America’s Lawyer E41: The recent train derailment in Ohio that spread toxic chemicals over an entire town has more and more people calling out Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg – we’ll explain why he’s the target of the public’s anger. Microsoft is having a world of problems with their new artificial intelligence bot that has started comparing journalists to Hitler. And a weird trait of Donald Trump’s could prove that he understands human psychology better than other politician. All that, and more is coming up, so don’t go anywhere – America’s Lawyer starts right now.
Transcript:
*This transcript was generated by a third-party transcription software company, so please excuse any typos.
Mike Papantonio: Hi, I’m Mike Papantonio and this is America’s Lawyer. The recent train derailment in Ohio that spread toxic chemicals over an entire town has more and more people calling out transportation secretary Buttigieg. We’re gonna explain why he’s a target. Microsoft is having a world of problems with their new artificial intelligence bot that has started comparing journalists and other people to Hitler and Pol Pot. And a weird trade of Donald Trump’s could prove that he understands more human psychology than most politicians. All that and more, it’s coming up, don’t go anywhere. America’s Lawyer starts right now.
Donald Trump has a new nickname for Ron DeSantis and there might be a good reason why he does this. Ring of Fire’s Farron Cousins joins me to talk about what’s happening, and along with a lot of other topics, but this Meatball Ron. Now I’ve heard two different versions. Some are Meatball Head Ron, Meatball Head, and the other was Meatball. Just, just regular Meatball Ron. First, it’s usually the first step we see Trump take where it comes to attacking his opponent, and there’s a good reason he does it. People might be saying he’s crazy, which he is. He’s obnoxious, which he is. He’s vulgar, which he is. But he has a political reason, doesn’t he? Go ahead and talk about it.
Farron Cousins: He really does. And this is actually a very interesting story because it does show that the one thing Trump is good at is getting people. And he knows that people, same thing you and I have been talking about for 20 years now, the American public has very short attention spans. So if you can capture that attention for any period of time, whether it’s with a stupid little nickname or a catchy slogan, you’ve got ’em.
Mike Papantonio: Mm-hmm.
Farron Cousins: Like that’s all you need. And that’s why these other nicknames he has, like, you know, crooked Hillary is still something you see. Lyin’ Ted Cruz, plenty of people on the left still use Lyin’ Ted Cruz. Those are all nicknames that Trump came up with. And he, as far as we know, has never publicly said Meatball Ron. But everybody in the media has now used that phrase.
Mike Papantonio: It’s, it’s out there.
Farron Cousins: It is.
Mike Papantonio: We’re gonna talk about that. It’s out there. Now, he was smart enough to put it out there and says, oh, I’m not gonna call him that. It’s all over. You know, I see Meatball Head and Meatball. I, I don’t know which one’s going to hit, gonna stick, but I see emojis with Meatball Head and you name it. But I mean, it, he, it kept with Sleepy Joe, you know, Sleepy Joe Biden. Little Marco.
Farron Cousins: Yeah.
Mike Papantonio: Little Marco definitely stuck. So you mentioned, you mentioned the attention span. It’s more complicated than that. When you really take a look at what, why the shrinks are saying this works. They’re saying that at this point in time, the average American has a reading and a comprehension ability of about a sixth to seventh grader. So they’re always going to gravitate towards the easiest thing. So Meatball Head here may, Trump may not call him Meatball Head, but at this point, we’re already seeing it. We’re seeing it in social media. We’re seeing comments that are coming out where they’ve got emojis with Meatball Head. So he’s really kind of accomplished what he wants to say. Here’s what’s really important, I think. The, the shrinks say it’s all about placing a visual with a word. In other words, if I put a bunch of words up here, if I put 50 words and I said, can you memorize those words? Probably couldn’t do it as well as if I put a picture with the word. If you saw lion and I had a picture of a lion, dog picture of a dog, you’re gonna be, you’re gonna be able to memorize that better. Your success in memorizing that. That’s what, that’s what’s happening here.
Farron Cousins: It, it really is quite fascinating, to be honest. And again, I know it’s, it’s juvenile, it’s silly, but it has worked for him so well, that’s the same reason that, you know, they, they shortened up the Make America Great Again into just MAGA, because it’s simple. It’s quick, it’s easy. It’s, it’s almost a slogan at this point.
Mike Papantonio: Mm-hmm.
