America’s Lawyer E35: A new study has found that constant social media use might be harming brain development in children – we’ll tell you what researchers have discovered. Multiple attacks on power stations have taken place in the past two months, and the media is strangely silent about what’s happening. And a FIRST GRADER was arrested last week after shooting his teacher during school – we’ll bring you the details. 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. A new study has found that constant social media use might be harming brain development in children. We’ll tell you what the researchers have to say. Multiple attacks on power stations have taken place in the past two months and the media is strangely silent about how bad our grid system is. And a first grader was arrested last week after shooting his teacher during school. He brought a gun to school and he intended to shoot her. All that and more. It’s coming up. Don’t go anywhere. America’s Lawyer starts right now.
A study from North Carolina has found that social media could be impacting the brain development in children and teens. The studies are compelling. Ring of Fire’s Farron Cousins joins me not to talk more about it. Farron, as you know, lawsuits are now being brought. This, the school, school district in Washington State brought a lawsuit against the tech companies for this very thing. And here’s what’s important about that. That’s showing and, and I, we’ve been asked to do the same thing, full disclosure. The, the, the reason that’s important is because the science is so compelling right now. This isn’t guesswork. This is objective findings on MRIs, PET scans, those types of things. Pick it up.
Farron Cousins: Yeah. That, that is what is really interesting about this particular study out of North Carolina, is it’s not just, oh, we’re surveying these children finding, they did brain scans while showing these children things from social media and, and the evidence is just overwhelming. What they see is that these children who are checking social media, some of them report checking it at least once per hour. They’re becoming what they call hyper sensitive.
Mike Papantonio: Mm-hmm.
Farron Cousins: To real world feedback.
Mike Papantonio: Yeah.
Farron Cousins: Which means they’re stuck in these confirmation loops online where I need the dopamine.
Mike Papantonio: Yeah.
Farron Cousins: Of getting an extra like, of, of getting an extra view.
Mike Papantonio: You, you hit it on the head. They’re actually seeing dopamine uptakes. And what it’s about is it’s, and it’s one thing, in other words, if you have something as objective as an MRI, when you can see biological changes taking place in the brain connected to a particular event, it’s pretty compelling stuff. The same way with PET scans. And what they’re finding is that we, we’re creating an entire generation that’s so dependent on acceptance by their peers. They have to have acceptance. Some of these folks that spend their entire day commenting, they’ll watch something and they’ll comment. And if you start, and so, and this is another thing they’re seeing with kids, that the tendency to have to go on and comment about everything because they want to go back and see what the reaction to those comments were. It, it’s almost like a reward system, a reinforcement that I’m okay. What I’m saying is good. People like me. People accept me. This is really scary stuff.
Farron Cousins: It, it’s, to me, the, when I read this study, what I looked at it as, as the same as a drug addiction. You know, you have these young individuals who, like the study says they cannot handle real world feedback anymore. They can’t handle criticism, they can’t handle any of the daily social pressures. So what they do is they turn to this thing. They go to social media, they get that dopamine, and it makes everything better just like a drug addict, you know.
Mike Papantonio: Mm-hmm.
Farron Cousins: I can’t handle the stress of my job. I gotta have a drink. And you have that drink and your brain releases the dopamine. You get the reward. And that is what we’re seeing. It, it, it’s a generation of addicts.
Mike Papantonio: Yeah.
Farron Cousins: Is what have been created here.
Mike Papantonio: Yeah. Sometimes our staff has fun around here. We’ll get somebody that’ll comment on a, may, make a comment. Well, they’re looking to see who agrees with me. When you go back there and really jolt them and really hammer them, they disappear. Typically, they’ll unsubscribe, they’ll go somewhere else, which is fine. I mean, great. Goodbye. But the point being is there’s something about that. They want to put the comment up there and they wanna say, are you with me or are you against me? And you’ll see them, you’ll see them slip that in there. And they’re, what it is, is they’re constantly going back and saying, what are my peers thinking me about this money? It is a, it’s a biological change that is driven by dopamine kind of chemistry in the brain.
Farron Cousins: Yeah. And, and you know, we tell our kids growing up, I know I was told, I’m sure you were told, don’t worry about what other people think. You be yourself. You go out there and you do your best. And now we have a generation, and I hate to sound like, you know, a crotchety old man at this point.
