A proposed bill in the state of Florida would require any blogger who writes about the Florida government to register with the state, which is a clear violation of the First Amendment. 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: A proposed bill in the state of Florida would require any blogger who writes about the Florida government to register with the state, which is a clear violation of the First Amendment. But that doesn’t mean anything to this yucklehead right here. This is, why don’t you pick up with Mr. Brodeur, who I don’t know, maybe he never took civics. Maybe he’s never read a book. But he comes up with this idea that if you are a blogger and you criticize the governor, or you criticize the cabinet, or you talk about some bad thing happening in Florida politics, then by golly, you need to, you need to register, and you need to tell the, every time, every time you tell the story, tell them what the, tell ’em about the story you told. This is the craziest. I can’t even say it. It’s this goofball Brodeur really believes that this is possible in America in 2023. Hell, maybe it is. What do you think?
Farron Cousins: Well, anything is possible, unfortunately. And that’s the really terrifying part about this, because two years ago we would look at a story like this, it’s not even gonna make it to the floor for a vote. But now with everything we’ve seen, who knows? I mean, this could be the next big challenge at the Supreme Court. But this legislation that Mr. Brodeur here put forward late last week, basically says, listen, if you’re a blogger, which they don’t even clearly define blogger.
Mike Papantonio: It’s so vague.
Farron Cousins: But it, but it certainly applies to anyone.
Mike Papantonio: Are we bloggers because we do a show?
Farron Cousins: I think technically we would fall under that category because.
Mike Papantonio: Hey, let me, can I announce right now, we’re gonna be your first test case because we’re not gonna do a thing that passes in this legislation. We’re gonna test the case. Go ahead and pass it. Let’s see how you do with it. Go ahead.
Farron Cousins: Yeah. So what you would have to do, you know, what we would be legally required to do is every month on the 10th of the month, we would have to submit a report, each and every one of us listing the title of the story we did, when it was published, where it was published and how much we were paid to write that story or to do that video.
Mike Papantonio: Like somebody pays us, right?
Farron Cousins: Right. Which would include, you know, any YouTube revenue, Facebook revenue. Because what they want to do is try to say that bloggers, and he actually said this in an interview, bloggers are basically lobbyists who lobby with their words.
Mike Papantonio: Okay, so I see this goofy stare on this guy right here. I can see him saying, yeah, this is a good idea.
Farron Cousins: Well, it’s gotten so bad that even Newt Gingrich, you know, Mr. Contract with America came out over the weekend and had to say, listen, this is, this is his word, insane.
Mike Papantonio: Yeah.
Farron Cousins: What these Republicans are doing in the state of Florida has gotten so bad that, you know, the old guard, Newt Gingrich has come out and said, you got, you guys are insane. What is happening here is not normal. You can’t do this.
Mike Papantonio: We expect this from Trump.
Farron Cousins: Yeah.
Mike Papantonio: Okay. It’s nutcrackery, man.
