America’s Lawyer E106: Donald Trump managed to walk away from a failed assassination attempt this past weekend, just days before the start of the Republican convention. This event has changed the political landscape going forward, and we’ll explain what this means for the presidential race. Corporations aren’t just hoarding your data to send you targeted ads – they are using it to raise prices on items that they know you are going to purchase. We’ll tell you how this is happening. And a new poll has found that a majority of Americans are completely embarrassed by the top two presidential nominees in this year’s race. 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. Donald Trump managed to walk away from a failed assassination attempt this past weekend, just days before the start of the Republican Convention. This event has changed the political landscape going forward, and we’re gonna be talking about that. Corporations aren’t just hoarding your data anymore to send you targeted ads, they’re using it to raise prices on items that they know you’re going to purchase. We’ll tell you how this is all happening. And a new poll, it’s found that a majority of Americans completely are embarrassed by the top two presidential nominees in this race. All that and more, it’s coming up. Don’t go anywhere. America’s Lawyer starts right now.
Donald Trump narrowly avoided an assassin’s bullet this past weekend, and both Republicans and Democrat are calling for unity. They’re calling for healing in the wake of that event. But those words haven’t swayed many people. So what is this political fallout all about and how does it finally stop? Do you have any ideas? I just, right after the guy’s shot, you have these freaks on X, and they’re millennials jumping up and down about how mad they were that he wasn’t killed. You’ve got the statements coming out of the American public are just so repulsive. And I don’t care who the guy is. They’re sad that he wasn’t killed. I mean, I don’t even know how to get my arms around what’s happening in this country right now.
Farron Cousins: Yeah. Those are statements, you don’t ever make that. That is absolutely unnecessary. It’s uncalled for, and it’s not okay to say that. We also, and I’ve done segments on this, the amount of anger now coming from the right, they’re calling for war. They’re calling for deaths and public hangings. So you’ve got these two factions right now. Like, oh man, too bad he didn’t die. And this side saying, well.
Mike Papantonio: Who has all the guns?
Farron Cousins: Now we’re gonna come and get you.
Mike Papantonio: Who has all the guns? The right or the left?
Farron Cousins: So it’s.
Mike Papantonio: I’d say it’s heavily right. You
Farron Cousins: Well, it’s honestly, it’s terrifying.
Mike Papantonio: Of course it is. Of course it is.
Farron Cousins: I’m looking over my shoulder a little bit more than usual now. And the overall thing here is that it doesn’t matter where you sit politically. This is not okay. This is not the kind of thing, if you want to beat this guy, you beat him at the ballot box. You beat him with talking points, you beat him in debates. You do not ever, ever go this route. This is not okay.
Mike Papantonio: Well, Farron, again, sometimes people think I compliment you too much, but I don’t think I can compliment you too much. I really do believe when something like this, I go to you and I say, what’s your opinion on it? Because I think your takes are so precise. I honestly say it all again and again, I think you’re the best progressive commentator in the business. And so, I’m interested, so after this happens, you start seeing this kind of batshit crazy conspiracy of all sorts. What are the conspiracies that you followed and that you’re gonna be talking about the next few weeks?
Farron Cousins: Yeah. The big one, of course was this was staged. This was staged by Trump and his people. That’s why Trump didn’t get hit with this. That’s why the police backed off when they saw the guy. It’s not a conspiracy. What happened was a failure across the board with law enforcement and both the secret service. But of course, people don’t want to see the easiest explanation. Right. They think, okay, well, obviously since it didn’t get him, and you’ve got a clear shot from that rooftop, you just grazed his ear. That was planned. No, it wasn’t.
Mike Papantonio: Can you, now what, a person with a thinking like that has fried eggs for brain. I mean, there’s no other way they can describe it here, yeah, go ahead and take a shot at me from 130 yards hit my ear. I’ll have time to put some kind of blood on my face. Have we really got, has the American public, honest to God, gotten this stupid to where on X within minutes you have these buffoons, I mean, utter buffoons. You wouldn’t wanna spend 10 minutes in a room with ’em because it would hurt. They would take the air out of the room because they’re so frigging stupid. But they’re saying, oh, this is all staged. Really? At what point do we reach the age of reason again? Okay, so what other conspiracy issues kicking around out there?