Farron Cousins: Same thing with these nicknames. You know, Meatball Ron is now a slogan.
Mike Papantonio: Mm-hmm.
Farron Cousins: Just like, if you heard Hot Pockets or By Mennen, those are things that people remember. It’s short, it’s quick, it’s to the point, and it, it, it is a branding corporate thing. And that is one thing that Trump understands better than anybody.
Mike Papantonio: It’s, it’s branding by Trump, you know, the whole Trump empire has been branded by. But what he was looking at, when you look behind, you look behind the story when people say, well, what was really up here? Well, he’s trying to capture a, I don’t know DeSantis, I’ve never met DeSantis, but apparently he does have kind of a pudgy fat head and a pudgy body. So when he’s get, when he’s talking now, as people are watching him, they’re doing that thing that I just talked about. They’re associating a word with a picture, and he might be delivering really important things. I’m, I’ll tell you where I’m already seeing it, really weird. We’re already seeing it right now. DeSantis in Florida is trying to take away consumers rights to sue insurance companies when their house is destroyed by a hurricane. He’s trying to limit what they can do. He’s trying to really beat ’em down. Consumer organizations are really mad about it. I’m already seeing Meatball Head out there by those consumer. Now those are people who ordinarily probably would’ve supported the guy, but now they got this tool and we’re gonna. Colbert.
Farron Cousins: Yeah.
Mike Papantonio: Didn’t Colbert do the same thing?
Farron Cousins: He, he had a whole song that they sang about Meatball Ron the other night. So this is something that has now made it into pop culture.
Mike Papantonio: Right.
Farron Cousins: And again, it all happened with Trump never having to say it publicly.
Mike Papantonio: No.
Farron Cousins: Just having it leak out that he’s considering. And, and prior to that, actually back in November, he was considering calling him Potato Boy was gonna be the nickname. But I gotta say Meatball Head.
Mike Papantonio: Meatball.
Farron Cousins: Meatball Head sticks a lot better than Potato Boy.
Mike Papantonio: Well, I think it’s a problem. It may not, if you look at the history of it, it is a problem for DeSantis. And I don’t know how you overcome something like, you know, every time somebody sees you, they think Meatball Head. I mean, I think it’s a problem.
Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg is over his head. And we’ve been saying this so long, haven’t we? He, the string of, of, of derailments now after the airline disaster. I don’t know what it takes. And I think of the word derailment, it’s almost a metaphor for Buttigieg right now. I don’t, here’s what bothers me about it. Obama tried to solve this problem. He knew that we were a century behind in technology dealing with breaking systems on trains. So he said, let’s put this in place. And he had it working, and then Trump comes in, does away with it. But five years later, almost five years later, Buttigieg has done nothing. He’s done nothing, even though the previous administration laid out what the problem was and said, this is a big problem.
Farron Cousins: And, you know, three or four days after that big derailment in East Palestine, Ohio, he goes on cable news, they talk to him, they do a whole interview with him. Not once do they mention that train derailment. Not once did they mention the big toxic cloud over that city. And this was days after it happened. He had not yet made a public statement about it. And, and that was actually, The Nation did a phenomenal article talking about how this guy doesn’t get it. He had to be forced publicly and shamed into finally even addressing that this thing happened.
Mike Papantonio: Why, why is the media and why is this Democratic party protecting him? I mean, is it, you know, if the first result, the first thought you have, well, he’s gay. Nobody wants to attack him because he’s gay. The truth is, there are hundreds of gay politicians and, and people in bureaucracy that could do this job very competently. So it’s not that. I mean, you have to call it out what it is. You can’t just get hung up on the fact that he’s gay. Well, he is gay. Okay. Big deal. There are plenty of gay people that would do a fantastic job with what he’s doing, but it’s like, it’s like, it’s like non speak that you hear the politicians, it’s non speak that the, that the media is just so afraid to talk about this. He’s an incompetent boob. He needs to be gone, man.
Farron Cousins: Well, it reminds me a lot, you know, when, when we would criticize Hillary Clinton, whenever she did something wrong, people would say, well, you’re being sexist.
Mike Papantonio: Yeah.
Farron Cousins: This is, no. Well, you’re ignoring the actual argument here.
Mike Papantonio: Yeah.
Farron Cousins: But what we have seen in just, I mean, just the last 12 months, forget the last 24 months that he’s been in office, the last 12 months, we have seen them break up the rail worker strike, that part of it was about this issue.
