Several conservative media outlets have filed a lawsuit against the Biden Administration’s State Department, alleging that they are actively trying to censor them by having the government label them “misinformation.” Plus, experts are ringing the alarm bells about A.I. creating 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: Several conservative media outlets have filed a lawsuit against the Biden administration state department alleging that they’re actively trying to censor ’em for having government label them with information. Whether you like these websites or not, it’s irrelevant. We have a constitution. The government can’t decide what we see and what we don’t see. We’re not a bunch of brain, well, there are some brainless children out there. Part of our American public right now really believes that, oh, I can’t look at that. I want the government to tell me that this is bad. I want the government to think for me. Let the government decide whether this is information I should read. Almost like they can’t get around to critical thinking and understand, well, I can decide this myself. Can’t I?
Farron Cousins: Well, and on that note, by the way, I saw a study that came out yesterday, I think it’s one in five school kids, school age kids, don’t know that the Holocaust actually happened.
Mike Papantonio: Oh, wow.
Farron Cousins: So we’re talking about 20% of our kids don’t even know that that’s actually a real thing. But this lawsuit, listen, I don’t like any of the outlets that filed this.
Mike Papantonio: No. I don’t either.
Farron Cousins: And I hope they win.
Mike Papantonio: Oh, of course.
Farron Cousins: They have to win.
Mike Papantonio: It’s the Federalist Society. I mean, we talk about their craziness all the time.
Farron Cousins: But what’s happening here and this is horrifying, and people need to understand this. Take off your blinders, because this will kill media if the government is allowed to do this. So the state department has this new power that was enacted, I think it was like 2017 officially.
Mike Papantonio: Yes. It was.
Farron Cousins: In that first Defense Authorization Act or whatever. They put together this office that’s job is to monitor foreign propaganda. But as part of monitoring foreign propaganda, they’ve started slapping labels on.
Mike Papantonio: Domestic.
Farron Cousins: American media outlets. Saying this is misinformation. So the government is literally telling these outlets, you are misinformation. And that is not allowed.
Mike Papantonio: We did a story on this. There was a woman that was making this circle all over the United States preaching about our show. You know that.
Farron Cousins: Oh, yeah.
Mike Papantonio: Attacking me that we’re destroying democracy by talking about corrupt corporations. I mean, giving speeches. I got a call, she was in California. She was talking, of all things, she’s talking to a room full of lawyers of organization that I’m in. I know most of the folks. She puts my picture up there and they, I guess she doesn’t know the connection, puts my picture up there and starts talking about how we’re destroying democracy by talking about corporations. And we should be censored. I mean, what the hell? How have we gotten here to where you have part of the American public saying, oh, that’s okay? There’s some things you shouldn’t say. No, you ought to be able to say what you wanna say. And then we ought to be intelligent enough to say, well, that’s nonsense. Or it’s not nonsense. Maybe it’s the truth.
Farron Cousins: Well, see and that’s the problem, is the government thinks at this point, like, well, we have to baby everybody. Everybody’s so dumb that if we’re not watching them every second of the day, they’re all gonna walk off the bridge.
Mike Papantonio: Yeah. Or they’re gonna go to their safe space. You know, I can’t hear this. It’s too bad. Or I can’t process it.
Farron Cousins: But all of these websites, they have a right to exist. They have a right to report on what they wanna report on.
Mike Papantonio: And there’s not one thing you and I would agree with them on, I mean, these are right wing websites.
Farron Cousins: Right.
Mike Papantonio: There’s not much we would say, yeah, that’s, we’re with you on that. But they have the right to do it.
Farron Cousins: And look, a lot of people watching this are saying, but guys, they are misinformation.
Mike Papantonio: So what?
Farron Cousins: But listen, if the government can slap it on them, then guess what? The Democrats aren’t gonna be in power forever.
Mike Papantonio: That’s right.
Farron Cousins: We’ve already been slapped with misinformation labeling by people.
Mike Papantonio: For telling, oh God. What, we had a story pulled, what was it pn TikTok?
Farron Cousins: On TikTok, yeah.
Mike Papantonio: Where we had done a story, it was created by the FDA. Right. The FDA put out a warning about baby formula, a type of baby formula.
Farron Cousins: Killing premature infants.
Mike Papantonio: Killing premature infants. And some jack leg that worked for the industry, got them to take it down. We had to write ’em back, say, here it is, you idiots. This is the FDA saying it. But that’s the problem. When censorship and these are infants dying all over the country from these probiotics. And we said, well, we ought to be able to tell that story, shouldn’t we? Not only did the FDA say it was true, we have a lawsuit that has almost proven that it’s completely, utterly true. And the industry’s known about it for decades. But that’s the risk with censorship.
Farron Cousins: Yes.
Mike Papantonio: But you have, I swear to God, you got these people, they can’t think. They’re almost child-like, I mean, they literally are child-like, don’t say those words. They offend me. Let me have my safe space. It’s this whole snowflake mentality that puts us in a position where we’re actually arguing about whether or not the government should decide what we read. We have gotten to that point.
Farron Cousins: Yeah. And people don’t realize the irony of that.
Mike Papantonio: No. And I think if you’re young enough, you of course, I’ve grown up with that my whole life. This is normal, isn’t it? That’s almost where we are.
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.
