America’s Lawyer E94: Democrats in the House have given tons of money to a group that is fighting AGAINST their own agenda – we’ll explain why this is happening. Lawmakers are now receiving death threats from angry constituents over the plan to ban TikTok in the United States, and these threats aren’t helping anything. And the Justice Department is finally cracking down on Apple’s monopoly of their app store. All that, and more is coming up, so don’t go anywhere – America’s Lawyer starts right now.
Transcript:
*This transcript was generated by a third-party transcription software company, so please excuse any typos.
Mike Papantonio: Hi, I’m Mike Papantonio, and this is America’s Lawyer. Democrats in the House have given tons of money to a group that’s fighting against their own agenda. We’ll explain why that’s happening. Lawmakers, well, they’re now receiving death threats from angry constituents over the plan to ban TikTok in the United States. And these threats aren’t helping anything. And the Justice Department’s finally cracking down on Apple’s monopoly of their app store after all these years. All that and more. It’s coming up. Don’t go anywhere. America’s Lawyer starts right now.
House Democrats have given more than a million dollars to dark money groups that have been actively fighting against lowering prescription drug prices. That’s the Democrats behind this. This is a group being run by a former Pelosi staffer and has ties to all sorts of industries and former Democratic officials. I’ve got Ring of Fire’s Farron Cousins to talk about this. God, can we talk about this since we’re talking about Democrats? I mean, are we allowed to talk about this? What do you think?
Farron Cousins: You’re definitely gonna have some keyboard warriors getting angry about this. But the fact is, you have the House Democrats chief fundraising arm that has pumped more than a million dollars into this dark money group that then turns around and spends that money lobbying these same lawmakers to not lower prescription drugs for Americans.
Mike Papantonio: The story is never told. Okay. All that you hear is Democrats want to lower drug prices. Republicans don’t. That’s what you hear. Democrats want to increase regulations. Republicans don’t. But behind the scenes, the truth is this is what’s going on. And we’re not just talking about minor players. As I just said, this is coming from the Pelosi camp. As a matter of fact, you had Alixandria Lapp, she was a former lobbyist for the pharma industry, and she is like in charge. She’s the one that calls the shots on Pfizer and the Chamber of Commerce. These are folks that are ingrained, deeply seated in the DNC, right? So we don’t ever hear about it. And the people at the end of the day, these are the folks. Center forward is the name of the organization. Conoco, Chevron, Business Roundtable, Altria, Honeywell, US Chamber of Commerce, Global Strategies Group. This is like the who’s who of corporate America and the Democrats, again, I know it kills people when we talk about the Democrats, don’t talk about ’em. How dare you talk about ’em. We have an election coming up. Well, that doesn’t make any difference if all you have is a party that we’re gonna say, oh, they’re always for us. They’re not. Just like the Republicans aren’t. The Democrats aren’t either. I have an advantage. I’m independent. I know you’re a Democrat and you’re great, you’re a great voice for the Democrats. They’re so lucky to have you. Okay. But I’m not. I’m independent. I have to look at a story like this and say, what the hell? Why are we kidding ourselves?
Farron Cousins: Well, exactly. If we can’t hold our own side accountable, then we are no good at what we do. And that is the point of this. This is coming from a left-leaning website and it’s not to say, oh, look at just these people are horrible. It’s to shine a light on it and tell people, listen, we’ve got some serious problems over here on the left, and you can choose to bury your head in the sand. Act like none of this matters, because the only thing that matters is if we win or lose elections, or we can shine the spotlight on these people, shame them and get them out of office and replace ’em with somebody better.
Mike Papantonio: Are we allowed to do that? Are you as a Democrat, are you allowed to do that?
Farron Cousins: According to people online, no, I’m not.
Mike Papantonio: No, I don’t think, yeah, according to people online, you’re not allowed to do that. I’m allowed to do it because I really don’t give a. I’m gonna talk about Republicans and I’m gonna talk about Democrats. And so, but let me just give the quick lineup. Paul Brathwaite, this is one of the strategists here. Well, who’s he lobbying? He’s lobbying for Amazon, Bristol Myers, petro manufacturers. This is the guy at the heart on the board of this organization. Kate Dickens, biotech company, EnergyX, in other words, the biggest companies in the country. Pete Manchin, or what is it? Meachum, director of, this guy was a director, he still is, state director for Donald Trump’s presidential campaign. Alright? He is seated though in the center of power that the Democrats use secretly. One hand they’re saying, oh, we are the party for the people. And the truth is where it comes to social issues, you know, they’re much better than the Republicans. There’s no question. But where it comes to mom and pop issues that puts food on the table for these folks, they’re just as bad. I mean, they’re just as bad.
