America’s Lawyer E45: Donald Trump’s legal problems finally caught up to him in New York this week, with prosecutors ready to face him head-on in court. But this case might end with more of a whimper than a bang, and we’ll explain why. A former detainee at Guantanamo Bay says that Ron DeSantis personally oversaw his torture while he was held in the military prison. And your toilet paper might actually be poisoning you – we’ll bring you the disturbing 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. Donald Trump’s legal problems finally caught up with him in New York this week with prosecutors ready to face a head-on court battle. But this case might end with more of a whimper than a bang. We’ll explain why. A former detainee Guantanamo says that Ron DeSantis personally oversaw his torture while he was being held in the military prison. And your toilet paper, well, it might actually be poisoning you. We’ll bring you more of that disturbing detail. All that and more, it’s coming up. Don’t go anywhere. America’s Lawyer starts right now.
Donald Trump’s luck might have finally run out in New York as prosecutors are ready to take on the former president for his hush money payment to adult star Stormy Daniels. Ring of Fire’s Farron Cousins joins me to talk about it. Wow, what a case. You know, as I look at this, I love, I love to see all the law professors line up on a case like this. And if you read the law professor’s take on it, the case may be DOA. I mean, they say that because, yeah, he can win. The prosecutor can win in New York. I mean, he, you’re gonna have a blue juror. You know, you’re gonna have blue judges. He can win there. But the appellate issue is really sticky here, isn’t it?
Farron Cousins: It truly is because, you know, they have these interlocutory appeals, which basically means before you even get a judgment in that jury trial, assuming you even go that far, the defense can appeal this, and they can basically pick it apart. Say, we’re gonna appeal this part, we’re gonna appeal the statute of limitations. We’re gonna appeal on this piece of evidence. We’re gonna appeal this. They can tie it up possibly for years.
Mike Papantonio: Oh, they can, they can.
Farron Cousins: With these appeals.
Mike Papantonio: Well, okay. So first of all, you move to dismiss. I think, let me make a prediction. The move to dismiss is gonna be somehow centered on a constitutional question. The constitutional question is, can a state prosecutor go ahead and piggyback a federal claim with the state claim? The underlying claim in the state case is the records, the business records fraud. Where fraud, where apparently, if you believe what’s said here, Trump said to his lawyer, Cohen, go ahead and pay off McDougal and pay off Stormy Daniels and then disguise the payoff. Make it look like it was legal services. And then we’re gonna open an account offshore. It’s gonna be an offshore account. You can pay through there and disguise it. If they pin all that, it certainly looks like intent to me. I mean, I think the intent question is pretty straightforward. But I gotta tell you, this case fails.
It fails on a constitutional level, and I think Bragg, maybe he’s just hoping he can take Trump out of the picture. He certainly can. But with interlocutory appeals, with the number of gyrations that defense is gonna be able to do on this case, I think you gotta due process argument here. I mean, that’s a fundamental due process argument. And that is that, you know, you’ve got, you’ve gotta be able to say, first of all, did he know, did Trump know when he was doing this, that it was violating this statute, this new law that has been created by Bragg? You see what I’m saying? He’s creating a new law. And if you look at the best case for him is to say it’s a due process argument. So let’s assume I did that. Let’s assume I told Cohen that he could do that. I didn’t know that there was this thing that was invented by Bragg, and therefore it is a due process argument. There’s so many ways that he can delay this. There’s so many ways that the presidential election can be over by the time this is done. And Bragg could come out looking like a fool. I’m sure he is aware of that. I like that he’s taking a chance. I like that he’s taking a shot at it. Who knows?
Farron Cousins: Well, to me, the whole thing is weird that he chose to revive this whole Stormy Daniel’s issue in the first place. We know from last year when Alvin Bragg took over, he actually squashed the investigation and the pending indictments that Mark Pomerantz and Cyrus Vance had already written for the actual financial crimes, the bank fraud, the tax fraud, all of that. They were ready within days to indict. Bragg came in and said, no, no, no. We’re not gonna do that.
Mike Papantonio: Right. Explain that to me. He saw it. It was ready to go.
Farron Cousins: They had the evidence.
Mike Papantonio: Everything.
