America’s Lawyer E64: The corporate vultures from Wall Street are harassing wildfire victims in Maui, begging them to sell their property so that greedy bankers can make a fortune off of it. The Biden administration is trying to kill a lawsuit brought by young activists fighting for a better planet, with the administration arguing in court documents that there is no Constitutional right to a “stable climate”. And a Republican Presidential candidate says that a conservative media outlet told him that if he wants to come on their shows, he’s going to have to pay up. 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 corporate vultures from Wall Street are harassing wildfire victims in Maui, begging them to sell their property so that greedy bankers can make a fortune. Never ends with Wall Street. The Biden administration is trying to kill a lawsuit brought by young activists fighting for a better planet with the administration arguing in court that documents don’t show that there’s any constitutional right to a stable climate. And a Republican presidential candidate says that a conservative media outlet told him that if he wants to come on their show, he has to pay for it. All of them are doing it. But we’re gonna talk about this story. All that, and more, it’s coming up. Don’t go anywhere. America’s Lawyer starts right now.
As residents in Maui sift through the ashes of the wildfire, they’re being harassed by corporate thugs on Wall Street who want to buy up their properties for as little as possible. New reports have confirmed that residents are being inundated with calls from realtors and investors and residents are absolutely livid, and they should be. You have these people basically walking around on bones right now, these people showing up. It’s disgusting. You know, of course when it comes to Wall Street, that’s always who I’m across the table with, and whether it’s a pharmaceutical case, environmental case, fraud case, one of the biggest cases in the country, the opioid case, I just finished, the PFAS case I just finished, tobacco, which originated in this law firm. We’re always on the other side of these creeps. And sometimes it’s hard to get the public to understand that we’re dealing with real sociopaths. I mean, if you had a DSM 5 and you’re doing a checklist, is this person a sociopath? When you start really drilling down on it, you’d find that they are. What kind of person shows up that these people have lost everything? They lost their family, they lost their friends, they lost their house, they lost the clothes on their back and people showing up, hey, can I buy your property? Who the hell does that?
Farron Cousins: And they’re doing it as one resident said, as the cadaver dogs are running around trying to find their family members and their cell phones are ringing, hey, uh, would you be interested? We understand you just had a recent event. Maybe you could sell us your house. And these people are saying, I don’t know where my relatives are. This is absolutely disgusting, as one resident put it to even be getting these phone calls. And look, you and I sat here four days ago saying, predicting that this was going to happen. And sure enough, immediately following that, all of these Wall Street vultures or hyenas, or jackals, whatever you want to call ’em, it’s inhuman what they’re doing.
Mike Papantonio: The first day we, you and I agreed, the best thing this governor can do is create a moratorium. I don’t know much about this governor. I really like this guy. The more I know about him, the more I like him. He’s a doctor. He has a huge history of doing good things for those islands. He just, you know, he’s just a, sounds like a good guy with a good plan. And he says, look, I’m not gonna let this happen. I’m not gonna let these vultures come in and sweep up this property, which they’ve always wanted to do.
Farron Cousins: Yeah.
Mike Papantonio: They’ve always wanted to bulldoze the place. It was like, same thing we saw after Katrina in New Orleans. Right? Same kind of deal. We saw the same thing happen. We have lived through this, haven’t we? We have lived through these folks coming in, folks, I mean, these people from Wall Street and Chicago and Miami and LA coming in, hey, we’re gonna build a better life for you. It is the most disgusting. So this governor says, hell no, you’re not. As a matter of fact, I’m working on a moratorium. Now, if I really analyze it, the moratorium is gonna have constitutional issues. So what. You can hold it up in court for years, and that’s all they need to do. He’s saying, look, don’t leave this island. Don’t go to the mainland. There’s no reason for you to do that. Come back. Let’s all rebuild together. I love the attitude that this guy has. And you’ve got people on their own. You’ve got a woman that’s creating a huge movement over there saying, look, I’m not gonna let this happen. Talk about that a little bit.