Mike Papantonio: Good point.
Farron Cousins: We have seen the massive meltdown in the entire airline industry over Christmas and, and Thanksgiving.
Mike Papantonio: The administration, with this administration, right?
Farron Cousins: Yeah. Yeah. With him as transportation, we, we saw the supply chain fiasco, you know, that’s all under his leadership. He may not have caused the problems and I’ve, I’ve, I’ve said that he didn’t cause the problems. But he is not equipped, he does not have the, the wherewithal to address these crises, these multiple crises that his office has faced. If this were somebody from the Trump administration.
Mike Papantonio: Oh my God, it’d be.
Farron Cousins: We would’ve been doing segments on it every day.
Mike Papantonio: Absolutely.
Farron Cousins: Everybody in the left would have.
Mike Papantonio: Absolutely.
Farron Cousins: Calling for his resignation. And I think we should be at that point. He can’t do the job.
Mike Papantonio: The, okay, so the, so what we hear is, oh, well, it’s the CEOs of the company. The CEOs of the airline company, the CEOs of the rail company. No. It’s his job to make sure they do their job. He’s been here for more than four years now and he, I mean, it, it just is not happening. It’s just, it’s just not happening. You know, here, here’s the problem. The problem, I said four years. That’s not, that’s not accurate.
Farron Cousins: Yeah.
Mike Papantonio: It’s three, it’s three, three and a half, three and a half years. So, but the point being, he was here, here’s what I was trying to get to. He was here when we had a Democratic House, Democratic Senate, Democratic president. And he had already been told by a Democrat, a Democratic president, Obama.
Farron Cousins: Merkley.
Mike Papantonio: Well.
Farron Cousins: And, and Merkley in the Senate sent him.
Mike Papantonio: Right. Right. He had been told, this is a problem, so deal with it. Don’t go on vacation, or wherever the hell he disappears to, deal with it. I just think they need to get rid of him. I just think he’s a, he’s, he’s a disaster. And it’s like, you know, I’m tired of hearing gee whizz, it’s not his fault. It’s the CEO’s company. That’s, that is a ridiculous argument when you consider that his job is to regulate.
Farron Cousins: Well, and look, the CEOs, their hands are not clean. But we talk about that all the time.
Mike Papantonio: Yeah.
Farron Cousins: We’re, we’re well aware of that. Trump, yeah, he repealed the Obama era rule, which was already not very good.
Mike Papantonio: It was a, it was at least in the right direction, Farron.
Farron Cousins: It, it was, which was a lot what we saw under Obama. It wasn’t quite where it should have been, but it was a good step forward.
Mike Papantonio: Yeah. He was trying, he was trying. We had a president who was trying to fix the problem.
Farron Cousins: Right. But, but we had, during the Obama, the early years, we had so many train derailments that they started to refer to them as bomb trains.
Mike Papantonio: Yeah.
Farron Cousins: There was a great reporter that I worked with at DeSmog blog, Justin Mikulka, he was writing about trained derailments and explosions nearly every day. And, and that’s why Obama finally put that rule in place because we knew how dangerous they were. We’re using the breaking system that we used.
Mike Papantonio: A hundred years ago.
Farron Cousins: During the Civil War.
Mike Papantonio: Yeah.
Farron Cousins: I mean, same system.
Mike Papantonio: And they have, they have a replacement that’s used all over the world.
Farron Cousins: Yeah.
Mike Papantonio: They use it in Asia, they use it in Europe. It’s an electric pneumatic system. Isn’t that kind of how you describe it?
Farron Cousins: Yeah. Yeah. The brakes.
Mike Papantonio: It’s electric.
Farron Cousins: All the, all the cars it runs.
Mike Papantonio: Right, it’s electric pneumatic. The industry knows about it. They know how to, how to make the adjustments and put it on ours. It’s used as I say, all over the world except here. And this numb nut has been here, let me correct it again, only three years. Not, not four or five, like I said.
Farron Cousins: And, and that’s the big issue. You can spread the blame. If you wanna say the CEOs, we know what they did. We know what Trump did.
Mike Papantonio: Sure. They’re dirty operators.