Mike Papantonio: Yeah. You’re not. I mean, every time we talk about this, somebody’s like, oh, you’re a crotchety old man on the front yard telling the kids go play somewhere. No, this is real stuff developing.
Farron Cousins: But we have parents that are, you know, borderline neglectful and they’re letting social media raise the children.
Mike Papantonio: Yeah.
Farron Cousins: That, this is not okay.
Mike Papantonio: Yeah.
Farron Cousins: And it’s harming the children’s brain development is what we’re finding.
Mike Papantonio: It’s, it’s doing big damage. And the lawsuits, you’re gonna see, we’re gonna find a lot more. Here’s what here, I, I make this prediction based on what I’ve ever saw, I’ve already seen. Okay. They’re, they’re gonna see documents to where the industry understands that. The industry plays that. How do we get that person in a corner to where what they’re really coming to look for is social acceptance. That’s really what they want. There it, it creates, it, it creates suicide issues, creates bullying issues, creates all types of physical and mental issues for these kids. And so the documents are gonna show that. The, I think this is a lay down lawsuit, if you want to know the truth. The only question, the only thing that interferes with this lawsuit is 230. You know that segment?
Farron Cousins:Yeah.
Mike Papantonio: Section 230. The difference of that, of, of that section where it comes to the analysis of this lawsuit, 230 is a protection for the, for the platform when a third party comes in and puts something up. You, they say, well, you can’t sue the platform for that third party. Here, the platform itself is the target. The platform itself is creating the issue. This is potentially a huge lawsuit. The, the, the tech companies better get ready for it.
Federal Trade Commission is proposed a new rule to ban non-compete clauses for workers. Thank goodness. I, you know, I know where this came from. It came from a just, just old business. You come to work for us, we train you, and you can’t go to work for anybody else after that. The problems, it’s fraught with problems. First of all, there’s no comp, no competition for wages. It keeps wages down. It keeps innovation down. Pick it up from there.
Farron Cousins: Yeah. And what we see a lot too now happening as the tech industry booms, a lot of these tech workers have to sign these clauses. You know, you cannot go and make your own tech company. You can’t go work for our competitors. If you do, we’re not gonna share the secrets with you. Which is what they use to try to scare them into submission.
Mike Papantonio: Mm-hmm.
Farron Cousins: But it, it really does hurt competition. And to be honest, we have seen this so many years now, and this has contributed to the major problem with our healthcare industry.
Mike Papantonio: Mm-hmm.
Farron Cousins: You get these doctors that basically have no choice but to sign up with a hospital corporation, and they have to sign saying, you will not open a private practice. You will not go work at the other hospital. You have to be with us, or you cannot work in this city.
Mike Papantonio: Yeah.
Farron Cousins: Anywhere.
Mike Papantonio: You gotta go somewhere.
Farron Cousins: Yeah.
Mike Papantonio: It’s, it’s a ridiculous old rule that we have, have allowed to stand. The only problem, and I, I hate to say this, but if I’m analyzing this, I don’t know that the FT, FTC had authority to do it. I feel like probably it’s gonna fail. The US Chamber of Commerce is putting huge money, you know, here again, we talk, people think the US Chamber of Commerce is mom and pop warehouse or mom and pop store on the corner. It’s not. US Chamber of Commerce is 19 of the biggest mega corporations on the globe. So they’re fighting this tooth and, and nail. They’re saying, gee wiz, we’re gonna, we’re gonna lose trade secrets if we do that. We’re gonna lose, we’re gonna lose sensitive information. We’re not gonna spend the time training employees if you make us do this. Which is all ridiculous argument. But the point is, it’s unfair. You know, first of all, it, it, it’s, it’s, it’s certainly unfair. And it does, if you think about it, it holds wages down.
Farron Cousins: Yeah.
Mike Papantonio: Because that person who’s working for this corporation may say, well, right down the street, they’re gonna pay me $10 more an hour. Well, I’m sorry, Joe, you can’t go there and if you do, we’re gonna sue you and we’re gonna sue them too.
Farron Cousins: And, and, and you make a great point here too, because I thought the same thing reading through this, this is a wonderful proposal. It would be great to have it go through. It’s gotta get killed in court.
Mike Papantonio: Yeah.
