Congressional stock trading is at an all time high, and members of Congress are so good at trading stocks that they routinely beat the average market returns. Then, new polls show that the American public isn’t just sick of Biden and Trump – they have grown disgusted by the entire political process in this country, and that includes our two-party system of government. 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: Congressional stock trading is at an all time high, and members of Congress are so good at trading stocks that they routinely beat the average market by miles. There’s little doubt that they’re using inside knowledge to do that. We’d be arrested if we were the average citizen for doing exactly what they get away with every day. The numbers are startling. I mean, this cat, the numbers are ranging, let me see here, with increases above the market average as high as 200%. In other words, if the S&P is at X, they’re beating the X by 200, 250% because of insider trading, right? This is what Nancy Pelosi fought so hard to try to make sure that we could continue doing that. Remember when it came up, Nancy, you’re making what, 70%, 65% above the market. You’re not doing that because you’re so smart. You’re doing it, Nancy, because you have information that no other Americans have, right?
Farron Cousins: Yeah. And, look, this report kind of makes it crystal clear. This is a big bipartisan thing here. You’ve got Democrats who actually are worse with, what was it, 7,000?
Mike Papantonio: Yes.
Farron Cousins: Versus 3000 for Republicans. And the top, as you pointed out, was Brian Higgins, Democrat from New York, 238.9% above average market return. You can’t make those numbers just guessing on stocks. You don’t.
Mike Papantonio: Let’s stop just a second. Average person’s at home, okay, they’re reading the news, they’re trying to talk to their broker. They may have their pension program tied up in there, their retirement program tied up in there. They’re counting on the money because if they retire, they’ve gotta live on that, right? So all they have is the information everybody else has. Same stuff you would have, or I would have. These cats up in Congress like Pelosi and this guy that, what was the number? 123% higher than the S&P. I mean.
Farron Cousins: Yeah. You got Higgins.
Mike Papantonio: Higgins, yeah, Brian Higgins. You’ve got, but these numbers are to where the reason they’re able to do that is because they got to committee meeting, right? In the committee, they say, well, we’re gonna sell a bunch of weapons to Saudi Arabia. So what does that person do? Hey, we’re gonna sell a bunch of weapons to Saudi Arabia, Mr. Broker, you need to know that information. That’s insider trading. Any way you look at it. It affects policy. It affects war policy. It affects economic policy. It affects health policy, right?
Farron Cousins: It does. And they also know things too, not just about the big things coming. They also know about the bad things coming. Like, hey, we just had a hearing. We’re going to possibly subpoena the heads of the pharmaceutical companies. I need you to dump everything Pfizer, dump everything Merck, dump it, dump it, dump it. So when this happens, those stocks are gonna tank and I’m not gonna be a part of it. I’ll sell while I can get out.
Mike Papantonio: They actually know the names of the people. They know the names of the company, with Silicon Valley, great example. Members of Congress sold, they sold SVB long before it became a problem, because that’s insider information. And so what do we say? Well, if we catch you, Mrs. Pelosi, we’re gonna hit you for the $200 fine. Are you kidding me?
Farron Cousins: Yeah. The Stock Act that is supposed to ban these people from doing it, if they get caught $200 fine. Okay, well, I just made a 240% on my a hundred thousand dollar investment. Yeah. I’ll give you 200 bucks. I’ll give you 400 bucks because I’m gonna tell you right now, I’m gonna do it again. Because there’s no punishment for any of these people.
Mike Papantonio: They actually have something called the Pelosi Act. She was so bad about it. It’s the Pelosi act of 2023. And this other cat, the Democrat that says, look, I did pretty good, 238% above the market. But, you know, its okay because I’m retiring, I’m not running again. Now, you see how patently unfair this is. First of all, it affects the market. People are counting on this money. Most people are counting on, it’s somewhere that they’re counting on for retirement and their pension programs. But we don’t have the same benefit. And if we do this, we go to jail. I mean, I’m talking about serious jail. Pelosi has gotten so good at it, and this article talks about it that she has figured out, let me do all of this at a time during the holidays where it’s not gonna be reported. Let me send in that, hey, I just sold 300 shares of something and made a gazillion dollars, but let me report that on a Friday during the holidays. That’s part of this story, is how they game the system. So they clearly know how wrong it is. Is patently wrong, isn’t it?
Farron Cousins: Yeah, it absolutely is. And look, I have to give credit where credit is due. The two people that have been pushing the hardest, a Republican and a Democrat joined forces to try to stop congressional stock trading altogether, it’s AOC and Matt Gaetz.
Mike Papantonio: Wow.
