America’s Lawyer E104: Last week’s Presidential debate was an absolute disaster for President Biden. Media outlets all over the world have been calling for the President to step aside and let someone else be the Democratic nominee this year, but after a weekend with his family and advisers, Biden is refusing to let anyone else take his place. Ring of Fire’s Farron Cousins joins Mike Papantonio to talk about what’s happening.
Transcript:
*This transcript was generated by a third-party transcription software company, so please excuse any typos.
Mike Papantonio: I’m Mike Papantonio, and this is America’s Lawyer. Last week, presidential debate was an absolute disaster for President Biden. Media outlets all over the world have been calling for the president to step down and let someone else be in charge of the Democratic nominee position this year. But after a weekend with his family and advisors, Biden is still refusing to let anyone else take his place. I’ve got Ring of Fire’s Farron Cousins with me now to talk about what’s happening. Freezing on stage, discussing healthcare, discussing the economy, disorientation, it’s a freak out. The first people freak out, obviously, are the donors, right? Because they put so much money in. I mean, you’ve got the weapons industry. It’s expensive buying politicians. The weapons industry put millions into Biden, pharmaceutical industry, millions, banking industry, the Chamber of Commerce, so they could get all this immigration. So, that was the deal. We’re gonna, we’ll support you, but bring in immigrants so we can have cheap labor. This is all, this is an expensive thing for donors and right now they are totally gone bananas. What’s your take?
Farron Cousins: Yeah, absolutely. Friday morning, morning after the debate, I’m going through news like I do every single morning and what stuck out to me was not just the fact that you had all these American outlets freaking out about Biden, talking about how horrible it was, but it was the international outlets. BBC, The Guardian, Al Jazeera, all over the world they were freaking out about what they saw on that stage Thursday night, because it’s not just about policy here in the United States. These other countries know like, well, wait a minute. That’s the guy I have to work with as an ally, that’s the guy I need as a trade partner. And if he can’t even do the job, I know the other guy on that stage is also horrible for our country. We are screwed, they’re saying across Europe.
Mike Papantonio: Here’s what they’re saying. You’ve got people who would blow us off the face of the map. Okay. You don’t think Iran’s looking at this, North Korea’s looking at it. Everybody, all these nutcase world leaders are looking at this guy freeze up, and they’re saying, this is the guy in charge. Maybe it’s time we make a move. This is a Commander in Chief that if you listen to what’s being said now that he has something called the sun downer syndrome. I’m not really familiar with it other than the fact that people are suffering from dementia. I think you’ve done a segment on this, but the’s suffering from sun downer syndrome, and I’d like you to talk about it. But this is a guy that in the middle of the night, has to make complex decisions about the safety of this country. They’re complex, they’re critical situations that he has to make quick decisions from. And they’re saying now, well, no, he has this syndrome. It’s called sun downer syndrome. Talk about it.
Farron Cousins: Yeah. What happens according to mental health professionals, is you see a lot of this in people with dementia or Alzheimer’s or a handful of other very serious cognitive problems. And what sundowning means is almost exactly that. When the sun starts going down, at the end of the day, this individual suffering has been through the entire day and they can wake up sharp as a tack. Right. Totally coherent, cognizant of everything. And then as the day goes on, later afternoon, early evening, that’s when they start slipping. And the reason that we see a lot of this talk right now is, because obviously this debate, which started at 9:00 PM Biden’s terrible, he can’t string two sentences together to save his life.
Mike Papantonio: What are the hours? Basically on what you’ve looked at, this is not something new. This is something they’ve looked at.
Farron Cousins: Oh yeah, this is absolutely.
Mike Papantonio: What kind of hours are you talking about? They get up in the morning, four o’clock, five o’clock, they’re out of it. What happens?
Farron Cousins: Typically Yeah. Later afternoon is what it says. It can happen earlier, it can happen a little later. But when you start seeing that, that is a very troubling sign. And again, to just kind of reiterate it, Biden could not perform at 9:00 PM. The next day while still suffering from that cold because he was coughing a lot, but at 1:00 PM the next day, he gives a speech in Raleigh, North Carolina. Great speech, energy.
Mike Papantonio: But is he’s off a teleprompter there?
Farron Cousins: But he’s got the energy. He’s not dragging. He’s not looking off into space. He performed well. And honestly, I think the difference is literally night and day. We’re seeing it.