Farron Cousins: They had the testimony, it was all nicely compiled. And Pomerantz said, all right, Bragg, you’re in charge now. What do we do?
Mike Papantonio: Why did he not take his shot then?
Farron Cousins: We have not gotten a clear answer on that, unfortunately.
Mike Papantonio: Okay.
Farron Cousins: Because to me, that was the slam dunk.
Mike Papantonio: I agree. I totally agree.
Farron Cousins: And those were far, you know, far more serious than what we’re dealing with here. If you take either of the things basically that Trump is accused of here, you know, the I gave more money to a campaign through the in-kind contribution than was allowed. You’re not gonna go to jail for that. The falsification of the business records.
Mike Papantonio: It’s a misdemeanor.
Farron Cousins: Is a misdemeanor. So you’re not going to jail for that. So why did Bragg say, okay, we’ve got these real felony charges here.
Mike Papantonio: Right.
Farron Cousins: I wanna look at the misdemeanors.
Mike Papantonio: That’s my point. Okay. Let’s assume that he says, yeah, I did it, but I did it thinking I was only, at best, it was gonna be a misdemeanor. Now Bragg comes along, the New York, you know, prosecutor, state prosecutor invents a new law. I didn’t even know about it. It’s a due process argument. Look, hey, let’s do this. Just so all those people who are gonna get angry because we say that he could actually prevail here, let’s say Bragg’s gonna win. Does that make you feel better? It’s just not the truth. It’s not the truth. Bragg can do a lot to Trump here. He can certainly affect the presidential election process with primaries and in the run. But when you drill down on this, Bragg is going to have a lot of explaining to do. A, why didn’t they prosecute the first time when they had him? Statute was good, everything was good. It was all there. And then Bragg has to go back and invent a new law. He has to invent something that’s never been done and he creates a due process argument for Trump. But for all y’all that get angry that we’re trying to talk both sides of this and let you see the other side, we’ll agree, Trump’s gonna be prosecuted. Trump’s gonna be convicted if that’ll make you feel better. But the truth is, at the end of the day, this is a problem.
Farron Cousins: Well, and even if I think, if he does elevate it to a felony, secures the conviction, survives the appeals. I still don’t think he’s going to jail.
Mike Papantonio: No, he’s not.
Farron Cousins: I mean, so that’s, that’s the other part of it.
Mike Papantonio: I mean, you know, look, they wanna take this shot. This is a Soros, this is a Soros appointed prosecutor. Soros was the money behind it, and that’s been Soros’ plan, is to put progressive prosecutors in places that he can use politically. I just think he’s asking Bragg to do a little too much here. He’s really stretching to get Bragg to do what’s doing, what Bragg’s having to do. And I think in the long run, it hurts Bragg.
Farron Cousins: We could have already had a trial had he just gone with the initial charges that they had when he took over that office?
Mike Papantonio: Oh, absolutely.
Farron Cousins: It’d had been, it would’ve been done a year and a half ago.
Mike Papantonio: They had Cohen on the ropes. He was on the ropes. They had Pecker, what’s the guy’s name? Pecker wasn’t it?
Farron Cousins: Yeah, David Pecker.
Mike Papantonio: David Pecker with the National Enquirer. They had him on the ropes. They had Weissel, was it Weisselberg?
Farron Cousins: Weisselberg.
Mike Papantonio: They had Weisselberg on the ropes. They had everything lined up. And Bragg comes in and says, no, we’re not gonna prosecute now. I’m gonna go and I’m gonna prosecute later with something that has constitutional flaws all over it. That’s my take on it.
Florida Governor Ron DeSantis doesn’t talk much about his time as a JAG officer at Guantanamo Bay and that might be because detainees at the prison say that he was personally involved in torture that they experienced. Okay, first of all, this is a bigger story than the DeSantis part of it.
Farron Cousins: Oh yeah, much bigger.
