The Dems Can’t Shut Carville The Critic Up

America’s Lawyer E73: The corporate media is beating the drums of war louder than ever, and the networks are parading their favorite defense contractors onto the air to convince us that a war between Israel and Palestine is a great idea. 41 states have joined a lawsuit against Facebook and Instagram for endangering young Americans by getting them addicted to social media – we’ll bring you the details. And President Biden has two more Democratic primary challengers – which may not be a bad thing considering how bad his poll numbers have gotten. 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 media is beating the drums of war louder than ever, and the networks are parading their favorite defense contractors onto the air to convince us that a war between Israel and Palestine is really a good idea. 41 states have joined a lawsuit against Facebook and Instagram for endangering young Americans by getting ’em addicted to social media. We’ll bring you the details. And President Biden has two more Democratic primary challengers, which may not be a bad thing considering how bad his polls are looking right now. All that and more, it’s coming up, don’t go anywhere, on America’s Lawyer.

Cable news outlets are relying on defense industry consultants and their war profiteers to give their audience information about international conflicts and the problem has reached a peak with the conflict between Israel and Palestine. But these networks don’t even bother to tell their viewers that they’re hearing propaganda, pure propaganda from the men who profit off the coverage and the carnage. Ring of Fire’s Farron Cousins joins me now to talk about what’s happening. God, this is maybe the only thing that saves CNN. I mean, save ’em for a little while, as long as the war lasts. Have you ever seen such a disgusting process, though? I saw it with Ukraine. Ukraine, parade in all of these people. Make ’em sound like they have all of these qualifications, and don’t tell ’em, don’t tell the viewing audience that oh, by the way, this person makes $250,000 a year just sitting on the board of Boeing. That’s what’s happening here. No disclosure whatsoever.

Farron Cousins: Yeah. As usual, the folks at the Lever did a phenomenal job exposing this, and one of the worst offenders right now is MSNBC.

Mike Papantonio: Oh, terrible.

Farron Cousins: They keep bringing on this guy Jeremy Bash. And Mr. Bash, they’re like, oh, he’s a foreign policy expert. Trust us, Mr. Bash, he knows everything there is about everything that’s happening. Well, I’m sure he does, because Mr. Bash is actually getting a ton of money from the defense industry.

Mike Papantonio: Yeah, and has been.

Farron Cousins: Right. And sits on the boards, part of these consultancy groups that are really just front groups for these massive defense contractors, because that is where all the money comes from.

Mike Papantonio: Okay. So they’re on the board, they’re on the board for a reason. Raytheon puts ’em on the board because they know they’re talking heads, and they don’t mind paying them 250, $500,000 a year to be their talking heads. But by, there should be a responsibility of the network to say, look, what you’re listening to could be construed as propaganda. What you’re listening to by Jeremy Bash, first of all, was mostly. When he delivered what he was saying, it was nonsense. And if you followed what he was saying and followed up on what he was saying, it was pure nonsense. But the point is, MSNBC is shameless about this. They don’t really care, just like Fox, just like CNN, you’re seeing these people everywhere that are showing up and they’re just rattling the sabers of war like they did with Ukraine. It was worse with Ukraine than it is right now. And nobody paid any attention to that.

Farron Cousins: Well, and one of the big things that is so frustrating about this is the viewers have no idea. If you’re watching MSNBC or CNN and Fox News, you’re probably not the kind of person that’s gonna go and read this report from the Lever. So you’re not gonna know that you’re sitting there getting this defense industry propaganda from people who, it doesn’t matter which country it is. They’ll rattle the sabers against Russia, against China, against North Korea, and sure, a lot of those countries are bad. But that doesn’t mean we need to go and send tanks and bombs and planes and start World War III. But that is what these people deep down want, because that’s the way they make money.

Mike Papantonio: Yeah. They’re rewarded according to if Raytheon sells more missiles, they make more money. Look, if you think, this is not even a hidden handshake. This is go out there, Dennis Ross, ambassador ex, Dennis Ross on Meet the Press. Okay. Nobody says, well, Mr. Ross, this is some pretty strong language you’re using right now. Tell us about your affiliation with WestExec. Right? Talk about that. Tell us about your affiliation with this company that makes a ton of money for being the mouthpiece for every weapons manufacturer on the globe. Not a word is said, even on something like Meet the Press that you would hope is maybe a little higher standard, not much, but a little higher standard within NBC.