Farron Cousins: Well, and it’s because you have these, and this was all founded in part too, by the guy that created the blue dog Democrats.
Mike Papantonio: Right, right.
Farron Cousins:: And those are the Democrats who say, listen, everything is perfect and fine the way it is right now. Let’s not rock the boat. Let’s not put new regulations. Let’s not do anything that’s gonna make anybody upset. And the people they’re worried about upsetting are these same corporations we’re talking about. And that’s why it’s save the status quo. Don’t do anything to rock the boat.
Mike Papantonio: Okay. So we hear MSNBC, CNN, oh, let me tell you what the Democrats are doing. They’re pushing back to get more regulations of banks. That’s what the American public thinks. So while that’s going on, you have an entire arm that everybody knows about. Understand the guy in charge came directly from the Pelosi organization. So the guy in charge is doing everything he can to defeat that. He’s pumping money, spending money like a crazy man. Or how about this? Come on television, the Democrats, they’re for lowering the price of drugs. So everybody thinks, well, great, great. They’re gonna get something done. The truth is, the Pelosi guy is in the back rooms trying to defeat that effort by the Democrats. It’s just so wrong. Why are we not able to say this is wrong and we need to do something about it?
Farron Cousins: Well, part of the big reason is because all of these companies that we’ve sat here talked about linked to these groups, these are the advertisers. These are the ones that go on MSNBC and CNN every commercial break. So you can’t expose this level of corruption when you’re also dependent upon these people to pay your bills. So that’s the biggest issue here. And we also have too many people that aren’t willing to go and read a story that’s eight pages long. Right. You gotta keep it small, short, quick. They gotta be able to digest it in 30 seconds or they lose interest. And that’s part of the reason why journalism is dying in this country, is because people stop caring.
Mike Papantonio: You hear me say all the time, and I really believe this, you are the best voice the Democrats can have. Okay. You really are. I’m not a Democrat, I’m not a Republican. I just look right down the middle as an independent. But even when you do come out and say, wait a second, let me tell you the story. How about this, Farron? Build Back America. Okay. The Build Back America Act, what was it called? Build Back Better Act, BBB. It sounded wonderful. And I’m sitting there thinking, oh, go Democrats. What was really happening?
Farron Cousins: There were huge handouts. And by the way, there were a couple of organizations that did talk about this at the time, very far left groups, but there were just these massive handouts to these same corporations that are working behind the scenes. So that’s part of the reason why it was scaled down to a degree. But when you start looking at where a lot of this money is going, it’s not going to your local construction company. It’s going to the big conglomerates. It’s not going to help average people. There’s tons of money going to the fossil fuel industry, to the pharmaceutical industry for some reason. And all of that is in that legislation. If you actually read it.
Mike Papantonio: Why don’t they cover this? Why do we turn on MSNBC on liberal issues? We turn on Fox for conservative issues. And it’s always, we gotta color in the lines. We can’t talk about this because people would be so mad if they knew that the very people who were up there on stage, on television saying, this is what we’re doing for know as they’re saying that, that behind the scenes this is going on.
Farron Cousins: Well, look again, a lot of it has to do with the advertising, but a lot of it has to do too with, it has become so tribal and so much of team sports that people can’t stand to even hear something, not even negative, but critical of their own party anymore.
Mike Papantonio: Well, I’m glad you’re out there talking. I’m glad you’re out there as the voice for the Democrats. But you know what? I’m gonna talk about it. You do too. And I respect the hell out of that. I gotta tell you.
The Department of Labor and OSHA are conducting an investigation into the death of a 16-year-old at a poultry processing plant. The company has been cited countless times for the damnedest things where they’re just ignoring safety of these kids. First of all, how many times have you and I done this story?
Farron Cousins: Oh my God, at this point, we’re talking about dozens of times in the last year.
Mike Papantonio: How many times have you seen it on corporate networks?
