America’s Lawyer E44: George Santos’s lies might have finally caught up to him, as his former roommate has told authorities that Santos was the mastermind behind a massive credit card fraud scheme. More young children will be put to work under a new law in Arkansas – and corporations couldn’t be happier about this cheap source of labor they can now exploit. And if you think politics in Florida is crazy now, just wait until you hear what’s happening behind the scenes. 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: Ron DeSantis is clearly running for president, so we need to understand a lot more about his character. Would he be a president who would take care of our families in tough times? Would he care at all about the struggles that Americans are faced with day-to-day? We can learn a lot about our presidential want to be by taking a look at how he treats Florida consumers. This is an eyeopener. I’ve got Troy Rafferty with me now to talk about what’s happening in Florida. Troy, you, I don’t think there’s anybody who spends as much time over in Tallahassee watching all this take place. What struck me is when we analyze who Ron DeSantis is, I think America needs to understand when they vote, what are they voting for? What’s he doing to consumers here in Florida? You gave me a call, you said this, I just saw something that’s so horrendous you need to know about. Let’s talk about it.
Troy Rafferty: Yeah. So over in Tallahassee, what’s happening, literally, I was over there last week watching the Banking and Insurance Senate Committee hearing. And it was an abomination. It was the most despicable and deplorable display of democracy that I’ve ever seen.
Mike Papantonio: Democracy in the dark is a term you like to use.
Troy Rafferty: Democracy in the dark. Everything, it was clear what was going on over there was these legislators are run amok. And they’re doing whatever they want and they’re checking boxes in order to.
Mike Papantonio: Troy, the setup on this is that Charlie Crist ran for governor. He was a bad candidate. He lost by 20%. But this is not a Florida story. This story affects the entire nation because I gotta tell you something, if I’m calling a winner, potentially, it’s Ron DeSantis for President of the United States. So last week I heard the story about what you observed, and we’re gonna show, we’re gonna show folks this film. I want people to see firsthand what Ron DeSantis says is okay. Last week we did a story on the fact that Ron DeSantis was, I guess, out of the picture. And you had a bunch of legislators home alone in Florida, where they were coming up with laws that would have made it requirement if you’re a blogger that you have to report to the government if you criticize Ron DeSantis or if, there was another piece of legislation where they wanted to do away with the Democratic party in the state of Florida. So here it comes down to the question, who the hell is in charge in Florida? And this is all coming from Ron DeSantis. Tell us what you observed last week.
Troy Rafferty: Yeah. So, in the committee and Senator Boyd, you got a picture back here, Senator Boyd was the chair of this committee. He, there were so many people, because the bills that are being proposed by this legislature are corporate welfare packages. They’re welfare packages for insurance industry. And that’s what they’re pushing. It injures, it hurts consumers. It hurts small businesses. It hurts victims. And all of these victims came up to testify. And I’ll tell you what I saw, and I really want everybody to go to the videos, but what I saw was disabled people coming up, driving hours and hours and hours to go testify about how this bill is a bad bill. And this senator, the chairman gave them 30 seconds.
Sen. Jim Boyd: Probably over a hundred cards, will be limited to 30 seconds per speaker and it will be enforced because we want to get as many people on the record that wanna speak to this bill as possible.
Troy Rafferty: One particular individual who has a traumatic brain injury asked for more time because she couldn’t articulate quickly enough what she had to say in 30 seconds. They drive nine hours and they get 30 seconds.
Mike Papantonio: Okay. So Boyd is up on, he’s the guy in charge. He’s, DeSantis knows that this is the guy in charge of a committee that wants to completely obliterate consumer’s rights in Florida, where it comes to being injured, where it comes to being able to go after an insurance company when they do something wrong, like tornado comes through, hurricane comes through, destroys their home, that consumer wants to have the right to go after that company. The deal is, he’s the guy who’s carrying the water for Ron DeSantis to try to take all those consumer rights away.
Troy Rafferty: 100%.
Mike Papantonio: So this woman with brain damages in front of the committee, terrible brain damage. I saw the film, we’ll take a look at it here. Terrible brain damage. He says to her, you have 30 seconds, ma’am, to tell us about what happened to you. Why is it that you want this law defeated in the state of Florida as a consumer? What happened?
Troy Rafferty: And it’s more despicable than that. He not only just gave 30 seconds, he then interrupted her as she was trying to articulate what her story was and how she got hurt.
Mike Papantonio: Because she couldn’t speak.
Troy Rafferty: She couldn’t speak. She had, she’s got a traumatic brain injury and so she’s speaking very slowly and she has to process the thoughts. He interrupts her and says, thank you for being here. We have to move on.