Farron Cousins: Right. And WestExec is just one of these many consultancy groups, because that’s how they label themselves. And they get their money from Raytheon. They get their money from Boeing. And then we’ve thrown to commercial here and suddenly it’s a commercial for Boeing. Like, oh, look at our new jet engines. Well, why are you advertising a jet engine? That doesn’t make any sense to me.

Mike Papantonio: You gonna buy a jet engine or maybe buy a missile? You gonna go buy a missile? Because look, that’s part of the deal. Raytheon, give us your advertising dollars. We’re gonna put on your war. Your war, Dennis Ross, is gonna show up, and he’s gonna encourage more war in Ukraine. He’s gonna encourage more war in the Mid East. And it’s a deal that you would think they’d even, they don’t even keep it quiet. The only people who keep it quiet is the people that have ’em on talking this propaganda and these talking heads, the hosts, don’t have enough sense to say, tell me about your relationship with Raytheon. Right?

Farron Cousins: Right. And honestly, that’s probably the biggest problem at all, because these people, they develop audiences, audiences who trust them.

Mike Papantonio: Yeah. And that’s unfortunate.

Farron Cousins: They tune into these corporate media outlets and they say, I watch this person because I know they’re gonna tell me the truth. And they’re not. This person is not telling you that this other person on the side of the camera, whether it’s somebody that the host chose, or maybe the host was told, you have to talk to these people. Now, this kind of seems like this instance where one of these hosts needs to take a stand. I get it. You get lots of money from it. But come clean. Say on the air, listen, say, look, I’m probably gonna be cut off in a few minutes, but let me tell you what’s happening.

Mike Papantonio: Well, they would lose their millions of dollars. The host would lose their millions of dollars of money that they’re paid to keep their mouth shut. That the person across the table with them is nothing but a war. A war pimp that wants more war because he’s working for Raytheon, he’s working for the weapons industry. And the interviewer doesn’t have enough character, doesn’t have enough class to say, you know what, I listen to what you’re saying, but you work for Raytheon, don’t you? Raytheon pays you $500,000 a year, don’t they? Don’t even ask the question. It’s the most disgusting issue that’s happening right now. Right now we have become a nation that makes all, that our economy’s propped up with weapons. That’s what we do. We’re a weapons manufacturing, country. That’s where we make our money. That and pharmaceuticals. And this is just an extension. How about when Donahue got fired, right? All the way back to Donahue getting fired over Iraq when he said, this is nonsense, this is. Why are we invading Iraq when Saudi Arabia’s the people that that bombed, caused the bombing in 9/11?

Farron Cousins: Exactly. He, and all he did was ask the questions that should be asked and speak out against it, obviously. And they wasted no time, again, the liberal network wasted.

Mike Papantonio: Oh, liberal. I mean, liberals don’t even look like liberals anymore. I can’t, I don’t even recognize ’em anymore. Used to be we would talk about the right wing Republicans doing this kind of thing. Now Fox is doing it. But so is MSNBC, so is CNN, so is ABC, they’re all doing it without showing any shame whatsoever to say that this person you’re listening to has a direct interest in fomenting war and promoting war and keeping war alive. When Donahue did it, when he told the truth by God, he lost his job. Matter of fact, guy that I used to be law partner with, Joe Scarborough replaced him, and Joe was willing to say whatever the hell had to be said, just like he’s doing right now.

41 states have filed lawsuits against Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, alleging that the company went to extreme measures to attract young people and get ’em hooked on social media. And this addiction then led to all sorts of problems with these children. Now, look, there is no hocus pocus here. We know what they did. We know that they’ve used algorithms. They have hired the best shrinks in the world to say, how do we keep this 14 year old hooked on TikTok? How do we keep this 35 year old woman hooked on Facebook? What do we do? They’ve hired shrinks to say, well, these are the tricks. This is how you go about doing it. They focused it. They’ve tampered algorithms. And the whole intent, the whole intent was to create the same atmosphere that causes any addiction, whether its alcohol addiction, drug addiction, there’s some commonality to people who have a tendency towards addiction. They figured it out. And now they’re using it on everybody. Mostly children right now.

Farron Cousins: Yeah. And it’s really interesting about this lawsuit because I’m sure a lot of people, this has been big news. So people have seen the headlines, and I’ve seen some people say, well, this seems stupid, right? You can’t sue just because your kid’s on Facebook and Instagram too much. And when you really start to look at the particulars in here, it is astounding. There’s internal documents from Meta, the parent company of Facebook.