Mike Papantonio: Do we want a nighttime president, I guess is what it comes down to. Look, this is, they can’t hide him in the basement again. Okay. If you remember just several months ago, they said, we’re gonna do the same thing we did last time. We’re gonna put him in the basement. He’s gonna come out when we have to bring him out, but he’s gonna be in the basement. And so the problem is they can’t do that now. Right. I mean, it’s out there. And the question is, how bad is it? How do you put him in the basement now?
Farron Cousins: Oh, you absolutely cannot. It’s gonna look like you are in fact, hiding him from the public. And what’s really concerning here is that now, now that this is out in the open, we’re starting to see these people that have worked around him throughout his administration, and they’re saying, well, wait a minute, guys. This is actually not new. We have been raising the alarm bells from inside this administration for years. Carl Bernstein, renowned journalist.
Mike Papantonio: Exactly. And how do you get any more left than Carl Bernstein? But go ahead, pick up with that.
Farron Cousins: He comes out and says, listen, we have heard this. We have been told this. We have also been told that this administration, the people in charge of Biden have dismissed it at every point. Staffers from the White House came out earlier this week, and they said, we feel like we have been lied to because we have, this guy has been hidden from us.
Mike Papantonio: Okay. I don’t buy that. I know that’s what they’ve said. I don’t buy it. Look, the corporate media is complicit in all of this. Corporate media, they know what’s going on. They’ve known what’s going on, but this is their guy. They thought they could make it through one more cycle. If we can just get him through one more cycle, he’s gonna give us all this stuff that he’s giving them. As you know, we’ve done stories on that. But as corporate media, there’s no way that they can stand back and say, well, we didn’t know it. Yeah. He’s been their waterboy, he’s been their fanboy for at least a year and a half, maybe even two years. They knew it. The staff knew it. Obama knew it. Hillary renew it. And instead of telling us they create this elaborate lie, this remarkable reality, elaborate lie that they repeat again and again to where there’s nothing serious. Don’t paint it. There’s nothing to look at here.
What you’re seeing with your eyes, it ain’t real. You’re making that up. It’s all fake. And this elaborate lie during a time when this man is in a very serious mental decline where they understand, it’s like the New York Times, New York Times said, for the good of the country. Now, that’s really it, isn’t it? For the good of the country, step down, rather than taking this selfish, this selfish risk that you’re putting out there by saying, look, I can do this again. I can do it again. He’s doesn’t seem to understand the imminent risk that he poses every time he gets on stage and does that, every time he falls down, every time he bumps into a wall, every time we start seeing this mumbling gibberish, we’re not the only people seeing it. But the corporate media and the Obamas and Hillary Clinton and all of the Democratic Washington elite said, don’t believe what you’re seeing. It’s not real. It’s almost like a line out of the animal farm. You know, it’s where the pigs were telling the sheep, don’t believe what you’re seeing. And they’re saying, well, what the hell happened to the other sheep? Well, don’t believe what you’re seeing. That’s the problem here, isn’t it?
Farron Cousins: It it really is. And look, we also have all of these people that at one point were firmly behind Biden. James Carville, Paul Begala, both of them coming out in the last few days here telling us, oh God, there’s a problem. Get him off the ticket.
Mike Papantonio: Oh, Begala even said that? I know Carville.
Farron Cousins: Begala said that. I saw it this morning. Begala did come out too.
Mike Papantonio: Carville’s been saying it. And every time Carville says it, all the snowflakes go freaking crazy. How dare he say that? Everybody’s been saying it. Jon Stewart, Bill Maher, name it, Cenk with TYT. They’ve been saying this for a long time.
Farron Cousins: But Carville, a month ago we were talking about how Carville said, hey, young people, if you don’t vote for Biden, you’re idiots, basically.
Mike Papantonio: Oh, I know.
Farron Cousins: And now he says, oh no, nobody needs to vote for this guy. We need a different person.
Mike Papantonio: Okay, I get that. But, but Farron, doesn’t it just really burn you up that it’s not like Carville didn’t have any indication of this? Carville is on the inner circle there, man. Just like the media is part of the inner circle. They’ve known this and they’ve been willing to sacrifice and risk the safety of this country so they can have their guy. It’s like a team baseball. Oh, we want the guy with, our guy. We don’t want the guy with the red hat. We want the guy with the blue hat because he’s on our team. But you know what, it was almost crazy to watch. I mean, Hollywood, Rob Reiner comes out in his talking like he’s demented. Obviously if you listen to Rob Reiner, his reaction to all this, it’s almost like he’s a demented crazy man.