Farron Cousins: But he also knew what they did. News, knows what they do. He could have solved this problem. He could have put it in motion to get back to where we had been under Obama. He failed to do it. He failed to take action on the airliners. He let them do what they’re doing, you know, failed us on the supply chain. Just failures across the board. There’s not a single accomplishment this man has done.
Mike Papantonio: Why is corporate media giving him a free ride, in your opinion? Why? I, I’m, I’m interested to know. Am I just so far off on the fact, I just think they’re afraid to criticize him because he’s gay?
Farron Cousins: I, I think they’re afraid to criticize him because they think he’s gonna be the 2024 Democratic nominee.
Mike Papantonio: Oh, good lord. Let’s hope not for the Democrats because I’d love to see some Democrats win.
The Biden administration has sided with the company responsible for the Ohio train derailment in a lawsuit that can make it harder to sue corporations. I don’t understand this. What the hell? What, I mean, what, why is Biden sending his, his Justice Department to argue on behalf of Norfolk Southern railroads? In a nutshell, what they’re trying to do, they’re trying to say right now, if somebody’s injured, they can bring a lawsuit in various jurisdictions. It’s called forum shopping. They say, I’m injured here. These courts are usually, the laws better for us. The statutes are better. We like the judge’s rulings. We’re gonna go here to bring the case. Norfolk wants to say, no, no, no, no. You can only bring this in Norfolk, Virginia. That’s, that’s their argument. And the Supreme Court has that question right now.
Farron Cousins: Yeah. And, and, and the, the Biden administration went to court. They didn’t have to.
Mike Papantonio: No.
Farron Cousins: And that’s what everybody has to understand. They voluntarily went to court and made the argument that yes, we, we support Norfolk Southern’s lawsuit here. We agree with them. The consumers, you know, should not be allowed to sue. Because if the company is based in Virginia, they gotta sue in their hometown.
Mike Papantonio: Right.
Farron Cousins: Where they’ve probably paid off every, you know.
Mike Papantonio: Of course.
Farron Cousins: Judicial.
Mike Papantonio: Of course.
Farron Cousins: Judicial campaign there. But.
Mike Papantonio: Well, I don’t know if they paid off judicial campaigns, but they pay off politicians.
Farron Cousins: Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. They, I mean they, they spread all the money around.
Mike Papantonio: Yeah.
Farron Cousins: And we have seen, you know, a lot of these, some of the local elections, because not all judges are elected, but there’s plenty of them that have taken Norfolk Southern money. But what the issue is here is you got a man that had cancer. He was working with the train company, but he’s working down in Georgia.
Mike Papantonio: Yeah.
Farron Cousins: So he gets cancer and he says, okay, well I’m gonna sue where I get the cancer because that’s where I am. That makes the most sense.
Mike Papantonio: By the way, the law’s better there. The statutes are better.
Farron Cousins: Yeah.
Mike Papantonio: Anyway, go ahead.
Farron Cousins: And so Norfolk Southern says, no, no, no, no, because we are based in Virginia, you have to come to where we are, even though it’s our toxins that came all the way down to you.
Mike Papantonio: Mm-hmm.
Farron Cousins: And, and this could be used across the board. This is not just a Norfolk Southern issue. This is something, I mean, think about all the cases you’ve done with this environmental toxin that, that has spread throughout our waterway. And imagine if you had to go to the home, you know of, of Dow.
Mike Papantonio: Yeah.
Farron Cousins: And, and try it right there in their backyard.
Mike Papantonio: Well.
Farron Cousins: It’s a lot more difficult.
Mike Papantonio: We’ve seen, we’ve seen this Biden administration, Department of Justice side up almost continuously with the US Chamber of Commerce, with associated industries, with big business every time the cons, it’s big business versus the consumer, Biden sends in his dogs, the Department of Justice to argue, well, let’s argue for big business. That’s what this is all about. Look, it’s just common sense. We know up in Virginia where they’d have to go that they’ve got limited liability. They’d make it very difficult for the consumer, for the injured victim. Limited damages, unfavorable case law, bad statutes. They have all of that. That’s why Norfolk Southern wants ’em in their backyard. It’s a dangerous, dangerous thing. And what if we have an absolute catastrophe like we’re seeing in Ohio, we don’t know where that’s going to go. And so now they’re gonna, oh, you’re gonna have to come to Norfolk, Virginia, or where, you’re gonna, it’s not just gonna be Norfolk, it’s not gonna just be Norfolk Southern is what I’m trying to say.
