New audio tapes have emerged that show how the NRA agreed to hide certain luxury expenses for their outgoing president – and these new tapes could be the final nail in the coffin for the group. Also, after a door plug blew off during a Boeing plane during a flight recently, questions have been asked about how this could have happened. 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: New audio tapes have emerged that show that the NRA agreed to hide certain luxury expenses for their outgoing president. And these new tapes could be the final nail in the coffin for that group. Interesting story, again, this is ProPublica that did this story. Of course, they’ve never liked this guy. But lay this story out for us, would you?
Farron Cousins: Yeah. This story goes all the way back to 2009 where they uncovered this audio of a meeting where the organization was trying to figure out, hey, we got this guy Wayne LaPierre, he’s been running the group for decades. He likes to spend money. He likes to go on these lavish vacations. He likes his private jets. He likes these luxury resorts. But we’re a nonprofit and there are rules that say we can’t do this. So they came up on this audio call with the brilliant idea, they’ve got this PR group, what was it, Ackerman?
Mike Papantonio: Yeah.
Farron Cousins: Ackerman McQueen. And they said, okay, so the PR group, that’s an outside company, they’re gonna get these American Express cards, the Platinum American Express, and they’re gonna be the holders of those accounts. We then use the cards. And this again is everything in a nutshell. We use these Amex cards, and they started passing out what they called the Ackerman Amex. They were handing them out to executives like crazy at the NRA.
Mike Papantonio: This is special account.
Farron Cousins: Right. And so what happens is Ackerman pays the bill that has the itemized expenses, private jets, luxury resorts, fancy meals. And then the NRA just pays PR expenses on the Amex.
Mike Papantonio: But I want to tell you something. We’ve seen this in a lot of cases besides this.
Farron Cousins: Oh yeah.
Mike Papantonio: I mean, big pharmaceuticals, Wall Street. It’s just a scam. They’re all doing it. They’re all doing it. And he got caught.
Farron Cousins: He did. You know, this is a good Icarus story. Right. His greed went on for so long that it just increased and it increased and it increased along with the hubris. And eventually you come crashing down because you’re gonna slip up every now and then, you’re gonna screw things over. And look, they’re facing a pretty big trial that actually started just a few days ago in New York.
Mike Papantonio: Yeah. If he had another prosecutor, I’d feel better about it.
Farron Cousins: But LaPierre, even NRA members have been sick of this guy forever. He’s doing nothing but just running an organization to put money in his own pockets. He’s not actually doing anything to help the members of the NRA. I mean, the members of the NRA, if you look at the polls, they’re normal people. They’re not.
Mike Papantonio: Well, they pay a lot of money into it. We’re talking about tons of, tons of money coming in here. And so this idea of, well, let’s have this special account that our donors don’t really know about. That if we do an audit, it’s really not gonna show up as a ridiculous expense like Ritz Carltons and Jets and million dollar parties, that kinda stuff. It’s not gonna show up. So let’s not worry about it.
Farron Cousins: And the big thing too is it’s not just that he was pulling the wool over the eyes of the donors. It’s that because this is a nonprofit organization, you are legally not allowed to do this.
Mike Papantonio: You can’t do that. Right. Exactly. See this with hospitals a lot, by the way. Nonprofit hospitals.
Mike Papantonio: After a door plug blew off during a flight recently, questions have been asked how this could have happened. All you have to do is follow the money and it becomes crystal clear, doesn’t it, Farron, about what Boeing’s up to. They’re just paying off regulators. They’re paying off pros. Uh, I was gonna say, I started say prostitutes.
Farron Cousins: You didn’t get it wrong.
Mike Papantonio: Prostitutes. I was going, I was thinking Congress, congressional prostitutes. So they’re paying off, they’re paying these people off. I mean, huge money. Mega $40 million, $60 million kinda money.
Farron Cousins: Yeah. Boeing, and just for anybody who’s not aware of it, even though it’s been national news, you had that door in the middle of a flight, you’re 35,000 feet in the air, door plug blows, door comes flying off airplane. And this is the latest in a string of mishaps, we’ll call them, that Boeing airplanes have suffered in recent years. We’ve had two very fatal crashes. We had the woman that almost got sucked out of the plane and now the door plug. And so a lot of people are wanting answers. And well, if you want answers, go to the Lever because the Lever put it all together as per usual.
Mike Papantonio: As usual. I mean, these guys are great.
Farron Cousins: And they followed all of this dirty money that bought them deregulation.
Mike Papantonio: It’s just amazing, the capability. I don’t think in corporate media there’s such a thing as investigative journalism anymore. But you have people that are doing it. You’ve got the Lever, you’ve got some folks just like that. I mean, we’ve got about five sources that we go to, and this is one of them. And they just always get it right. Look, Spirit, what happens, there’s Spirit corporation which supplies, I think it’s 70% of the parts for Boeing. In other words, they basically build the airplane.
Farron Cousins:: And it’s a spinoff of Boeing. So they are tied right at the hip there.
Mike Papantonio: Exactly. So you have employees that are saying they know what they’re doing. We’re complaining all the time about defects. We’re complaining all the time about shoddy workmanship. And they’re telling us to shut up. Don’t say anything, conceal it. This is coming from their own employees. The Lever was smart enough to get a few of them understatement and this is what they’re saying. How about 2018 and 2019, what 346 people killed? 346 people killed by the very kind of thing, it was something wrong with the airplane, some defect with the airplane. Somebody didn’t do their job in making the part, whoever it was that distributed the part covered it up, concealed it. It’s the same thing, man. Every time.