Mike Papantonio: Oh, yeah.

Farron Cousins: Where they’re talked about like, how do we get, almost like the tobacco documents, how do we get ’em hooked?

Mike Papantonio: Full disclosure, we’re handling these cases out in California. I wanna put that on the table. We’re seeing some of the documents. There’s no question that they have set out four or five years ago to say, look, we can increase our traffic. We can increase advertising. And so they said, how do we increase traffic? And they micro analyzed, how do you do it with a 14 year old? How do you do it with a 30 year old? And they’ve got a whole approach to doing it where they’re using all of the weaknesses of addiction. A person who has a propensity towards addiction, they’re using those weaknesses to hold ’em there. This is an ugly story, man. 35, fortunately, you got 35 states that are saying, well, we’re gonna do something about it.

Farron Cousins: Well, and it gets even more interesting too, when you look at it as, okay, we got ’em hooked. So people might say, all right, well people are addicted to social media. Where’s the damage? Ah, they know the damage too. Because there have been plenty of studies, you know, we’re still sorting through data here, but the studies have shown that these young people, 13, 14 years old, the more time they spend on social media, they have a poor body image. They go through depression. This social media is destroying them mentally.

Mike Papantonio: Let me point out, I think you just said it, but I wanna make sure it’s clear, they had that information in their file cabinets. It’s not like somebody else said, well, this is gonna cause depression. This is gonna gonna cause anxiety. This is gonna cause potential bullying. This is gonna cause potential suicide. They had this in their file cabinets and had that information in their file cabinets for years. So what do they do? They do what all corporate America does. They go out and they strike a deal with the American Psychological Association, complete utter pimps for this industry. They pay ’em enough money and they come out with the same talking point that we saw with tobacco. We saw the same talking point with opioids. We saw the same talking point with PFAS. We see the same talking point in every major pharmaceutical case. You know what the talking point is? We don’t know. We don’t have enough information. More studies need to take place. And these biostitutes, that’s what they are. They’re paid whores. Work for the university. Work somewhere in science. They have a big name in science. So they go out and hire ’em for a million dollars. Doc, would you please write a paper talking about how there’s no relationship or that you don’t know for sure because there’s not enough study? So they delay it another 10 years in this study mode. Right?

Farron Cousins: Or, hey, poke a couple holes in this one. Look, some of this data right here, we think it was done incorrectly. Look at it compared to our data. And so the scientist, or the doctor, or whoever it is, will say, oh, yeah, when comparing the alternate sets of data, you see that there is no correlation. They don’t do any of their own research in these cases. They rely on everything from the industry. And then they’ll get a big endowment to their department at their university. It is sick. And there is a database that these corporations use and we have seen the database.

Mike Papantonio: Oh, we use it cross examination all the time. I’ll be across one of these, across the table from one of these biostitutes, and I’ll pull out a paper that says, look, you did this for this company. You did this for this company, no disclosure. You did this for this company, no disclosure. You wrote this paper for this company, no disclosure. That’s what’s happening here. They’re trying to round up the best biostitutes they can round up to say, ah, this is ridiculous. Like they did with tobacco, like they did with opioids. Like they do every time that there’s a big crisis like this. Right?

Farron Cousins: Yep.

Mike Papantonio: And as this goes on, you’re gonna see these people are gonna get, they’re gonna get spanked. I promise you they’re going to get spanked because the courts are tired of it. There was a hearing took place in California a week ago. In the hearing, one of the defendants was asked, well, sir, don’t you have a duty to make safe what you’re doing here where it comes to children’s lives? You know what he said? No. Court came unglued. Court said, really? We’ll see what your duty is.

Political strategist James Carville is back in the news again, this time for what he’s not allowed to say, according to Carville, Democrats are telling him to keep his mouth shut. Don’t talk about Biden’s sinking poll numbers because they’d rather bury their head in the sand than listen to what Carville’s trying to tell ’em and that Biden is going to lose. That’s what Carville is saying. Every poll, there’s no outlier that says everything’s okay. Every one of ’em are saying Biden is going to lose. Right?

Farron Cousins: What we’re seeing right now is more and more saying that either we got a dead heat, Trump’s ahead by two points, Biden’s ahead by two points. But it is statistically a dead heat. The big problem, and listen, I don’t usually agree with James Carville. He’s not said a lot of things I’ve liked in the last 10 years.

Mike Papantonio: Me either.

