Florida Governor Ron DeSantis is letting the whole country know how thin his skin is by pushing to change defamation laws to make it easier to sue journalists who report on his administration. Then, new legislation has been introduced in the House of Representatives that would put an end to the concept of “Corporate Personhood.” The goal is to undo the Citizens United Supreme Court ruling that has allowed corporations to take full control of elections. 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: Florida Governor Ron DeSantis is letting the whole country know how thin his skin is by pushing to change the defamation law to make it easier to sue journalists who report bad things about his administration. Ring of Fire’s Farron Cousins joins me to talk about what’s happening and many other issues. Okay. No surprise here. You know, he hates the media. The corporate media has not been fair to him in his mind. And you know what? As I watch it, they really aren’t. I mean, as I watch, I mean, even you and I are taking shots at him all the time, and people take shots at him because he’s in the business. Okay. You gotta have, you can’t have thin skin in this business. What’s your take on this story?
Farron Cousins: This is really interesting one, because he has no authority to even do this.
Mike Papantonio: No, no.
Farron Cousins: You know, this was actually put forward by our state representative Alex Andrade, who clearly does not understand how the federal law works. You can’t change defamation, slander, and libel laws at a state level when these things are already set nationally.
Mike Papantonio: Andrade is a goof. Okay. Andrade got mad at me for calling him, what’d I call him a punk, and said he had no life experience. What was going on was Florida Power and Light was raid, I mean, raiding everybody’s money. I mean, they were just taking money away from everybody in this state, four or five times the amount that they should be paying for electricity. So I went after Andrade. I said, why is it happening? Why aren’t you going to Tallahassee doing something about it? Called him a punk, said he was a child, a manchild or something like that. So maybe, maybe this is my fault, I don’t know. But this is dead on arrival. I mean.
Farron Cousins: It really, well, they’ll pass it.
Mike Papantonio: Oh, yeah.
Farron Cousins: Because the goal and we see this all the time, especially here in Florida, the goal is not to pass successful legislation. The goal is to get somebody to immediately sue about the legislation so they can work it up to the Supreme Court and undo the New York Times versus Sullivan case.
Mike Papantonio: That’s the goal. Right.
Farron Cousins: That’s the goal.
Mike Papantonio: That’s the goal.
Farron Cousins: And that’s why, look, I get so incredibly frustrated because you have these well-meaning groups out there on the left. And I love these groups, but I hate that as soon as legislation gets passed, they immediately file these lawsuits because that’s what these conservatives like Ron DeSantis want to happen. That’s how you end up with the Supreme Court undoing Roe versus Wade. You’ve gotta take your time and analyze it and have the right argument instead of the knee-jerk reaction that we’re gonna sue you.
Mike Papantonio: Right appellate court, lower level appellate court, right Supreme Court state and right US Supreme Court. This, but I mean, look, the idea is to be able to say that we’re gonna lower the standard to where if I say something bad about Andrade, he’s gonna have an easier time suing me. Now, Andrade says, oh no, this isn’t about public officials. This is to protect the average man on the street
Farron Cousins: Because they’re getting slandered all the time apparently.
Mike Papantonio: Oh yeah. You know, they’re, everybody’s slandering the average man on the street. No. The people that are slandering politicians is the politician deserves to be slandered. Okay. They chose to do this for a living. And when they do stupid stuff, people like you and I ought to be able to say, Andrade you did another stupid thing. I’m gonna do it anyway. And, you know, when you pass your legislation, I’m probably gonna be the one that tests it if anything happens there. So the point is this, I do, there’s something I do agree with here, though. In there is something about anonymous sources. Okay. Look, I went to University of Florida Journalism School, news editing was my major. And we always talked about anonymous sources. Anonymous sources are really, really dangerous. Anonymous sources, if you think about it, allowed Judith Miller with the New York Times to start a war with Iraq that killed millions of people. Okay. And it’s still a problem. Judith Miller lied. She lied about her source, she lied about the story, and the whole time that she was ginning up the story, it was based on anonymous sources. Do you remember that story?
Farron Cousins: Oh, absolutely.
Mike Papantonio: Okay. So anonymous sources to me, we need to take a look at it because we’re seeing it everywhere now. Anonymous source says this, hell, there’s gotta be some limitations there.
Farron Cousins: Well, I mean, to a degree, sure. But at the same time, you know, that would’ve prevented us from getting the Nixon story. I mean, Deep Throat.
Mike Papantonio: True. Good point.
Farron Cousins: Mark Felt at the point was an anonymous source.
Mike Papantonio: Good point.
Farron Cousins: So without that, we wouldn’t have it. But we also don’t want to get to the point where we’re forcing these reporters, these journalists to reveal their sources. It’s when it’s a real public corruption story. If you’re talking about keeping a source secret, because they said, hey, DeSantis eats pudding with his fingers, which is a story that did come out recently. I get that. Okay. Why are you protecting?
Mike Papantonio: Wait, wait, wait, wait. He does what?