Farron Cousins: No, you don’t ever hear these.
Mike Papantonio: Why? Tyson is a big advertiser. These poultry folks are big advertisers. They sell all the chicken in the country. They sell all the beef in the country. And so what happens is, you’re not gonna hear it from corporate media, but we did this story because we were talking about, I remember Tyson. You remember the Tyson story we did a few weeks ago? Tyson’s closing down plants all over the country because it was discovered that they were getting ready to hire 40,000 immigrants to step into those shoes, right? Talk about it.
Farron Cousins: Yeah. And so now we’ve got this MarJac poultry processing plant, and they have multiple plants across the country.
Mike Papantonio: Oh, all over the place.
Farron Cousins: But the issue with them is they did the same thing, said, okay, let’s bring in the migrants. But they went a little step further. They said, we’re not just gonna bring in the migrants, we’re gonna bring in migrant teenagers.
Mike Papantonio: Yes.
Farron Cousins: And we’re not gonna have any kind of safety regulations. They didn’t even have railing up where the, what is it called? The pulverizer.
Mike Papantonio: Yes, yes.
Farron Cousins: Which can, if you get stuck in that, you are dead. And that’s what happened to this 16-year-old.
Mike Papantonio: Well, it’s either that or you’ll have a system that they know fails all the time. We’ve had people losing their arms. Sucked up into the system. We’re talking about kids. Now, who they really love is the unaccompanied minors that are coming across the border. Alright. They love that because you got a 16-year-old that’s gotta figure out how to live. Right. So he’s gonna do anything. He or she’s gonna do anything to keep kicking. And so this is what they do. They go out and they understand bring in more, bring in as many as you can because if we cut off an arm or we blind them, or they’re hurt some way, we send ’em back to Guatemala. This kid Guatemalan, 16-year-old and this failure that took place that killed this kid had taken place dozens of times. They had been put on notice dozens of times that this can happen. Right?
Farron Cousins: Yeah. This wasn’t even the first time somebody died in the last two years at that particular plant, almost in the same way. So two years prior to this child dying, you had another person die. They knew the failures. OSHA looked into it and said, hey, you did some bad things. We found about 10 other violations. Give us a hundred thousand dollars and we’re done.
Mike Papantonio: Well, human life is cheap, isn’t it?
Farron Cousins: It is.
Mike Papantonio: I mean, in their minds, human life is cheap. Used to be, we had to go to Honduras, Nicaragua, India, China to get slave labor. But now under the headline of compassion for immigrants, that’s what really ticks me off. The American public, oh, we gotta do this. This is compassionate America. This doesn’t have anything to do with compassion. It has to do with US Chamber of Commerce, associated industry, and every major corporation in the world, bringing these folks in so we can move folks out that we’re paying minimum wages to and have these people work for slave wages. That’s what’s going on here, isn’t it?
Farron Cousins: Yeah, 100%. And like you said, these are people who routinely get hurt. They’re not told how to operate these things properly. And they know that, the CEOs, the corporations know that if this person does get injured, they can’t do anything because they risk exposing themselves as an undocumented immigrant. Or they know they’re gonna get shipped back. They could lose their asylum status if they can’t hold a job. So these people will lose fingers, they will lose their vision, they will lose other parts of their body and keep on going. And that’s what corporate America wants. Work until there’s nothing of you left and then we’ll just grab the next person and replace you.
Mike Papantonio: Farron, you and I have done this story, you’ve done this story. Sometimes I’ll watch your story, I’ll go, God, that’s brilliant. It is a great attack, Farron, thank you for doing the attack. And then I’ll say, well, surely somebody’s gonna pick it up. Surely, because I know what happens. Corporate media looks through this stuff. I can promise you. Little producers are always looking for new material. So those producers are looking for new material. Oh, we can’t tell that story. Even though Farron laid it out item by item. Farron made it very clear what was happening. We’re still not gonna do the story. That’s how this all works. And so when we start raising hell about it, you know, like I say, if you believe this about we’re the compassionate types bringing in all these folks, this is all about business. It’s about bottom line. Has very little to do with compassion.
Farron Cousins:: That’s right.
