marijuana. Now, I wanna tell you this full disclosure. I, I, you know, I’m involved with, with the Charlotte’s Web, I’m involved with Stanley Brothers, I’m involved and have been for a long time. But as I look at this entire thing, isn’t it time to say that Fentanyl is killing a hundred people a day, marijuana ain’t killed anybody.
Farron Cousins: Right.
Mike Papantonio: And so, so Biden is doing exactly what he should be doing. And these, these bottom feeders are saying, ah, you’re taking money away from the people who give us money.
Farron Cousins: But, but we’re also talking about like, this is another massive accomplishment that Biden did.
Mike Papantonio: I know it’s huge.
Farron Cousins: There, there’s no ads on it, there’s no celebrating.
Mike Papantonio: No.
Farron Cousins: He just does it.
Mike Papantonio: And he needs to be back out there again saying, I wanna legalize it across the board.
Farron Cousins: Exactly.
Mike Papantonio: Leave him, let, let the guy be his, be himself. That’s, that, what I’m seeing a lot of is they just aren’t letting the guy be himself. If he wants to eat ice cream in an ice cream baller and say whatever’s on him, let him do that. Because most of the time what he says most people agree with.
Farron Cousins: Yeah.
Mike Papantonio: Local news is dead, but reviving it could, could help save, I guess, this country. I don’t know. I, I, tell me about this story. You, you and I, of course I end this show by saying every week that what we do, corporate media can’t do because their, their attachment to all the advertising money is so strong and their political involvement is so deep seated. You see? And that’s what’s killing the American corporate media.
Farron Cousins: Yeah, it is. And this was a great op-ed, it really caught my attention. Washington Post opinion writer, Perry Bacon, Jr. just so everybody knows, puts out this wonderful piece where.
Mike Papantonio: It’s great.
Farron Cousins: He starts talking about, we gotta put money, $10 billion he’s calling for, in local news. And I think a lot of it does have to do with the fact, like you say, corporate media can’t tell stories anymore.
Mike Papantonio: Right.
Farron Cousins: But more and more corporate media has bought up your local newspaper, your, your local news outlet. You know, your, your channel three ABC News or whatever you got in your area, corporate media is owning it. And because of that.
Mike Papantonio: Sinclair.
Farron Cousins: Sinclair, clear channel.
Mike Papantonio: Yeah.
Farron Cousins: All of these groups. So it is a big monopoly. And what are they doing? They’re telling you, okay, somebody got shot on the street near your house. We got that. But then other than that, it’s national news.
Mike Papantonio: One thing we, we do, and I’m so proud working with you, and I have for so many years. What have we been together 20 years doing this kind stuff?
Farron Cousins: just about, yeah.
Mike Papantonio: Arguing back and forth and I, I just so respect your opinion, but the reason people tune in, the reason our traffic is as high as it is, is because people get a chance to see what corporate media doesn’t talk about. I would say three quarters of the stories we do on this show, corporate media doesn’t touch.
Farron Cousins: Right.
Mike Papantonio: If they touch it, it’s like a, you know, a headline and then it disappears. I think, I think this is what replaces that, Farron, I really do. So the $10 billion, if they’re gonna spend that kind of money, it needs to really focus on who’s telling the story, and, you know, to me, I, as you know, I could give a wits, I could care, I could not care less that some jerk wader writes a comment, you know, Papantonio’s too right. Farron’s too left. That, that has no impact on me.
Farron Cousins: Right.
Mike Papantonio: And as a matter of fact, what we do, as you probably know, is we try to get in a thinking audience. An audience that says, I’m not so tribal that I can’t think on the other side. That’s the problem with media. There’s, it’s, it’s so polarized.
Farron Cousins: Well, and, and we need a local media almost as much people need to pay attention to local media like they do with local elections and local school board races. All politics is local. All news should also be local.
Mike Papantonio: Yeah, yeah.
Farron Cousins: And we need to hear about, I mean, look, how many cases have you tried because an entire town, a small town, but you know, 20, 30,000 people poisoned by a massive mega corporation? Those are the stories.
Mike Papantonio: Or the government.
Farron Cousins: Right. Those are the stories that the local news has to tell.
Mike Papantonio: Local news can’t tell it because they, they don’t have, they don’t typically, they’re not interested in investigative journalism. The advertising industry controls them. They don’t have any ability to, management’s not gonna let ’em tell the story. You know, that was my experience with MSNBC. And like, I, you know, any times I would appear there just to, just to contribute, it was, you can’t tell that story.
Farron Cousins: Yeah.
Mike Papantonio: But we can tell the story. And what I’m trying to say is that’s the kind of place, this is the kind of place that I think will end up replacing what we, what we term corporate media. And because I think we have a, a different attitude. It’s called Reckless Abandon. I don’t really care if somebody agrees or disagrees with me because we make, you know, we’re, we’re fine financially. Nothing’s gonna put us outta business.
Farron Cousins: Yeah. You, you, you don’t have to play nice. You don’t have to, you know, placate anybody. We can do whatever we want to do because we have that freedom.
Mike Papantonio: Yeah.
Farron Cousins: And, and we’ve made a good product with that freedom.
Mike Papantonio: What, what have you started doing when people tap in, I’m going to unscr, unsubscribe because I disagree with you? I say, don’t let the door hit you on the butt on the way out. Thanks, Farron.
Farron Cousins: Thank you.
Mike Papantonio: That’s all for this week. But all of these segments will be available in 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 every week we tell you stories that corporate media won’t tell you because their advertisers don’t let ’em, or their political connections are so deep that it won’t allow for it. We’ll see you next time.