Mike Papantonio: DeSantis, you know, if you take the, you know, we beat on DeSantis every week. Every, every week. But here he was a JAG officer. He was looking through a fence. He was trying to say, these are standards that we have to follow. It was force feeding. Force feeding is not, you know, under all the treaties is not torture. But I mean, the attack on him, it’s just gonna be a pile up attack. This is just one of them. Give me your take on it. I think this is a bigger story than DeSantis because if you go after DeSantis on this, you gotta go after all of these people who knew exactly what was, Obama. All of Obama’s people knew exactly what was going on there. Right?
Farron Cousins: Well, and see, that’s the problem is that not a single person was held accountable. You know, when this began under the Bush administration with the torture, not just at Guantanamo, I mean the Abu Ghraib pictures that were all over the media. They tried to pin it on one or two individuals. They even claimed one of the women involved in torture, oh, well, she was, when she was born, she had the umbilical cord wrapped around her neck, so it starved her of oxygen. And they said that’s why she ended up torturing. But this was, this was legalized to a degree by Alberto Gonzales, by George W. Bush himself.
Mike Papantonio: The force feeding, the force feeding with these prisoners who were saying, look, I’m gonna starve myself.
Farron Cousins: We’re on a hunger strike because we’re being held here on no charges. And this individual who’s got a new book out, and he says, Ron DeSantis was right there watching as all of these horrible things are happening to me. He was released after 14 years with no charges at all. So we just held him and plenty of other folks for over a decade.
Mike Papantonio: Yeah.
Farron Cousins: And then eventually said, all right, you can go home.
Mike Papantonio: What was going on back then is you would have tribal, you’d have tribes that this person in this tribe hated this person in this tribe. So they would tell the US government about it. They would tell the military about it. They would take that person prisoner and put ’em in Guantanamo. It was just in fighting. A lot of it was just pure crazy in fighting and it took us years to figure that out. And this guy, as you say, was there for 14 years. And he was, I guess, you know, you can’t explain it any other way. He’s bleeding through the mouth. The force feeding is not just stick a tube down somebody’s nose and everything’s okay. But the story is, DeSantis was JAG officer. He was there at the time. There’s a lot worse stories about DeSantis than that.
Farron Cousins: Yeah.
Mike Papantonio: The stories that are taking place in Florida right now are horrendous. What he’s doing to consumers in Florida is horrendous. And so if we look at DeSantis as a potential presidential candidate, we have to say, is he gonna do same thing nationally? And there’s a big history of him really abusing consumers in Florida.
Farron Cousins: And there is, and to me, this story with this prisoner’s new book is not even really the DeSantis story. It’s the story of how we just hit the 20 year anniversary this week of the Iraq War. Nobody has been held accountable for any part of it, whether it’s the torture, the lies leading up to it. Colin Powell walking into the UN with his little vile saying, oh, this is proof right here.
Mike Papantonio: Complete lie. He admitted that, you know, they lied to me and I lied to the UN.
Farron Cousins: The aluminum tubes, the yellow cake, all of this.
Mike Papantonio: Condoleezza Rice, lied to her. You know, she should have known a lot more. But the whole thing was a lie. Nobody’s prosecuted, nobody’s held accountable. Then it flows over to the Obama administration. Nothing changes there either.
Farron Cousins: Right. Obama comes into office. He’s got this stack of evidence, the Gonzalez torture memos.
Mike Papantonio: Right.
Farron Cousins: All of it. And Eric Holder, his new AG says, we’re going to look forward, not backwards.
Mike Papantonio: Yeah. Eric Holder did that because he was trying to, Eric Holder didn’t do that because of the war issue. Eric Holder did that because he was trying to protect all of his pals on Wall Street, who had burned down the entire economy, who lost $13 trillion for the US economy. That’s who he represented. He represented those white collar criminals with this, his law firm, Covington Burling. And so he comes in and says, we gotta look forward. We can’t look backwards. Nobody gets prosecuted for anything under Eric Holder’s watch. But I guess this is a story from the standpoint somebody can, you know, they can make hay with it. But at the end of the day, there’s so many more important stories about DeSantis’ abuse of voters, abuse of citizens, abuse of consumers, than this story.