Jane Fonda, oh, I cried all night because of it. Jeffrey Katzenberg, you almost expected him to say, where are my seven dwarfs? Where are my Disney seven dwarfs so we can get this guy the hell off the stage? It’s disgusting because they’ve all known it. And every time we talked about it, it was, oh my God, how dare you say that about our president. But the truth is, we’re in the middle of it now. I mean, where does it go from here? How do you, first of all, I don’t see a recovery. Okay. They can put him in front of a teleprompter. He can read like a child when he is having a good day, sometime before four o’clock in the afternoon. But at the end of the day, he has to answer questions, man. Journalists have to ask him questions, and he’s gotta be able to deal with that off of the teleprompter.
Farron Cousins: Yeah. And I don’t know that he can fully recover from this. Look, he was already, the day before the debate, the latest polls came out, showed that they had shifted again. Trump was ahead by one point in those polls. He had gotten tons of great polling news after Trump’s convictions. So you’re facing a convicted felon at that point and even before you melted down on that debate stage, you started losing to him again. The polls have now shifted. He’s now losing by three points in those same polls to Donald Trump. Again, a convicted felon who also is not mentally all there.
Mike Papantonio: Exactly. How do you even, but the Democrats understand that. The Democrats, all they gotta do is put up a real candidate. They’re saying, well, maybe Kamala Harris. Really? Kamala Harris is gonna fix this. This guy Trump should not.
Farron Cousins: She’s complicit in it.
Mike Papantonio: Yeah. Oh, she’s absolutely complicit.
Farron Cousins: So you can’t put her up.
Mike Papantonio: She’s with him every afternoon. They’re in those offices talking and he’s freezing up after four o’clock there too. But he’s gonna be, Trump is gonna be the next president, and it’s wholly because of what happened with that inner circle, the Obamas, Hillary Clinton, the corporate media, donors that should have known better, staff that should have known better, all of the talking heads that clearly knew better and defended him anyway, because he was a Democrat. And they can’t think anything except Democrat. And as I look at this, this nepotism, this hanger on culture, can you imagine what they’re going through right now? Those folks that their whole life is getting invited to the White House for a White House dinner, being able to take a picture with Uncle Joe, with their arm around the President. These hangers on are in hell right now because most of them paid big, big money to have that kind of access and now that’s even gone. So they’re defending him. They have to defend him. They have to defend him and that’s what’s so sad about this.
Farron Cousins: Yeah. And now there’s even talk, according to a report out on Tuesday this week, there’s talk that they may go ahead and just nominate him early,
Mike Papantonio: Early. I saw that.
Farron Cousins: So that you don’t have any more of this talk that, hey, what about Gretchen Whitmer? Hey, what about Gavin Newsom? Hey, what about Andy Beshear? By the way, Beshear, Democratic Governor of Kentucky, a red state. But he’s proven, hey, I can win a red state. There’s a good person sitting right there you could snatch up, pair him with Gretchen Whitmer, put Elizabeth Warren with somebody, fricking Bernie Sanders. I mean, my God, Sheldon Whitehouse. I could name so many people right now that you could stick on that ticket. But instead, look, I’m seeing posts on social media from these vote blue no matter who people that say that he’s the only one who can beat Trump and that is, that’s BS. It’s BS.
Mike Papantonio: The blue hearts. You know what our people know to do? If they see the blue hearts on comments, they’re out of there. Because all that is, is trolls. They’re the same people that you, we did a story one time where you were in Washington and you had all these social media folks in there. Oh, they’re gonna meet the president. He’s having lunch with us. All we have to do is go online and put a bunch of frigging blue hearts up every day and we’ve done our job. Right? I mean, isn’t that part of the problem? These folks are so committed to this access to, oh, I know the president, I was in his, I had dinner with him. I went to the Christmas party. It’s just nauseating, man.
Farron Cousins: Look, if Donald Trump got up on that stage and did any of the things that Biden did, if he froze, if he had told us we finally beat Medicare, I would’ve been doing segments about it, up right now, I’d be doing a segment about it again, I promise you because I do cover all of his slips and all of his mental screw ups and all the horrible things he says. But I’m also not gonna sit here and defend Biden when it’s something I would’ve attacked Trump for. Absolutely not. I’m not that tribal. I’m not gonna be, what do they call it? Blue MAGA. I’m not Blue MAGA.