Ms. Vera Vox: I’m sure a lot of people can relate, but.
Sen. Jim Boyd: I hate to cut you off Ms. Vox, but we’re 45 seconds. So thank you for being here, though. We appreciate your testimony.
Mike Papantonio: All right. Second woman comes up, man comes up, the film I saw he has no arms, he has no legs. He’s lost his arms and legs in a malpractice case. He’s standing in front of this committee. Let me tell you my story. Please allow me to tell you, please allow me to tell you the story of what happens when medical malpractice takes place and the governor takes away the right of the consumer to go ahead and proceed against the hospital.
Troy Rafferty: And get the medical damages and the medical treatment they need. That’s, I mean, it’s as I’ve said, I’ve said despicable and deplorable and I don’t think I can say those two words enough.
Mike Papantonio: Okay. What happens?
Troy Rafferty: And so he gets up there and he’s telling his story and he’s very impassioned. And you saw the video, he’s very impassioned and he’s telling the story and, you know, about having to sit on the floor in the shower because he can’t afford a leg, you know.
Mike Papantonio: Both his legs are missing.
Troy Rafferty: Both his legs are gone.
Mike Papantonio: His arms are gone.
Troy Rafferty: His arms are gone.
Mike Papantonio: And he’s saying this clearly took place with hospital malpractice. And if you take this right for me to sue that hospital away, which DeSantis wants to do, if you do that, then I’m a ward of the state. Taxpayers have to take care of me.
Troy Rafferty: It’s gonna fall on the taxpayers. And that’s what, that’s why I said it’s an insurance industry bailout. It’s an insurance, it’s a welfare package for insurance industry.
Mike Papantonio: Yeah. Okay. So, Mr. Boyd here is listening. He sees the guy up there with no arms. He knows that this is a horrendous situation. And he says, what to this man?
Troy Rafferty: He interrupts him and he said, sir, sir, I’ve given you 45 seconds. It’s, you have to go. We have to move on. And everybody starts applauding and he gets angry, that senator right there, the chairman gets angry and says, there will be no applause. There will be no shouting. There will be nothing like that in this chamber.
Mr. Gary Miracle: I’m allowed to have for the rest of my life on the top shelf, not the bottom shelf of life, please.
Sen. Jim Boyd: Mr. Miracle, I gave you over a minute, and please be respectful of those behind you. I’m sorry that we had to limit to. Next we have Frank Pierce. Um, ladies and gentlemen, we’re gonna try to run this meeting as professionally and with as much decorum as possible, clapping and shouting and it will not be tolerated. I will, we’ll deal with it accordingly.
Mike Papantonio: Okay. Why, the reason this is so important, the reason this is a national story. This is not a story about Florida. It affects Florida consumers. It’s important to Florida consumers. It’s a story about the character of this man, Ron DeSantis, who says, I want to be your president. I want to take care of you. I’m gonna take care of the American public. When the American public struggles, I’m gonna be there for you. I’m gonna take care of you in hard times. How does it get any harder than what you’ve just described? So we need to understand that at the top of this food chain in Florida, these stories that we’re doing about what’s happening in Florida are just opening the door so you can better understand that if you vote for Ron DeSantis, that the things that you’re hearing about are gonna take place on a national stage. Isn’t that what this case?
Troy Rafferty: That’s absolutely right. This is about his character. I don’t think you could say it anymore clearly. Absolutely.
Mike Papantonio: Okay. It’s, you know, last week we talked about the fact that it’s like a scene out of Home Alone. Okay. You’ve got these nut cases running around Tallahassee knowing they can do whatever they want to do because Charlie Crist lost by 20 points. And it’s like a mandate from the public is the way they read that. But the public doesn’t know what’s happening in the dark and that’s why these stories have to be told. That’s why you need to be over doing what you’re doing as a lobbyist every day, making sure that we’re protecting them.
Troy Rafferty: And what happens is when the public does try to go and try to participate, that’s how they get treated in the legislature. They get shut down. It was, it was really one of the most despicable, deplorable things I’ve seen. It is, they wouldn’t even put names up on the board. You didn’t even have to go around and vote. It was just, if you’re in favor of this amendment, say, aye. Aye.
Mike Papantonio: Brain damaged woman who can barely speak, this bird is telling her, oh, you gotta hurry up, ma’am, you got 15 more seconds. Man without arms, man without legs, can I please, please allow me to tell the story about the legislation that you’re getting ready to do at the request of this man Ron DeSantis who’s running for president. Let me tell you the story because you wanna understand how bad this is that you’re getting ready to do. Why would Ron DeSantis not walk into the chamber and say, what the hell is happening here? I mean, isn’t that the question?