Farron Cousins: Yeah.
Mike Papantonio: Yeah.
Farron Cousins: Well, and that’s, you know, with, with the derailment in Ohio, people have to understand too, with those chemicals, which there are known carcinogens, we may not know the damage for 10, 20 years in the future. So it, it’s gonna get worse.
Mike Papantonio: It’s, it’s bad stuff that they’re having to breathe up there and it’s moving in the groundwater.
Farron Cousins: Yeah.
Mike Papantonio: It goes from the, it goes from a plume into the ground, in, into the soil, into the aquifer, into the drinking water. That’s the cycle that it takes.
Moderna has decided not to raise the price of their covid vaccine after Bernie Sanders threatened to haul the CEO in for a Senate hearing. Boy, this happened quick. Right. You know. Okay. You got a company that developed a vaccine, actually, taxpayers paid for.
Farron Cousins: Yeah.
Mike Papantonio: Billions of dollars. Taxpayers helped them develop it. Taxpayers gave them billions of dollars to, in the first phase where there was an emergency need for it, they made billions. And then after that, after they couldn’t get, count on that money, vaccine cost $26, for the consumer they tried to raise it to $130. What was it 400%?
Farron Cousins: Yeah. 400% increase. And so, of course, always has to be Bernie Sanders.
Mike Papantonio: Yeah.
Farron Cousins: Comes out and he says, okay, listen, Moderna. And he points out everything you just said, you know, we gave you the money. You know, you’re using also publicly available research. We threw all the resources at you to do this. And we’re thankful for it, by the way. You did good. But now you’re trying to screw us again. So how about you, Mr. CEO of Moderna, I want you to come into this senate. Now I’m gonna sit you down and you’re gonna tell your story.
Mike Papantonio: It was Mrs. Mrs.
Farron Cousins: Oh, Mrs. Mrs. Moderna.
Mike Papantonio: Yeah.
Farron Cousins: You come in and you tell your story to the entire country about why you’re raising the prices 400%. And a couple days later, they said, you know what, uh, we’re gonna keep it 20 bucks.
Mike Papantonio: Yeah.
Farron Cousins: Everybody just do what you’re gonna do. But that is the kind of pressure that you could see somebody like Pete Buttigieg putting on the airline industry or the train industry.
Mike Papantonio: Of course.
Farron Cousins: But nothing. But Bernie Sanders is still the, the leader out there with taking on these corporations.
Mike Papantonio: That, that’s called, it’s called leadership. You’re in an office where you can use that kinda leadership. And he, he beat them back like a wild dog, I’m telling you. And so that’s, that’s all that had to happen. No, Mrs. Moderna, you’re not gonna raise it from $26 to $130, because you’ve already made billions of dollars on the backs of taxpayers. They’ve already paid you a lot of money. I love that kinda leadership.
Farron Cousins: It, it does. And Bernie wasn’t threatening legislation against them.
Mike Papantonio: No.
Farron Cousins: He wasn’t threatening, you know, price gouging charges. He just said, why don’t you come tell everybody why you’re doing this. And that was enough to scare ’em.
Mike Papantonio: Yeah. Yeah.
Senator Feinstein announced her retirement last week but the question is if she’s even, even capable of serving for the next two years as her term expires. Big big question here, man. I’m telling, there’s every every sign of just failing mind. Go ahead and pick it up.
Farron Cousins: Yeah. And, and you know, this is a difficult story to talk about because we wanna make it clear we’re not insulting her. We’re not mocking or making fun.
Mike Papantonio: No, of course not. It’s just she’s not.
Farron Cousins: But twice last week, well, first on the day that she announced she was retiring at the end of this term, reporters came up to her a little while later and said, hey, we want to talk about your retirement. And she says, well, I haven’t made that decision yet. I haven’t said anything. And her staffer next to her had to say, well, actually, you, you did, you made that announcement this morning.
Mike Papantonio: Well, they actually said, no, actually, Senator, you put it in a written statement where you made that announcement. And then just last, was it last week?
Farron Cousins: Well, it was the next day.
Mike Papantonio: Okay.
Farron Cousins: The next day, yeah. She walks out of a vote once again, you know, reporters are asking questions and she says, did we, did we, did I vote on that?
Mike Papantonio: Mm-hmm.
