Legislation has been introduced that would limit the amount of weapons and military equipment the United States can sell to Saudi Arabia, and the legislation specifically cites the massive human rights abuses that the country has engaged in as a reason for the US to finally pull support from the country. 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: Legislation has been introduced that would limit the amount of weapons and military equipment the United States can sell to Saudi Arabia. And the legislation specifically cites massive human rights abuses that the country’s been engaging in for so long. And we just seem to ignore it. I don’t know who in the hell has got it in their head that these are our friends. I have no idea. They’re not our friends, are they?
Farron Cousins: No, absolutely not. And look, it’s not only the human rights abuses, which we’ve covered extensively. It’s not only the human rights abuses in Saudi Arabia, it’s also the abuses that they’re carrying out in Yemen and all over the Middle East. And they’re doing it with our weapons, with our bullets, with our jets and missiles. We are supplying the ammunition for Saudi Arabia to kill their own people and the people in the neighboring countries. That’s what folks have to understand here. And think of it this way too. Remember earlier this year, maybe it was last year, everything runs together at this point. But when Biden went to Saudi Arabia and said, oh my God, gas prices are insane. Saudi Arabia.
Mike Papantonio: Please help us.
Farron Cousins: We’ve given you so many weapons, everything you’ve ever wanted, could you just help us? And they said, no.
Mike Papantonio:No.
Farron Cousins: No, we’re gonna make prices a little higher, actually.
Mike Papantonio:That was after Biden, after he said, well, Biden called him the pariah. Remember he was running for.
Farron Cousins: Yeah. He said he was gonna make him a pariah.
Mike Papantonio: He says, President Biden campaigned in 2020, making Saudi Arabia a pariah. Okay. This is Ken Klippenstein with Intercept, who I think is brilliant.
Farron Cousins: Yeah, he’s wonderful.
Mike Papantonio: I mean, he’s really a great reporter. And then that he only focuses though, when he’s calling him a pariah, and he says, there’s very little social redeeming value in the present government. This is Joe Biden, very little social redeeming value. Then he turns around within a matter of months and gives them almost $600 million worth of weapons to be used any way they want to use them. Even though he’s also told, oh, by the way, these weapons are, we’re finding these weapons in the hands of terrorists. How’s that happening, right?
Farron Cousins: Yeah. And that, by the way, was another huge report from a couple years ago that went largely under the radar that Saudi Arabia was selling weapons to terrorists. Those terrorists were then using those weapons to kill American citizens, to kill US soldiers, to kill US contractors. We are being killed across the globe by our own weapons, because Saudi Arabia, once we sell it, there’s no regulations, there’s no limitations. Here is our best of the best. You do whatever you want. And then when we ask you for a favor and you say, no, we’ll shrug our shoulders and we’ll sell you some more.
Mike Papantonio: We always look the other way. I remember the story with the Philippine, the two Filipino women that were held slaves. They were actually, this piggish looking Saudi of the royal family. I mean, absolutely hoggish, piggish looking guy. He’s holding them slaves in his house. Okay. Now there’s laws against that. But instead of that, instead of us charging him, well, no, he has immunity. He has diplomatic immunity. So we let him go. Just like after 9/11. What’s the first thing we do? We take all the Saudi Royal family and we fly them out of the country. Why did we do that? Why? Because at that point, everybody’s talking, this is Iraq, Iraq, Iraq. No, it wasn’t. It was Saudi Arabia. And this history just doesn’t end. When Biden says that they are pariah, he was right.
And it’s almost like he’s changed his mind because corporate America’s told him, the weapons industry said, you must change your mind. It’s almost like he reacts to everything corporate America tells him to do. This is the weapons industry that’s telling him, you may think they’re pariah, but we want you to sell more weapons. Same thing with immigration. I mean, look at the major policies, weapons, we know what that’s about. Immigration, we know what that’s about because corporate America wants more slave labor in the United States. They can pay somebody $10 an hour rather than $15 or $5 an hour. And if they lose an arm, you ship them back. These are policies. Big pharma, I’m talking about Biden administration policies. This is a policy reflection. And they don’t look any different than that crazy man Trump. Okay.
Trump was doing the same kind of stuff, and we’re thinking, well, okay, we’re gonna see something different. No, we’re not. Big pharma, oh, it’s almost like he’s a hero because he required that 10 pharmaceuticals, we could control the cost of 10 pharmaceuticals. And there’s thousands of them. And whatever else you want, forget it. But these are policy issues. You see to me, big tech, his favoritism to big tech. And so I just think that this is, I don’t think we’re gonna change it. I don’t think, we haven’t seen it change with Republicans. We haven’t seen it change with Democrats. It’s just a way of life here in the United States.
Farron Cousins: Well, and part of that also ties back to the stock trading story, because every single thing you mentioned here, well, all these members of Congress, House and Senate, they own stocks in all these companies. So they don’t want any change. All they want to do is be able to go out there and sell people on an issue. Like, man, if we just had five more people from our party in this body, boy, we could really do something about it. But, oh man, we just don’t have it. So we can’t. But really, they don’t want the thing to happen.
Mike Papantonio: Well, you’ve said it many times. You’ve said it. If you take both parties, from the standpoint of social issues, yes, the Democrats are distinctly different than Republicans on social issues. But where it comes to just bread and butter kitchen table issues, Dems are just as bad as Republicans. This last article we did says maybe they’re worse. Who knows?