Mike Papantonio: As lawmakers in Washington push to ban TikTok in the United States, angry constituents are lobbying death threats at ’em. These threats aren’t going to change the minds in Washington and it could actually make things worse. It’s gonna, anybody who gets a death threat says, really? You want to threaten me? Let’s mix this up. The pushback is incredible. First of all, TikTok story, it ain’t about China. It’s about Facebook and Instagram and all the competitors want TikTok out of the way because they’re just, it’s a flood to TikTok. And so best way to do it is get rid of ’em. Right?
Farron Cousins: Yeah. And that is exactly what’s happening here. Look, you’ve got the intelligence agencies here are the United States, there was a great report in the Intercept, Ken Klippenstein.
Mike Papantonio: By the way, that guy, I gotta say this. Ken Klippenstein is one of the best, I think he is one of the best progressive investigative journalists. I say progressive because if you look at his stuff, he doesn’t take a side. I mean, Klippenstein takes it right down the middle, but when he does an investigation, you can sure count on the fact it’s good. Right?
Farron Cousins: Oh, he’s absolutely phenomenal. And so what he’s got here is that these intelligence agencies are also admitting, listen, we don’t exactly have evidence that TikTok is really connected in any way with the Chinese government, but you know, you could imagine what it would be like if it were, and they could get your personal data. I mean, they could get your location. The same thing that the phone in our pocket is doing to us right now, TikTok might be able to do, and we’re supposed to be concerned about that, but not Apple or Meta or any of the other places.
Mike Papantonio: Look, China right now could buy everything that these politicians are saying TikTok might do. Now, I love the use of words. Do you realize since this has been gone, there’s been no evidence at all. CIA has looked at it, FBI has looked at it in, NSA has looked at it. There’s been no evidence that’s presented to anybody that’s looking at this story in Washington that says, this is happening. The words are, this could happen. Be very afraid because this might happen. Be terrified because it’s possible this could happen. That’s all the wording, isn’t it? You gotta look at what these people are actually saying. They’re not saying this has happened, but this could happen. This is all being fed by the lobbyists from Facebook, lobbyists from Instagram. They’re pumping this up as big as they can. Right?
Farron Cousins: They are. And I will say, it is a shame that you do have these people that are calling in these death threats now, leaving these horrific voicemails because that doesn’t fix this situation at all. If anything, it makes these politicians more angry and only encourages them that, okay, we’re doing the right thing. Look at what TikTok has done to these people. Ordinary people now saying they wanna murder me. That’s the threat of TikTok. Like, don’t give them ammo. You know, there’s right ways to do these kinds of things, and there’s wrong ways and the death threats are wrong. Calling your members of Congress, leaving them normal voicemails, encouraging them not to ban this. That’s a great thing to do. Flood their voicemails if you have to, but keep it not illegal.
Mike Papantonio: What I love is they’re gonna promote propaganda. Okay. Hell, all you gotta do is call up Fox News if you wanna promote propaganda, call MSNBC, call CNN, give those producers who are too lazy to get to the truth of the story. Call them and give them propaganda. There’s no worse propaganda than Fox, MSNBC and CNN. And so all of a sudden they’re saying, we might have to worry about propaganda in the next election cycle if we don’t do this to China. Right?
Farron Cousins: I mean, we’ve got, there is so much propaganda in the United States right now, originating from this country, we don’t need to worry about other countries flooding us with propaganda or AI images that try to fool voters. That’s coming from here. The calls are coming from inside the house at this point, folks. The real threats are in this country, but our politicians don’t want to acknowledge it. They don’t want to acknowledge the threats that Facebook and Instagram and Twitter pose to youth, to election cycles, to misinformation in general. So all the ire is on TikTok to distract from the badness of the others.
Mike Papantonio: Yeah. It’s being sold as a grave national security threat to America. And this cat calls up a senator, a Republican senator, okay, listen, if you ban TikTok, I will find you, hunt you down and shoot you. I mean, God almighty. Have we really gone this crazy? Yeah, I guess we have.
The US Department of Justice has teamed up with 15 states to file an antitrust lawsuit against Apple. The lawsuit claims that the company’s created a monopoly. Really? Like this is new business. With their devices that squeeze out competitors, they make it harder for independent developers to get their apps on an app store. Again, how many times have you done this story, that you have done this story just on your segments? How many times have you and I done this story? We’ve been talking about this for years, right? So this is the new development.
