America’s Lawyer E100: Universities across the country have joined forces with Big Pharma to make sure that you can’t afford your prescription drugs – we’ll explain how that’s happening. A new study has found that the chemicals in vaping liquid are causing an enormous amount of health problems that could result in permanent damage to the human body. And an entire generation of political content creators are losing their voice with the potential ban of TikTok. 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. Universities across the country have joined forces with big pharma to make sure that you can’t afford your prescription drugs. The universities are part of the process now. We’ll be explaining that story. A new study, they found that the chemicals in vaping liquid are causing an enormous amount of health problems that we don’t even know the names of the diseases that are developing right now. Permanent damage to the human body. We do know that. An entire generation of political content creators, well, they’re losing their voice with the potential ban of TikTok. All that and more, it’s coming up, don’t go anywhere. America’s Lawyer starts right now.
Major colleges and universities receive huge federal grants to help develop prescription drugs. But what you may not know is that these colleges also get a cut of the drug’s profits, which is why they’re teaming up with the ugliest part of big pharma to keep the cost of your medications as high as possible, because they’re making a percentage on those costs. I’ve got Ring of Fire’s Farron Cousins with me to talk about this. Wow. How has, I just, when I saw this, I’m wondering how has UCLA, NYU, Stanford University, University of North Carolina Chapel Hill, how have they been under the radar in this? To where we didn’t know that they are the little gremlins, the secret little gremlins that are doing business with the ugliest part of big pharma who wants to keep drugs as high as they can, who wants to keep drug prices as high as they can. How have we missed this? I mean, we do this every day.
Farron Cousins: I know, and I love that you’re saying that because that is the exact same reaction I had with this story. We’ve covered this story for 20 years. And I learned so much from this article that I didn’t know, and it’s shocking to me.
Mike Papantonio: Farron, until you gave me this story, I would’ve said.
Farron Cousins: Right.
Mike Papantonio: But these are university administrators that are part of keeping the cost of drugs sky high, right?
Farron Cousins: Yeah. Because what happens here, we’ve talked about this part, obviously the federal government comes in and they say, hey, college, UCLA, because that’s one of the worst offenders here.
Mike Papantonio: Oh, good God.
Farron Cousins: UCLA, we’ve got millions of dollars we want to give to you because you’ve got brilliant scientists and they’re working on a cure for this cancer. So here’s millions of dollars, UCLA, you make this cure, it’s taxpayer money, but you get it for free. UCLA goes and does it. So, okay, we’ve got this wonderful drug, and here’s the part we didn’t know. They do sell it to pharmaceutical companies, which everybody knows, but the university keeps the patent.
Mike Papantonio: Right.
Farron Cousins: And every time somebody has to pay $200,000 a month for this cancer treatment, that university is getting a rather sizable percentage.
Mike Papantonio: Oh, yeah, you think?
Farron Cousins: Of those drug sales. So in addition to getting your tax dollars, they get a cut of the drug sales.
Mike Papantonio: That’s the ugliest part of it. The university has gotten your tax dollars to do the research. Okay. Then they say, I got this patent and what is it, Xtandi?
Farron Cousins: Xtandi. I believe that’s how it’s pronounced.
Mike Papantonio: Yeah. Okay. So it’s a prostate cancer drug that is sometimes the only thing keeping a person alive that it costs, did I, is it 2 million a year? Is it $200,000?
Farron Cousins: $200,000.
Mike Papantonio: $200,000 a year for that person to buy that drug. And the college sold it for $520 million to the drug company. And the drug company says, hey, thank you for that. We’re gonna give you royalties. So secretly the university is trying to stay under the radar, and they’re trying to be the lobbyist to keep drugs high. It’s not just, UCLA by far is the worst offender. Somebody ought to go there and just clean house. But it’s also Chapel Hill. It’s also NYU. It’s Stanford, that they have a direct interest in making sure that people have to pay as much as possible for a drug that might keep ’em alive.