Farron Cousins: Yeah. She’s basically talking about the fact that, look, the history, the heritage of this town that has now been pretty much completely destroyed, as the governor said, there’s almost nothing left at all. But it has such a rich history that it has to be preserved. And the people who live here are that living history. This is generation upon generation going back hundreds of years on that island, in that town. Do not give it up to these Wall Street vultures.
Mike Papantonio: First of all, the Hawaiians have fought like hell to hold onto their culture, to hold onto what is Hawaiian, to hold onto that thing that connects them with Hawaii. This is one example of it. As you said, there’s 3, 4, 5 generations of people that have given every thing they can to hold onto their business, to build a life for their family and their friends in that community. And to have these people come in. I love this quote. This is Green. He says, I’ve reached out to our attorney general to explore our options on moratorium on any sales of our property that have been damaged or destroyed. I just, I love that he probably understands the same thing we’re talking about. It may not succeed at first. Who cares? By the time it goes through the appellate process, you would’ve slowed all this down. And the only thing that’s gonna slow it down is the people on that island being led by these folks that are saying, look, we have to fight back. And this woman is doing this through social media.
Farron Cousins: Yeah. Very powerful.
Mike Papantonio: I just love what’s happening. But they’ve got to be, they’ve gotta be strong and they cannot back down. Look, here’s what they’re faced with. They’ve lost everything. Somebody comes in and says, hey, you’ve got a piece of property that’s $1.66 million, but you know what, it really isn’t worth that anymore. We’re gonna pay you $400,000. Can you take that? Well, they got children to feed. Right. They don’t have a home. They have to rebuild somewhere. They have to start from scratch. They’re tempted to say, yeah, let me do that. Big mistake. Whatever has to happen on that island for everybody to pull together and say, we’re just not gonna allow this to happen.
Farron Cousins: Well, and it’s important for people to understand the Wall Street banks coming in, they’re not talking about, oh, we’re just gonna rebuild houses and just sell them. This whole area here will be demolished. These will be be giant hotels, a Disney resort, a Sandals Resort.
Mike Papantonio: Oh, it’ll look like Miami Beach.
Farron Cousins: Yeah. They’ll charge $2,000 a night because this island is one of the top tourist destinations, not just in the country, in the world.
Mike Papantonio: Yeah. I mean, hell, you’ll have Mickey Mouse running around the road before it’s all over. Look, this has got deep, this area has deep historical significance, not just a rational relationship between the people and the land. It’s got history. This used to be the capital, you know, when everything first started happening, this was the capital. And I just love that these people have just been so tough in the past to say, we’re not gonna allow it. Do not allow these thugs to come to this island and do what they wanna do. I mean, that’s my message. And you can succeed, especially with this governor. Again, I don’t know much about the guy. Did a little reading on him last night. I like his background. I like the fact he’s heavily invested into the best interest of these people on that island.
A new study has found a dangerous link between fracking sites and rare forms of cancer, showing that children living within five miles of a fracking site were nearly seven times, seven times more likely to develop lymphoma as well as other very severe health problems. We’ve seen this story, haven’t we? Can I tell you, let me take you back in time. We’ve been doing this 20 years, haven’t we? Back to the very first days. Remember we did Air America. We did, you were a producer for Air America, and we were doing stories on this. We were doing stories back in the Air America days talking about the emerging science then. A year or two after we talked about that you had all of these documentaries coming out where they were showing that fracking chemicals coming through your water system that you could set your pipe on fire, was Gasland.
Farron Cousins: Gasland, by Josh Fox.
Mike Papantonio: Josh Fox was brilliant in putting that together. You know intuitively, this is really bad for health, right?
Farron Cousins: Oh, absolutely. I mean, there’s no question about it. And this new study is just kind of compiling everything that has been coming out for several decades. That this process of fracking is absolutely devastating for communities, not just through the poisoning of the water, which of course has been one of the biggest stories, but now we’re finding out through the flaring of it, which is when they vent off the gases and light them on fire up into the air. Uh oh. We didn’t realize, well, we didn’t care that this was causing cancer in children.