Toxic chemicals have been found in all brands of toilet paper all across the globe, raising alarm concerns about the dangers that consumers are exposing their bodies too daily. Again, you’ve heard it before. I’ve tried the first cases ever tried dealing with these PFAS products up in the Ohio River Valley. Tried five of them. That’s the first time that anybody even learned about it. They made two movies about it. One was called Dark Waters, the other one was called, The Devil We Know. Terrible, terrible history on this chemical. Now we find it’s in toilet paper.
Farron Cousins: Yeah. It’s especially troubling, as you know, this thing can cause all kinds of endocrine problems, you know, problems with fetuses, every cancer imaginable, basically. It is poison. It is pure poison that we as humans, as other species out there as well, 98% of us already have this in our system. We’re drinking it in our water. The EPA has done nothing. They’re finally saying, maybe we’re gonna come out and start regulating this. But with it being so prevalent in all the water, it gets into all of the plants and that’s of course, where we end up with the problem that it’s now in our toilet paper.
Mike Papantonio: Why do you think there’s such a yawn story? You know, there’s stories like when we talk about climate change, it’s, ah, it’s a yawn. You know, we talk about the environment, most of the time it’s a yawn. This is a yawn story. This is where people don’t understand what we’re talking about here. I guess maybe we just haven’t broken through. But it causes cancer, it causes birth defects, it causes brain issues, neurological issues, it causes gastrointestinal issues. We tried those cases. I personally tried those cases up in the Ohio River Valley up in, actually tried ’em in Columbus, Ohio over a period of about two years. This is a bad, this is bad stuff. But again, you know, people are gonna say, ah, I don’t know what PFAS is. Therefore, I’m not worried about it.
Farron Cousins: Well, and a lot of ’em think, oh, well, if I’m already drinking it, if it’s already in my body, clearly I have no problems right now, so I’m gonna be okay. Maybe it’ll flush itself out. But it doesn’t do that. It’s bioaccumulative
Mike Papantonio: Every time you get exposed, it builds up more in your body. It’s in the environment for a million years. If it’s in the soil or the water, it’s there a million years and it has the capacity to cause horrendous, horrendous physical illness. But, you know, again, it’s, you’ll see this will be, ahh, yawn.
Farron Cousins: Well, and then folks need to understand too, with it being in the toilet paper, you can actually absorb it through the skin.
Mike Papantonio: Yeah.
Farron Cousins: So it’s not like, oh, but I’m not eating toilet paper. It’s not gonna get. Nope. It can be absorbed through your skin, through any body opening. It’s horrendous. And people, again, don’t care. And maybe it’s because they feel there’s nothing I can do about this.
Mike Papantonio: Yeah. Maybe it is. We’ll keep talking about it anyway.
A third major drug company has announced that they’re cutting the price of insulin but Senator Bernie Sanders says that’s just a start. He wants across the board cuts for all prescription drugs because they’re making 2000, 3000% markups on drugs and Congress won’t take action, and the White House won’t take action. But didn’t I see Biden just last week doing a victory lap? Like he’s the one that caused the insulin prices to go down. I actually saw that.
Farron Cousins: Yeah.
Mike Papantonio: He was taking, he was taking credit for that. And tell the story. Tell how it actually happened.
Farron Cousins: Bernie Sanders has, obviously, he’s been on top of this issue for years. In the 2020 campaign, he traveled with a group of American diabetics to Canada so they could buy their insulin. So he’s literally been on the front lines on this. And he had threatened, okay, you know, Sanofi, all you other drug makers, I’m gonna haul your butts into the Senate and you’re gonna sit here and you’re gonna explain to Americans why we are paying these 2000% markups and the rest of the world is paying a hundred percent markup. And so they said, okay, well, we’ll lower the prices. We don’t want to have to do this. We want everything to be cool. But that was Bernie that did that.
Mike Papantonio: Yeah.
Farron Cousins: Bernie made the threat and they reacted.
Mike Papantonio: He was the only one in Congress talking about it. He was the only one that came forward and so this is wrong. Now he’s saying we need to do it with all the pharmaceutical companies on all the pharmaceuticals. Listen, this is a product, but full disclosure, I am suing this industry. I’m suing them for anti-trust, price fixing. The complaints been filed. We’re filing those complaints all over the country. The fact that they’re lowering it now has no effect on the lawsuit. They’ve made so many billions of dollars stealing money from the American public. So, but the point is, what you’re gonna find in this case is they all knew exactly how to set the prices. There were meetings where they discussed issues. They sent emails, they sent all types of information from company to company and all of the prices went up in lockstep. A product that cost $7 to make was being sold for $275. And so, you know, thank you Bernie. You know, I guess Biden can take a victory lap for it. But at the end of the day, this is the guy that made it happen.