Farron Cousins: Yeah. He allegedly eats pudding with his fingers.
Mike Papantonio: Maybe it’s a cultural thing, I don’t know.
Farron Cousins: So yeah, and it was an anonymous source that gave that information. So I get it. Like, that’s not an important anonymous source. You do have to have a line somewhere. But I think that’s what really him off, is the pudding story that started most of this.
Mike Papantonio: Okay. So here we have that, let me run for office. I wanna run for office. I wanna be Andrade. I want to be Mr. Big in Tallahassee, and I’m gonna be a what, a state representative, something to that effect. Okay. State representative in Tallahassee. Elect me, let me do horrendous things. Let me side with corporations to the detriment of consumers. Let me be reckless. Let me be stupid and let me be insufferable in the things I do. But with this, by God, if you sue me, I’m gonna have something to talk about. That’s kind of where this is. This is not for the every man on the street, but that’s the way they make it, that’s the way they make this look.
Mike Papantonio: New legislation’s been introduced in the House of Representatives that would put an end to the concept of corporate personhood. The goal is to undo the Citizens United v Supreme Court and the ruling that they made and it’s allowed corporations to absolutely trample, trample on consumers all over this country. Pick it up.
Farron Cousins: Yeah. What we have is representative Jayapal, who has put forward the We The People Amendment that says, you know, to distill it down to its most basic point, we the people means we the human beings, not the corporations. Because the big cornerstone of Citizens United was the Supreme Court saying that corporations are people and money is free speech.
Mike Papantonio: By definition of the Constitution.
Farron Cousins: Yeah.
Mike Papantonio: That’s what the Supreme Court did, which was ridiculous. It’s all, this fight’s been going on corporate America since, you know, since they came up with the notion of an LLC and a corporation has always been fighting to say, treat us like people. Well, if we’re gonna treat ’em like people, well let’s talk about what we should be doing with them. We ought be throwing ’em in prison when they do things like HSBC. You know the story on HSBC, right?
Farron Cousins: Yeah.
Mike Papantonio: They’re washing money for terrorists. American soldiers are being killed with that money, with bombs that are in place. A corporation kills 150 people a day with opioids. Those people should be in prison. But the corporate answer is, well now wait, not so fast. We want to be people. But you can’t put a corporation in prison. No, you can. You find out who made the decision. You put ’em in handcuffs and you put ’em in prison. But we’ve taken this whole Citizens United argument and we’ve turned it on its head. Everybody only thinks about it as it comes to donations. This is where they make the argument, you know, we’re a person. Well, if we’re a person by God, you need to go to prison for your conduct.
Farron Cousins: Well, exactly. And that’s why honestly, as much as I do like this legislation, I think Jayapal should come out with basically the exact opposite legislation as well. And say, listen, okay, if you won’t vote, House of Representatives, because we know they won’t pass this, unfortunately. Say, okay, if you don’t wanna make them, not people, let’s pass legislation saying they’ve got all the rights of American citizens. Basically trap them into voting for that because they won’t pay attention. And then at that point it does open them up for those kinds of prosecutions that need to happen. Because like you said, when you have companies that are out there killing people with cancer over the course of 30, 40, 50 years, killing 150 people a day, putting out other dangerous pharmaceuticals. Somebody needs to go to jail. If any human being in this country killed 150 people a day, they’re gonna be prosecuted.
Mike Papantonio: You know, I saw this for the first time as a very young lawyer. It was just, the argument was just really being propounded then. It was a case that was called Factor VIII. Bayer Corporation had made a blood, it was for hemophiliacs. It was for hemophiliacs, it was made to stop bleeding. Well, the problem is they knew that their product was infected with HIV. They sold it on the American market until we got involved. We stopped the sale of it. Got it off the market. They took that same stuff and sent it all over the world. People in Asia died of AIDS because of it. South America. Do you know how many people went to jail? One person, and that was a French citizen.
Had nothing to do with all the decisions that were made in the United States by these corporate pigs. Not one of ’em went to prison. But their argument was, you know, judge, we’re a corporation. I mean, how do you put a corporation in prison? All you do is follow, you just follow the memos. You follow the letters, you follow the conduct and you say you look like the guy who won. You’re going to prison. Because look at how many people they killed with that product. Sad, sad story. But we see it again and again and we hear the same argument again and again.
Farron Cousins: Well, yeah. You know, we’re not actual, we’re only people, we’re only, you know, having our personhood when it benefits us.
Mike Papantonio: And we have free, and money is free speech. That’s their argument.
Farron Cousins: Right. And I can’t, I still am in shock over that argument in general just because money cannot equate to free speech because at that point you’re saying some people have more free speech than others.
Mike Papantonio: That’s right.
Farron Cousins: You know, there’s an equal issue there. So that alone should have gotten this case tossed before it even made it.
Mike Papantonio: Yeah. That’s a very smart analysis.
Farron Cousins: Well, thank you.
Mike Papantonio: If money is free speech, then the people with all the money, they have more free speech.
Farron Cousins: Exactly.
