The US Department of Justice has teamed up with 15 states to file an anti-trust lawsuit against Apple. The lawsuit claims that the company has created a monopoly with their devices that squeeze out competitors and make it harder for independent developers to get their apps in the app store. Mike Papantonio & Farron Cousins discuss more.
Transcript:
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Mike Papantonio: 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.