Troy Rafferty: That’s the question.
Mike Papantonio: Doesn’t a leader do that? What in the hell are you nut cases doing in Tallahassee while I’m out campaigning for president?
Troy Rafferty: Exactly. And let them tell their story. Like the young, the mother who took a bullet for her daughter because she was being held to gunpoint. And she jumped in front of the bullet.
Mike Papantonio: And that story was told.
Troy Rafferty: And that story was told in that chamber.
Mike Papantonio: What was their reaction to that?
Troy Rafferty: 30 seconds is up.
Mike Papantonio: Ma’am, you’re outta time.
Troy Rafferty: Your 30 seconds is up.
Mike Papantonio: Ma’am, you’re outta time. This guy Ron DeSantis and this guy need to be out of time.
Troy Rafferty: That’s right.
Mike Papantonio: And so we’re gonna talk about these stories as they develop. Maybe Ron DeSantis doesn’t know what’s going on, but we do and we’re gonna report these stories because it’s not a Florida story. This is a national story because that tells you the character that’s behind this man.
Troy Rafferty: Absolutely.
Mike Papantonio: Troy Rafferty, thank you for joining me. Okay.
Troy Rafferty: Thanks Mike. Thanks for everything you do on America’s Lawyer.
Mike Papantonio: Thank you.
Mike Papantonio: George Santos’ former roommate says that the congressman was the mastermind behind a major credit card fraud scheme. But then he’s only just now speaking out because he was afraid that Santas would go after his family if he spoke the truth. And you know what, Santos probably would. I have Farron Cousins here to talk about this. Every week we do another story on this nutcase. It’s total nutcrackery every time we’re talking about him. So in this situation, we learned that he had this whole network where he’s lifting credit cards, he’s creating fraudulent credit cards, he’s scraping information from legitimate credit cards. He has a whole business set up, right?
Farron Cousins: Yeah. I mean, that’s what this roommate is alleging. And the roommate did go to jail for it. He was arrested, then deported back to Brazil. But according to a letter that this former roommate has now sent to federal authorities in the US, he said, George Santos is the guy who not only got me involved in this, he gave me the equipment, he showed me how to use it. We had a 50 50 agreement that every dollar I stole, he would get 50 cents of it. This is about as strong of a case as you can imagine. And what’s funny is that about a month ago, a piece of this story had come out that linked Santos to this case that said, hey, by the way, there’s a weird incidence where a man in Seattle was arrested for skimming credit card numbers. And he had a box in his car filled with skimming devices.
Mike Papantonio: Right.
Farron Cousins: That had George Santos’ address on it.
Mike Papantonio: Okay. Give us his, give us his other name. Okay. Santos was operating this, this fraud scheme, God, the guy looks like a fraudster. He looks like a fraudster, but okay. So he’s operating this fraud scheme. He’s stealing credit cards, he’s scraping credit card information. He’s actually robbing ATM machines in effect. And so while this is going on, his friend who got caught, Santos says, I’m gonna help you. I’m actually going to get El Chapo’s lawyer. Right. That’s part of the story. He tells his poor friend who’s sitting in prison, in jail, I’m getting El Chapo’s personal lawyer to come help you. What happens?
Farron Cousins: Obviously El Chapo’s lawyers did not show up to save the day. So, and once again, it’s just more lies from Santos. And even more disgusting, Santos then goes to Seattle to testify at the bond hearing. You know, we’re trying to get this guy out on bail, and he says, don’t worry, judge, I can vouch for him. I work at Goldman Sachs. And the judge, the judge even goes, he goes, whoa, well hold up. You, you work at Goldman Sachs in New York? He says, yes, I do.
Mike Papantonio: Yeah. Another lie.
Farron Cousins: So he lies to the judge trying to get his friend outta jail. He’s also told the media that, oh, I was an informant in this case. You’re not gonna be an informant in the case and then go to argue to get the guy out on bail. So every piece of the story Santos had told us, as best we can tell, is a lie.
Mike Papantonio: I mean, I forget the number of lies. First of all, he says, I’m Jewish. My parents were caught up in the Holocaust. He says, I have this career where I’m a Goldman Sachs advisor. I mean, it’s one thing.
Farron Cousins: I was an award-winning volleyball star.
Mike Papantonio: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Farron Cousins: Until my knees gave out. None of it even happened. His mom died in 9/11. She hadn’t been in the country since 1999.
Mike Papantonio: Okay.
Farron Cousins: It’s endless.