Mike Papantonio: Yeah. Well, the truth is, they’ve had the science. I mean, these aren’t idiots. They have scientists that work for their company. They know what a benzene chemical does. They know what a toluene chemical does. There’s tons of literature, tons of science that talks about the off-gassing of this. Look, there was a study done in 2022, nobody took any action on it. Nobody took action on it where they showed this increase of leukemia. Now, this is another study. Oh, by the way, this is also an increase of lymphoma. And what’s interesting to me is this isn’t guesswork. That found cancer clusters, 500 cancer cases, 500 cancer cases within that area, and then you go five miles outside the area and there is no cancer cluster. So these folks that are having to live with this, I mean, they have to make a decision, but they don’t have to make a decision that they have to get rid of their home or that they have to get rid of land that’s may be been their property forever. They need to go after these people.
Farron Cousins: They really do. And people have to understand too, because again, we’ve been talking about this for 20 years, but these environmental issues like this, it’s also a class issue. Because these fracking sites are not outside the gated community.
Mike Papantonio: Right.
Farron Cousins: Those are 20, 30 miles away from this. They put these in the poor communities. A lot of times, there’s environmental racism that we see. They put them in low income African American communities. That’s where they’re dumping their toxins or off-gassing their wells. And so this is a humanitarian issue. This is a horrendous issue for the people that are living there. And it’s going to get worse, especially because the Halliburton rule, we can’t know what chemicals they’re putting into the ground. You know, Dick Cheney responsible for that.
Mike Papantonio: Right. Well, that we can’t know, as you know, is a big defense. The big defense, well, we don’t have enough epi. Well, here, they got plenty of epidemiology. The, we can’t know, comes from the idea of going to a university and hiring some scientist that’ll say anything, just, Mr. Corporation, pay me the amount of money and I will use those words, we can’t know. Not in this situation. This is we clearly know. And so they’re not doing anything about it. And truthfully, the only thing these corporations understand, I mean, we’re talking about sociopaths, take their money away. You think the people making these decisions, they’re living in gated communities up in the Hamptons for God’s sakes. They’re living in gated communities in LA and New York and Chicago, they’re so far removed from this. They don’t care that somebody’s child died from lymphoma.
Farron Cousins: Yeah. Their kids are safe. They’re not drinking the poisoned water or anything.
Mike Papantonio: Exactly. Exactly. But the reality is, the only thing you can do is sue ’em and make their life as miserable as possible. We do that all the time and we’ve done it with a lot of corporations where we stopped the way they do business. That’s the only thing you can do.
The Biden administration recently argued in a court filing that Americans don’t have a constitutional right, wow, now listen to that. Americans don’t have a constitutional right to a safe, stable climate, that they’re trying to protect the fossil fuel industry. Now, this is the, again, this is Garland. You understand? This is his department. He’s sending lawyers in and we’ve talked about, remember when he was up for Supreme Court?
Farron Cousins: Yep.
Mike Papantonio: We said, this guy is in the pocket of corporate America every time you turn around. So now he’s serving as Attorney General, and he’s doing the bidding of Biden, and going and saying that these kids that are bringing these lawsuits that are having a big effect, Montana, Utah, Hawaii, all of a sudden we’re seeing something happen. In comes his, Biden’s Attorney General to say, wait a second, there’s no constitutional right to be healthy. Right?
Farron Cousins: Yeah. It truly is just this absolute, I don’t even wanna say it’s Orwellian because this is just so much worse than that. This government, through this filing, is literally telling the country, you don’t have a right to clean air. You don’t have a right to clean water. You don’t have a right to not get respiratory illness from all of this pollution. You have no right to health is what this is. And you know, on the Merrick Garland issue, you and I, we got a lot of people angry back in the day because we talked about.
Mike Papantonio: Who cares?
Farron Cousins: We talked about the fact specifically that Merrick Garland was horrible about environmental issues. I remember doing these segments with you and everybody said, no, he was so much better than Scalia. Well, look, a potato is better than Scalia was. But that doesn’t mean we ever have to settle. And that’s the problem, is we settle far too often. When we could have great, but we’ll say, you know what? Not the worst is good enough. No, it’s not good enough on the issue of climate change. We can’t have Biden coming out there saying, oh, well, I know climate change is bad. We’re investing in renewable energy. But then at the same time, they’re pushing these pipelines for more dirty energy. This is not an environmental president, folks.