Farron Cousins: It really is. And look, okay, it’s a good thing that they’re finally taking this on. But let’s compare it to what’s happening in Europe. Okay. In Europe, a couple months ago, maybe even just a full month ago at this point, they passed this new law that outright calls out these social media companies and says, you essentially have to be broken up because of what you’re doing. So less than a month after passing that, they’re already enforcing it. And they’re saying, look, Apple, you gotta pay up $2 billion for violating this law we just passed a couple days ago. Pay up right here. And in the US we’re, all right, well, I guess we’ll file a lawsuit and we’ll see what happens.
Mike Papantonio: You know what’s so interesting about this? You have all of these so-called progressives pushing the progressive agenda. The guy in charge of Google, oh my God, every day it’s some new push that he does. And we think, oh, he’s not capable of breaking the law because of what he’s saying in public. Same way with Facebook, with Zuckerberg, same place, Instagram. Oh this is, you know, this is okay because they’re pushing a progressive agenda. You know, what they’re doing is the same thing that’s been done for generations. It’s antitrust, it’s monopoly, but we don’t wanna call it that. We don’t wanna call it that. The information is overwhelming in this case. Would you agree?
Farron Cousins: Oh, absolutely. You have concrete evidence that Apple is squeezing out these competitors, making them jump through hoops, charging them exorbitant fees just to get this, I developed a little game, you know, and I want to get it on the app store.
Mike Papantonio:: You don’t have a chance of getting your game on do you?
Farron Cousins: Right.
Mike Papantonio: Unless, unless you do what?
Farron Cousins: Well, you’ve gotta either pay up big bucks, or most likely you have to sell yourself to Apple. So then Apple owns you and then your app can go, but you get nothing from it.
Mike Papantonio: We see this in the music industry. Used to have, and it probably still goes on, if you were an emerging entertainer, you could not get into the business unless you paid money. It was either Nashville, Detroit, New York, LA, you had to pay to play. That’s what these sites are doing. They’ve learned, we had years and years of that history going on in the music industry. They’re doing the same thing here.
Farron Cousins: Yeah, absolutely. And it’s a lot like the old days of Hollywood where they owned the movie studios, they owned the actors and they own the movie theaters. So you could only see this actor in this movie at this theater owned by MGM or whoever it was. It is exactly the same with these apps.
Mike Papantonio: It’s called lateral systems.
Farron Cousins: Exactly.
Mike Papantonio: Lateral systems, own the thing that might help this kid launch his new app, own it, and don’t let him do it unless he pays homage to us. Homage means you pay us big money or we buy you out and you disappear. Right?
Farron Cousins: Yeah.
Mike Papantonio: Farron, thanks for joining me.
Farron Cousins: Thank you.
Mike Papantonio: That’s all for this week, but all these segments are gonna be posted right here on this channel in the coming week. Make sure you subscribe. 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 because their advertisers won’t let ’em, or their political connections won’t allow for it. Because if you’re Republican, you have to color within the Republican circle. If you’re Democrat, you have to color within that circle. But you know what? We don’t color within the lines on Ring of Fire. We’ll see you next time.
Suspicious Activity: That it had helped dirty money flow through its branches around the world, including at least 800. Plaintiffs allege that the defendants provided money and medical goods to terrorist groups, Hezbollah and Jaysh al-Adl. This is a well organized business for these individuals that carry out these attacks. Terrorism is a business and they run it like a business. They knew about what was going on for a decade. They absolutely, absolutely no question about it knew that HSBC was washing money. They had every reason to understand it was for terrorism and it was for drug cartels. Took no action whatsoever.
These banks are involved, their accounts are connected, and they’re using them to mask the transactions. The more complicated they can make the transactions, the more distance they could put between the bad guys and a seemingly legitimate purpose of these funds. They pay $1.9 billion, which is a drop in the bucket compared to what they’ve made. And nobody goes to prison. These CEOs, these bankers that made this decision, they’re safe at home. They know what they’ve done. They know it’s resulted in the death of Americans, contractors and soldiers, not just hundreds but thousands. And we look the other way because they don’t look like criminals. The die cast, the people that are responsible for it, are on Wall Street. And they don’t look like criminals. It’s almost a suspension of disbelief. Sometimes I’ll have people call me and say, is this, is this real? Do they really get away with this? Yeah, they do.
