It looks like George Santos will not be spending any time in prison in Brazil thanks to an agreement he’s reached with authorities in the country. But his problems here at home still remain. Also, Facebook’s parent company META is threatening to remove News articles from the Facebook feeds of users in California if the state passes a law that would require the company to actually pay outlets for their content. 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: Looks like George Santos is not spending any time in prison in Brazil, thanks to an agreement he’s reached with authorities in that country, probably a little money involved. But his problems here at home, well, they still remain and Ring of Fire’s Farron Cousins joins me to talk about what’s happening. Farron, pick this story up. I was like you, I was going. Are we ever gonna stop this little cockroach of a character from running around the kitchen?
Farron Cousins: I know, you know, he’s been so lucky recently with all of the media hyper-focused on Donald Trump that we haven’t seen much from George Santos in the last month. But he did, apparently behind closed doors, they’ve worked out a deal with prosecutors in Brazil. He is going to admit that he defrauded, that he stole the checks and wrote a bad check for $1,300. He’s gonna pay some restitution to the victim, but most importantly, he’s not gonna be extradited and sent to a Brazilian prison to rot for God knows how long. So that is one of the many scandals of George Santos that is actually now able to be put to bed. Again, it’s disappointing because what he did down there was painfully obvious. He even admitted it to police in 2008. He has a sworn statement where he says, yeah, I did it. And they still let him go.
Mike Papantonio: Okay. And then the person that he was in business with in the United States stealing credit cards. I mean, they said, yeah, that Santos was the guy who taught me how to steal credit cards, how to take the information off the credit cards and reuse it. And a matter of fact, that person went to prison. He was caught. Matter of fact, they even caught the machines that they would use to create these fake, inside the Santos car, inside the car that Santos had provided for this guy.
Farron Cousins: Yeah. So, I mean, in my mind, there’s very little doubt that Santos was involved in that scheme. And luckily the police in Seattle, because he went from Orlando to Seattle to pull off the scheme, they never closed the investigation. So they’ve picked it back up. So that may take him down. But the biggest problem I think Santos has right now, one is that the voters in his district hate him.
Mike Papantonio: Yeah.
Farron Cousins: And two, he actually has a very strong Republican opponent now.
Mike Papantonio: Oh, this guy’s gonna, this guy is going to trounce, he’s going to trounce Santos. Yeah, he’s a military, very humble beginning, worked in the private sector, did two tours in Afghanistan, worked with JP Morgan as invest. This is the death of DeSantis, don’t you? You know, not DeSantos. Excuse me. I get the two confused sometimes, of Santos. Go ahead.
Farron Cousins: But yeah, it really is. I mean, the guy that’s now running against him in the Republican primary is kind of the real life version of everything George Santos claimed to be, you know, came from virtually nothing, joined the military, served his country, you know, makes it big, goes to JP Morgan. Now he’s gonna run for office, because as he said, you know, I just, I can’t stand to see what’s happening with the, you know, with this office in our district here because it’s a joke. The fact that Santos was not immediately run out of office.
Mike Papantonio: It speaks, it’s such, it’s such a black eye for the Republicans. Okay. I’ve seen the Democrats do the same thing. I mean, you know, you’ve seen them hangers on, you know, we’re not gonna prosecute them. We’re not gonna kick them out. It’s the same thing with Republicans. But this particular story, I mean, everything is right there in the face. He’s a, you know, psychopathic liar. Has made up his life. We know that he’s a thief. We know that he’s committed fraud. But hey, apparently that’s okay with the Republicans today.
Mike Papantonio: Facebook’s parent company Meta, well, they’re threatening to remove news articles from Facebook feeds of users in California if the state passes a law that would require the company to actually pay outlets for the content. What’s this about? First of all, you got this hair brand. You got really this, the name of the person, Buffy, Buffy Wicks. Yeah. This brilliant Democrat, Buffy Wicks, sponsors this bill that is really, when you drill down to it, it is a corporate, it’s a corporate media relief bill, isn’t it?
Farron Cousins: It is.
Mike Papantonio: It’s corporate media putting their thumb on social media. And they’re trying to say, look, shows like this, like you and I are doing right now, you know, they might take, they might use some of our material. They might do research and use some of our material. We need to be paid for it. So what happens? So rather than paying corporate media Meta and Instagram and folks like that say, well, we’re just not gonna do it anymore. Right. This is a dangerous, dangerous thing. This is just making corporate media stronger and stronger, even though people are leaving corporate media in droves.
Farron Cousins: Yeah. They really are. And this, of course, would have a devastating effect on the independent media because there are, there’s a lot of people, especially on the progressive side, that really only use Facebook as their platform. That is where they publish their videos. You know, they’ve got no presence on YouTube, but a massive following on Facebook to tell people the news.
Mike Papantonio: When’s the last time you’ve even watched television news? I mean, do you really watch MSNBC or CNN?
Farron Cousins: If it’s a debate, I’ll watch whatever channel the debate is on.
Mike Papantonio: Yeah. I mean, when is the last, do you go searching for news on MSNBC and CNN?
Farron Cousins: Oh God no. No.
Mike Papantonio: I mean, the exodus is incredible. Fox, you gonna watch Fox to figure out what the news of the day is? Really? So what’s happening is people are saying, I’m tired of that, man. I’m just gonna go find out myself by going to sites like this, Ring of Fire or TYT or David Pakman or Sam Seder, or all these sites that are out there where you can really figure out what the hell’s going on. So corporate media’s behind this and this Buffy Wicks, my god, the Buffy Wicks, this genius is making it sound like this is really good for consumers if we can pull this off. Where is it? It’s moving through California legislature.
Farron Cousins: It is right now. It’s moving through the state assembly, and it has a pretty good chance of passing.
Mike Papantonio: God almighty.
Farron Cousins: And, you know, it’s weird because it is being sold to the public as, oh, listen, we’re trying to protect, we’re trying to make sure the media gets their fair share. But Facebook actually has a good argument. They say, listen, we’re not making them post this. They’re posting it on our platform because it benefits them already.
Mike Papantonio: Right, right.
Farron Cousins: They’re getting eyeballs. They’re selling ads based on the number of people looking at it.
Mike Papantonio: Do you realize what’s happening now? Shows like this are actually helping corporate media. If you go to our site, if you go to Ring a Fire, for example, on YouTube, and you watch this segment over to the side, you’ll see lining up other stories you might be interested. MSNBC, CNN, Fox, all they’re doing is piggybacking on our stories even though their stories have nothing to do with the kind of stuff we’re talking about.