Mike Papantonio: You’re gonna love this argument. When you really follow this, read everything, this is their argument. One of their arguments, along with saying, hey, these kids don’t have a right to have a stable climate. They don’t have the right to protect themselves against these fools that are destroying the planet. This is the other argument. The Biden administration on June 22nd’s court filing, the Justice Department lawyers argued that because the, listen to this, the child plaintiffs are not the only people who are gonna be seriously harmed by the ecological breakdown, that the suit should be thrown out. Now process that, process that just a minute. They’re, along with saying you don’t have a constitutional right to protect yourself, kids from the future, inevitable future. But you also, this fails because, eh, you’re only one class of people and you don’t represent every class of people. This is Garland’s Department of Justice making these arguments and putting it down in writing. I don’t even know how to, hell, I don’t even know how to respond.
Farron Cousins: Well, it’s also an admission that, yeah, hey, we are destroying the environment. So what do they want? Do they want the entire country to sign on as a co-plaintiff on this lawsuit? I’ll sign, give me a piece of paper, I’ll sign and join on. And you can’t make that argument that not everybody’s there.
Mike Papantonio: You wanna know who their partners are in the argument. Koch Industries, American, these are people signing off as, yeah, we agree with what you’re saying. The Koch Industries, the American Petroleum Institute, Valero Energy, Exxon, these are showing up as amicus briefs on behalf of the position that Biden administration has taken that these people have no right, no constitutional right. These kids have no constitutional right to protect the planet, to save the planet that they’re left with, that we’ve frigging destroyed and put into a fireball.
Farron Cousins: Right. And most of these people that are making these decisions at the DOJ, y’all aren’t gonna be here to see the worst effect, well, no, I take that back because guess what, we’re living in the worst effects of it right now. It’s only gonna get worse. I mean, we have a climate emergency, whether it’s the tropical storm in California, fires in Hawaii, the heat dome that we’ve been under for a month and a half.
Mike Papantonio: You think everybody’s noticed that, by the way? Yeah. Okay. So you got what I love about it, the movement for these kids is being spearheaded by this nonprofit public interest, Our Children’s Trust. And it’s saying, look, the adults aren’t in the room now, so it’s up to the kids. And in Hawaii, it’s worked. In Montana, it’s worked. The state district judge Kathy Seeley, I love this woman. She said, every additional ton of greenhouse gas emissions exacerbates the risk and ultimately will kill these kids. And so the truth is they got the high ground and the US Justice Department, ah, nah. You don’t have a constitutional right to protect your health.
Farron Cousins: Also just worth pointing out, another wonderful story, this one is from The Lever. I always like to give them a shout out because they’re such a great organization.
Mike Papantonio: Yeah. L E V E R, go online and look at it. We get, sometimes we get criticism, they say, where do you get these stories, man? I can’t. Well, people don’t look for ’em. You know, if it’s not on MSNBC at night, or CNN or Fox News, they don’t even look for it. And so The Lever, if you want to cut through all the waste of time, go to The Lever.
A new report has revealed that Saudi Arabia has been killing refugees that are trying to seek asylum in their country and some survivors are saying that the Saudi military is walking right up to people, shooting them dead, right on the border. Now, here’s the problem. United States as usual, because it’s Saudi Arabia, we don’t care. Okay. They’re buying our jets for 80 gazillion dollars a piece, whatever it is. They’re coming to the United States, we’re training their pilots right here down the road from where we live. We’re buying their oil. We are prisoners to Saudi Arabia and this insane prince, I mean, is there any other way to describe this guy other than insane? And this is being driven, promise you, by him?