Farron Cousins: And when these things happen, what Boeing does is they get their lobbyists, they get their checkbooks out, they go to Washington, DC and they say, hey, listen, we’ve got the FAA or whoever it is, sniffing our tail right here. We need them to not be. Uh, hey, you’ve got this rule right here that says we’re not allowed to do this, or we have to go through X number of safety checks. Cut that down. Cut it down to one safety check or maybe we just fill it out ourselves and send it into you. That’s all we have to do. You don’t even have to send your people, oh, by the way, I totally forgot. Here’s your $5 million. And these lawmakers, Democrats and Republicans, both of them, they make the phone calls to these federal agencies and they say, get off their backs.
Mike Papantonio: Ron Estes from Kansas Republican, pressures the Federal Aviation Administration say, look, you need to have, you need to move this faster. You need to deregulate some so Spirit who supplies the parts can continue making defective parts. That’s just one Republican. Here’s Democrat, Democrat Maria Cantwell. Well, she holds herself out as this really, I’m really a consumer oriented individual till you go looking behind the curtains and then you find out that she’s creating legislation that says that the 737 looming safety problems, that we need to move on and we need to give them a break. Really move on? This is a airplane killed 270 people, you know.
Farron Cousins: And it’s almost crazy when you think about the fact that, okay, Boeing is a company,
Mike Papantonio: Excuse me, 346 people.
Farron Cousins: Yeah. So Boeing is a private company that makes products, and they’re working on legislation to say, this specific product from this private company, we gotta get this on the market immediately. Why? That doesn’t make any sense. That’s like a toy company lobbying Washington, hey, we gotta get this new Elmo doll out there. You’ve gotta pass legislation. When you look at it in those simplistic terms, this is insane because lawmakers are lobbying for a plane to make it to the market faster. We have planes. We got good, safe, decent planes right now. And Boeing is cutting corners, paying off everybody.
Mike Papantonio: Because they’re making so much money.
Farron Cousins: Exactly.
Mike Papantonio: They’re making so much money and Spirit’s making so much money, and they’re putting people’s lives at risk as we become a frigging Banana Republic. You wanna hear real crazy. I don’t know if you caught this story, I just caught it yesterday, maybe day before, where Buttigieg, of course, their transportation guy who brought us multiple derailments, brought us inability for the airlines to even get people from point A to point B, a record more cancellations, more failure of the airlines to deliver what they’re supposed to deliver then we’ve ever seen in history. Okay. The same guy that couldn’t even keep trucks moving and ships moving in the cargo areas. And we had a supply problem. This is the guy who now, I don’t know if you, I’m not making this up. He really has proposed that we, for diversity and inclusion, we need to start hiring people that have mental disabilities. Did you see this article?
Farron Cousins: I haven’t seen that. No.
Mike Papantonio: It’s there. Yeah. It’s just coming out by the FAA, FFA, FAA. Sometimes it’s easy to confuse the Future Farmers with the aviation department. But the point being, mayor Pete is behind this diversity push. Now if they’re not working in the control area, great. I’m all for it. But there’s no delineation. I used to, as you know, I used to be a pilot. I flew for a lot of years. But this is not the kind of job where you can put somebody up in a tower or working radar that has a history of mental illness. And this, for some reason, he specified that in this diversity request.
Farron Cousins: Well, I think this isn’t even something that Buttigieg needs to be talking about. You are the head of the agency. This sounds like an HR issue. Like, HR should be hyping that up. They should be promoting it. You should be worried about the fact that we’re back to the point where airplanes are crashing. They’re blowing up in the middle of the air. That’s what Buttigieg or anyone at the top of that agency needs to be focused on. And they’re not. And that’s what drives me crazy about this. I’m all for inclusion. But again, let the HR people deal with that. Let the lower people on the ladder there, they get to do that and great for them. You have to go out there and you have to put pressure on Boeing. That’s what you should be talking about. You should be talking about all of these companies still price gouging us, alleging that, oh no, the supply chain. Supply chain’s fine right now. We’re being gouged by corporations. You should be on a better message than talking about things that most people are gonna roll their eyes about anyway.
Mike Papantonio: This last story, I mean, I looked at four different sources to see if this was true. But it really is psychiatric disabilities and intellectual disabilities. We wanna reach out and bring ’em into the FAA. And great, there’s probably places where they can work. Don’t put ’em in a tower. Don’t put ’em in a control radar setter. So maybe it’s a good idea, but the way it’s written and the way that it’s going, it specifies this is what we’re looking for. I don’t know, man. This guy gets creepier and creepier. Every story that I do, it’s just another crazy story about this Buttigieg cat.
Farron Cousins: Well, to me, it’s just, he has been, I think out of everyone I’ve seen from this administration, the worst. In terms, if you look at what’s happened from the transportation department since he’s been in charge, it’s been a disaster. There is no way to spin that. It’s not because he’s a gay man, it’s not because he’s a man. It’s because he sucks at his job and he should not have that job. He was grossly under-qualified.
Mike Papantonio: Oh, he’s a mayor.
Farron Cousins: He was a mayor of a town of under 200,000 people. He should not be in charge of transportation for the US.
Mike Papantonio: Mayor Pete for president. I literally see that. Mayor Pete for president.
