Multiple Democrats have entered the 2024 presidential race, but the Party has made it clear that they are sticking with Biden and don’t want to risk him getting on a debate stage with other candidates. 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: Multiple Democrats have entered the 2024 presidential race, but the party has made it clear that they’re sticking with Biden and they don’t wanna risk him getting on a debate stage with another candidate. Pretty obviously why. Ring of Fire’s Farron Cousins joins me to talk about what’s happening along with other issues. Farron, this is embarrass, this should be embarrassing to the Democratic party. I mean to say, no, we don’t want, I mean, look, Robert F. Kennedy right now, as soon as he announced he was 30, 31 points up on, not ahead of Biden, but he was closing that gap. He’s 31 on the announcement day. So don’t put him on the stage. Don’t let Biden have to answer any questions. Just let it rock on like a bunch of old, crazy people in charge of the US right now.
Farron Cousins: It really is sad. And, I mean, just because of the fact that we know how things played out for the Democratic party in 2020. Biden was not doing great. South Carolina came along, saved him in that primary, switched the trajectory. Had that not happened or had it happen at a different date, Bernie Sanders likely would’ve had the momentum going into that. Same thing with 2016. And so what they’re trying to do right now is avoid anything that could disrupt Biden.
Mike Papantonio: Right.
Farron Cousins: And that would include putting him on a debate stage. You and I both know Bobby Kennedy personally.
Mike Papantonio: Right. Been a friend a long time.
Farron Cousins: He’s a wonderful debater. Like, he’s super talented at that. And Marianne Williamson, who is also running, has really turned around the undeserved reputation she got in 2020, I will say. They tried to paint her as a kind of a kooky, nutty, but she’s not. She is an exceptionally intelligent individual that also deserves to be heard. If Biden is gonna be your candidate, let him earn it again.
Mike Papantonio: Last time running against Trump, and I would’ve done the same thing with Biden last time. They put him in a cellar, they put him on TV every now and then. They didn’t let him talk all that much because it would’ve scared the hell out of everybody. So right now though, it’s almost like they’re having a witness protection program. No, he doesn’t do interviews, won’t do any kind of press conferences, when he does it is a train wreck disaster. So along comes Bobby Kennedy with numbers like that right off the bat. And you gotta say the one thing he’s gotta overcome, Bobby has to overcome, obviously the issue with the vaxxer issue. But I gotta tell you something. This is a guy that I’ve tried cases with over the years. He’s been a close personal friend. I’ve done television with him. I’ve done radio with him. He and I have been to trial some of the biggest cases in America.
The last one I tried was in West Virginia, a Spelter trial where we hit ’em for $395 million because Bobby and I were able to show that they had put these stacks of toxin, I mean mountains of toxin. This company had put mountains of toxins up around the city. The wind was coming in, people were dying of all kinds of lung diseases. So they really punished him. But the point is, he cares. He’s done something. He doesn’t just, he actually walks the talk. Right now we’ve got a guy who said he wants to, hell, he doesn’t even want to talk. He wants to hang out somewhere and just let this thing go as it, you know, maybe somebody’s gonna pay attention to it. I don’t know.
Farron Cousins: Well, you know, it really at this point seems like it would be a walk in the park for Biden if he didn’t have Democratic challengers. Right? Obviously at that point, he secures the nomination no matter what. And he’s up against Donald Trump, who depending on the week, is 10 points down or 10 points ahead of Biden. I think when it comes down to it, Trump doesn’t really have a chance in a general election.
Mike Papantonio: No, I don’t think he does.
Farron Cousins: Moderate voters, Independents, no way they’re gonna break for him at the end.
Mike Papantonio: Thank goodness he does not.
Farron Cousins: Right. But that’s why it becomes even more important for the Democrats to have a real primary, because if Trump is gonna be the guy on the other side, and he’s also saying he’s not gonna debate.
Mike Papantonio: Right.
Farron Cousins: But if he’s the guy on the other side, then we’re at a point where we can actually choose, possibly in the primary, who the next president will be.