Farron Cousins: Yeah. We’ve got a new report from Human Rights Watch, Ethiopians coming from Africa, crossing through Yemen. They’re escaping horrendous conditions back home. They make it to the border in Saudi Arabia. And if they survive the bombing because we’ve got reports from these refugees that Saudi Arabia is sending missiles at ’em. They’re just bombing the hell out of ’em. The ones who survive that are then met with these Saudi border guards, who in some instances, according to these reports, will go, which limb do you want me to shoot you in?
Mike Papantonio: Before I kill you?
Farron Cousins: Yes.
Mike Papantonio: In other words, they’re showing up, they make it past all of that and then they say.
Farron Cousins: Where would you like to be shot?
Mike Papantonio: You want us to shoot you in the leg? Wanna shoot you in the arm, before we kill you?
Farron Cousins: And this is men, women, and children that are being slaughtered. And the ones who are not slaughtered, many of them end up in these internment camps that Saudi Arabia has. They’re being tortured, they’re being raped, they’re being put into forced labor. This is if any other country, if you replace the word Saudi Arabia with Russia, if you replace it with North Korea or Iran.
Mike Papantonio: Of course, of course.
Farron Cousins: US troops would already be there banging on their door saying, we’re getting rid of you. But because it’s our good friends in Saudi Arabia, we look the other way. And they commit these gross abuses.
Mike Papantonio: And you know who their best friend is? The weapons industry. The weapons industry is making an absolute killing from Saudi Arabia buying weapons to go kill folks in Yemen. But the stories are horrendous. Girls, teenage girls making it across the border are being raped, along with being before they’re shot through the arm or shot through the leg, they’re first raped, then they’re basically tortured. And then the border guards kill ’em. One thing, what was the story about if they’re injured, if they can’t walk, if they’ve got some kind of injury, they send them out into a field and drop mortars on ’em?
Farron Cousins: Yeah.
Mike Papantonio: Did I get that story right?
Farron Cousins: Yeah. That is one thing that Human Rights Watch talked about in this report. And it’s difficult to talk about this. And I hope people understand that this is such a massive story. This is an absolute abuse of human rights. The entire world should be condemning Saudi Arabia.
Mike Papantonio: Tell me where it’s being reported. Did you see this on the nightly news?
Farron Cousins: No. Human Rights Watch is the only place I’ve seen it.
Mike Papantonio: You see it New York Times?
Farron Cousins: No.
Mike Papantonio: No, you don’t see it on Fox, MSNBC, CNN. Why? Same reason and we talk about this all the time. When you see a Raytheon ad, a Boeing ad on CNN or MSNBC or any of the networks, Fox, why is that ad there? It’s not that, hey, Raytheon, man, they make missiles. Maybe I’m gonna need a missile someday. It is because they’re buying access. They’re buying influence with the network. Okay. And so if they wanna kill a story, they’ll do it. As a matter of fact, and as you look at this story, you understand that this is a country, this is a prince that’s reneged on every promise he’s ever made to us. Remember he hustled Biden?
Farron Cousins: Oh yeah.
Mike Papantonio: He said, Biden, you do this for me, sell me more jets, and I’m not gonna raise the price of oil. And what was it, two months later, gets the jets and raises the price of oil. How many times do we have to go through that? How many times do we have to see him, this prince moving closer and closer to China and Russia and building this new alliance while we’re selling him our best weapons? How long do we have to wait till we say this is just not, this is not good for the American public?
Farron Cousins: And even before this story came out, we have talked again for 20 years about the gross human rights abuses of Saudi Arabia. I mean, killing people for tweets, a record number of people killed for that. Killing them for disagreeing, saying, hey, I’m not happy with what my government’s doing. Okay, you’re dead now.
Mike Papantonio: About 82, 85, a hundred, we don’t know. Somewhere in that range, beheaded every year in a public square. And it’s not because they stole anything. It’s not because they robbed anybody. It’s because they said something that this idiot prince didn’t like. Who now is our best friend. He’s now best friends with weapons industry, I guess. So he’s best friends with us. And then, again, we continue to overlook the murder of 3000 Americans on American soil and we know Saudi Arabia was responsible for it. We know that this administration right now won’t even release the 9/11 investigation because it’s fraught with information that says, yeah, this was done by Saudi Arabia. I just don’t know how long it takes, man. I don’t know how long it takes. And so do we support the administration because hell, this is their decision, and by God, they’re Democrat or they’re Republican and we have to support ’em in that. Is that what we’ve become, really?
