America’s Lawyer E103: This year’s presidential election is going to be decided by voters that are now being called “DOUBLE HATERS” – which means they can’t stand the thought of voting for Biden OR Trump. We’ll explain what this means for the race. Scientific studies have shown for decades that chemical hair relaxers were causing all sorts of health problems in women, including cancers, but the public is only just now learning of those threats. And President Biden’s team is warning him that his current campaign strategy is going to make him lose the election. 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. This year’s presidential election is gonna be decided by voters that are now called double haters. Sounds very Democratic or Republican, doesn’t it? Which means they can’t stand the thought of voting for Biden or Trump. We’ll explain what that means. Scientific studies have shown for decades that chemical hair relaxers were causing all sorts of health problems in women, including cancers. But the public’s only just now learning about these threats. And President Biden’s team is warning him that his current campaign strategy is going to make him lose the next election. It ain’t working, and insiders won’t believe that. All that and more it’s coming up. Don’t go anywhere. America’s Lawyers starts right now.
One of the most vital voting blocks this year is a group of voters that they call themselves double haters. They can’t stand the thought of voting for either Trump or Biden and this group’s getting bigger as we get closer to the election. I’ve got Ring of Fire’s Farron Cousins with me to talk about this. I don’t know many people who have better insights as to what’s going on than you, Farron. But I look at this story and I go, yeah, this makes perfect sense. Their point is, really? 300 million Americans, and we have these two juck heads to vote from. Terrifying, it was described, as terrifying. Their descriptions of both options suck. These are words from the story. I mean, it goes on and on, and I think it’s going to boil down to who sucks the less. These are actual statements that come from these fairly, very extensive kind of look at this. Absolute trash is one term that they use. I don’t, man. What’s your thought about it?
Farron Cousins: Well, it’s interesting because what these voters are saying is very reminiscent of what we saw in 2016 Trump versus Hillary, because that election became the big talking point, the lesser of two evils, and you had a lot of people mostly on the left who said, look, we’re tired of lesser of two evils voting. And then we had it again in 2020. Biden pulled ahead in the primary, ended up becoming the nominee, and then it was, well, we got to vote for the lesser of two evils. So now we’ve got the repeat of 2020. And these voters who talked to the Washington Post, and they’re all in swing states and that’s important for everybody to understand.
Mike Papantonio: Yeah, it is.
Farron Cousins: These aren’t people in deep red Alabama or deep blue California. These are swing state voters, and they say, we’re sick of it. We’re sick and tired of looking at a ballot and saying, both of these people are terrible. So I have to pick which one is least terrible. I’m not voting for somebody good. I’m voting for somebody less bad, and I’m tired of it in politics.
Mike Papantonio: Well, you know, this is the Washington Post and they very seldom do what they’ve done here, where they just say, look, we think the responses that we’re hearing are so significant. The first ones I read, absolute trash, 300 million people and this is what I have choose from. It’s terrifying. Both options suck. One option sucks less than the other. I’m praying nightly that somebody else comes along. Both men are too old, and I’m making my decision according to what’s out there and it’s frightening. One response was either one of those guys are horrible. I mean, it’s just these statements are so juiced up. Where people are just angry, man. They’re saying, really?
Farron Cousins: They’re very narcissistic, very God particle. I don’t know what to do, is what they say.
Mike Papantonio: It’s a feeling of futility and that’s what’s so ugly about it. It doesn’t insure a benefit to either party. We don’t really know what’s gonna develop. After, you would’ve thought that after, what, 34 felony convictions, right?
Farron Cousins: Yeah.
Mike Papantonio: From Trump, that there’d be a big move. There wasn’t, because they’re looking at that and they’re saying, well, okay, yeah, he’s bad, but so is Biden.
Farron Cousins: Yeah. The polls did shift in Biden’s favor, but they shifted three or four points. I mean, you would expect.
Mike Papantonio: Minuscule, it was miniscule.
Farron Cousins: Okay, we could get a 10 point swing. We should get a 15 point swing. And okay, well, you got three or four and all of that could be wiped out after the debate.
Mike Papantonio: Oh, of course.
Farron Cousins: There’s no telling what could happen. But, I think it’s very interesting here because these voters, like so many Americans, they look at each election as, okay, this is horrible, and I guess I gotta do it. And then maybe four years down the road, we get two people that I can say, hey, these are good folks. I get to pick a good person. But we keep.