Farron Cousins: Right. But, right here, he’s actually saying something that kind of gets to the heart of messages that we get in emails and angry phone calls.

Mike Papantonio: Oh God. We have to listen to it all the time.

Farron Cousins: And that is when people say, don’t talk about that. You’re helping the other side when talk about it.

Mike Papantonio: By talking about it.

Farron Cousins: Yeah.

Mike Papantonio: It’s childlike, isn’t it? It’s like a three year old that says, sticks their finger, nah nah nah. They don’t want to hear anything. Don’t talk about it because it upsets me. Rather than saying, maybe you should talk about it, because if you talk about it, we can adjust to the problem. We can get something done. It’s so childlike. We see it firsthand here all the time. Don’t we? This story, oh my God, they’re gonna, how dare you talk about the fact that Biden’s, that he’s in the tank or that Kamala Harris is in the tank. How dare you talk about it. You’re hurting us. No, we’re not hurting anybody. We’re trying to say there’s time for adjustment. Make a frigging adjustment.

Farron Cousins: Right. And the big thing that Carville’s pointing out is not just the head-to-head matchups. He says, listen, it’s that 37% approval rating. That’s what’s killer. George W. Bush had higher than a 37% approval rating.

Mike Papantonio: The statistics are, you can’t win with less than 40%. The historical, historically, you cannot win without 40%. So Carville, whether you like him or not, has been in this business a hell of a long time. And he’s saying, you know what? Something’s wrong here. I want to talk about it. How dare, how dare you DNC come to me and plead with me, please don’t talk about the bad stuff and direct me not to talk about the bad stuff and threaten him if he talks about the bad stuff. That’s how bad it is. They’re literally threatening the guy. He owns a, he’s got a lobby firm right now. They’re, you keep doing this, buddy, we’re gonna cut you off. Right?

Farron Cousins: Well, it’s like if the building’s on fire, but rather than addressing the fire, the Democrats are yelling at you to turn down the fire alarm because the noise is making ’em mad. They’re sitting around as everything burns around them, and they say that the alarm is making me angry. Don’t blare that alarm. But listen, I will say part of me is almost shocked at how bad Biden’s poll numbers are because every day I’m talking about all of the ridiculous insanity on the right. And it just blows my mind that people can see all of that dysfunction and still look at Biden and say, yeah, but he may be worse. That is a problem for this administration and they’re not addressing it.

Mike Papantonio: Well, look, it’s not just him. Dean Phillips is coming out and saying, you know, Dean Phillips now running. Everybody that’s running against him say, what the hell is it you’re not seeing? The guy is a train wreck. He’s a train wreck. Why can’t you see it? Instead, what we get when we say something like that, and people call, they literally call and say, how dare you do that? You’re killing the Democrats. No, we’re not killing the Democrats. We’re trying to tell the Democrats, pay attention here. Act like a freaking grownup rather than a child and do something about what’s happening. That’s all we’re doing. And that’s what Carville’s doing. Carville’s saying, I’m not out to get Biden. He’s just yesterday’s news. It’s time to move on to some new news now. That’s what he’s trying to say.

MindGeek, the parent company of several prominent adult video websites is being sued by a woman who alleges that her sexual assault was videotaped and published on their platform. These allegations are not a one-off. They’re, as you know, we’re handling these cases. We’ve handled these cases against PornHub, we’ve handled against MindGeek. These are serious cases. The reason, the most startling thing about it is the money behind all this is coming directly from Wall Street. Okay. We’re finding that as we look at these cases, MindGeek, for example, MindGeek is a company in Canada tied to the PornHub. Okay. They would collect, they would send out notices to people who they knew were traffickers, knew that they clearly, they were traffickers. They would say, we need a videotape of a 14 year old being sodomized in a hotel room. And the traffickers would go out and do that. They would go to a hotel, rent the hotel, bring in lights, cameras, anybody at the hotel had to see something was wrong there. But while MindGeek was being investigated by Canadian parliament, asked the question, we have it on you. We know you’re doing this. While that was happening, Wall Street was giving ’em more money to finance their operation. That’s how ugly this story is.

Farron Cousins: This whole story here, and it’s tragic what happened to this woman. She says that she was sexually assaulted, basically raped, it was videotaped. And then next thing she knows, it’s up on this website.

Mike Papantonio: They won’t take it down

Farron Cousins: For people to watch for their enjoyment. This horrific thing in her life. But you talk about the Wall Street involvement, the Canadian company involvement. We also have the hotel involvement.