Farron Cousins: Right. And the colleges have offered the dumbest and most insulting excuse for this. They say, well, we use this money because we gotta keep up the grounds. We gotta keep up the buildings and we give people scholarships to come here, and this helps pay for that. No. What helps pay for all of those things is the fact that you’ve jacked up your tuition prices 7000% in the last 20 years. Those students who are not on scholarships, are already paying for those that get the scholarships and everything else. You’re not paying your professors, basically not paying ’em living wages because you’re getting rid of the real professors, bringing in the adjuncts you pay $5,000 a semester to.
Mike Papantonio: The adjuncts who, oh, by the way, work for the pharmaceutical industry.
Farron Cousins: Yeah. And so this story, colleges are all about money these days. There is no other way to say it. It’s not about education. It’s about the money.
Mike Papantonio: Okay. Down the hall there at UCLA, they’re teaching humanities, right? They’re teaching humanities, the interactions of how we should interact among ourselves. They’re teaching ethics. They’re teaching philosophy. And they are making sure that while they’re teaching those things, they’re making sure that a person has to pay $130 per pill, and they need them every day, year round, they need $130 per pill just so he can stay alive. Now, you tell me there ain’t a problem there.
Farron Cousins: And by the way, most of the time, they actually sell these patents to companies overseas who then contract through the major pharmaceuticals, your Pfizers, your AstraZenecas here in the US to make it for them and basically ship it. So Pfizer and them, they don’t have to do much at all. But then these other companies, usually in India is where they will buy the patents, they also say, okay, well, you can make generics because now we also have this. And those generic companies recently approached the US government and said, hey, listen, this Xtandi drug, we can give it to you for three bucks a pill. Instead of your, you know.
Mike Papantonio: $130 a pill.
Farron Cousins: Right. They said $3 a pill. Cut down your cost by hundreds of thousands a month. And they said, no. No.
Mike Papantonio: Well, why?
Farron Cousins: They literally just said, no.
Mike Papantonio: But why did they say that? They said it because these ghouls, these ghoulish grim reapers that are secretly hiding in the halls of Congress are the universities that are making money. And we just, only thing we talk about all the time is the pharmaceutical industry, which is bad enough. You talk about a bunch of death ghouls, they’re filled up with death ghouls. But then you add the university, the people that are supposed to be kinder and gentler, supposed to be teaching our kids the idea of decency and ethics and humanities and how we should teach each other. They are making a killing off the death of people.
Farron Cousins: Yeah.
Mike Papantonio: No other way to put it.
A new study out of the United Kingdom has found that the chemicals in vaping fluid are causing a cascade of problems in the human body. And those fruity flavors that young people seem to love, well, they’re on the market and they have potential to cause diseases, Farron, that we don’t even know the names of the diseases. That’s what struck me. They said, this is happening so fast, we can’t even keep up with the way that these chemicals are morphing. We’re seeing chemicals we’ve never seen coming from a vaping pen. Pick it up.
Farron Cousins: Yeah. Because what’s happening is, well, first of all, you’ve got at least they’ve identified 180 chemicals in some of the most popular flavors of these vaping fluids. But these researchers say, listen, we can only look at necessarily the individual chemicals. What we can’t look at and understand yet, because it hasn’t been long enough, is what happens when you superheat these chemicals together.
Mike Papantonio: Synergistically
Farron Cousins: So we’ve got chemical reactions taking place inside your vape in a matter of nanoseconds that then goes into your lungs. And again, these things have not been around long enough for us to have any kind of long-term studies. So what these researchers in the UK did, which is actually quite brilliant, is they ran it through artificial intelligence. They said, simulate these chemical reactions inside a human body over a period of five years, 10 years and basically this AI generated body is so filled with diseases, like you said, we don’t know what they are.