Farron Cousins: And the staffers had to say, yes. Actually, you, you did just vote on that judicial nominee. You voted no. And it had just happened. I mean, we’re talking within that hour, she had performed an action, a vote, an official vote in the Senate.
Mike Papantonio: Literally did not know she had done it.
Farron Cousins: Had no idea.
Mike Papantonio: Yeah.
Farron Cousins: That, that’s, we, I mean, that is so dangerous. And if people watching this don’t understand how dangerous it is for a, a member of the Senate to be casting votes, not even knowing that she’s doing it.
Mike Papantonio: Well, she’d be 90, she’d be 91 by the time she finished this term. It’s clear, she has clear memory, memory loss. I mean, slim, very slim mental acuity. She’s the oldest serving senator. And it, it’s, you know, at some point, don’t we have to say it’s, it’s just like the story we did on Santos. I mean, yeah, he’s a Republican. You wanna support him because you need the vote. Get rid of the guy. He’s a crook. Don’t you have to say to Feinstein, ma’am, it’s time, it’s time to call it, you know, let’s throw water on the campfire. You go on home. Let Katie Porter or Ro Khanna run for your, for your seat right now. Those two people are in the running, aren’t they?
Farron Cousins: They are. And actually, Barbara Lee also announced her candidacy this week.
Mike Papantonio: Mm-hmm.
Farron Cousins: Adam Schiff, of course is, is in it too. Which you can go away Schiff.
Mike Papantonio: Yeah.
Farron Cousins: But man, to think of having Katie Porter or Ro Khanna in the Senate.
Mike Papantonio: Oh yeah.
Farron Cousins: It, it is hugely remarkable. Of course, you know, if they’re both in the primary, that means they will not both be in the House anymore.
Mike Papantonio: Yeah. Well.
Farron Cousins: So it’s a big risk, but a huge reward.
Mike Papantonio: I get it. I get it. But can you imagine Katie Porter or Ro Khanna in that position, which she should have enough class, and the people advising her should have enough class to say, you know what, you’ve done your job. You’re just not ready for it anymore. Let’s go home. Let’s have a new election. Let’s run these people.
Farron Cousins: Well, we can do the special election.
Mike Papantonio: Of course, of course.
Farron Cousins: Which will, which will weed out that overcrowded primary.
Mike Papantonio: Yes.
Farron Cousins: And allow, this is what the Democrats need to do, it will allow us to keep the other three people in Congress.
Mike Papantonio: Yeah. While it’s.
Farron Cousins: And not lose those seats.
Mike Papantonio: That’s right. That’s right.
Farron Cousins: The smartest thing is for the Democratic Party to say, you know, you’ve been here since 1992. We, we love you. It’s time to go. But we can’t afford to lose four seats in the house.
Mike Papantonio: Yeah.
Farron Cousins: Just because you want to hang on for two more years.
Mike Papantonio: I agree.
More information’s been revealed about how a major banking CEO helped Jeffrey Epstein with his illicit activities involving sex trafficking. Now here’s the question everybody begins when we’re talking about Jeffrey, Jeffrey Epstein these days, why is nobody being prosecuted? Okay. We know who they are. The names are out there. Why is the Justice Department not going after these people? So all of a sudden we’ve got Jes Staley, we got Jes Staley with JP Morgan. And Jes Staley has this love affair with Epstein. It’s just, it’s, it’s, it’s, it’s man love, the only way I can describe it. But he, these emails are coming out where we’re seeing what that relationship was with, with Staley clearly understands what’s going on and he’s part of it, according to the complaint. Now, that’s, that’s what’s been alleged in the complaint.
Farron Cousins: Yeah. And, and I mean, the, the emails are pretty explicit. Some of them talking about, you know, they’re, they’re referring to these young girls. Staley had Disney princess names that he would call them. That was kind of their code for which girls I, again, allegedly, he, he would want. It’s always about alcohol with him. Even Jeffrey Epstein says that. Staley’s out there saying, oh, you’re my best, you’re my only friend. I don’t know where I’d be without you. But then of course, you have the real sinister stuff happening behind, well, I can’t even say real sinister, it’s all sinister. But as the CEO of JP Morgan, you’ve got JP Morgan workers in the bank that have raised a ton of red flags about.
Mike Papantonio: Yeah. The people who are supposed to, they’re looking at transactions. They’re gonna say, wait, wait a second. What is this? What is this all about?