Mike Papantonio: Oh, absolutely.

Farron Cousins: Like you talked about, we have hotels that knew this was taking place. You had every staffer in these hotels say, yeah, everybody kind of knew when you saw the guys moving in with filming equipment for the Red Roof Inn. This isn’t like.

Mike Papantonio: Exactly. They’ve rented a room for two weeks in the biggest suite they have, people bringing in cameras, lights. Go ahead.

Farron Cousins: Exactly. And so, there’s lawsuits against the hotels and we’ve done plenty of segments about that.

Mike Papantonio: We’ve handled those cases.

Farron Cousins: Exactly. And so this industry, this human trafficking industry, this assault industry is alive and well, and it’s not, it’s not the people you see in the movies. Right. You know, Taken. It’s not just a group of people who go out there and they snatch women off the street.

Mike Papantonio: From the Balkans.

Farron Cousins: Yeah. And then they sell ’em overseas. I mean, that happens. But this is much more sophisticated. You have Wall Street involved. You have massive hotel chains. You have these companies that are well organized and well established and very well funded that do this for a living. It’s almost, I recently talked to Chris Paulos from your firm about terrorism. People think, oh, the terrorists are these people, they’re hiding out in their caves. They are not. They are people with connections to Wall Street with the high up banks, with the governments. It’s a sophisticated high tech apparatus. And so is the human trafficking industry. And that’s what we’re seeing here.

Mike Papantonio: Yeah. Well, we’ve been handling these cases against the MindGeeks and the PornHubs and all these slithering creeps for a while now. And the bothersome thing is to understand but for Wall Street money, they wouldn’t be alive.

The FDA has warned that use of probiotics on premature infants could have deadly effects, deadly side effects. Children have already died. There are now dozens of adverse events reported regarding preterm infants and probiotics. And the FDA has gone as far as telling the companies that you’re illegally marketing these treatments to hospitals and stop. Hasn’t stopped ’em, has it?

Farron Cousins: No, and the FDA hasn’t done anything either, other than that.

Mike Papantonio: No, no. They’ve sent out warning letters and then just like the FDA does, they did nothing after that. Right?

Farron Cousins: Yeah. They send out the letter and they say, okay, there we go. We did it guys. Everybody go home happy. But no, infants, premature infants are dying and they’re dying a horrific death. Nothing but pain for these infants to the point, and this is actually another lawsuit that your firm is handling.

Mike Papantonio: We’re handling these cases, yeah.

Farron Cousins: But the stories we’ve heard are absolutely horrific. These NICU nurses saying, I had to quit my job. The screams, the whales from these infants as they’re dying from this necrotizing enterocolitis, it’s one of the worst things they’ve ever seen in their lives. They’re haunted by the screams that they heard from these dying babies.

Mike Papantonio: As you know, what it does is it dries up the bowels of the child. And as it dries up the bowels of the child, the pain is excruciating. They can’t really stop the pain other than putting the child into a coma. You’re seeing it with their milk, the so-called formula milk that is supposed to be so safe and it’s gonna make your child so healthy. And once they get ’em hooked on that, that’s good for the company. But that formula is part of the problem. Add to that, the probiotics are in that formula, so it’s like a double whammy, you know? And they’ve known for ages that you can’t give cow milk to preemies. You just can’t do it. There’s tons of literature that says it. And you have the big companies like Abbott that have known it. Their own scientists at one point told ’em, don’t do this. And the only reason they don’t make a choice to change anything is because of brand loyalty. They’re afraid if they make a change that’ll interrupt brand loyalty.

Farron Cousins: Yeah. And these parents, they don’t know. I mean, these warnings that the FDA has sent to the hospitals and to the manufacturers, they’re not going to the new mothers. They’re not going to the parents. The FDA is not saying, hey, wait a minute, uh, before you give this to your child, you may wanna look at our literature. Because the FDA does nothing other than send out letters. They’ve known this for so long. People could be in jail for this. The FDA could have totally shut ’em down, banned these products, and they’re not gonna do it.