Mike Papantonio: They don’t want the disease. They don’t even know what the diseases are. Neurological, cardiac, pulmonary. They’re seeing variations of chemicals they’ve never even seen before. While these cats are saying, well, I don’t smoke anymore. By God, I got off of tobacco. I brought, our law firm, brought the first tobacco cases in America. Believe me, I know how bad tobacco is. But at the same time, you have, I call ’em these new pioneers. They’re pioneers of new diseases. They’re pioneers of new chemicals. That’s why this guy is right here as he smokes his vape, he’s a pioneer. He’s pioneering new diseases that we won’t see for 10 or 15 years. New chemicals, wow, we got a new chemical out there. Wonder what we’re gonna do with it? It’s just, what is it, is it 40,000? 40,000 different flavors?
Farron Cousins: Yeah.
Mike Papantonio: Okay. And each flavor, according to this, has potential to create diseases we’ve never even seen before. Right?
Farron Cousins: Right. And each of those 40,000 different flavors means 40,000 different chemical combinations. And if you are using, well, today, I’m a grape flavor. Tomorrow, I’m a cherry flavor. Now suddenly you’ve got different chemicals now interacting with the other. It’s insanity. You’re turning your body into this little disgusting laboratory and you don’t even know. And they have the audacity to tell us it’s safe, is what the vapors do.
Mike Papantonio: Well, worst, oh, yeah, we’re gonna get comments.
Farron Cousins: Oh, they are the most rabid people.
Mike Papantonio: We will get the most rabid crazy and I love it. I love it.
Farron Cousins: It’s hilarious.
Mike Papantonio: They are so frigging crazy. Well, it got me, I stopped smoking. Go back to frigging smoking. You are safer, if you follow this story, and the truth is, the industry, of course, is reaching out to kids. Ollie Ollie Orange, Goofy Grape, Susie Strawberry. Those are kind of the flavored names. I don’t know if those are exactly the names, but that’s what they do. They name it these cutesy little names, and oh, wow. This tastes like grape. This can’t be bad for me. Well, thank you. You’re a new pioneer. You are engineering new diseases that we haven’t seen, and we’ll see ’em in the next 10 or 15 years. That’s, I guess that’s the only congratulations you can give these cats because that’s exactly what’s happening.
Farron Cousins: Yeah. And look, my biggest issue with these folks that do this is listen, if you want to do it, do it. Okay. That is your prerogative a hundred percent.
Mike Papantonio: Yeah, of course.
Farron Cousins: But stop fooling yourself into thinking that this is safe. That, oh, well, there’s no studies that show it’s gonna cause diseases, because there’s no time yet. These things have been around for maybe 14 or 15 years from their early incarnation of what was called the e-cigarettes at the time. But stop pretending that, oh, well, since no long-term studies exist, obviously it’s fine. It hasn’t been around long enough for there to be long-term studies.
Mike Papantonio: Of course. I mean, anybody with a brain can analyze that. You don’t need AI to tell you that. But AI is saying, well, by God, we’re seeing diseases we don’t even, we’re projecting diseases we don’t even have names for. We’re projecting chemicals that we don’t even know what to call ’em.
Farron Cousins: Well, it’s gonna end up being Goofy Grape syndrome, and, you know.
Mike Papantonio: Yeah, yeah, exactly.
Young Americans are becoming more politically active than ever, but President Biden is ready to silence their voices by signing a ban on TikTok a few weeks ago. You know, the irony to me is the people advising Biden, they’re saying, go to TikTok. He’s all over TikTok. It might be the only place that he has a way to connect to a certain generation, by the way, which I think is remarkable, I just can’t even get my arms around this. Biden is loading up on TikTok, and Carville is out there saying, the people he’s trying to appeal to are stupid and lazy and won’t go to the polls. Right. Those two stories don’t seem, but that’s what Carville did. He said, the young people in this country are so freaking stupid. They’re so lazy that they’re gonna, the destruction of Earth is gonna be on their shoulders. At the same time, Biden is loading up on TikTok with these people that he says, are stupid and lazy. Right?