Farron Cousins: Well, and for anybody who wants to argue, oh, well, you know, they’ve gotta make their money back so they can make new wonderful drugs. Listen to this. Both the stock for the companies that cut their insulin prices, their stock went up and their profits went up because they were actually able to sell more because people could actually afford it now. So they made more money by lowering the prices.
Mike Papantonio: But we are coming after you, lower the prices, you have made so many billions of dollars, Mr. insulin companies, and you can’t run away from what you’ve done to the American public.
CNN tried to rebrand their network recently, and the results actually, they’re even worse than before. Viewers are shutting off the network at a rate that suggests that CNN could be a footnote in the history books if they can’t find an audience. You know, when I looked at this story, the thing that occurred to me, why has nobody, why has there not been a shareholder derivative suit making Zucker, that idiot, the target of that suit. Zucker came in, he thought he could make some quick advertising money by taking the programming completely, utterly to attack, you know, a left attack, attack attack attacking the right. Well, even as it was happening, shareholders were saying, what the hell’s going on? You’re losing audience. Zucker, and I bet he has another job somewhere. I bet the industry is so incestuous.
Farron Cousins: It is.
Mike Papantonio: That this idiot that destroyed an entire, this was a credible network at one time. This was where they did, they reported the news. And so the issue, the shareholders were saying, go back to reporting the news again. People want to hear the news. They don’t want to hear that Brian Stelter or, you know, whoever the flakes were that they had attacking right wing all the time. The same thing with Fox. Fox is getting into the same problem because they, just report the news. Tell us what the news is. Don’t tell us what to think.
Farron Cousins: Well, and that’s CNN’s problem is they’ve got this huge identity crisis. At least Fox News, they know they’re Republican. MSNBC, they know they’re Democrats. CNN always kind of said, well, what are, are we left? Are we right? No, no, no, no. We’re kind of neither. But then you attract neither, and you’re also not doing journalism. You’re not sending embedded reporters to go across the world doing these undercover investigations. You’re not 60 minutes. You’re not helping consumers. You’re just fluff. You’re just nothing is what CNN became.
Mike Papantonio: Why are they, why are they hanging onto Don Lemon, for example? Okay. He’s always shown as liability. It’s almost like they don’t have enough sense to move it through when it’s not working. So at this point, they’re bringing in everybody. They’re bringing in Barkley, they’re bringing in Bill Maher, they’re bringing in celebrities. The celebrities are now gonna be giving the news. And that’s a little scary. Did you see, every time I think of celebrities telling me what I ought to think about politically, I think of Chelsea Handler. Do you know the story about Chelsea Handler where when she was 40 years old, I’m not making this up and if you don’t believe me, Google this story, when she was 40 years old is the first time she knew that the sun was different than the moon. She thought it was all one entity. And when she went to Africa, somebody explained, no, they’re two different things, at 40 years old. So now Licht is saying, well, let’s bring in all the celebrities to give us the news. Doesn’t that scare you just a little bit?
Farron Cousins: Yeah. And they bring in the celebrities and the ratings continue to go down. They’ve tried, okay, we’re gonna do town halls. We’re gonna have a town hall with the, was it Glenn Youngkin, you know, he’s gonna tell us all the right wing policies. It tanked. You had a, I mean, their traffic that day was so bad.
Mike Papantonio: Our traffic is better than, our traffic is better than their traffic. Okay. Now come on.
Farron Cousins: Right. I never thought we’d be doing better than CNN, but here we are. But that’s the problem is CNN, like all the rest of these corporate news outlets, they thought they could tell the news without telling the news to off their advertisers.
Mike Papantonio: Yeah.
Farron Cousins: You can’t do that. So you have to make that choice. Do we seek alternative means of funding to be able to tell the news? Or do we keep going down this hole of oh sensationalized daily stories of garbage and lose the audience?