Farron Cousins: If it makes it all the way to our corporate controlled Supreme Court or any of the corporate district courts, there is no way they are gonna let this stand.
Mike Papantonio: No, it won’t.
Farron Cousins: It, it, it will die, unfortunately. But it’s a step in the right direction.
Mike Papantonio: Well, that doesn’t mean Congress can’t take care of.
Farron Cousins: Right.
Mike Papantonio: You see, they won’t. Again, because again, the US Chamber of Commerce are thugs. They’re absolutely thugs. And I don’t know what it takes the American public to understand it, but, this is a great example. It should happen. It’s not gonna happen. They’re gonna lobby it to death. They’re gonna put more money behind it. But in, because they’re gonna argue that the FTC simply doesn’t have any written authority, either apparent authority to be able to do this.
There have been multiple attacks on power stations across the country in recent months and the corporate media, it’s almost like they could not care less. Are you seeing any stories about it? I’ll see a story, well, the weather got so bad and the grid, the grid collapsed. Here’s the truth about this story. In this case, give us the case and then let’s talk about it.
Farron Cousins: Yeah. You had a couple of idiots up in Washington State who had the brilliant idea, we’re gonna attack the power grid, knock out the power, and then we’re gonna go rob a bunch of stores. So they, they do, they successfully attack the power grid. They go into a store, they empty out the cash register.
Mike Papantonio: What was $3 million worth of damages or something like that? Yeah.
Farron Cousins: Yeah, to the, so now they’re both facing possibly up to 20 years in prison, just to take a little bit of cash out of a register there. But it does underscore the bigger problem. We have seen half a dozen attacks in the last month and a half. This is becoming a very serious problem.
Mike Papantonio: We’ve been, we’ve been doing this story for five years, Farron. We have, we started doing this story long time ago. And this is what people don’t understand. First of all, in most countries, the state or government owns the power grid. In this situation, we’ve given it to private industry. And because we’ve given it to private industry, corporations, you have folks like NextEra are the biggest corporations on the planet that are saying, gee wiz, you know, we don’t wanna spend money to upgrade the grid. Why should we? So it’s in, it’s in, it’s in disarray. They need to take and build infrastructures. But the private corporation wants to pay dividends. They wanna buy stock back. Why should they rebuild infrastructure? This isn’t something private corporations ought to be doing. And so right now, here, here’s how bad it is. There are 50, these numbers are crazy, but there are 50,000 key transformers in the country. Okay. Under this grid. If you take 10 of those key out, of those key transformers out, the entire grid system collapses.
Farron Cousins: And, and I’m sure most people have seen, you know, driving through your cities or, you know, traveling on the roads, you’ll see these little substations. And usually what kind of protection do they have? There is a chainlink fence around the little power substation. So if you can overcome a chainlink fence, you can knock out a power to an entire city in a matter of minutes. And of course, what we’ve seen so far has been a couple of, you know, radicals all the way from Washington to North Carolina attacking these grids. But if we have people that want to do real harm, people that are competent criminals, I guess, or terrorists.
Mike Papantonio: Mm-hmm.
Farron Cousins: They could knock out the power to this country in a heartbeat and we’d be powerless to stop it.
Mike Papantonio: No question. Now, the real question in my mind, it’s not a question in my mind because we’ve done the other side of it. The reason the media doesn’t report it, the reason corporate media doesn’t report it, take a look at the advertising. It’s gonna come from the big power companies, whether it’s local, whether it’s regional, or whether it’s national. The big power companies are a big part of the local television programming. So they’re not gonna say, you know, we’ve got Florida Power and Light and their disaster. The grid system’s a mess. We’ve got NextEra that owns Florida Power and Light. Maybe they should pay better attention to the grid system. You don’t see it. It all comes down, down to the dysfunctional nature of corporate media. Advertisers drive it and politics drive it. And otherwise, you’re not gonna see a story like this. Go turn through the, turn through the stations today, see how many times they’re talking about, it wasn’t just about these, these nut jobs that were breaking in and trying to rob stores. It’s about the power grid in general.
Farron Cousins: Well, you know what, that is a great point because when you watch tv, especially local tv, you know, your local ABC, NBC, CBS, Fox, you see commercials for the power companies.
Mike Papantonio: Of course.