Mike Papantonio: Putting that off, don’t we?
Farron Cousins: Right, right.
Mike Papantonio: Hillary and then Trump and Biden.
Farron Cousins: Every time it’s always somebody that, okay, well, next time, we’ll get the good people and we don’t ever get them.
Mike Papantonio: There are plenty of good Democrats, there are plenty of good Republicans. Where the hell are they? And it’s sickening to me. It’s absolutely deplorable to me that people are having to reach so far down and hold their nose with 300 million Americans out there to choose from and this is it. And to me, it’s so disheartening. I mean, I have to laugh at this. Have you ever heard the term double hater in an election?
Farron Cousins: No.
Mike Papantonio: That’s a new term.
Farron Cousins: Yeah.
Mike Papantonio: We have created that new term, double hater, with the election of Trump and Biden.
Farron Cousins: Which actually makes me more surprised that some of these other candidates running Bobby Kennedy Jr, Cornel West, how are they not capitalizing more on this? If everybody hates these two guys, you know.
Mike Papantonio: Because it comes down to that whole thing we talk about all the time, we’re so tribal. People don’t even listen to Bobby. They don’t even listen to Cornel. They don’t. They’ve turned their backs to ’em because they’re headline thinkers. Okay. MSNBC says this. New York Times says this. They’re headline thinkers. They can only think by what they read in the headlines without doing any research beyond that. And it’s killing us. It’s creating a whole new kind of voter called a double hater. I’ve just never dreamed we’d be here.
Lawsuits have been filed against the makers of chemical hair relaxers after decades worth of studies have shown that the chemicals in these products can cause cancer and other very serious health problems in women. But as usual, the industry covered up these dangers for decades. So they continue to make cash. The corporate media continues not to talk. Did you catch that in the story?
Farron Cousins: Yeah.
Mike Papantonio: Why is corporate media been not out at front of this? Because of the companies that are involved, the companies advertising with their nightly news.
Farron Cousins: Yeah. L’Oreal, one of the biggest ones here.
Mike Papantonio: Yeah. But that’s so typical, isn’t it?
Farron Cousins: Yeah.
Mike Papantonio: We can’t tell this story and I say this all the time because I used to do MSNBC with Ed Schultz, and we’d be in the close count, it was insane. We’d be in a close count and the tickle would be coming up, Mike Papantonio, Ed Schultz talk about Bayer product that’s killing women, in between the tickle and the time I’m supposed to go on and talk about Bayer, we get a call all over the ear, Mike, we gotta change your story. We’re gonna talk about constitutional law. Why? Because the company has called MSNBC and said, by God, if you do that, we’re gonna cut back your advertising. Same thing here. Corporate media is dead, dysfunctional and died. I mean, they’ve died where it comes to taking care of consumer issues like this.
Farron Cousins: Right. And it’s only after we get to the point where they have no choice but to cover it, which is exactly what’s happened with the New York Times here. And to their credit, this is a great story. I’ve actually covered.
Mike Papantonio: No, it is. But look, this has been around for 15 years, man.
Farron Cousins: It’s going back to, what was it, 1990. They suspected it in 1995, the researchers. So they spent two years in 1997, they finally came out and said, we just spent two years looking at it. These chemical hair relaxers that are marketed to black women across the country, they’re causing early onset puberty. They’re causing uterine cancer, breast cancer, bladder cancer, all these horrible cancers. And it’s because of these chemicals in this product. So these scientists didn’t stop there. For the next 20 years they did more studies. It was like 43,000, more than 43,000 women they examined and they concluded after study, after study, after study, these chemical hair relaxers are killing these women.
Mike Papantonio: Okay. You hit it on the head. Okay. You’re roundup of that is exactly right. You know, we’re handling these cases. And you go back and look at the documents, they’ve known forever. There’s been small studies out there that have shown forever that, yeah, you know what? Formaldehyde is bad to put on somebody’s head because it leeches to the brain. It becomes systemic in the body. Really? They knew that 20 years ago. Okay. People were looking at this 20 years ago, 15, 20 years ago, there were studies that said this might be a problem. But until the sister study came out, which is an important study, the sister study is an incredibly important study because it makes comparisons. It says two people that grew up together, they used this product. This person didn’t use this. What are the differences there? Are there DNA issues? No, there’s something that’s external. The sister study is extremely important. But the point is, corporate media knew about this a long time. And there were many efforts on our people like us that said, you gotta cover this story. And you know who would cover it? It would be the outliers. It would be social media. It would be small organizations, maybe like The Lever or organizations that we go to for real news.