Farron Cousins: It feels like it. And I will tell you, there’s only one candidate I’ve seen that’s ever talked about the dangers of Saudi Arabia and that, of course was Bernie Sanders in 2020.
Mike Papantonio: Absolutely.
Automotive workers for the big three automakers are considering a strike if they can’t get better pay working conditions. But now the automakers have some hair-brained idea about how they’re gonna push back. This is the craziest idea I’ve ever seen. Anyway, talk about it, Farron, would you.
Farron Cousins: What we have right now, and this is almost comical. It’s something you would see in a sitcom, is you’ve got, Ford is leading the charge, and they’re saying, okay, listen, I know you work in human resources. I know you’re an engineer. You sit in an air conditioned office all day, but.
Mike Papantonio: You’re a scientist.
Farron Cousins: Yeah. You’re a scientist. Uh, do you know how to work a forklift? Okay, come down to the warehouse and I’m gonna teach you how to work a forklift. I’m gonna teach you, person who’s in charge of getting our health insurance, I’m gonna teach you how to start making carburetors. They are taking the salaried workers and throwing them into these warehouses saying, guess what, you’re now on the assembly line because we could be facing a strike. And rather than actually just say, okay, we’ll pay you a living wage, they’re saying, no, we’ll take our scientists and our human resources folks, and you guys now work the assembly line.
Mike Papantonio: Our number crunchers. You’re a good accountant. How would you like to work this complex machinery?
Farron Cousins: Yeah. Don’t stick your hand in here, it’ll get cut off.
Mike Papantonio: Well, okay. So, and they’re also being asked, look, you have a choice, Joe, Mr. Accountant. It’s not so bad. You have a choice. You can go to Colorado, we’ll send you there. We’ll send you to Florida. We’ll send you to New Jersey. Anywhere you want to go, you can’t take your family, but you can go and hang out and work as a forklift operator. Yes, you’ve been in a white collar your entire life. You’ve never even been around a forklift. But this is gonna be the answer to it. Now, the thing that cracks me up is there’s already so much history that this doesn’t work. Didn’t Caterpillar try something like this?
Farron Cousins: Caterpillar tried it. John Deere tried it. And of course those videos went viral because you got these idiots, not that they’re idiots because they didn’t know any better, but they’re crashing.
Mike Papantonio: Yeah, John Deere, not Caterpillar, excuse me.
Farron Cousins: Yeah. They’re crashing forklifts into the walls. They’re destroying product because they don’t know how to do any of this stuff. It is, it really, it’s like an episode of Seinfeld. Like Kramer gets a forklift and starts running through walls.
Mike Papantonio: Are they serious about this or is this just some kind of, you strike, we’re gonna find a way to do this? I mean.
Farron Cousins: I think it is more of like, we’re gonna try to see if we can call your bluff. But if I were the auto workers, I would not be afraid of this at all. I would be encouraging it, saying, you know what? You think I’m so replaceable?
Mike Papantonio: Yeah. You think what I do is not important?
Farron Cousins: Yeah. You go get Dr. John down here and see if he can run this.
Mike Papantonio: Yeah.
Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy is surging in the polls with some polls showing him knocking Ron DeSantis out of second place totally. And now his associates are saying that he was told by the president of Newsmax that if he wants more positive coverage, he has to spend more money. Now, when I first saw this, first a couple things, you know, this guy is emerging.
Farron Cousins: He really is. He’s come from nowhere.
Mike Papantonio: I don’t know if you’ve been listening to him, but he’s kind of beating the hell out of DeSantis right now, moving into that second place. But we hear this story, we’ve heard this story forever, that not just Newsmax, but all these networks. There’s some quid pro quo. We’ll put you on midday when nobody is gonna be watching you. But you know what, if you buy some advertising with us and advertise your campaign, we’re gonna put you on prime time. Right?