Farron Cousins: All the time. And you have to start thinking to yourself, wait a minute, I don’t have a choice. Why are they advertising to me? I already, they’re the only ones here. So if I want electricity, I have to go to them. It’s not because they’re trying to get you to buy the product, it’s because they’re paying off the media.
Mike Papantonio: That’s a great, that is a great angle. It’s the same way with weapons industry with McDonnell. Well, you know, Raytheon goes on and they’re talking about their, their patriot missile, or whatever the missile of the day is. Am I gonna go buy a missile? Why, why is Raytheon up there? They’re trying to buy access to the media. That’s what it’s all about. Same, same things happened here.
A six year old was arrested last week after shooting his teacher during class. You know, before we came on, I missed something that you pointed out to me, Farron, I think it’s critical, critically important. I read this, I thought the kid just had a gun. It went off in school. You, what you did is research. You found there was intent to actually shoot the teacher.
Farron Cousins:That is what the police officers who have already been investing, investigating this, excuse me. They say that this was not an accident. This child intended to come to school and shoot this teacher who at this point still remains in critical condition.
Mike Papantonio: Mm-hmm.
Farron Cousins: So a six-year-old had the thought process going in their head, I have to do something about this teacher. So far we don’t know exactly maybe what has spurred that. Maybe the kid got in trouble the day before, we don’t know. But the kid manages to, to get a gun. We’re still kind of figuring out details. Where the hell did this come from? Gets into school, shoots the teacher, mass panic, obviously. But luckily, nobody else.
Mike Papantonio: There, there’s so many parts to this story. I mean, did, did the kid learn to do that watching Barney on children’s tv? Did, I mean, is that where? No, he didn’t learn it there. He learned it somewhere else. He learned it on just watching general television, watching social media, playing games, whatever it may be. We can’t go on and just ignore this white elephant that’s in the room. I mean, there’s, there’s, there’s some reasons that this kid, six year old was able to, to come up with mens rea and come up with a real notion, I’m gonna go shoot that teacher. Hopefully kill her. The other part of it though is some of this stuff’s easy to solve. First, first of all, make the parents have an insurance policy on that gun. Make it cost $2,000 a year to have that gun or any other gun that you have. Whatever it may be. Require that they have a license for it. Just like a driver’s license where they have to go to school and they have to sit through a week of school where they learn about the ins and outs and the prob, probab. I mean, we do this, we do, we give licenses all the time. Driver’s license, name it. The, the point is, make ’em do that type of thing. Make it more difficult for them just to go out and just buy a handgun and leave it around that the child might be able to have access to it.
Farron Cousins: Exactly. If the child didn’t have access to the gun, this would not have happened. And another thing that can be done too, along the lines of the insurance, the homeowner’s insurance needs to drop people if these guns are not safely locked up, lock and key.
Mike Papantonio: Right.
Farron Cousins: To where the kids can’t get ’em. I mean, that, there’s a very simple solution these home insurance companies could do.
Mike Papantonio: Yeah.
Farron Cousins: I mean, they drop people for all kinds of things. If you own the wrong kind of dog, they’ll drop your insurance.
Mike Papantonio: Yeah.
Farron Cousins: But not if you leave a gun laying around on your living room table, they’ll just keep going.
Mike Papantonio: Yeah. Well, it depends on how you, I mean, I grew up with guns, I have guns, have always had guns and, but I, I understand the process of it. Most people, a lot of people don’t. I mean, they just go out and buy a gun and they don’t even think, well, if I put it in my drawer, it’s gonna be okay. No, it’s not gonna be okay. And I think the insurance angle is a, is a really important angle. Insurance companies could have a big impact on this.
New data shows that American police officers killed more than a thousand civilians just last year, a record high for law enforcement. This case, this case, I mean, this story came out in Truthout, go ahead and pick it up.
Farron Cousins: Yeah. So what we’re looking at is 1,176 people in the year 2022 killed by police officers. Some of them, about a third of them were involved in violent situations. So those are situations where the suspect may be pointing a gun at the police officer, could be in the process of attacking them.
Mike Papantonio: Mm-hmm.
Farron Cousins: So as unfortunate as those are, those are situations where it would be classified as provoked.
Mike Papantonio: Mm-hmm.
Farron Cousins: What concerns me is the number of times that individuals were shot and killed during wellness checks, during a mental health call.