Mike Papantonio: Two things. Number one, is they never throw a white man in a suit in prison for killing people like this. Okay. They don’t get it. It could be the worst kind of manslaughter. Just like opioids killed 150 people a day. Not one of the white guys in Armani suits went to prison. It was manslaughter. It was the equivalent of drinking an entire fifth of Jack Daniels and driving 200 miles through a school zone. But nevertheless, they’re MBAs. They’re from Harvard, they’re from Yale. They got suits on so we don’t throw them in jail because we have a different system in the US. Anywhere else in the world, they’d be thrown in jail. Matter of fact, you see it all the time, Europe and Asia, these people are actually dealt with. Not here. Because we have a DOJ that has no guts. Most of the time the administration in charge of the DOJ, like this one, has no guts to push it. And so that’s why this happens. And it’s gonna continue happening until some of them are thrown in prison and they can tell the story about the fact that Joe did this 10 years ago, and he got 10 years in prison. Until we do that, this type of thing is gonna continue. Drugs, the environment, with pollution, stealing from mom and pop and pension programs. It’s all gonna continue because we won’t throw these people in jail because, well, they got a suit on. They got an MBA. They went to Harvard. They went to Yale. So we don’t throw ’em in prison.

The number of Americans who say that they have no trust, zero, zero trust at all in mass media has hit an all time high while the number of Americans who say that they trust the media is an all time low. And you know what? The mass media doesn’t seem to care. They’re just whistling through the graveyard aren’t they? That’s what amazes me is the arrogance. The absolute arrogance of mass media to say, so what? We don’t care. Fox is gonna say, so what? If they don’t like it, they go to turn to the other channel. MSNBC, CNN, so what? We don’t care that trust in media is at an all time low to where people have zero, zero trust in what the media is saying.

Farron Cousins: Yeah. More than a third of the country right now says, no, the mass media, newspapers, cable news, it’s lies. It’s nonstop lies. 40% of the country is saying that. And here’s the thing, what’s funny about this is CNN was recently given, obviously when they changed leadership and they got rid of Cuomo because of what they were having him do with his brother, all that, CNN had the opportunity to do the right thing. To finally get back on track. And then of course, Ukraine, Israel. So they, oh, well, we gotta bring out our generals. We gotta bring out our defense contractors.

Mike Papantonio: Not to tell ’em not to report the news, but to report propaganda.

Farron Cousins: Yeah. So they immediately went right back into that cycle where they lost all their trust, which was back in 2004 or even before that, pushing the Iraq war. They fall into these same traps because at the end of the day, for them, it’s not about telling the truth. It’s about telling enough of a story to sell some advertisements. That’s what it is.

Mike Papantonio: You know, of course, I was a journalism major, a news editing major at University of Florida and it’s interesting, between 1972 and 1997 when I was in school there, or part of those years anyway, the trust level was 72 to 75%. How does it possibly fall to where it is right now, 27%? How do you get there? I don’t know. But to me, you have, it’s this arrogance. The arrogance is just phenomenal. It is, well, we own the house. We’re gonna do what we want to do. It’s, we recognize it’s not news, it’s propaganda, it’s entertainment. We know it’s not news. But it’s almost like they don’t think it through and say, okay, where does this leave journalism? Who the hell wants to be a journalist nowadays? I mean, really, who the hell wants to say, I’m gonna go to school? Because first of all, any type of investigative journalism is over. You got the Lever. We talk about the Lever all the time. That’s real journalism. But that’s so rare. There’s some other organizations.

Farron Cousins: The Intercept is a good one.

Mike Papantonio: Intercept is a great example.

Farron Cousins: But the fact that we can list all of them

Mike Papantonio: On one hand

Farron Cousins: Yeah. Shows us that the whole thing is essentially dead.

Mike Papantonio: Yeah. That’s where we go to for our stories and it’s just good stuff because they’re real journalists really working. But to say a kid coming outta school right now, say, really, what an honorable profession. I really wanna be a journalist. You wanna be a pimp. That’s what you wanna be. If you wanna move into a journal, you wanna be a pimp for some corporate entity. That’s all it is.

Farron Cousins: You want your face on the news, and you get to be one of those smiling personalities and sipping coffee with Kathie Lee Gifford. That’s what you want. That’s what people think of journalism these days.

Mike Papantonio: Well, journalists, people actually think, what is that thing called, The View with Joy Behar? They think of that as journal. They think that’s journalism. I mean, you got five crazy women talking about crazy nonsense. That’s journalism in their mind. That’s where we’ve gotten that The View, if you ask people, is that journalism, they go, yeah, that’s journalism.

Farron Cousins: One of the only places to actually see real news on cable is either John Oliver, which I guess that’s HBO, he’s good, but he’s satire. He’s not supposed to be news. And the Daily Show is still pretty good with it. Not as good as with Jon Stewart. But those satire shows are the only ones who actually kind of tell more truth than everybody else.