Mike Papantonio: So his poor friend who is part of his fraud scheme, his credit card fraud scheme, he goes to jail and then he’s deported. Can we deport this guy? I mean, is there a way to deport him? The real question comes down to why in the hell are the Republicans not getting rid of him? Because you got an election coming up, Mr. and Mrs. Republican, you got an election come up. This guy is gonna be hung around your head. So the best thing you can do right now is get rid of him. Hope that people forget who Santos is. Hopefully get him sent back to Brazil after you put him in prison. But I don’t know why McCarthy won’t pull the, he won’t pull the trigger.
Farron Cousins: It’s so dumb. You guys have more than enough evidence right now. Hold the vote, kick him out, and he’s gone.
Mike Papantonio: You still have a majority, they still have a majority even without him.
Farron Cousins: Right.
Mike Papantonio: You don’t need him.
Farron Cousins: Yeah. His one seat is not make or break it for these Republicans. So kick him out. Sure, you’ll lose the seat, but you also lose this liability that as we’ve seen the stories keep getting worse, they’re not gonna get better.
Mike Papantonio: Is this another example of the Justice Department not doing their job? Again, every time we come on this show, we have another story about the Justice Department not doing their job. Why didn’t they arrest him? They had all of this information to begin with way back then. When they threw his pal in prison, they had the same information. They stood by and let it happen, didn’t they?
Farron Cousins: Yep. But at least the investigators in Seattle, they never closed the investigation officially.
Mike Papantonio: Yeah.
Farron Cousins: So they might still be able to take him down. So maybe he’ll end up in prison in Seattle. Maybe it’ll be federal prison. Maybe he’ll be deported. But there’s a jail cell somewhere waiting for this guy.
Mike Papantonio: I hope so. Brazil or the US.
Elon Musk is now being investigated by the FTC for giving journalists access to Twitter’s internal messages. Regardless of how you feel about Musk, you need to understand that this is a major, major assault on the freedom of the press. I mean, can you imagine the dysfunctional FTC that has never done a thing for consumers? Every time you turn around, the FTC is making consumer a victim. It’s the most dysfunctional organization that, almost as bad as the SEC, almost as bad as the EPA and the FDA. They are a class of their own. They are do nothing where it comes to consumers. So now they want to know, well, who are the people that have looked at these files and are writing stories about how the Jack Dorsey, this is a Jack Dorsey issue, man, Jack Dorsey knew what was going on. These people that are writing about him when he was running Twitter, these stories are compelling. But now the FTC, the federal government wants to know who the journalists are. Really?
Farron Cousins: That, this story did strike me as very odd. And look, you know, I am definitely not a member of the Elon Musk fan club.
Mike Papantonio: Oh, I know you aren’t. I’m not either. But I mean, let’s call it what it is, though.
Farron Cousins: But for them to say, we need the names, that’s not even your job as the Federal Trade Commission. Why are you even involved in this whatsoever? And they’re doing it saying, well, you gotta give us the names. Okay. The names are public. We know what reporters because they’ve been confirmed.
Mike Papantonio: They’re looking for more. They’re looking for other people that they can victimize like they tried to victimize Matt Taibbi in front of Congress last week.
Farron Cousins: And they’re, they’re trying to claim, oh, well, we need to make sure that user data was not compromised here. Oh, we’re protecting the consumers. No, you’re not. We have data breaches at Yahoo, at Google, at Twitter, before Musk came along. Facebook, we’ve got real data breach problems out there that the FTC has totally ignored. So for them to act like, oh, no, suddenly we’re concerned about these people looking into, you know, user data, which isn’t really even happening. And I’ve said before, I think so far the Twitter files have been a big dud. I mean, nothing, nothing that’s excited me at all.
Mike Papantonio: The only thing, the only I’ve found.
Farron Cousins: But I don’t think it’s to the point where the government needs to say, give us all your sources, that’s crazy.
Mike Papantonio: Okay. I was a little moved by Matt Taibbi. We’ve known Matt Taibbi a long time. We’ve interviewed Matt Taibbi over the years, very credible journalist. I moved by the idea that he’s saying, wait, if you don’t take anything away from this, take this away. The FBI was dominating the decision making with Jack Dorsey. That was my takeaway. When I listened to those hearings, that was my takeaway. Taibbi went after Democrats, he went after Republicans and he said, how dare you, how dare you be questioning my job as a journalist? And because they weren’t happy that he was going after the FBI. I mean, that’s the way I saw it. What is your take on that?
Farron Cousins: Well, as far as the hearings last week go, I don’t think Taibbi did himself any favors.
Mike Papantonio: Okay.