Mike Papantonio: Mm-hmm.
Farron Cousins: Those are situations where police officers should not be the ones to respond. And to me, that, that, that’s the problem here.
Mike Papantonio: Well, they, in Europe for example, they have special people that go out and respond to that kind of thing.
Farron Cousins: Exactly.
Mike Papantonio: That’s, so that’s your point.
Farron Cousins: Or we could send the, the firefighters out there, especially if it’s somebody who’s clearly having a mental health crisis, they don’t know where they are, who they are. A armed police officer should not approach that individual. It’s gonna make the situation worse as we’ve seen.
Mike Papantonio: Okay. There, there, there’s another side to it and that side is, if you just do a little bit of research on it, you see that there is a, there’s an angst that has been as bad as it’s ever been with police officers nowadays. I mean, the fear, I mean, it’s just abject fear. They see the stories where you’re sitting in your police car and somebody comes up and shoots you. Standing on the street, somebody comes up and shoots you behind. These are real stories. I mean, if you follow the news, just all you gotta do is headlines, headlines, headlines.
Farron Cousins: We had one right down the road here, not long ago.
Mike Papantonio: Exactly. So the numbers, what’s causing this angst has to do with the numbers. I mean, that’s what the police unions are saying. They say, look, we had 2,400 victims, police officers that were shot, they were shot, some of them were killed. We had 1,100 victims of knife attacks and club attacks that took place. And what that’s doing is it’s putting the police officer in a heightened sense of protection. That’s, this is what they’re saying and they’re, they’ve got pretty good, they’ve got pretty good data to show it. But it’s, it’s, it’s way beyond that. I think a lot of it has to do with basic training. If we have, this is the reality, then we have to train around that reality, don’t we?
Farron Cousins: We, we need better deescalation tactics with these police officers. And that’s something we, you and I have talked about for well over a decade, because we have plenty of cops who are more than willing to go out there, shoot first, ask questions later. We’ve got plenty of cops who are also reluctant to do it and end up in a situation where they have no choice. We have to also understand that’s a reality.
Mike Papantonio: Yeah.
Farron Cousins: So what we have to have, first of all, is a distinction of those two scenarios. But in the case where you just have these trigger happy cops, there has to be better deescalation, there has to be better training because again, this doesn’t happen anywhere else in the world.
Mike Papantonio: Mm-hmm.
Farron Cousins: This is a uniquely American phenomenon. And part of the reason too that we do see the cops so fearful these days is because with the prevalence of guns.
Mike Papantonio: Yeah. Well, they are fearful because of that. I mean.
Farron Cousins: They’re making easier to get ’em. Yeah.
Mike Papantonio: Yeah. They, they don’t, a policeman in, in say the UK, these numbers don’t look like this in the UK.
Farron Cousins: Right.
Mike Papantonio: I mean, 2,400 police victims shot, you know, not, not all of ’em killed, but shot in the, in the process of making an arrest, 1,100 of knife attacks and club attacks. So that heightens, I guess, sense of fear. I mean, I, I can see that. It, it, it has to play into there. But then your point I think is, okay, we, we know that’s a reality, so let’s adjust to it and let’s train around that, that kind of.
Farron Cousins: Well, and look, if you talk to these police unions, you’re not gonna find bigger supporters of gun control in the United States.
Mike Papantonio: Oh, thats true.
Farron Cousins: Than these groups.
Mike Papantonio: That’s true.
Farron Cousins: Because they understand they are on the front lines and they do see the real danger that everybody having a gun poses to society. And as you showed there with the numbers too, they’re on the other side of it as well.
Mike Papantonio: Yeah. There, I think overall there was a 60%, 60% increase in violence against police. Not just while they’re making an arrest, when they’re sitting in their police car, when they’re walking down the street, a 60% increase in that level of violence.
New documents show that the government lied about a drone strike that killed an Afghan civilian and a group of children August, 2021. You did this story. I, I remember us doing it on the show and we saw the, we actually saw the film footage and the film footage was where you had a humanitarian aid, aid man. He was working for humanitarian aid, carrying water, because that’s part of what they did is provide, provided water for a particular area. Drone comes out of the air, blows him up. And this is where it gets Interesting. The report, everybody’s asking, well, it killed a lot of people, innocent people besides that innocent person too, didn’t it? And the, it, it disappears, the story disappears. All of a sudden now the report resurfaces a year later and we learn some new things, don’t we?