Mike Papantonio: Blue MAGA. Yeah. I’ve got right here. Yeah. That is the new thing. Blue MAGA is no different than Red MAGA. They’re blue, Red MAGA is red. That’s the only difference. What about, I don’t know if you’ve wondered, you know Saturday Night Live has never done, they’ve had so much material. How do you not do a segment on this about what’s happening? They could have started this a long time ago, and we could have said, well, let’s take a look at it. But no, their goal, corporate media is to protect the guy. It’s small things like that, that all coalesce and they allow this man to make it this far. And I don’t, even if you replaced him right now, it wouldn’t make any difference. I see any difference.
Farron Cousins: Well, Biden’s very lucky because right now, SNL, it’s summertime. So they’re not doing new shows. Although they have come back and done special segments here and there, but he is so lucky that they’re not around to be able to make fun of him.
Mike Papantonio: But they wouldn’t do it anyway. That’s my point. They wouldn’t do it anyway. That’s kind of the point I’m trying to make, Farron, is that they’re so committed to this one ideology that all of this has been happening for two years, and they’ve been totally silent. They don’t even do a segment to where people might ask a question, what the hell is this about? You know, one thing that bothers me, and not just me, it bothers a lot of political writers, is what I call her Lady McBiden. Lady McBiden, who doesn’t have enough decency, doesn’t have enough class to give her husband, 81-year-old man with dementia, permission to quit. What’s your reaction to that? I mean, it really bothers me. The last few years, just give him, let him live with a little grace, a little dignity in the last few years of his life. Why do you wanna put him in the middle of this?
Farron Cousins: You know, I’ve seen a lot of that too. And right now, nobody on this planet knows that man better than Dr. Jill Biden. So she sees this, alright. There’s no way that she cannot see what has happened to her husband over the years. She is with him all day. So she knows the difference. Like he wakes up, we have wonderful conversations, by the end of the day, I don’t know what he’s saying anymore. So there is no excuse. She should be the one protecting him and saying, Joe, listen. They had that meeting over the weekend in the Hamptons where the whole family was there, even Hunter, and Hunter says, dad, stay in. Well, we know why you want him to stay in.
Mike Papantonio: Yeah, of course.
Farron Cousins: But Jill should have said, no, listen, look, we know how dangerous what’s on that other side is. We have to just make sure that that doesn’t win. And unfortunately, that means you can’t do this anymore. Look, you were President of the United States. You will be in the history books.
Mike Papantonio: Right. I was First Lady.
Farron Cousins: Right.
Mike Papantonio: But, it’s almost like she can’t let go of that First Lady status. I can’t let go of this. This is just, this is too intriguing. It’s too big for me to let go, to have the decency, to give my husband permission to, you don’t have to do this, Joe. Live your last life, the last part of your life. He’s 81 years old. Live the last part of your life with some dignity, with some grace. I’m all good with that. The family’s good with that. You have nothing to prove to us. Isn’t that what you do if you really care for somebody?
Farron Cousins: Look, we sat here saying the same thing about Dianne Feinstein. Like, listen.
Mike Papantonio: Oh, good point.
Farron Cousins: You’ve spent too much time in office. You’ve got some good accomplishments. Retire with dignity and let somebody else, you know, pass the torch to somebody else. And then what happened? She didn’t do it. She died in office. Now, we’ve lost two amazing people from the House of Representatives who ran for that Senate seat, Katie Porter and Barbara Lee ,not gonna be in Congress next year because Dianne Feinstein wouldn’t retire. And it me off. And we’re looking at the same thing here. I don’t even know if he’ll make it to the election.
Mike Papantonio: Oh, he’s not gonna make it to the election. The entire DNC has been gaslighting the American public. That’s the bottom line here. They want us to believe something that our eyes are telling us this isn’t believable. It’s almost as if they expect that there’s some fairy dust, maybe we’re gonna sprinkle some fairy dust on voters and all of a sudden, they’re not gonna believe what their eyes are seeing. They’re not gonna believe what their ears are hearing. They’re stupid. We’re counting on the American public being so stupid that we can’t understand what happened on that stage and what’s happened so many times throughout the year that you and I have done stories on. And where we were trying to say early, this is a problem. And now, 72% of the American public are justifiably freaked out. They’re saying, we gotta do something. 25%, well, they don’t care. They’re mentally, they don’t care that they have a mentally impaired president with this thing that you call the sun downer syndrome that’s making life and death decisions for our families, for our children, for our families. And it’s almost as if the indifference comes to me in this way, is that the American public is so stupid and that we don’t really care. We don’t really care. All that we care is that we win our team sport. Do they have a plan? What’s their plan going forward?