Farron Cousins: He, with the way he was kind of dancing around that issue, especially where they said, here, the FBI said, does this violate your terms of service? And then both him and Shellenberger said, well, that’s, we think that’s a demand.
Mike Papantonio: Mm-hmm.
Farron Cousins: Okay. You’re reading a lot into that if you’re saying that’s a demand, as opposed to do these naked pictures violate your terms of service. But even still, I’m not gonna begrudge those guys for doing it. You know, you can do what you want to do. You got a ton of subscribers, followers for it, whatever. But, and again, I despise Elon Musk, union busting SOB in my opinion.
Mike Papantonio: Hey, can I tell you something? We disagree. I mean, I’m no fan of Elon Musk. But where it comes to Jack Dorsey versus Elon Musk, I’m going with Elon Musk all the time.
Farron Cousins: Well, but for the FTC to be digging into this at this point, this is gross. This is kind of like the Julian Assange thing.
Mike Papantonio: Yeah. Very, very similar.
Farron Cousins: It doesn’t, you gotta put your personal opinions aside because I know a lot of folks are, well, no, he helped Republicans.
Mike Papantonio: People can’t do it.
Farron Cousins: But it’s an assault on journalism. And that’s what this is.
Mike Papantonio: Well, people.
Farron Cousins: This is an assault on journalism.
Mike Papantonio: People will watch this, will watch this segment, and they’ll line up on their politics. You know, MSNBC is telling me to think like this. Therefore, I’m not upset by the fact that journalists are being sought after. CNN is telling me there’s nothing to this story. Don’t pay attention, just walk away. That’s how they’ll line up. And then the people that agree on the other side will be coming in with comments. It’s tribalism gone crazy.
Farron Cousins: It is.
Mike Papantonio: The FBI has a new way of getting their hands on personal data without having to go through the court system. Instead of getting warrants, they’re simply buying your data from companies that are already tracking you every move you make. There is no, you know, there’s no privacy. Okay. But I think at this point, society has gotten to the point where they say, I’m okay with that. You know my opinion, people don’t care about it. I think they don’t care that big brother is tracking them. Maybe that’s just like, maybe that was a sixties and seventies thing. Maybe it was only boomers who really cared about the fact that, that people were tracking them. I say that, but then I see the Generation Z, they’re kind of responding to some of this.
Farron Cousins: Yeah. Z the younger folks, definitely.
Mike Papantonio: It’s that in between that I wonder about.
Farron Cousins: Yeah. The millennials and the Xers, they’re just, ah, nothing matters.
Mike Papantonio: Ah, no big deal.
Farron Cousins: But this is so funny, especially, you know, when we pair this to the FTC Musk, did you violate user service data? And then the FBI’s saying, well, we’re just buying it. You know, we’re the ones actually taking your data.
Mike Papantonio: Yeah.
Farron Cousins: We’re the, and we don’t even have to go through the courts anymore because that was too exhaustive. It cost us too much money. So instead we take that money and we go to Twitter, or we go to Facebook and Google and we say, hey, um, we wanna buy the location data, just like advertisers do. They buy our data from these companies. And the FBI thought, well, that’s an easier way. We don’t have to go to court and justify why we need this persons data.
Mike Papantonio: Well, they have to get around it. You see, Carpenter versus the US is a Supreme Court decision. And in that decision, the Supreme Court said, hell no. You can’t just follow data. If you follow data, it’s just like, it’s without a warrant. We’re not gonna let you do that. So, the CIA, FBI says, well, we don’t even have to do that. We’re just gonna go to Facebook and Twitter and we’re gonna buy all of it. If we wanna know where you are at any given moment, it’s easy to do. We can do it without a warrant. And apparently they, you know, the Supreme Court’s gonna have to deal with this at some point. But based on the decision in Carpenter, I don’t know it’s gonna go all that well.
Farron Cousins: Well, and it’s very terrifying too for the people who think, oh, it doesn’t matter if they have my data, I’m doing nothing wrong. Okay. But what happens when your data shows that you were in a location where they just found a body.
Mike Papantonio: Yeah.
Farron Cousins: You know, they just had a robbery. Suddenly the FBI bought your data and said, well, wait a minute, we can link up Mr. Smith here to this building.
Mike Papantonio: He was in the room next door.
Farron Cousins: And then it does create a world of problems for you.
Mike Papantonio: Yeah.
Democratic leaders have issued a stern warning to the party. Stop, stop being mean to Vice President Kamala Harris, or else. Well, but the party doesn’t seem to understand that she’s hugely unpopular, Farron, and she could cost them the next election. Here’s the problem, here’s the visuals on it. You got a guy who’s gonna be what, 82 or 83 by the time the next term would be over?