Farron Cousins: Well, yeah. And not just putting their own content out there. They have had White House meetings with these TikTok influencers. We understand how valuable it is, how vital it is. Also, my name is on the legislation that’s gonna kill it. And look, even my children who are in their very early teens have come home and said, ah, so mad that Biden did this. So they know and they know that, hey, he’s the guy who signed it and yes, that is going to be held against him. But the most important thing is we’ve talked about multiple times, it’s all based on BS. There are no known security threats from TikTok, according to the Homeland Security.
Mike Papantonio: The NSA.
Farron Cousins: Yeah. But what we do have is a generation that has become insanely politically active through TikTok, all kinds of new influencers on both the left and the right. They’re out there putting news and information out for people every day. And that could come to an end.
Mike Papantonio: Part of the backstory is Biden knows that Trump is going to double, triple down on TikTok. I mean, that’s what he’s afraid of. And the point being, these kids don’t have any other source. They’re not watching television media pablum. You think they’re gonna tune into MSNBC or Fox News? Hell no. They’re not watching the nightly news. These are kids, some of them have not even had the benefit of going through a civics class, because the big cuts in education are we just want to teach kids how to read and write. We don’t care about anything else. So they didn’t even have the benefit of that, which is disturbing to me in and of itself. So kids have to figure this out themselves. And the way they’re doing it, apparently, is on TikTok. And the very age group that’s doing it is, there’s so many ironies here, the very age group that’s doing it is the very age group that the big mouth, the loudest voice for the Democrats, James Carville, is saying, they’re remarkably stupid. They’re remarkably lazy. You aren’t even gonna show up for the election and you’re gonna destroy this country. There’s so many ironies mixed up in there, I can’t even begin to talk about it.
Farron Cousins: Well, what gets me about this story too, is that a lot of people will say, okay, well, if you’re not on TikTok, you can go to Instagram, you can go to Facebook. And actually.
Mike Papantonio: No, you can’t.
Farron Cousins: A very important thing is that Meta recently, just a couple months ago, they instituted a new policy where they no longer recommend social or political issues on their platforms. We saw our engagement personally at Ring of Fire.
Mike Papantonio: Oh, it disappeared.
Farron Cousins: It dropped by about 95% overnight because they changed this policy.
Mike Papantonio: Instagram. Instagram, think about it.
Farron Cousins: Yeah.
Mike Papantonio: Your stories will do 120,000 likes or visits or whatever, you put it through Instagram, if you get 25, it’s 25,000, you know, 25 visits because they’ve throttled you back so much. They don’t want you talking about your politics.
Farron Cousins: They want you to see cat videos.
Mike Papantonio: It’s almost useless. I almost say we just get off of Instagram, totally, because they’re gonna throttle back anything we do if it has anything political. And I guess just let the American public remain, let this age group that Carville said is so stupid, let them remain stupid, I guess. Because I don’t know where they’re gonna get their information.
Farron Cousins: I don’t either.
Mike Papantonio: Presidential polling is all over the place right now, making it hard to know who’s actually in the lead, but it’s because Americans are evenly split. Is that the reason, or is media just getting worse at polling? Um, huh. I think it’s both. I don’t think you can trust a thing you read from polling. I remember New York Times came out with that article that the left went crazy about. My God, you would’ve thought that they were blowing up the world. The article where it showed that Biden was behind Trump in all the swing states and then New York Times goes crazy about it and every liberal progressive goes crazy about it. But it doesn’t mean anything right now, does it? I mean, the guy that wrote this, who was it, Rex Huppke?
Farron Cousins: Yeah.
Mike Papantonio: Rex Huppke. I don’t know who the guy is. He says that he’s a leading progressive, a leading political progressive and he’s looking at all this, and he’s trying to say, look at the things that can change between now and the election. Rights?
