Lobbyists have found a new way to outsmart politicians and get them to attend their corporate events. Mike Papantonio & Farron Cousins discuss more.
Transcript:
*This transcript was generated by a third-party transcription software company, so please excuse any typos.
Mike Papantonio: Lobbyists have found a new way to outsmart politicians and get them to attend their new lobbyists corporate events. Okay. Farron, why don’t you lay this one out.
Farron Cousins: What’s happening here is that, well, I think the best way to put it as the, as the Intercept, Intercept said, they’re exploiting the appetite for virtue signaling, is what these lobbyists are doing. So they put together these events and they say, hey, Democratic lawmakers, we’ve got this diversity gala tonight. We would love for you to come because we’re celebrating how, you know, the new diversity of the new Congress.
Mike Papantonio: Yeah.
Farron Cousins: You know, we want your, your black lawmakers, your Latino lawmakers, we want you all to come in and be part of this inclusion. And then as soon as they say, well of course I have to go to to this, I have to be seen going to the diversity event.
Mike Papantonio: Yeah.
Farron Cousins: And basically then you’re locked in a room with lobbyists for four or five hours and they’re pitching you on. I mean, we got the list of the companies here. JP Morgan, MasterCard, Exxon, Apple, Airbnb, Toyota ,Reynolds, which is tobacco.
Mike Papantonio: Target, Walgreens, Amgen, Google,
Farron Cousins: All of the big pharma, big business, all of ’em.
Mike Papantonio: Okay. But again, it’s the same thing we talked about in the other story. Right? The new love speak. The love speak for woke America. The love speak is like we talked about in the union case, you know, don’t fire, you know, don’t, don’t start a union. You’re gonna put poor Joe out of a job here. He’s going to school. He needs the money. We’re all one big family. Can’t we just, can’t we just embrace and have a kumbaya moment. This is the same thing. Okay. While they have the, while they have the LGBT groups, while they have the Black Woman’s Caucus there, while they have these diverse folks there that are all doing their job in their world, and it’s important work, we have these folks that are price fixing. They’re price gouging. Their anti-labor action underway. Their consumer espionage underway. They have consumer fraud. Almost every week you hear another one about one of these banks that’s ripping people off. These are the people that are coming in with this new love agenda. We’re all one big happy family and all of this, this message that we are just like you. They’re nothing like these people in the room. And the sad part is, it works. The sad part is those people go out of the room and when that lobbyist that served them a martini or, you know, shrimp cocktail has to meet with ’em about something that’s gonna take people’s rights away. They say, oh yeah, yeah. Remember our party?
Farron Cousins: Yeah. And that’s what’s so disgusting about this. But it shows like, look, these, these lobbyists have found a way to outsmart the politicians because you basically, you do, you make ’em the offer they can’t refuse. Like, are you really gonna not show up to a diversity event? You know how bad that’s gonna look with your constituents? They don’t want to see you snubbing all of these diverse people. So they’ve got ’em between a rock and a hard place. They know that they’re not gonna look beyond what that invitation says. Like, well, who, well, who is Ferox Strategy putting this on? They’re not gonna look at that. They’re gonna show up, you know, get their picture taken. You know, be out in social media. But it’s really just a way for the lobbyists to get ’em in a corner and say, listen, my drug company here, we’re, we’re just getting hammered. We need all this, you know, benefits from you. I need a favor. That’s what it is.
Mike Papantonio: Yeah. They’ll bring in, the other thing is to bring in the celebrity voices, right?
Farron Cousins: Yeah.
Mike Papantonio: Like, like, we really need to listen to celebrity. Did you see the story, Chelsea handler’s sister, honest to God said Chelsea Handler until she until, she was 27 years old, believed that the moon was the same thing as the sun? Did not know that there were two separate and distinct. I’m not making that up. Look it up. Google it. She believed it was the same. So that’s the celebrity voice that’s supposed to lead these people into good decision making. Scares the hell outta me.