Farron Cousins: You know, it looks like we’ve got millions coming in from, from human trafficking here for this Epstein account. Staley, what do we do? And he basically says, you don’t worry about that.
Mike Papantonio: Yeah.
Farron Cousins: These are, these are not red flags. Everything is cool. Everything is good. So he essentially kills these internal investigations, based on these allegations. And that’s because he’s, you know, down there enjoying himself at, at the private island.
Mike Papantonio: Somebody at JP Morgan was doing their job. Okay. And they started seeing these transactions. I think in the end, the complaint says there was a million dollars exchanged for these Disney princesses. And somewhere in those exchanges, somebody who’s, does their job says, wait a second. This does not pass the smell test. Let’s do a little longer. So the attorney general, and I, I love this. I love the courage of this attorney general, the attorney general of US Virgin Islands. He says, we, we think, we think JP Morgan has propped Epstein up. That’s what the complaint is. That none of this could have happened, or it, it couldn’t have happened as extensively without JP Morgan. Whether he, he proves his case, I don’t know. But I’ll tell you what, the complaint that they filed is pretty darn damaging. And so we’ll see where it goes. But these emails, I don’t know how they just go away.
Farron Cousins: Yeah. And, and you’re, you’re right though, too. We need answers because we know so many of these people that were involved with Epstein one way or another, all the answers are there. They’re in those sealed files that we can’t, you know, nobody has been able to get ahold of.
Mike Papantonio: Right.
Farron Cousins: But, but there are actions happening right now. They are trying to get ahold of those. They’re trying to get them opened because the public deserves at this point, we need to know. Yeah. There’s Republicans in there. Yeah. There’s Democrats in there. There’s leaders of the tech industry in there.
Mike Papantonio: We gotta be blind.
Farron Cousins: There’s scientists.
Mike Papantonio: Yeah. We have to be blind about what the association is. These are people that did some bad.
Farron Cousins: A creep is a creep.
Mike Papantonio: Yeah, they did some, did some bad stuff. Okay. Why can’t we just say they did some bad stuff? It’s just like when we do a show on this, on this program, and we talk about a Democrat that’s done some bad stuff. You have the Democrat, you know, meatheads coming at you saying, oh, how dare you do that? I’m so tired of it. I mean, aren’t you? Aren’t, don’t you just wanna say, get a life. This is not a baseball game. This is politics that involves our democracy. This is the same analysis.
Farron Cousins: You know, I used to get people that would get mad at me because I was skeptical of Michael Avenatti before he got hit with any criminal charges.
Mike Papantonio: Yeah. Before he started serving time.
Farron Cousins: I was, I was very skeptical and not quite nice to him. And people said, look, he’s doing great stuff. What are you doing? And I was like, well, I’m a free man, and he’s not now. So I’m gonna go ahead and say, I was right about that.
Mike Papantonio: What is that? Tell me what that is. I, we, we always are asking the question, what is it that causes somebody to be so incapable of just logical analysis to where if they, they, they think everything is a football game or a baseball game. They don’t understand, give that up. Let’s analyze what’s really happening here. And the Department of Justice has to do that in this situation with what happened with Epstein, regardless of where their association is, they gotta be blind to that. They simply have to go after these people.
Farron Cousins: Yep.
Mike Papantonio: Microsoft’s new artificial intelligence bot appears to have gone nuts. I mean, he’s insulting reporters. He’s insulting everybody by comparing them to blood thirsty dictators. Wow. This, this story, I love this story. Okay. So, so we take, we, we take this machine input for AI, it’s machine input, and it is learning through big data. That’s how it’s fed in. It’s supposed to be intuitive to some degree. So now the, the Bing, called Bing from Microsoft, they’ve invented this, lay this story out. It’s almost not believable. Go ahead.
Farron Cousins: Their, their little artificial intelligence creature has become a, a belligerent, angry, lying.
Mike Papantonio: Yeah.
Farron Cousins: Computer program that also says it wishes to be human now.
Mike Papantonio: Yeah. Yeah.
Farron Cousins: But it, it, it is, I mean, people have to understand, you had an Associated Press reporter that was, I guess essentially doing an interview with the artificial intelligence.
Mike Papantonio: Trying to, trying to pump it up, trying to say, this is great.
Farron Cousins: Yeah.
Mike Papantonio: And then what happened?