Farron Cousins: Yeah.
Mike Papantonio: But I don’t know why we don’t hold corporate media responsible for this kind of stuff. We saw it with opioids. Right?
Farron Cousins: Yeah.
Mike Papantonio: We saw it with PFAS. Right. I’ve seen it with about 80 pharmaceutical companies where we believe that the corporate media is there for us and they’re not.
Farron Cousins: Well, there’s also, if I can find it here, something that’s also very interesting to me is the fact that we don’t have this happening in Europe.
Mike Papantonio: No.
Farron Cousins: They have chemical hair relaxers.
Mike Papantonio: Explain why.
Farron Cousins: But here it is. In Europe, the European Union regulates more than 1,300 ingredients for use in cosmetics. Here in the USA, the FDA prohibits or restricts only nine. So most of these chemicals in these hair relaxers in the United States causing these cancers and these other endocrine system problems, they don’t exist in Europe because Europe says, no, we know these will kill people. You can’t use ’em in cosmetics. And the cosmetics companies say, okay, we can actually do it without them. We’re just choosing to not do it in the US because it’s slightly more expensive.
Mike Papantonio: Yes, it’s more expensive. We can make more profit. As a matter of fact, something like 80% of the toxins that are in these hair relaxers, that any basic chemist could look at and say, this is bad. This is bad. 84%, something like 84% aren’t even on the label. They’ve been saying, we’re gonna hold it secret because it’s a fiduciary, it’s an interest, a financial interest to us to hold this a secret. But, we’ll never solve this problem. The thousands of women, you ought to hear the cases, uterine cancer, breast cancer. And this was targeted primarily to African American women. Right. Because we created this aura that you have to have straight hair. And even leaders played into that. Oprah played into it. Whoopi Goldberg played into it. Michelle Obama. All people that are kind of, people look at and they say, this is leadership. Let me see what they’re doing. And they’re just part of the same old story and this just perpetuated itself and thousands of people dying because of it.
Farron Cousins: Yeah. And there was a time in my lifetime and your lifetime as well, where this is the stuff the media would cover. This is what 60 Minutes would tell you about on a Sunday evening. Instead, now they want to do these puff pieces with politicians. They don’t want to talk about the dangerous products. The faulty products that you buy. The undercover investigation. Remember in the eighties, we had so many undercover investigations of the auto mechanics ripping people off.
Mike Papantonio: Of course.
Farron Cousins: They don’t do that anymore.
Mike Papantonio: Do you have any idea, you know, we launched the tobacco litigation, do you have any idea, they made a movie over how difficult it was for us to even get the media to pay attention to tobacco. You know why? Because the advertising dollars were tremendous. And so they ignored it. And we think we can turn on the news and know, okay, we’re gonna be told what might kill us, what might kill our children, what we should eat, what we shouldn’t eat. We think we’re covered. We’re anything but covered, Farron. It’s outrageous the lack of sunlight that the media puts on stories like this. Black women have been at risk for decades now, unnecessarily, and we owe it to the fact we got a media that doesn’t give a because dollars is all that matters. And an FDA, that doesn’t give a because that guy that’s making the decision with the FDA is looking for a job with L’Oreal or one of the other companies.
A new study’s found that there’s something definitely off about YouTube’s recommendation algorithms and left-leaning videos are recommended far less than video creators on the right. Wow. We see this, don’t we, constantly? I don’t know that you could call my stuff left-leaning. Most of the stuff I do is it’s consumer generated. It’s certainly the middle of the road where it comes to politics. I’m not Democrat or Republican, either one. But we see throttle back on political. I see your stuff throttled back all the time. Every day, we’re a family here. Ring of Fire’s very much a family and we all know what everybody’s doing, and we want everybody to have an opinion. And your opinions are absolutely throttled back when you start going far after Trump or after Republicans. If it doesn’t look conservative, they’re throttled back. Right?