Farron Cousins: Yeah. And he makes a really good point here, because I want to read this, it says, Biden and Trump, as you may have heard, are up in years. One awkward fall or one health emergency, neither outside the realm of possibility, could reshape the race. And it’s just, it’s weird little things like that, that are absolutely accurate because look, anytime Donald Trump goes out there and he slurs his words, anytime Biden says he just talked to somebody who actually died 10 years ago.
Mike Papantonio: A ghost.
Farron Cousins: That’s a big deal. And it does capture the headlines.
Mike Papantonio:: You know what I got to thinking about the other day? The fact that Trump is in a trial, keeping him in a trial out of going around saying stupid stuff is probably helping him. If you really think about it, because just like you say, any given day, he’s like, God knows what he’s likely to say. Any given day, Biden is likely to run into another wall or fall off the stage. You don’t know what’s gonna happen. And that’s what this writer says. He says, look, we don’t know what’s, the economy could change. There’s all these variables that could take place, but we get so focused on what the poll is, and we talk about those polls. Now, let me be very clear.
Farron Cousins: Yeah, absolutely.
Mike Papantonio: We talk about the polls, but not for the reason to say it’s over. But to say you might want to know, this is important information, and whether it’s relevant or not, I don’t know. The war in Gaza. I mean, look what it’s doing to Biden in just the last few weeks. Trump, who would’ve thought that his trial is actually increasing his popularity? You don’t know.
Farron Cousins: Well, see, a lot of the things that I always kind of talk about in my videos is, isn’t it strange that when you look at the polling aggregates going back six months all the way to today, the polling aggregates always show that they’re usually within about half a point of each other?
Mike Papantonio: Yeah.
Farron Cousins: Like, just never changes. It’s always the horse race.
Mike Papantonio: That is.
Farron Cousins: And that’s why the media will put out this poll, suddenly Biden’s ahead today, tomorrow Trump’s ahead. Because people are, oh my God, what happened? And they click on the story and as soon as you click, boom, they get the advertising dollars. It’s a media creation at this point with the polling. And polling has become so much less accurate in the last 10 years.
Mike Papantonio: Look at the last two cycles.
Farron Cousins: Right.
Mike Papantonio: I mean, they were off so dramatically. You wonder who the hell is doing this?
Farron Cousins: They were wrong in 2016, 2020.
Mike Papantonio: Yeah. It’s like a bunch of caged monkeys trying to figure out what’s going on out there. I don’t know. Maybe we stop talking, the only reason we talk about polls is because, not because that is the definitive issue, the end of the election, but people ought to know what’s being said out there. But, again, Trump can say another stupid thing. If he wins the trial, the projection is if he wins the trial.
Farron Cousins: He gets a huge, huge boost.
Mike Papantonio: A huge boost. He don’t know what’s gonna happen with Biden. He’s gonna say something that you don’t, he’s talking to dead people. He’s running into walls. What the hell? You don’t know what’s gonna affect those voters. So I don’t know that polling is the way to worry right now.
Farron Cousins: Well, you know, my degree is in political science and part of that, I had to take courses in how to conduct political polling. And the very first thing our professor said on day one, he said, if a poll ever has a margin of error of more than 3%, don’t trust it. It’s trash.
Mike Papantonio: Really? Okay.
Farron Cousins: And I see every poll I look at now, that’s the first thing I check. I’ve seen some come out this year where the margin of error will be seven or 8%, more than double what the actual political scientists say, no, this is trash.
Mike Papantonio: It’s useless.
Farron Cousins: So, if it’s over three, don’t even bother.
Mike Papantonio: Farron Cousins, the best progressive in the business.
Farron Cousins: Thank you.
Mike Papantonio: Thank you for joining me. Okay.
Farron Cousins: Appreciate it.
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. So 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 they’re too Democrat, they can’t color outside the Democrat lines, if they’re Republican, they can’t color outside those lines. We hope we make you mad every week. That’s part of what we want to accomplish. We want you to think, and if you get mad doing that, we feel like we’re a huge success. Hope to see you next week.
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.