Farron Cousins: Oh, my God. Yeah. Axios spoke to people in the Biden campaign and said, we got a plan. Don’t worry, an eight point plan here. Here’s what we’re gonna do. Dismiss the bedwetting, whatever that means.
Mike Papantonio: Wait, wait. Okay. We’re called bedwetters. How about bleeders? I’m not bedwetting. I’m bleeding through the eyes and ears worried about this country because of he. But they call me, call us a bedwetter. Okay.
Farron Cousins: Yeah. Squeeze polls for juice.
Mike Papantonio: What does that mean? Squeeze the polls.
Farron Cousins: I don’t even know. I can’t even make sense of that.
Mike Papantonio: Well, I think what it means is find any little hope, find some county in Minnesota where they love the guy. Squeeze it and say, look, this county in Minnesota, they really love this guy. Poll the Hollywood stars, oh, they all love him. So everything must be okay because celebrities, you know, they’re so freaking smart. That’s what I think squeezing the polls means.
Farron Cousins: Yeah. Warn of chaos. Which of course that is obviously like, hey, our guy might have one foot in the grave, but the other guy is very dangerous. And yes, he is very dangerous. I totally understand that. I say it every day.
Mike Papantonio: I do too. It’s not, this is not my guy. But do you think protect democracy is winning? Is protect democracy going to overcome the fundamental problems we’re seeing with Biden right now?
Farron Cousins: No, because based on that poll you just mentioned, the 72%, they think protecting the democracy means keeping him out of office. Keeping Biden out of office.
Mike Papantonio: That’s their talking point. Tell all of our little social media trolls, we have to save democracy. I mean, it’s like those same words. It’s speak these words and it’s really gonna take hold. What are their other plans here?
Farron Cousins: Limit dissent. So, people like us, don’t listen to us, you know, listen to the campaign. They’ll tell you what’s real, not us.
Mike Papantonio: Yeah. Campaign people are so much smarter.
Farron Cousins: Keep elected leaders close, which means insulate Biden with his little cheerleaders and use them as the surrogates. Right. We don’t need to send him out there, oh, we’ve got this good politician. Maybe Gavin Newsom, you go out and do a speech for Biden instead of Biden doing it himself.
Mike Papantonio: So that’s about number what, number five in seven, in they’re eight point. This, you’re reading they’re eight point plan.
Farron Cousins: Yeah.
Mike Papantonio: And these words are actually their words. Get elected leaders close. I kinda have to think about that. I think you hit it on the head though, isn’t it? It’s like you show up in Georgia and you have the elected leader up next to Biden, and all of a sudden Biden doesn’t look so demented, I suppose. That’s the only thing, go ahead.
Farron Cousins: Get the donor class to chill. That’s, get the donor class to chill, is there.
Mike Papantonio: Do they look chilled right now? Do they look, they look completely bonkers because they’ve invested so much into access to this president. Like I say, the weapons industry, the pharmaceutical industry, the Chamber of Commerce, corporate defense firms. You see all these appointments coming up to the bench right now, all these new appointments to the federal bench, three quarters of them come from silk stocking corporate defense firms.
Farron Cousins: Well, what’s funny about that too, get the donor class to chill. They are obviously referring to the corporations and the wealthy.
Mike Papantonio: Oh yeah.
Farron Cousins: Because they raised $27 million right after the debate, which is actually pretty good considering his performance. But that’s from average mom and pop, $10 a pop donors. So they’re not worried about the small time donors. They’re only worried about the big donors, which shows you, that’s a problem in and of itself.
Mike Papantonio: The donor class.
Farron Cousins: Yeah.
Mike Papantonio: The donor class.
Farron Cousins: That is a horrible phrase. You don’t ever wanna be considered part of that.
Mike Papantonio: I mean, who would even use the word, the donor class? Like they have some position that’s so ethereal and it’s so much superior to the average American.
Farron Cousins: Well, we usually use it as an insult.