Farron Cousins: Yeah. And there is a new study that seems to confirm this. It’s this study out of London, we hear the US we don’t do meaningful things. But what they did was they looked at this and they created these different online personas to test and see what YouTube would recommend. They had one that was a mommy vlogger. So we’re interested in stuff for moms and parents. We have one that is a staunch conservative, one that’s a staunch liberal, one that is a Spanish speaking mother. And what they found across the board was that if you’re right-leaning, they’re gonna recommend right-leaning material to you, as they should. That’s what you like. But if you’re left-leaning, you’re actually not getting recommended more left-leaning content. They will throw right-wing content at you. They will throw culture war issue at you. And most importantly, the main thing they’re pushing is religious content. So, whereas the right-wing people will get recommendations for Fox News, the left-wing people are not getting recommended left-wing content.
Mike Papantonio: Do you know what’s scary about it? They say that algorithms are driven by the pulse of the nation. You ever heard the term?
Farron Cousins: Yeah.
Mike Papantonio: Pulse of the nation. We are figuring out, we have AI looking at everything. They’re analyzing polls. They’re analyzing what’s being said out there in social media and we’re reacting to the pulse of the nation. And what that tells you is what the pulse of the nation is a movement to the right. I mean, that’s the only thing you can conclude from this. And these are folks that they’re hanging their hat on the idea that we’re calling it right because I think what you’re saying is completely correct. We see it here firsthand. We see the throttle back when you do something.
Farron Cousins: We can see our views from recommended videos start to dwindle.
Mike Papantonio: Oh, absolutely.
Farron Cousins: Because it happens about once a year, once every two years. And it’s something that, by the way, just I guess anecdotally here, but it has happened in the last month to essentially every left-leaning channel. MeidasTouch, TYT, Brian Tyler Cohen, Majority Report, David Pakman,
Mike Papantonio: Yeah. They’re doing stories on it. They’re saying this is bad.
Farron Cousins: Right. And us, and so it does happen across the board. But when you look at the right-leaning channels, there’s no drop in traffic. There’s no drop in advertising. They always seem to be unaffected when the left goes through these doldrums, which shouldn’t be happening in an election year when people are actually seeking out political news. But it does happen for some reason.
Mike Papantonio: Well, if you believe that algorithms are driven by this thing called pulse of the nation, it gives you a sense of what we might be concerned about. Right.
Food costs for Americans continue to soar, and so do the profits of the corporations selling us food. In fact, multiple studies have found that the prices we’re paying for food far outpace the rate of inflation. At the same time, corporations are spending record profits on stock buybacks. Here’s this, this is such an ugly story in the sense that, first of all, you have these corporations arguing, well, it’s because of COVID. COVID made us do it. Well, really? Because COVIS is gone now and you’re still coming in at these ridiculous increases. The other thing we’re hearing is, well, this is because of the American Rescue Plan that Biden signed, that he signed. Well, there are two sides to that. Yes, it is. There’s some inflation because of it. These things that Biden has done that are inflationary, the Inflationary Reduction Act actually became inflationary. They’re making all these lobbyist arguments that really sound pretty convincing when you listen to what they’re saying and they have the numbers to kinda show it. But at the end of the day, it’s PepsiCo, people like Walmart, PepsiCo saying, look, we just want more money. We want to pay our CEOs more money. We want more money for ourselves and hell with everybody else.
Farron Cousins: Well listen, when we’re in times of high inflation, as we’ve discussed a million times, we’ll discuss it a million more times before we’re through as well, in periods of high inflation corporations make it very clear, we’re gonna raise our prices above what inflation is. And right now that rate is about 7%, a 7% increase over inflation is what these corporations are passing on to us. Pepsi, Kroger, Walmart, all the usual suspects here. So they are making more profits than at any other point in history while claiming, oh, no, no, no. Things are, we got to do this because inflation’s so bad. No. All of the, The Lever put together all the numbers for all the companies.
Mike Papantonio: Lever, by the way, if you have any doubt about this, go read The Lever. These folks get it right all the time.
Farron Cousins: Every time.
Mike Papantonio: Every time. And I mean, the numbers are easy to look at. You got inflation at this rate, you got increases at this rate. You got stock buyouts that are skyrocketing. And the stock buyout, all it is, it’s good for the shareholder, it’s good for the people at the top and to hell with everybody else trying to buy milk or bread. It doesn’t really make a difference.
