Democratic strategists are worried that President Biden has put too much faith in his long-time adviser, and his current election strategy could be a losing one. Instead of focusing on issues like the economy, Biden is being told to focus his message on “I’m better than Trump,” and that may not be enough this year. 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: 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.
