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. But will the Democratic Party actually hold a primary – Or maybe even a debate so that the public can hear from these other choices? Don’t hold your breath on that one. 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: 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.