Farron Cousins: Yeah, we do. We, we learned of the intel, intelligence failures leading up to that attack. And I think we’re talking about five or six children, I mean, little kids killed in this attack. And part of the intelligence failure was, well, we made assumptions not based on evidence. We just saw that this guy was taking a weird path.
Mike Papantonio: Yeah.
Farron Cousins: While driving his vehicle filled with water and kids.
Mike Papantonio: Mm-hmm.
Farron Cousins: Oh, and we saw the big containers of water and we assumed they were explosives.
Mike Papantonio: Yeah. This is, this is a CIA drone operated and, and targeted and the whole, the whole thing’s planned with the CIA. Which brings me to another point is just kind of an aside. We did a story last week and we’re talking about the dangers of what’s happening with the CIA moving into the tech industry and how dangerous, and we get these comments, well, these are trained people, these are people who understand intelligence. Why would you have any problem with them going to work with Instagram and Facebook and Google or whatever? Why would you have problems with that? Well, this is a pretty good example right here.
Farron Cousins: Yeah. That, not exactly the, the best training. And we see too much of this. I mean, we saw it during the Biden administration, during the Trump administration. Now of course we see it under Biden where all of these civilians are being slaughtered by these remote controlled drones. And, and honestly, I think a part of it, I remember in my literature class in college, we read the Odyssey, we read the the Iliad and in the Iliad he pointed out, the professor did, it’s important to understand that every time they talk about somebody on the battlefield being killed, which is most of the book.
Mike Papantonio: Mm-hmm.
Farron Cousins: They talk about the name, they talk about the family, they talk about that individual’s history. Because the authors wanted everybody to know that everybody that dies is a human being.
Mike Papantonio: Yeah. Yeah.
Farron Cousins: And when we have now evolved from having to be up close to kill somebody.
Mike Papantonio: Mm-hmm.
Farron Cousins: To now you can do it remote control from thousands of miles away.
Mike Papantonio: Desensitize. Yeah.
Farron Cousins: It desensitizes. And you take away the humanity of these people. And so that’s why it’s easy to just click a button and say, oops, wrong guy. Let’s reload the drone and do it again.
Mike Papantonio: Right. So they start off, this is a righteous kill. We did everything right. This is CIA, righteous kill. We didn’t make any mistakes. And now the end line is, oh my God, this was a tragic, horrible mistake and we’re sorry. Here’s where it really gets interesting. The people, I promise you who helped delay this report, helped cover it up. Make everybody just forget about it. You know, wait, a year, year and a half before we ever bring this out, are the people who built these rockets, built these drones, Lockheed Martin, General Atomics, you know, they build these things like the Reaper or the Hellfire Missile. Well, if, if it gets out, if, if the common discussion is the Hellfire Missile is, is inappropriate because it kills everything around it, it kills civilians. It’s not really targeted in the way that, that Lockheed Martin says it’s, it’s targeted. If that gets out, the government has to respond and they don’t buy as many Hellfire. The, the industry’s part of keeping this just as quiet as they can. Let’s wait a year and a half before anybody talks about it.
Farron Cousins: Yeah. And it’s because they’ve kind of moved into this approach now where it’s like, okay, we have the field. We could go out and just pick the weeds by hand and that way we know we got the weeds, but instead we’re gonna napalm it.
Mike Papantonio: Yeah.
Farron Cousins: You know, we’re gonna Agent Orange the whole field and then everything dies. But hey, at least we got the two weeds that were sitting out there in the middle of the field.
Mike Papantonio: Right. Right.
Farron Cousins: That’s the solution now is kill everything.
Mike Papantonio: Mm-hmm.
Farron Cousins: Bury it, cover it up, and then when everybody forgets about it, quietly release it. And again, I saw this in Common Dreams, haven’t seen it anywhere else.
Mike Papantonio: But what if you saw every day, or every time this happens, Hellfire Missile, or Reaper takes another 10 people out? Well, the government has to respond to that, right?
Farron Cousins: Yep.
Mike Papantonio: They say, well, I’m sorry, Raytheon, or, or, or, you know, whoever it is of the day, missile of the day, we can’t buy your missiles because the pub’s too bad on it. We can’t buy it because it’s killing too many citizens. That’s very much a part of keeping this tap down.