Mike Papantonio: And they’ve lost confidence in that too, Farron, because the political ideology is just so slanted. So they’ve lost interest there. They can’t pick up a newspaper and say, this is journalism anymore. It’s awful. If you’re a young person saying, this is my career, forget it. Unless you wanna be an entertainer, a talking head, which I’ve done, you know, I did MSNBC for years. I did America’s Lawyer. We’ve done a lot of that. You and I have done it together, but I don’t even recognize it anymore. I don’t even look at it and say, yeah, this is journalism.

Farron Cousins: No.

Mike Papantonio: It’s The View, it’s The View.

Two more Democrats have entered the presidential race in the past few weeks with both of them saying that President Biden doesn’t appear to have a path to victory next year by any stretch of the imagination. But will the Democratic Party actually hold a primary, or maybe even a debate so the public can see how bad the Democrats are in trouble? What do you think? They gonna have a debate? We’re gonna let Biden defend himself in a debate against the folks out there running?

Farron Cousins: I would love to see it. Honestly, we have more than one Democrat running for president. So the Democrats need to have debates. Hell, even the Republicans who know that Trump is their nominee no matter what, they’re still holding debates. I think we got another one coming up.

Mike Papantonio: As crazy as they are, they’re debates.

Farron Cousins: Yeah. At least people get to see, hey, there’s what’s his name and who’s his face. But with the Democratic side, we have to get away from tradition almost. And tradition is, oh, well, they’re the incumbent. They get it no matter what. Stop thinking that way. Just because you did it a way for X number of years doesn’t mean it’s the right thing to do. And I’m not even saying that I’m endorsing Cenk or Dean Phillips here, or Marianne Williamson, I like all these folks. I mean, obviously we have a close relationship with Cenk Uygur.

Mike Papantonio: Well, Cenk is a personal friend. Okay.

Farron Cousins: Exactly.

Mike Papantonio: But you know what he says? He says, look, I have to do this. I have to do this because if I don’t do this, we’re not ever gonna, nobody’s going to stop and think, can we win with Biden? That’s what he’s doing here. He’s taking it on the chin. He doesn’t, his interest is to get people to pay attention to what the hell’s happened to the Democratic party. You know, he was with MSNBC during the same time I was doing shows with, as a commentator with Ed Schultz. You remember Ed Schultz. And so he left. He left because he says, I want to tell, I wanna be critical of Democrats when they do things wrong. And they wouldn’t let him do it. He said Hillary was a bad choice. He was beating up on Hillary. He was beating up on TPP. He was beating up on the things that needed to be addressed. Okay. And so they said, well, we can’t have that. We gotta get rid of you. So now he’s saying, I can at least do this. I can run for president and I can create some energy around the idea that the Democrats are driving themselves off a cliff. Right? That’s what he’s doing.

Farron Cousins: Right. And he’s also pointing out, and I think Dean Phillips has pointed this out too, listen, we’re not out of time yet. We can still do this. We can still have another option. Now, two months from now, that’s not gonna be the case. We will be out of time. But when we’re looking at a president who has a 37% approval rating, and who is, I guess, statistically tied with a man facing 91 felony counts in four jurisdictions. How can you be tied with that and think that you’re okay? I mean, are.

Mike Papantonio: You’re an incumbent president, an incumbent president, and you’re tied with, in most every state in the union. And you’re saying, oh, it’s okay. And Dean Phillips is saying, and Dean Phillips, let me just say, he is 100%, everything Biden has wanted, whether it’s the border, whether it’s the economy, he’s voted 100% with Biden, and he still says, it’s creepy. This guy’s creepy. I don’t think I can go the distance and say that, yeah, he’s gonna be our next president. So, I see, well, of course, everybody that’s watching this thinks, well, this is easy. Trump is gonna be in prison by the time the election takes place. Far from the truth. What do you think?

Farron Cousins: I would love to think he would be, but we all know, I mean, logistically.

Mike Papantonio: It can’t happen

Farron Cousins: Putting this man in prison because he is guaranteed by law Secret Service protection for life. Like, just on that base, you can’t even physically put him in a jail.