Farron Cousins: They have been a very unlikely duo, but they’re actually pushing for this. So full credit to both of them. Gaetz still talks about it regularly. He has been highlighting this report calling out his fellow Republicans. But it has to be a bipartisan effort. But when you only have these two, three, or even 20 people pushing for the ban, you got 415 who say, hell no, we’re not gonna do it. I’m making too much money.
Mike Papantonio: It’s like the Haley story. What’s her name?
Farron Cousins: Nikki Haley.
Mike Papantonio: Nikki Haley. Okay. So she comes into Congress with no money. We’ve told this story before. It was a great story, a great investigative story on this. She has no money. She has $15,000 in the bank. She owes about a million dollars. But within four or five years, she’s living in a five, $6 million mansion. Now, where did that come from? It came from her relationships with big corporations. This is no different. This is, in a sense, these people, they get calls, they get calls that nobody else gets. They hear testimony that nobody else hears. And they’re able to skulk into, you know, skulk away, quietly make that telephone call that any one of us would go to prison for doing.
Farron Cousins: Yep.
Mike Papantonio: Something’s gotta be done about it.
Mike Papantonio: New polls show that the American public isn’t sick of Biden and Trump, they’ve grown disgusted by the entire political process in this country. It’s a lot deeper than they don’t like Biden and they don’t like Trump. They hate the two party system of government. How have we gotten here. Talk about these polls. These are significant findings, man.
Farron Cousins: Yeah. I love this because a lot of the polls we’ve seen and we’ve talked about, say, well, I’m not crazy about Biden, I’m not crazy about Trump. But now a majority of Americans are saying, listen, I don’t like any of this. I don’t like the process. I don’t like these parties. Not only, it’s not just the people, it’s the parties. It’s the mechanism that they have for choosing people. And a lot of people both on the right and on the left, think that their respective parties are not running fair primaries and caucuses, which, when you look at it is true. We’ve got multiple states on the Democratic side who said, listen, we’re not gonna put all these other people also running on the ballot. You go in there for your primary, I forget the latest state to do it, but the only choice you have is Biden. Even though you do have Marianne Williamson, you’ve got Cenk Uygur, you’ve got Dean Phillips. I think I’m missing somebody else too, but.
Mike Papantonio: Yeah. The point, first of all, this is Associated Press and it’s the Center for Public, what is it, Center for Public Affairs Research. We’ve used their stuff many times. It’s really credible. Here’s the thing that caught me. 25% of Americans, of adults, say that they have only little or none at all confidence in the Democratic Party or the Republican Party. I don’t think it’s ever been like that, do you think?
Farron Cousins: No.
Mike Papantonio: I mean, it’s crossing both party lines.
Farron Cousins: It really is. And in recent years, we’ve seen a lot more people switch from an actual party to either no party affiliation or independent. The number of independent voters in this country continues to rise every single year, which is great because it does open the door for third parties. Now the problem is the third parties we have right now, not super great. We need something better. We need something more cohesive. But the two party system, more and more people say, this isn’t working anymore.
Mike Papantonio: You could assemble something and call it a unity party outta what’s out there. You could say, okay, a little bit of this, a little bit of that. Let’s put a party together. They’re just sitting ducks. Democrats and Republicans are sitting ducks. The American public is sick and tired of their stupidity. It’s just like one upsmanship. Oh, well, we did. It’s like, I was trying to look, there was a great quote where somebody says, everybody right now is a bunch of children stomping their feet until they get their way. There are no winners. They all want to claim to be winners. That was one and I think that’s well put. That it’s so childish.
Farron Cousins: It’s team sports. It’s my football team either wins or loses and I’ll be sad about it for the next week until the next game. And that’s how elections are. Like, did we win or did we lose? My team won. I’ll gloat for four years. And then we’ll see what happens next time. That’s all politics is these days.
Mike Papantonio: Yeah. It is children yelling at children, pointing fingers at children. There’s no statesmen out there. There just are no, well, there’s a couple, but it’s just so rare, man. It’s just so rare to have statesmen out there anymore. They’re just, they don’t exist. That’s all for this week, Farron. Thank you for joining me. Okay.
Farron Cousins: Thank you.
Mike Papantonio: These segments are gonna be posted right here on this channel in this coming week, so make sure you’ve subscribed. I’m Mike Papantonio, and this has been America’s Lawyer, where we tell you stories every week that corporate media won’t tell you. Mainly because their advertisers won’t let them tell the story if it affects the product that we’re talking about or their political connections are so deep. It’s so Democrat, it’s so Republican that you can’t really get the truth because they’re afraid that they’re gonna hurt their political party. We don’t really have that problem here. I know it upsets some of y’all, but you know what, that’s what we do every week. We’ll see you next time.