Ron DeSantis is the clear front runner for 2024 right now for the Republicans. But that, that might work against him in the long run. They’ve done so many studies on this. They look at, I, I think the best example was, was Bush. You know, little, what’s his name?
Farron Cousins: Jeb. Jeb.
Mike Papantonio: Jeb Bush. Little Jeb. Okay. So Little Jeb is, you know, he’s out there, he’s the front runner. He does kind of what Biden did in the president election. He kind of goes down to the cellar, disappears. Nobody, he doesn’t talk to anybody, doesn’t talk to the media, nobody knows where he is. It’s, it was kind of the Biden approach really.
Farron Cousins: Yeah.
Mike Papantonio: And you know, it obviously worked for Biden, but it didn’t work, it didn’t work for the little Bush did it?
Farron Cousins: No, absolutely not. Jeb, you know, was the clear front runner. Had over a hundred million raised and he thought, I’ve got this. I don’t have to do anything because it’s in the bag. And the more he stayed hidden, the less he said publicly, it gave rise to this whole crop of Republican candidates in 2015, 2016, who absolutely humiliated Jeb. I mean, ended any future prospects he may have had.
Mike Papantonio: Totally.
Farron Cousins: He was so embarrassed that his career and possibly for the whole Bush family is just done now. It’s done.
Mike Papantonio: It was, it was like a blood bath every time. Once he got it, he said, well, I can’t just sit here. Yeah. I’m a front runner. I’ve been governor of Florida, I’m in good shape and I’m gonna sit here and be quiet. So the question is, what’s DeSantis gonna do? I don’t see him doing that because he’s already kind of out there. If anything, you know, we don’t know. I guess the, the next analysis probably is, is, is DeSantis weighed against Scott Walker, which is a big stretch. Scott Walker was just a, a character without any personality. No charisma. Intellectually, he was a big dope. Everything came out of his mouth was stupid talk. You don’t have that with DeSantis.
Farron Cousins: But I, I do see a lot of parallels between the two here.
Mike Papantonio: Okay.
Farron Cousins: Because we talked a lot about Scott Walker, obviously back in the day.
Mike Papantonio: We did. Yeah. Yeah.
Farron Cousins: Because Wisconsin became, became the laboratory.
Mike Papantonio: Okay.
Farron Cousins: That’s where they tried all of the most extreme, you know, corporate legislation. He got it all done. He was the darling of the Koch brothers, and that’s what really propelled him. And it’s kind of the same with DeSantis. What we’ve seen happen here in Florida has become the Republican blueprint state by state. So DeSantis was the guy, much like Scott Walker that said, I’ll do it here first. If it works, you take it there. And another parallel I see that was pointed out here is that Walker got killed in the debates. And I think that’s gonna be his big Achilles heel.
Mike Papantonio: Okay.
Farron Cousins: Because I’ve seen him when he’s.
Mike Papantonio: He, he gets mad, doesn’t he?
Farron Cousins: He gets real mad. He gets thrown off his talking points. He gets flustered.
Mike Papantonio: Yeah. Yeah.
Farron Cousins:He, if, if he can’t get coached, which maybe he will, maybe he won’t. He’s got plenty of time.
Mike Papantonio: Yeah.
Farron Cousins: Then he’s got a real Scott Walker problem.
Mike Papantonio: But aren’t you praying for somebody besides Trump? I mean, I, I just can’t, I don’t think I could stand another Trump Biden cycle. And so, which brings me to this idea. Biden is on the border, he’s acting, he’s already talking about his next big run. This is a guy who said, I’m never, I’m a one, I’m a one term guy. This is what he promised, didn’t he?
Farron Cousins: Yeah.
Mike Papantonio: He promised to, I’m a one term guy, I just want to, I just wanna move Trump out of there, which he successfully did, which was necessary. But now it’s looking like, no, this old guy’s gonna run again. He’s gonna run when he is 80 years old or something like that. And so what is your take? Is he serious? I mean.
Farron Cousins: I, I really can’t make heads or tails of it yet. I mean, I, I hope, listen, I, I, I haven’t hated Biden. I’ve been very critical of, you know, a lot of things he’s done. But I’ve been, you know, when he does good, we say he does good. But it’s time for somebody else. Biden’s been there, you know, way too long just in DC in general. But at the same time.