Farron Cousins: Yeah.
Mike Papantonio: You got her making decisions. And if you just take a little, take a little walk down her history, it’s pretty scary. Because first of all, when it came to the presidential election, the primaries, what she get get 1% of the vote in California? She was the attorney general for God’s sakes and she had such a ridiculous history of screw ups that she got 1% of the California vote in the primaries. So now people are looking at this and saying, wait, she’s one heartbeat away from the president. An 83 year old guy walking around eating ice cream cones, maybe doesn’t even know where he is a lot of part, a lot of the time. But she’s one heartbeat away from that. What’s your take on this story?
Farron Cousins: Yeah. This is really bizarre. And it’s important. Like, this came from CNN, so it’s not a far right website talking about this.
Mike Papantonio: Well, they’re trying to move far right to try to get their, they’re trying to get their audience back.
Farron Cousins: Right. But I think it is important to say this is national mainstream news at this point.
Mike Papantonio: Yes, yes.
Farron Cousins: And you had Elizabeth Warren who made a comment recently who said, hey, you know, you’re good with Joe Biden as president. You good with Kamala Harris as vice president? She said, well, I’ll leave that up to Joe. So then the party leaders got furious with Elizabeth Warren.
Mike Papantonio: I’ll leave that up to Joe was not strong enough.
Farron Cousins: Right. And so they’re calling her saying, you gotta apologize. So now Elizabeth Warren has had to leave voicemails and messages.
Mike Papantonio: Why is she doing that?
Farron Cousins: To apologize.
Mike Papantonio: But why? If anything, she should be running for president. She should be a vice presidential candidate.
Farron Cousins: She should be.
Mike Papantonio: Elizabeth Warren is fabulous as a political, as a political candidate. And she’s having to apologize to Kamala Harris who’s lost what, three quarters of her staff? And her staff, the criticism is that she was lazy. She’s disorganized. She’s over her head. She’s petty and mean. Those are just a few of the things that are coming from the staff as they move away from this woman. And Elizabeth Warren is apologizing. Don’t you wanna say Elizabeth, you don’t have to apologize. You know, jump into the race, run.
Farron Cousins: You know what stuck out to me though, reading through this article, because you see the arguments that the party leadership is making for don’t attack Kamala. And it’s the same arguments that we would get in emails and phone calls and Twitter messages in 2016 saying, how dare you call out the bad things Hillary Clinton has done because you could cost the Democrats the election.
Mike Papantonio: I know, really.
Farron Cousins: But, it’s verbatim what these Democratic insiders are saying now. Like, no, you can’t attack the vice president. You can’t call her out because we’re in the fight of our lives and by God, we’ve gotta win. And that’s their mentality. It’s their job to make sure they win. But at the same time, it’s okay as people to say, listen, yeah, I like this party, but do they screw up a lot? Yeah, they do.
Mike Papantonio: Look, there’s an interesting article I saw that we have visuals, that everything is visual where it comes to the American public when they’re evaluating politics. You know, if I were to say to you, what is the visual of Dukakis? What would you, what comes to your mind?
Farron Cousins: He’s the tank guy.
Mike Papantonio: The tank, the helmet, right? He’s driving in the tank. If I were to say, what is the visual of Bush when you go, oh my God, what a nutcase, what would it be?
Farron Cousins: Yeah. Well, depending on which Bush, you had HW, which would be the.
Mike Papantonio: You know, the crazy, the goofy Bush. The real goofy Bush.
Farron Cousins: The little one is just this guy is, you know, he can’t add two plus two. The Bushisms.
Mike Papantonio: That’s right.
Farron Cousins: The tripping.
Mike Papantonio: I think of him landing on the carrier. And it’s over. The war is over.
Farron Cousins: Mission accomplished.
Mike Papantonio: Mission accomplished. And so you go on with all of these visuals, her visual is word salad. That’s her visual. Because when she speaks it’s word salad most of the time, and they’ve tried to correct her, they’ve tried to say, please don’t talk so much. You know, they’ve tried to say, don’t do these interviews, just sua sponte. Don’t do that. It’s word salad. But the point is, there are so many great female politicians that could step into that, those shoes. Name a couple. Elizabeth Warren, I”ll start.
Farron Cousins: Elizabeth Warren, Katie Porter.
Mike Papantonio: Katie Porter would be great.
Farron Cousins: She would be phenomenal.
Mike Papantonio: I mean, she can speak. It’s not word salad, you know.
Farron Cousins: And she, unlike Harris here, takes on those corporate interests. I mean, Harris, let’s not forget as Attorney General of California, she’s the one who lets Steve Mnuchin and these other criminal bankers walk away.