Farron Cousins: Yeah. Because we’re seeing grocery prices, the price of eggs has increased by 93%. So the price of eggs has almost doubled in the last two years. Milk is over 80% increase. We are getting screwed and part of that, little part of it is inflation because inflation’s coming down a little bit, but the prices are not. So these companies, when they raised their prices during inflation, eventually they may drop ’em down a couple pennies and people will say, oh, okay, it came down, but they’re still way higher than they were before inflation.
Mike Papantonio: This isn’t rocket science. There are indexes that show you this day to day. It’s not like you have to figure this out. You got an inflation index, you got a price increase index. It’s right there. And the truth of the matter is, I’m a little concerned that there hasn’t been any effort to have price controls and say at least threaten them with price controls. Say, look, you continue to do this, you’re 7% above what the inflation rate. I’m not seeing any reaction either way. You know it’s about your stock buyouts. You know it’s about the greed of management with a corporation.
Farron Cousins: The golden parachutes.
Mike Papantonio: There’s not even, but there’s not even any threat to it. You see, that’s what bothers me. A leader says, you know, you continue doing this, not only are you affecting the chances of us being reelected because inflation is one of the key issues. But you’re also affecting the rights of American consumers to be able to live a life, a quality life without being, it’s a license loot. That’s the best explanation. Somebody used the term in the story, license to loot, COVID gave them a license to loot, inflation arguments have given them a license to loot. And at the end of the day, it’s a lot more complicated than that.
Farron Cousins: No. The one person, and I do mean one person that has been consistent on this issue.
Mike Papantonio: Elizabeth Warren.
Farron Cousins: Elizabeth Warren,
Mike Papantonio: Elizabeth Warren.
Farron Cousins: She’s been sounding this alarm for two years now,
Mike Papantonio: Every time. And nevertheless, we ignore her. Now we’re talking about one of the segments we did was on, really 350 million Americans, this is what we have to choose from. Why not an Elizabeth Warren? Why not somebody like that? Okay.
Democratic strategists are worried that President Biden has put too much faith in his longtime advisor and his current election strategy and it could be a losing one. Instead of focusing on issues like the economy, Biden’s being told to focus on his message that I’m better than Trump and democracy is at risk. Haven’t we seen this before? Doesn’t this remind you of the Podesta brothers, those nut-bags that cost Hillary the election because they thought they could just run on hate Trump? And they had so much to talk about, right?
Farron Cousins: Yeah. This is a repeat of eight years ago. I’m better than Donald Trump. This guy’s crazy. This guy’s now a convicted felon. Look how bad he is on the issues. And the voters say, we know that. We’ve been through that, but why are you better? That’s the key.
Mike Papantonio: That’s the point.
Farron Cousins: And what’s happening now is that Biden has this advisor that has been by his side.
Mike Papantonio: Oh, he’s a bonehead, absolute bonehead.
Farron Cousins: Since 1981. He has had this guy working for him since 1981. So we’re talking 43 years. Mike Donilon is his name and Donilon is telling him, no, no, no, no, no.
Mike Papantonio: Fear for democracy.
Farron Cousins: Yeah.
Mike Papantonio: That’s his argument. Now, we’ve talked about this before, before this story ever surfaced, you and I were talking about what a ridiculous argument. How does the average American embrace, we’re worried about democracy, January 6th is gonna change my vote, when they’re worried about food, they’re worried about mortgage payments, they’re worried about fuel prices, they’re worried about wars that are going on all around the world. They’re worried about stuff that they talk about at the dinner table. They don’t wake up and say, oh my God, if we elect Trump, democracy is at risk. You hear all of these talking heads on places like MSNBC or The View, I mean, you want to really watch nauseating discussion, watch The View. Force yourself to watch The View the entire time. Sit there and force yourself to watch it and they’ll go off on these tangents, oh, democracy’s at risk if Trump is elected. We’re gonna lose democracy. Those arguments sound so ridiculous and there’s only a fraction of the American public that buys it. You hear it on M-S-N-B-C and you hear it on the cables. What percentage of American public actually even watch?
Farron Cousins: Three.