Mike Papantonio: Well, run out the appeal issue. Let’s say one of these hit. Let’s say one of them hit. This is gonna be appealed. The election’s gonna take place. You have people out there thinking, well, it’s not gonna really happen. We don’t really have to worry about Trump. Okay. You do have to worry about Trump. That’s what I’m trying to say. And if you put Trump against Biden, I just think Trump wins. And that’s what both of these guys are saying. I mean, that’s what everybody’s saying. That’s what Cenk is saying. That’s what Dean Phillips is saying. He said, what is it you’re not seeing here? And by the way, it’s not just MAGA vote at this point. It’s independent vote, it’s youth vote, it’s minority vote that you’re seeing this traumatic shift taking place.

Farron Cousins: Well, and Marianne Williamson, who also has some great ideas, she’s very much like Bernie Sanders. My only hangup with her is I wish she had the political experience to go along with it, but other than that.

Mike Papantonio: Love her ideas.

Farron Cousins: Yeah. I don’t dislike her at all.

Mike Papantonio: Yeah. I love her ideas.

Farron Cousins: And then, especially now you got Cornell West as a Green Party candidate. You got Bobby Kennedy as an independent.

Mike Papantonio: Bobby Kennedy.

Farron Cousins: Look, we could have a real multi-choice presidential race. And that’s not a bad thing. It doesn’t matter who you like in it, choice is good.

Mike Papantonio: A lot of it depends on how the ballot looks, you know? If you’ve got, the ballot’s gonna be covered with choices, it’s just gonna be covered with choices. And so there’s so much that people feel so disaffected by this whole process that I’m not seeing why Biden’s not understanding, you know, maybe I outta just step down for the good of the country, or Kamala Harris saying, you know, I have a chance, a snowball’s chance in hell and let me move on. Let’s hope I can be appointed something, but let me move on. It’s just, it’s a selfishness in a way, because they know how bad they’re hurting the Democrats political possibilities.

Farron Cousins: It really is. And if they were confident in their abilities, then they should tell the DNC, hey, hold a debate. I got nothing to hide. I’ll go defend my record and put it up against everybody else on that stage. Let’s do it. Let’s show the public that I really am the best choice. Because if he were able to do that, I think you would see poll numbers go up, if he did a debate and won, obviously. So you gotta have that caveat, but.

Mike Papantonio: Well, the last time he did a press conference, it was like, oh, this is great. It was average at best. But they thought it was great because he made it through it. He made it through, you know, he wasn’t mumbling, well, a little bit, but he made it through it. And that’s a victory. Anytime you’re gauging a victory like that, and you’re saying, this is good, have we forgotten real presidents? Have we forgotten what a real statesman looks like. A John F. Kennedy kinda statesman.

Farron Cousins: And people want energy these days. They need a little bit of enthusiasm in their candidate. I mean, even Bernie Sanders, who is older than Joe Biden, he still comes with energy and enthusiasm. You see him in videos, he’ll still be sprinting through airports right now. And Cenk, obviously, huge energy with him.

Mike Papantonio: Oh, yeah.

Farron Cousins: That’s not a question at all.

Mike Papantonio: If you don’t, I hate to hear people criticize the guy. He’s a wonderful person. I’ve known Cenk a long time, all the way back to Air America when we were, it was like this little group of us. It was Janeane Garofalo, Sam Seder, Chuck D, Al Franken, it was Cenk, God, just an incredible lineup. Bobby Kennedy and Rachel Maddow. I could go on forever. It was this gathering of progressives that said, we’re gonna create some energy around the progressive movement. And the only reason it failed was because the people that had all the money are the people we were criticized. You know, the auto industry, the pharmaceutical industry, Wall Street. But at any rate, it was an effort that was driven a lot by Cenk Uygur, who really caress about progressive movements.

Farron Cousins: Yeah. He, along with what we were doing at the time with Go Left tv, he’s the one who pushed the left to, hey, do this on video. I mean, really helped usher in that whole YouTube thing for everybody.

Mike Papantonio: No, he did. He did.

Farron Cousins: So huge credit for that.

Mike Papantonio: I just hope that people will listen to what he’s saying. Farron, thanks for joining me. Okay.

Farron Cousins: Thank you.

Mike Papantonio: That’s all for this week, but all these segments are gonna be posted right here on this channel in the coming week. So make sure you subscribe. 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 they can’t, their advertisers tell ’em that they can’t. The advertisers tell ’em, if you do this story, we’re gonna pull our advertising, or their political connection is such, it’s so Democrat, or it’s so Republican that they can’t get sideways with their ideology of that party. But we do and it may be offensive to some of you, but we’ll continue to do that. Hopefully we’ll see you next time.