Mike Papantonio: Biden is 82 years old when he raises his hand and is sworn in. Behind him is Kamala Harris who scared, outta scare the bejesus out of anybody if you’ve listened to her word salad speaking. So you’ve got a real candidate. Let me just go back to Bobby. You know, it wasn’t just the trial. Look, this is a guy, Vieques. Do you remember Vieques?
Farron Cousins: That was before my time.
Mike Papantonio: You had the government bombing the Island of Vieques of Puerto Rico with radioactive bombs. People were dying of cancer. There were cancer clusters all over that area. Bobby comes in and actually is put in jail for protesting. There were only about a dozen people with enough guts to show up and protest. He spends his time in jail while his wife is pregnant. That is putting yourself on the line. That’s where you’re actually out there. How about Keystone Pipeline? He shows up, he says, look, I’m on the front line saying this is wrong. He doesn’t just talk the talk. He walks that talk. Dakota Access Pipeline, almost arrested there because he’s in the front of the line saying, this is wrong.
Labor protests where Amazon workers are getting abused, something horrendously, and Bobby shows up and says, this is wrong. Also putting himself in the risk of being arrested. So, take all that and now you have one issue that people get really angry about, by God, he wasn’t right on the vaccine thing. Well, he wasn’t. I got a vaccine. You got vaccines. We believe in the vaccine. But it’s the equivalent of us saying Biden, for example, the issue of racism on Biden was covered up. Do you understand, go back and look at the way he treated Anita Hill when she was working through that horrible story. Go back and look at his voting record on things like criminal justice. And, you know, it’s easy to say he has a race problem, but we overlooked that and we said he’s fine. Why aren’t we able to do the same thing with Bobby and say, look, we don’t agree with you on this deal with vaccines, but we sure understand that you’re in the fight. What’s your take?
Farron Cousins: Right. You know, look, as you said, I completely am on the totally opposite side of Bobby on the vaccine issue.
Mike Papantonio: Right.
Farron Cousins: But again, this is somebody, you know, you and him founded Ring of Fire. Y’all started this together. So we have known him and worked closely with him side by side. We know where he stands on all of these issues. And with the exception of, you know, maybe two or three, it is exactly where the Democratic Party used to stand and should be standing today. So he’s the best environmental champion we’ve got out there.
Mike Papantonio: No question.
Farron Cousins: There is no question about that. He’s been on the front lines of holding corporations accountable, which is something we don’t see from anybody else.
Mike Papantonio: He’s written two books about it.
Farron Cousins: Exactly.
Mike Papantonio: Crimes Against Nature, where he goes after corporate America, when we let them pollute the waters, we let ’em do whatever the hell they want to do. As taxpayers, we have to clean it up. Nobody ever goes to prison. Bobby’s saying, by God, it’s time we start putting some of them in prison. That’s not a bad position to take.
Farron Cousins: Well, exactly. And look, the whole point here is it doesn’t matter who you’re supporting right now, you know, who anybody wants to endorse. Because look, I may change my mind as we go on. Right now I’m leaning with Biden at the moment, but I want to see the debate. I want to have the conversations. I need to get to know these other people as presidential candidates, not the former radio host. I need to see what it’s like to make an informed decision. And if the DNC doesn’t want to do that, you are taking away my right to make an informed decision.
Mike Papantonio: That’s correct. But this guy goes back as a progressive a long way.
Farron Cousins: Oh yeah.
Mike Papantonio: Air America, it was me, Al Franken, Rachel Maddow, Janeane Garofalo, Sam Seder, Cenk Uygur and Bobby Kennedy. We were there on Air America, the most progressive entity of its time right there in New York. Out of that, Bobby came in as a co-host and we built this very thing you’re looking at, Ring of Fire. This guy, I’m a hundred percent behind him. I’m not gonna be kind to Biden. I’ll just tell you straight up, I’m not gonna be kind to Biden. He’s reached his expiration date and it’s time to get some new people in there.