Farron Cousins: Yeah. And look, presidential campaigns, anytime we have a big election year, not just with the candidates, but with the Super PACs, advertising goes crazy. Each election breaks the previous elections record of how much money was spent on advertising. And Newsmax is basically doing what all the other networks are doing and says, hey, you know what? You’ve got money to spend, you’ve got your Super PAC, we would like that. If you wanna reach our audience, that’s the best way to do it. So when this came out, and Ramaswamy’s associates say that he told them that Ruddy told him. I think it’s a big game of telephone where something got lost along the way because it does seem like Newsmax was simply trying to say, listen, if you wanna reach the entire audience, the best way to do it is advertising, which is true.
Mike Papantonio: There’s gotta be something positive about the Newsmax story. One positive is they’re kind of kicking Fox’s butt right now. There’s an exodus there. But, you know, it’s all of them. Do you recall, I used to do, for a long time I did commentary on CNN and MSNBC and even Fox, I was the left, I was the liberal commentator for them a while. But to show the impact that these advertisers have, I would be on the air in the close count, Pap 10, 9, 8, 7, and somebody would come in my ear, we’re gonna have to kill the story that you’re doing on Bayer and how Bayer Industries is killing hundreds and hundreds of women with a dangerous product. Instead, we’re gonna flip it over to some inane issue. Pap, talk about the constitutional validity of this or that. And what would happen is, in between the tease coming up, Mike Papantonio, Ed Schultz discuss Bayer killing people by the dozens or hundreds with this new product. In between the tease and me appearing Bayer would make a call and they, or whoever it is, and Bayer is just an example, if you don’t kill the story, we’re gonna pull back on our advertising. Right.
Farron Cousins: And I’ll take it even one step further, a story you may have forgotten about, because back in 2002, you had a weekly segment on MSNBC, rat of the week. And everything was going great. You would talk about the corporations, the problems, until one time it was the arsenic tainted wood from osmose, which later became yellow wood, they were using wood tainted with arsenic in playgrounds for children. And after you did that story, the following week, you were no longer there.
Mike Papantonio: No, no. Can I give you the backstory? So, Griffin, Phil Griffin, whoever was the little punk that was running MSNBC wanted me to go on and apologize.
Farron Cousins: Yeah, that’s right.
Mike Papantonio: And I said, no, that’s not gonna happen. I’m never gonna go on and apologize for a story where you’ve got a company that’s producing a product that they know is being used for children’s playground equipment that has arsenic in it. I mean, not just a little arsenic, but a lot of arsenic. And so they had their PR team come in, they had their advertisers come in, make all these threats on yellow wood. And it was my, kind of my goodbye to MSNBC. Who the hell cares?
Farron Cousins: Well, and you wouldn’t apologize. So they actually made Joe Scarborough go on and apologize.
Mike Papantonio: Right. And he did.
Farron Cousins: And he said, I guess that makes me the rat of the week. It was such a BS thing and it was so obvious. But yeah, to bring it all back home, all these media networks, it doesn’t matter if it’s CNN or MSNBC or Fox or Newsmax, it’s all about you’ve got to scratch our back if you want us to scratch your back. If you’re not gonna be a giant ratings draw that we can sell advertisements based off of, then you better buy some advertisements and we’ll put you on.
Mike Papantonio: Since you brought up this Joe Scarborough story, a little known fact. He used to be my law partner. And so he moved into MSNBC and we did this show every week, and we would talk about how bad corporate America is and the awful things they would do. And then yellow wood was just too much. Farron, thanks for joining me. Okay.
Farron Cousins: Thank you.
Mike Papantonio: That’s all for this week. But all these segments, they’re gonna be available throughout the next week. And make sure you follow us on Twitter @AmericasLawyer. I’m Mike Papantonio, and this has been America’s Lawyer, where we tell you the stories every week that corporate media won’t tell you because their advertisers don’t allow for ’em to tell ’em, or their political connections are so entrenched, whether it’s Democrat or Republican, they don’t allow the network to tell the story. We’ll see you next time.