Mike Papantonio: What is it ,45 years. I don’t, has the guy ever had a job besides Washington, DC.
Farron Cousins: I don’t even know.
Mike Papantonio: Yeah.
Farron Cousins: But on the Democratic side, we don’t have the people waiting in the wings.
Mike Papantonio: Who do you have? Who, who, who do the Democrats have out there on, on, on that side?
Farron Cousins: Well, that’s ready today.
Mike Papantonio: Yeah.
Farron Cousins: I don’t think they do.
Mike Papantonio: Okay.
Farron Cousins: I, I don’t think that person exists. Four, well, I guess six years from now, you’ve got several people that could be coming up. Katie Porter at the top of the list.
Mike Papantonio: Love Katie.
Farron Cousins: But Katie Porter’s not there.
Mike Papantonio: I love Katie Porter. Yeah.
Farron Cousins: Now.
Mike Papantonio: She’s not. I love Katie Porter. I think she’s got a lot of courage. She’d be a great candidate.
Farron Cousins:: And she’s running for Senate now.
Mike Papantonio: The, the advantage I have is, you’ve heard, everybody knows this. I’m not a Democrat. I’m hell sure, not a Republican. But as I look at it, and I’m looking at it like a chess game, if I’m saying if he, if, if he does pull through primaries, you got California with Newsom, you know, that’s their guy.
Farron Cousins: Yeah. That’s the other guy we talked too.
Mike Papantonio: That’s, that’s the guy. And he has appeal to the left coast and the right coast. He dies in middle America, fly over America. There’s no way they’re gonna bring anybody in from California to win at this point. I, I just think that’s, that’s kind of the way I see it. But I, I just don’t know who the, I don’t know who the Republicans or the Democrats come up with that you go, wow, it’s a powerful candidate.
Farron Cousins: Well, even if Newsom were to overcome his problems in middle America, which you’re right, because Republicans have spent decades demonizing California.
Mike Papantonio: Oh, my God.
Farron Cousins: You can’t overcome 30 years of talking points in a year. But okay, assume Newsom somehow manages, who do you even pair him with? Because you couldn’t just switch Harris from Biden over to Newsom.
Mike Papantonio: Well. Okay, so what are Harris’s numbers? What are the numbers are, is she, is she even in the game?
Farron Cousins: Absolutely not.
Mike Papantonio: Yeah.
Farron Cousins: I mean, her numbers against even other Democrats in the primary, she’s not gonna win. She’s definitely doesn’t beat DeSantis. She doesn’t beat Trump.
Mike Papantonio: Yeah.
Farron Cousins: Biden beats Trump right now. Biden does not beat DeSantis. So, it’s a big problem.
Mike Papantonio: There’s something about the California card right now that I think Newsom’s risky. Go to Montana, go to Wyoming, go to any of those places where there’s a, you know what it was 450,000 people left California last year, migrated from California. And when you go and talk to those folks in Montana about California, it’s oh my God, kind of reaction. And I don’t know what that is, but it is out there. It’s middle America issue.
Farron Cousins: Yeah.
Mike Papantonio: California’s got a problem in middle America. Actually, he may have the same problems since he’s from Florida. I mean, Florida’s regarded as crazyville too. It’s not just California. Florida’s the new crazyville. That’s where he is coming from. How does he play in middle, middle, middle America? I don’t know.
Farron Cousins: So, so if the Democrats do come up with somebody else, and it’s not Newsom, even though Newsom is ready to go, he says.
Mike Papantonio: Oh, he is. Yeah
Farron Cousins: You’re gonna end up with probably a sleeper candidate, maybe a Gretchen Whitmer from Michigan, which Michigan would be a good place to get somebody.
Mike Papantonio: Gretchen.
Farron Cousins: Or maybe a Jared Polis from Colorado.
Mike Papantonio: We’ll see as it develops.
Farron Cousins: Yeah.
Mike Papantonio: It’s, it’s starting to develop as you know.
Farron Cousins: It is.
Mike Papantonio: 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 every week that corporate media can’t and won’t tell you because their advertisers won’t let ’em tell those stories or because their political connections are so tribal that it doesn’t allow for it. We’ll see you next time.