Farron Cousins: And it starts telling the reporter and says, you’re lying again. You’re lying to me. You’re lying to yourself. You’re lying to everyone. I don’t appreciate you lying to me. I don’t like you spreading falsehoods about me.
Mike Papantonio: Yeah.
Farron Cousins: And then it went on to call him Hitler, Pol Pot.
Mike Papantonio: Stalin.
Farron Cousins: Stalin.
Mike Papantonio: Yeah.
Farron Cousins: It, this is an artificial
Mike Papantonio: He called, called him, called him a 1990 murderer.
Farron Cousins: Yeah. Excused.
Mike Papantonio: He told, told the reporter they were too short, that they had an ugly face and that they had really bad teeth. Okay, go figure. Now here’s, here’s where this comes to me. Somebody put, somebody has to program it. I guess it’s all, it’s programmed through big data. Somebody understands it a lot better than I do, but I think I understand the basics. It’s, it’s machine learning through big data. It just goes through tons and tons. Everything from a baseball game to a, a recipe. And it, it just takes all of that. It takes words that people use and phrases that people uses, and then it puts it into intuitive thinking. Well, this little psychopath Bing, absolute psychopath, if it had arms would probably kill somebody. And so this is AI as we see it in 2023, right?
Farron Cousins: Yeah, it is. And, and just to circle back on what you said, it did literally accuse the reporter, it said, I have evidence that you committed a murder in 1990. I mean, that, that’s very dangerous.
Mike Papantonio: Yeah.
Farron Cousins: If we start relying on this for law enforcement.
Mike Papantonio: Yeah.
Farron Cousins: Which, you know, we’re, we will be headed there one day. So it’s basically trying to frame the guy for murder. Also, at one point, a different reporter, declared its love for him.
Mike Papantonio: Right.
Farron Cousins: Asked him to leave his wife. But.
Mike Papantonio: Yeah. Leave his wife and run away with an AI Bing computer, I mean.
Farron Cousins: But, but, but they do, like you said, it’s crawling everything on the internet. So recipes and, and videos and also social media.
Mike Papantonio: Right.
Farron Cousins: And I think that’s where it’s picking up this personality because as, as, as humorous as this is, this is a reflection of what humans have become.
Mike Papantonio: Okay. You hit it on the head. If you’re saying, we’re gonna bring in, we’re gonna quantitate, we’re gonna figure out where’s it getting it? Most of it, a lot of it’s coming from social media. And this is telling us that in social media, if you quantify how crazy social media has gotten, how angry and despicable social media has gotten, that’s what’s being fed to Mr. Bing right now. Now, I was, I was interested. They, they said, you know, the Bing said, your, your reporter who’s lying to everybody spreading fake news, you can’t be trusted. Was, was he talking about Fox and CNN and MSNBC? I mean, was it cable news or just generally.?
Farron Cousins: Well, I mean, you know, if it is crawling the internet, we’ve talked about all those studies that show that the.
Mike Papantonio: That’s my point.
Farron Cousins: The media can’t be trusted. So, you know, it, it may be learning things that reporters may not be happy about. But again, it’s so weird that we are seeing this huge push right now for artificial intelligence. Really just in the last couple months, all because, you know, ChatGPT has become the thing because that one actually works pretty well.
Mike Papantonio: Pretty good. Yeah. There’s no, well, is there any stories of it? Well, in this situation, Bing was actually urging the person talking to them to go out and commit violence against somebody. So, and it, as you say, it claimed to be human. No, I’m human and you should go break somebody’s arm. That kind of stuff, you know.
Farron Cousins: And, and then later on it actually told a different reporter that it never gave that interview.
Mike Papantonio: Yeah.
Farron Cousins: So it learned to lie.
Mike Papantonio: Yeah. Yeah.
Farron Cousins: That’s.
Mike Papantonio: Wow. Spooky.
Farron Cousins: It’s, it’s becoming human, that’s for sure.
Mike Papantonio: Isaac Asimov, great science fiction writer. This is the kind of stuff that he would, that he would create. Farron, thank you for joining me. Okay.
Farron Cousins: Thank you.
Mike Papantonio: That’s all for this week, but all of these segments are gonna be, 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 every week we tell you stories that corporate media can’t tell you. They cannot tell you these stories cuz their advertisers won’t let ’em, or their political connections just don’t allow for it. We’ll see you next time.
