Democratic Senator Bob Menendez is in even more trouble after a new indictment alleges that his corruption went on even longer than previously known – and it involved more foreign countries sending him bribes. Also, experts are ringing the alarm bells about the role that artificial intelligence could play in this year’s elections. A.I. can create deep fake videos, sound clips, and images that could have a significant impact on the election results for any candidate. 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: Democratic Senator Bob Menendez is in even more trouble after a new indictment alleges that his corruption went on longer than previously known. It involved more foreign countries, sending bribes seems to be the problem. I’ve got Ring of Fire’s Farron Cousins with me to talk about what’s happening on these issues. I don’t know anybody that’s better on issues like this than you. Pick this one up. Okay.
Farron Cousins: So Menendez earlier this week gets hit with this superseding indictment that says, not only was your corruption, it went into last year into 2023 and they previously thought, okay, he stopped around 2022. But nope, all through last year as well. And it’s not just Egypt where he was selling favors. Now we find out he’s doing it according to these allegations with Qatar, basically on behalf of a wealthy donor friend, getting him his hands on the Qatari Government’s investment fund in exchange for favors from Menendez.
Mike Papantonio: So the real estate guy, the funder that, if you don’t think he’s splitting money with Menendez on top of all this, that’s not in the story, but I bet that’s what they’re gonna find.
Farron Cousins: Probably.
Mike Papantonio: But here you’ve got this guy that has been, he’s part of the Menendez gang, so to speak. He’s been dealing with him a long time, and he says, hey, listen, I can get you a really good deal on some funds that you wanna be invested in. And to help you do it, I’m gonna write a letter for you. Oh, by the way, what do I get in exchange? So, starts off with watches. Take it from there.
Farron Cousins: Yeah. They send him a picture of these watches that cost tens of thousands dollars a piece and he says, okay, yeah, that looks good. They give him Grand Prix race tickets. All kinds of cash and favors. And all Menendez really has to do is he puts forward this resolution in the Senate saying, Qatar is one of our great friends. It’s a great country. We shouldn’t have any kind of hostility towards them. And that is the exchange, basically saying, the US government gives Qatar the green light to do whatever. We’re not gonna interfere as part of any of our terrorism investigations.
Mike Papantonio: Isn’t he foreign agent, Farron?
Farron Cousins: It certainly seems that way. Yes. I mean, it’s obvious at this point, he is working on behalf of foreign governments to influence US policy.
Mike Papantonio: Right. Okay. So you’ve got him where he is, we know he’s got gold bars stuffed everywhere around his house. We know he’s got cash stuffed all around his house. And now we’re finding that that’s just really the surface of all this. So why in the hell haven’t the Democrats gotten rid of him?
Farron Cousins: That’s what’s starting to really anger me at this point. At least, when you look at like Santos in the House who got expelled a month ago, that push was actually driven by Republicans in his state that said, we gotta get this guy out. He’s making us all look bad. The Democrats need to come out and say, get out of this body. There is enough evidence against you. Look, the tens of thousands of dollars you had stuffed in your jacket, pockets in your closet. That’s not normal.
Mike Papantonio: Gold bars. Who has stacks of gold bars in their closet?
Farron Cousins: Under his bed.
Mike Papantonio: Under his bed. Wife is involved. I call it the Menendez gang. Up in New Jersey, there’s this mobster mentality in the very area that he represents. And it seems like that’s just the way that they conduct business and they need to get rid of him. He’s an embarrassment. And every time they fail to get rid of him, the Republicans are able to say, look, we at least took care of Santos. You need to take care of this thug.
Farron Cousins: Yeah. He’s gonna become an election issue for the Democrats.
Mike Papantonio: Oh, no question.
Farron Cousins: If they’re not careful about this. They gotta get rid of him now. And look, he’s terrified, he’s gonna spend possibly the rest of his life in prison at this point.
Mike Papantonio: With a little luck.
Farron Cousins: Yeah. But, I mean, the evidence is overwhelming.
Mike Papantonio: Yeah. It is.
Mike Papantonio: Experts are ringing the alarms about the role that artificial intelligence could play in this year’s election. AI can create deepfake videos, sound clips, images that have a significant impact on what voters believe. Talk about deepfake. Give us an example of deepfake.
Farron Cousins: Yeah. There’s a lot of videos going around right now that appear to show, just some funny ones, not harmful, but President Biden and President Trump playing video games and talking over the headsets. The voices sound identical. And that’s fun and harmless. But if you were to see these things, a lot of these are getting really good. And if you didn’t know it was fake, I’m sure some people out there say, oh my God, why are these guys actually doing this? Because they are very realistic at this point. And you can take that and you could say, hey, look, we’ve got this politician having sex with a penguin. Here’s the video. You can make that video fairly easily these days because of this AI technology that has just blossomed in the last 12 months.
Mike Papantonio: I think on farronbalanced a show that you do, you did this story on Ron DeSantis and how he had took images of Trump and he made it look like Trump was putting his arms around Anthony Fauci. Remember that?
Farron Cousins:: Yeah.
Mike Papantonio: And so that, but it was so real. I mean, actually front pages of papers were covering that. But there’s no limit to what they can do here. They can make anything look legitimate and they can create, in the voter’s minds, ideas that are completely, so far off base, they have no anchor in reality.
Farron Cousins: Well, let me put it this way because again, the experts are saying, one of them says, I expect a tsunami of misinformation. Because anybody can do it. Other countries can do it and send it over here. But let me explain it to you this way, how easily duped the voters are. Because we all remember Sarah Palin when she said, I can see Russia from my house, except Sarah Palin never said, I can see Russia from my house. That was Tina Fey impersonating Sarah Palin that said that.
Mike Papantonio: No kidding.
Farron Cousins:: But everybody remembers Sarah Palin saying that.
Mike Papantonio: Wait, wait a second. You know what? I never knew that.
Farron Cousins: Yeah.
Mike Papantonio: I never knew that. She never really said it.
Farron Cousins: She never said it.
Mike Papantonio: Okay. But it took all life of its own.
Farron Cousins: It does. Because all it takes is that one pop culture moment or that one really good fake video. It’s almost like the Mandela effect. You think you remember something and then other people think they do. So it becomes reality.
Mike Papantonio: Yeah. And that’s the thing. That’s the hit on Sarah Palin. I first of all, I did not know that. Thank you for that information. And I’ve used that so many times when I talk about her, you know, she can see Russia from her house. Right. But that’s the idea. Now we’ve taken it to a whole new level though. Right.
Farron Cousins: And now you can actually have her say that with her voice and her video.
Mike Papantonio: Not Tina Fey. Actually, somebody that is her.
Farron Cousins: Right. And we’re gonna see that, especially when you look at the two people at the top of both tickets. Okay. It’s not out of the ordinary for either one of them to say something crazy and stupid.
Mike Papantonio: Well, they might have.
Farron Cousins: So you don’t have to go too far with it.
Mike Papantonio: Right. They might have Biden falling down. They might have him stumbling downstairs or saying stupid stuff. They might have Trump saying the most outrageous things that you go, I can’t believe he just said that. It’s hard to know what’s true and what’s not.
Farron Cousins: Exactly. Exactly.