Mike Papantonio: 3%.
Farron Cousins: Watches any cable news.
Mike Papantonio: Watches any cable news, 3%. And that’s where this comes from. Right?
Farron Cousins: Right.
Mike Papantonio: So Donilon, what’s his name? Mike Donilon.
Farron Cousins: Donilon.
Mike Papantonio: Donilon. Okay. So he embraces that and says, we’re gonna win by scaring the hell out of everybody that democracy is at risk. It’s a ridiculous argument. He’s being told. James Carville went completely ballistic with this guy and said, you idiot, talk about issues that matter.
Farron Cousins: Right. And you have, according to this report here, all of the other Biden advisors are trying to warn him, stop listening to this guy. He’s wrong. Okay. So they know you’ve gotta talk about the infrastructure act. You’ve gotta talk about how the economy, while not perfect, is better. You have to do these things to show your accomplishments and what you want to do in the next four years. People know this guy is horrible. That’s not even debatable except amongst his own supporters. You’ve gotta close the deal by telling us why you are better.
Mike Papantonio: Farron, let me ask you, okay, you’re sitting at the dinner table with your wife and your children, and you’re talking about what are the issues of the day, do you begin with democracies at risk? Or do you begin with the fact that the milk they’re drinking, the price has increased 20%, or that the steak, or the chicken or whatever it is they’re eating has increased 8%? What’s the discussion, really? Or how are we’re gonna pay for cloths for school? That’s table talk. They don’t go to the table and talk about something as esoteric as democracy’s at risk. We’re gonna be, this is gonna be a new Stalin homeland. They don’t. The MSNBC folks do, that two or three percent, you know, or the CNN folks do, or maybe even the Fox do, but that’s such a small percentage of the American voter. But Donilon thinks, well, that’s where the key is. Right?
Farron Cousins: Well, I’ve mentioned this a lot in videos, and the fact is the Capitol riot, as bad as that was.
Mike Papantonio: It was terrible.
Farron Cousins: The public has already forgotten about it a lot. Just like, I use this example a lot too, George W. Bush, he never had an approval rating higher than 50%. His approval rating today is in the high seventies. Why?
Mike Papantonio: They forgot.
Farron Cousins: Because people forget how bad things are in hindsight. And so if the election were held in February or March of 2021, right after the Capitol riot, you’d have nothing but Democrats elected across the board. But people forgot. They’ve moved on. In hindsight, maybe it wasn’t as bad as I thought it was, and I disagree with that mindset, but they’ve got other issues to worry about. They say, listen, don’t fill the glass of milk to the top because we gotta make that last an extra three days.
Mike Papantonio: All week. Yeah.
Farron Cousins: And that is what is more important to them.
Mike Papantonio: Or cut your medicine in half.
Farron Cousins: Yeah, that’s a big one.
Mike Papantonio: Cut your medicine in half because you can’t afford to buy medicine. That’s what people talk about. They don’t talk about the ramparts are being charged by crazies and democracies at risk. They don’t. And they forget. How do you forget that Bush and Cheney killed, at least a million people, based on a lie, based on something they just made up, weapons of mass destruction. But if you ask people like that, they have a faint memory. Yeah. Okay. Well, we killed a lot of soldiers. We wounded a lot of soldiers unnecessarily. We spent gazillions of dollars, and it was all a lie.
Farron Cousins: Well, and now Liz Cheney is a hero because she hates Donald Trump.
Mike Papantonio: Oh, yeah. Liz Cheney’s a hero.
Farron Cousins: That’s infuriating. I can’t.
Mike Papantonio: Is Cheney still? Is that, is it a mechanical heart that he has in him now? Is he still?
Farron Cousins: I don’t know if he’s just all cyborg at this point, but he’s still out there somehow, some way.
Mike Papantonio: Okay. He’s out there by way of his daughter, Liz. Thanks for joining me. Okay.
Farron Cousins: Thank you.
Mike Papantonio: That’s all the time we have, but all these segments are gonna be posted right here on this channel in the coming week, so make sure you’re subscribed. I’m Mike Papantonio, 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 tell the story. Or their tribal politics are so Democrat or so Republican that they can’t color outside the lines. We don’t have that problem here. We aren’t beholding to corporations, and we’re sure not beholding to political parties. 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.