Mike Papantonio: That’s right. Yeah. Stole billions.
Farron Cousins: They had them cold.
Mike Papantonio: Stole billions of dollars. Yeah.
Farron Cousins: They had all that evidence. Spent years compiling it. She refused to do anything about it. Look, she’s got a negative 10 approval rating with the public.
Mike Papantonio: I forgot about that.
Farron Cousins: She’s underwater by 10 points. She hasn’t been in media recently. So we know the administration, they’re trying to keep her back.
Mike Papantonio: Of course.
Farron Cousins: And if you wanna use her to her strengths, send her out there to be the happy, smiling face and Biden can be the fighter.
Mike Papantonio: What is the first attack that we are gonna get for talking about her? What are the commenters gonna be?
Farron Cousins: It’s misogynism, misogyny and then racism.
Mike Papantonio: Misogyny and racism. Rather than thinking about what are we really saying, that’s the easy go-to. Well, you know what, we’re gonna say it anyway. It’s not that. It’s not racism, it’s not the fact that she’s a woman. There are plenty of women of color that could do a great job in that, in that position. But it ain’t her. I can tell you that. She’s like an albatross around the neck of the Democratic party and they can’t get rid of the bird.
The failure of the Silicon Valley Bank over the weekend has renewed Americans’ fears about could we be headed towards another major banking crisis. The worst part is that this crisis was entirely predictable by regulators, and they could have taken care of this years ago. There’s books. Okay. Here it is. The bank has to report what their investments are, where they are putting their money, what are the deposits and things should balance out. And in that balance, there needs to be at least a $50 million hedge between that. Okay. So in this situation, the banks go out and they buy these bonds. Okay. The bonds are two years, three years, four years out. They buy ’em at one percent, where the interest rates are 1%. Powell comes around and he’s trying to help inflation, right? So he keeps raising interest rate 1%, 2%, 3%, 4%, 5%. And as they do, it depletes the value of the bonds. So the bank’s holding onto this, not worthless, but they’re worth tremendous amounts less than they were when they bought ’em. So somebody comes in, they say, I want my money. They gotta sell the bonds and take a loss, right?
Farron Cousins: Yeah. And that’s exactly what happened with the Silicon Valley Bank. And unfortunately for them, it was, you know, a third of their investors came in and said, we’re worried now, we want our money. So they sell more bonds, suffer these billions in losses. I think they did lose what, a third of their value over overnight last week.
Mike Papantonio: Yeah.
Farron Cousins: And it just led to this, you know, good old Great Depression style run on the bank, and then they’re outta money.
Mike Papantonio: Yeah.
Farron Cousins: Like within a matter of three days, no more money at the bank. It completely folds. And as usual, the same people who caused this mess, you know, the politicians in DC, they came out first thing Monday and said, don’t worry, we’re gonna give you all your money back, folks. We’ve got a bailout already ready.
Mike Papantonio: We got taxpayers who’ll be glad to take care of this screw up. Okay.
Farron Cousins: Which was their screw up to begin with.
Mike Papantonio: Which was their screw up. Okay. So the first thing that we hear is, let’s blame game. It’s Trump’s fault. Trump, and he did. Trump reduced that net, that safety net from 250 million, that the Frank, that the Dodd legislation would’ve permitted to 50. Now, but what the rest of the sentence is that they don’t say is that 33 Democrats voted to do that. Okay. They don’t talk about that part of the story, and they don’t talk about the fact that Biden’s been in office for three years. If Trump screwed that up, why didn’t he, when he controlled the House, when he controlled the Senate, why didn’t they go back in and get that fixed? I mean, how do you, there’s been no discussion about that.
Farron Cousins: Right. I mean, we had a solid two years there, even though it would’ve been a tough sell in the Senate. Well, actually, I don’t even know that you could have passed the Senate because you got somebody in there who while she was in the House, led the Democrats to deregulate it.
Mike Papantonio:That’s true.
Farron Cousins: And that person is Kyrsten Sinema.
Mike Papantonio: That’s right.
Farron Cousins: Who took over a million dollars from these banks to deregulate them. So, but they still could have at least tried, you know, at the very least you could have tried. And they didn’t even do that.
Mike Papantonio: Well, you could have doubled down on regulators, right?
Farron Cousins: Yeah.
Mike Papantonio: I mean, you know, could have said, look, I don’t like that this Dodd-Frank has been now watered down to where there’s not a $250 million safe net, safety net there. There’s only 50 million. Which is the difference in what the point being there’s a lot they could have done. They didn’t do it. Don’t go blaming everybody else. There’s plenty of blame to spread around here. Regulators, regulators should be fired. The people were in charge of, they’re all assigned. They have regions, they have territories. Find out who that person is and fire them.