Mike Papantonio: Well, our audience, you know, our audience, we’re not left or right on this show. I mean, our politics, mine are very left. Your politics are very left. But I feel like we have to at least tell the story.
Farron Cousins: Right.
Mike Papantonio: Let everybody else decide. I mean, you know, but, and people are smart enough to do that. And that’s what CNN did a lot for a long time. They reported the news. And then that idiot, Zucker, has he got another job right now? Do you know?
Farron Cousins: I haven’t seen anything. I haven’t looked. So I don’t know.
Mike Papantonio: I bet he’s working for another network. The guy was so, he wasn’t qualified when he started to begin with. Licht, Licht is marginally qualified and this stuff that he’s doing is a disaster.
Farron Cousins: Well, it’s like, you know, Licht was put in charge of the plane that’s already crashing. Saying, okay, you’re the pilot now, but there’s nothing you can do.
Mike Papantonio: Yeah, take the wheel. Right. Take the wheel. I kind of feel sorry for the guy, man. Anyway, we’ll see where it lands, well, we’ll see where it crashes, not where it lands.
Hunter Biden has decided that he’s tired of being a punching bag, so he’s gonna start fighting back. He’s now filed a lawsuit against the computer repair shop owner for violating his privacy. Okay. Why don’t you lead with this story.
Farron Cousins: This is really interesting to me, just because of the potential legal ramification, not for Hunter Biden, not for the laptop repair owner, but for actual real Americans, this case could impact you.
Mike Papantonio: Totally.
Farron Cousins: So here’s what it is. Hunter Biden’s laptop obviously ends up in the hands of John Paul Mac Isaac at his laptop repair shop. Nobody ever comes to pick it up. As far as I know, nobody paid for the repairs. So store policy, you didn’t pay for it, you didn’t pick it up. The time passed, this is now my laptop. And from there, of course we know that the photos on there, the information was then given to people like Rudy Giuliani and Tucker Carlson. And so now, you know, a couple years later, Hunter Biden says, this is a violation of my privacy. You’ve released items that did not belong to you. So I’m suing. But the question is, who did they belong to because of him leaving the laptop?
Mike Papantonio: Okay. Now let’s, okay. First of all, that analysis is brilliant.
Farron Cousins: Thank you.
Mike Papantonio: It’s brilliant. The question becomes, and it becomes, it’s gonna become a question more and more because does that computer repairman own the computer? Does he have the right to use the computer or does he have the right to use the content of the computer? That’s where you’re, that’s the point you’re making there, right?
Farron Cousins: Yeah.
Mike Papantonio: Okay. Here’s the problem I see for Hunter Biden. When you bring a case like that, you open the door to almost limitless cross-examination. All right. So if I’m cross-examining, if I’m cross-examining Hunter, I’m saying, okay, now which part of the information in that computer was not already public? Was it your relationship with prostitutes? Was it your relationship with Ukraine or China? Was it your story about your baby mama, you not paying her, you know, child support? You see the problem?
Farron Cousins: Yeah.
Mike Papantonio: You’re gonna hear the very worst of the attacks coming up again. And he’s gotta say, well, the violation of my privacy was A, B and C. But if A, B and C is already in the public domain, there’s no violation of privacy. Period. But your point, I think is a brilliant point. The point is, who owns, what is it that that shop owner actually has the right to own, the physical computer or the contents of the computer?
Farron Cousins: Right. And so one of the things that we know that came out the computer were all the pictures of Hunter Biden. And there are pictures that obviously depict drug use and things like that, the M&M thing. So do those pictures upon forfeiture of the laptop, does the owner, John Paul Mac Isaac, is he now the intellectual property rights owner of those photographs? Or does that stick with Hunter Biden? That is a question the courts have not ever answered.
Mike Papantonio: And I’m saying to you, by this lawyer advising him to do this, a lawyer on the other side is going to be attacking Hunter Biden saying, let’s go through the litany of everything, the prostitutes, the drug use, whatever it is, let’s go through the litany. You tell me what part is a violation of your privacy. But as he goes through that litany, it’s all just another big public explosion about that issue. Issues that people will forget about. Well, they won’t forget about it if the cross-examination is done properly on Hunter Biden.