Mike Papantonio: Yeah, it is to me. Here, they’re using it as a positive. Okay. What else do the Democrats say that they’re gonna do to overcome what just happened?
Farron Cousins: Prove vitality. So I guess you’re gonna have more pictures of him on his bike, showing that, hey, he’s got energy. And then.
Mike Papantonio: Well, can I ask you something now? Because this thing about they’re pump, they’re jacking him up with drugs. What is your take on that? Is that just hype or is it just, is it ridiculous talk? And if it is, can they do it 24 hours a day? Can they keep him jacked up 24 hours a day?
Farron Cousins: A week ago, I was sitting here saying, that is absolutely ridiculous. But now, I can’t say it’s ridiculous. You look at what he did at the State of the Union, there could be something to it. I mean.
Mike Papantonio: You know, while we’re on that topic, you know why I love doing the show with you? because you’re so brutally honest. I really like that. I hate, you know, for so many years I did, I was in a box and I had to do the show with everybody who agrees. Yeah. This is exactly what. But what I love about what you do, your brand, is you’re able to look at both sides and you’re able to say, this is what’s really happening, guys. Even though you go after Trump every day, beat the hell outta him every day, you’re still able to step back and we’re able to have this discussion. What’s the other thing in their list, the DNC’s list of this is what we gotta do?
Farron Cousins: This is the dumbest and biggest one to me, ignore/engage the media. So if it’s negative media, ignore ’em. Screw ’em. Get the hell outta here. But otherwise, let’s use them. Let’s manipulate them, engage with them, which is where the social media folks come in. Let’s get our TikTok influencers to go out there and talk about why the debate wasn’t that bad. Let’s go out there and have them bash Trump all the time. And look, again, as somebody who bashes Trump every day, it’s easy to do because he gives you new material every day. But we’ve gotta be honest about what’s happening here too. I’m not gonna put a happy face on it because there’s no happy face on this story. None.
Mike Papantonio: So, okay. So you’ve got the journalist side of it. I’m gonna have the big story. I’m gonna have access to Biden if I kiss his butt. I’m gonna maybe even be, who knows, press secretary one day, or on the press secretary staff. The social media guys, it’s just weird to me. It’s like you described that time that you saw ’em in Washington and they were all in front of the White House with Biden out there embracing them, not really thinking, not critically thinking about what it is they’re asking them to do, you see, go out and say positive under any circumstance. That’s what they’re told to do. Go out with your blue flags across the screen and do it every day. But think about how shallow that is and think about that, if that is what we have to rely on to get the President of the United States elected, that’s pretty scary stuff.
Farron Cousins: Well, you know what, and just on that note, over the 20 years we’ve been doing this now, you’ve never been invited to go chill at the White House. But you’ve been invited to speak in front of workers organizations. In front of unions, in front of populist groups. Like all the real average working class people, those are the people that are inviting us to come and be a part of that.
Mike Papantonio: Because we don’t give a.
Farron Cousins: Exactly.
Mike Papantonio: I could not possibly care less about having my picture taken at the White House dinner. I mean, really? Everything we do day to day is the other side of that. Everything we do at this law firm is anti-corporate, when corporations mess up or when they kill people or when they do things they weren’t supposed to do. That’s the side we’re on. So yeah, we do line up with labor. We do line up with the populist movement.
Farron Cousins: And environmental groups, and all that.
Mike Papantonio: Environmental groups.
Farron Cousins: And so, I couldn’t imagine being one of those people where your goal is, I get to go to the White House.
Mike Papantonio: It’s nauseating.
Farron Cousins: Sure, it’d be awesome to do that, but you’re not actually helping people. And that’s the big difference. I think after 20 years of doing this, we have helped people.
Mike Papantonio: Oh, I hope, you definitely have.
Farron Cousins: And sometimes we help ’em by telling them the unfortunate truths here. But this is the truth. You may not accept it, but that doesn’t make it less true.
Mike Papantonio: Farron, keep beating the hell outta Trump and just be willing to tell the truth like you have today. And like I said, that’s why we’ve been doing business for 20 years. Okay. Thanks for joining me.
Farron Cousins: Thank you.
Mike Papantonio: That’s all the time we have for this week. I’m Mike Papantonio, and this has been America’s Lawyer, where we tell you the stories that corporate media won’t tell you because their advertisers won’t let ’em, or their tribal politics won’t allow for it. We don’t have that problem here, as you can tell, we aren’t beholden to corporations or 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.