Farron Cousins: Well, and why didn’t anybody warn Powell as he’s just raising interest rates like a drunken sailor, why didn’t somebody step in and say, wait a minute? We’ve got banks out here because, you know, we’ve deregulated, they’ve got these investments that are gonna become worthless if you don’t slow this down.
Mike Papantonio: Yeah.
Farron Cousins: Inflation’s already coming down. You can chill for a moment. We’re gonna cause a massive banking crisis here. Nobody bothered to tell Powell that or if they did, he just didn’t care.
Mike Papantonio: Well, especially since Powell’s already seen the history.
Farron Cousins: Exactly.
Mike Papantonio: Greenspan did exactly the same thing. Volcker did exactly the same thing, and it ended up in a disaster. They have all this history behind them and they continue going to that, well, let’s just raise rates. We can stop inflation. That was part of this problem right here.
Farron Cousins: Yep.
Mike Papantonio: Arkansas Governor Sarah Huckabee Sanders has signed a new bill that’ll undo decades of child labor protections in the state so that corporations, and here it is, corporations want to exploit the immigrants that are coming into this country. They want to exploit a cheap labor, a renewable source of labor to make a profit. It all centers, understand, think about this. We’ve seen this coming up in Iowa, Wisconsin, Minnesota and New Hampshire all at one time. Why? Because all of these immigrants are coming into the country and we realize that we can have, you know, the children working in every kind of job, whether they lose their arm, doesn’t make any difference, they lose their arm, ship ’em back to Mexico or Guatemala, no harm done. We can pay ’em poverty wages. So all of a sudden, US Chamber of Commerce, man, they’re excited about this, aren’t they?
Farron Cousins: They really are. And Sarah Huckabee Sanders has taken, you know, the first step for this. We’re undoing, you know, almost a hundred years of progress on child labor here in the United States. We’re just undoing it at rapid pace. And I just wanna show this too. These are the kids. They were standing next to her while she’s, you know, smiling with her bill. These are the kids. Look at how terrified their little faces are, because I feel like the kids understand how horrible this is. You got the parents in the background cheering it on, smiling. Good, put little Timmy to work in the coal mine.
Mike Papantonio: Yeah.
Farron Cousins: But another thing that people need to understand, this is something I learned, for children under the age of 16, for the first 90 days of employment, they don’t have to be paid minimum wage. You can pay them below $4 an hour across the country.
Mike Papantonio: Really?
Farron Cousins: Exactly.
Mike Papantonio: They’re gonna be injured anyway.
Farron Cousins: Exactly.
Mike Papantonio: You know, send a little, you know, send them back to Nicaragua.
Farron Cousins: So we’re talking about being able to bring in this cheap source of labor. Most of them probably will not make it 90 days.
Mike Papantonio: No.
Farron Cousins: So you pay them three, $4 an hour instead of $15 an hour. The corporation saves a bunch of money. The kids get hurt, they get shipped back overseas, or they get sent back to high school with one arm. And that’s what happens.
Mike Papantonio: You folks, you folks from Iowa, Wisconsin, Minnesota, New Hampshire, this is what you’re doing. You are exploit, you are completely exploiting immigrants that are coming into this country. And at the same time, we’re singing, we are the world and like we really care. Like this is a humanitarian effort to bring in these kids. There’s nothing humanitarian about the way the US Chamber of Commerce sees this. All this is, this is cheap labor. They can take advantage of this as long as possible. We don’t even have to go overseas now for cheap labor because we’ve been able to bring, what, 3 million immigrants into this country. And so that’s the new cheap labor.
Farron Cousins: It is. And it’s getting younger and younger. And again, we don’t have to go to the Sipan sweatshops. We have the sweatshops here.
Mike Papantonio: We have ’em.
Farron Cousins: And we’re legalizing it. That’s the big problem.
Mike Papantonio: Yeah.
Farron Cousins: It’s not just, oh, we busted a meat packing plant, hiring 12 year olds. So instead of saying, okay, meat packing plant, you’re in trouble, we’re saying let’s change the law to where that’s no longer a problem.
Mike Papantonio: Iowa, Wisconsin, Arkansas, Minnesota, New Hampshire, buddy, if you don’t, if you live there and you don’t know this is going on, it is. 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 every week we tell you the stories that corporate media won’t tell you because their advertisers don’t let ’em tell those stories or their political connections are so strong that it doesn’t allow for them to tell the story. We’ll see you next time.