Farron Cousins: Right. And if Hunter’s lawyers screw this up badly enough to where this gets appealed and appealed and appealed, then we could be looking at the Supreme Court deciding who owns your photographs on your device.
Mike Papantonio: That’s right.
Farron Cousins: You know, because a lot of people.
Mike Papantonio: And think what that does to the tech industry.
Farron Cousins: Well, exactly. Because when you buy a phone and the people who buy it on the payment plan and pay every month, if you don’t pay, you forfeit that phone. So suddenly does that mean AT&T or Apple now own all your photographs.
Mike Papantonio: Yeah.
Farron Cousins: That is what this case has the potential if it goes up there.
Mike Papantonio: Yeah. I love your analysis there.
Farron Cousins: We could lose a lot of rights with this case.
Mike Papantonio: I love your analysis there. I think it’s very smart.
Farron Cousins: Thank you.
Mike Papantonio: Ron DeSantis and Donald Trump have spent the week hitting at one another in the media. But behind the scenes, Florida’s Republican leaders, well, they want absolutely nothing to do with the fight. They are scared to death to open their mouths about who are you gonna support. First of all, you have an entire collection of clowns. Okay. They’re both in Florida, I mean, certainly in Florida. I mean the legislature in Florida, if I were to give you a picture, the picture I would have is a picture of ass clown. It’s like you have the biggest collection of ass clowns we’ve ever had in Florida. So you’re gonna go to that person and say, hey, who’s your guy? Pick it up from there.
Farron Cousins: Politico, they did exactly that. They came down to Florida, they started asking all the state legislatures, state senators, state party leaders. Okay, look, you got two guys in Florida, they’re the two front runners for the nomination on the Republican side. Who do you like? And they said, I’m not wading into that. I’m not getting into this mess. And a lot of ’em actually said, oh, I know who I support.
Mike Papantonio: But I can’t.
Farron Cousins: But I’m not stupid enough to tell you out loud. And the overwhelming response in addition to that is everybody wants this feud to end. And it’s not gonna end because DeSantis is sucking up spotlight. Trump wants it all on him. And they don’t know, the two of them, both massive egos, they don’t know how to coexist and let Trump be 2024, DeSantis be 2028. Neither of them want that to happen. So it’s gonna be a bloodbath.
Mike Papantonio: Our responsibility here is to tell the story about what DeSantis has done to Florida consumers with that big gaggle of ass clowns in legislature right now. They have decimated, decimated the rights of consumers to have any voice in court anymore. They’ve basically, they’re trying to close the courtroom door for consumers. He knows it. He’s the one that’s gonna sign off on it. And when he does, we’ll start talking in real detail about how dangerous this guy is.
Farron Cousins: Well, and he’s allowed these power companies to have these massive mergers throughout the state that have jacked up our power prices three to four times what they were two years ago. And that’s not an exaggeration. That’s about what our bills are now.
Mike Papantonio: No, it’s four times, four to five times.
Farron Cousins: And he’s allowed the, you know, the major Wall Street banks to come in and buy up entire communities and price people out of the housing market. We have had the highest housing price increase in the United States out of all 50 states.
Mike Papantonio: You know what he just did this week? He was the guy that was behind getting the ass clowns to say, let’s have a law where a person can’t sue their insurance, or is limited in being able to sue their insurance company when they are, when their medical malpractice takes place, or when a hurricane comes through and destroys their home. Let’s really limit that consumer’s right of redress in a courtroom. He knew exactly what he was doing. He was, it’s a payoff, payoff to the Chamber of Commerce so he can run for president. And the people suffering are Florida consumers. We’re gonna continue doing these stories where we show, where we show you what he is about because he’s about to become the next president of the United States if we’re not careful. Farron Cousins, 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 available throughout the week and make sure you follow us on Twitter @AmericasLawyer. I’m Mike Papantonio and this has been America’s Lawyer, where every week we tell you stories that the corporate media can’t tell you because their advertisers don’t let ’em or their political connections are so tight that it doesn’t allow them to tell the story. We’ll see you next time.