Farron Cousins: Well, to me, that of course is the biggest one. And it’s fairly obvious at this point that that is not at all what happened. All the facts surrounding this show that no, that is not the case. But, you also have people pushing the conspiracy theory about the Secret Service. They wanted this.
Mike Papantonio: I know.
Farron Cousins: Which it’s like, look, okay. They did not react quickly. Sure. They should have been much faster on this.
Mike Papantonio: Well, I think it was the fourth shot, I think.
Farron Cousins: Yeah. But again, people wan to look for something to make sense of things because they don’t like the real answer. And that’s why the conspiracy theories exists.
Mike Papantonio: And so, now the thing is, well, he was a Democrat. No, he was Republican and the Democrats caused all this. No, the Republicans caused all this. Who the, who cares? I mean, really, who cares? Isn’t it just a slice in time that says we are in trouble as a nation, that we’re so divided? But, to me, they start out, well, Biden made this statement, we ought to put a target on Trump. Well, it was innocuous statement. He’s talking about, look, stop.
Farron Cousins: In private.
Mike Papantonio: In private, stop talking about me. Let’s target him. It’s not like he’s out there at a rally, let’s go target Trump. But then with that, you have all these, what I call the irrelevant has been celebrities. The worst I’ve ever seen. I mean, you’ve got this Madonna, blow Trump up, blow him up. Let’s suffocate him to death, Mickey Rourke. Lea DeLaria, blow Trump up. Rosie O’Donnell, throw him off a cliff. First of all, these are has beens. Okay. Second of all, it’s the celebrity mentality. Most of these people that are in Hollywood, and they’re making these statements as if we really give a what they’re saying. But they’re, most of them, they were studying how to act the part of Hamlet while everybody else was studying real material like history and science and mathematics. But nevertheless, we put such emphasis on what they have to say. And when we do that, all it does is adds to this problem. It adds to this division. These has beens, these irrelevant has beens. And I think it was the same way on the Republican side, when they started targeting Biden saying, oh, well, Biden, he’s the one that caused all this. That’s nonsense. Biden didn’t cause anything. And to say he did it by saying, let’s put a target on Trump. I don’t know where it stops. Do you have an idea about that?
Farron Cousins: No, but I will say, this kind of reminds me of a Chris Rock bit, from late nineties a year or two after Columbine. And he said, everybody’s trying to say, was it the music? Was it the video games that caused these kids? And he said, why can’t people just be crazy? Why can’t we just accept that there are just crazy people out there
Mike Papantonio: We’re crazy as hell. Right.
Farron Cousins: And of course, he says it as a joke. But I do think at some point we have to look at, yeah, we have a mental health crisis in this country. And that is what leads people to do this. We have people that are hugely partisan involved in politics every day. I am one of them. Something like this would never cross my mind. But there are other people who do the same thing, read politics, get enraged, and take action. So what’s the difference? Why does that person have that violent switch and others don’t? That’s what we need to get to the heart of. Not just with things like this, but with the school shootings, with anything. How do we identify those switches and how do we prevent them from going off?
Mike Papantonio: We to be able to. We understand everything about DNA and human.
Farron Cousins: Right.
Mike Papantonio: But the point, I guess the thing that’s most bothersome is even in the wake of this, people are not seriously saying, look, haven’t we taken this thing too far? Lee Atwater, we talk about him often. He was Ronald Reagan’s guy. He was the guy that understood that hate sells in politics. He really, he embraced hate in politics. And on his deathbed, he talked about, oh my God, what have I done? It was a mistake for me to take these kinds of positions. But he’s the one that took Ronald Reagan to Philadelphia, Mississippi, which is the most racist place in the country, and said, this is gonna be our next president. Well, why did he do that? He did it because he started this concept of rage rhetoric. And the idea behind rage rhetoric is that what we do is we keep our side pumped up to the point to where they can’t even clearly analyze. Okay. I don’t know where this goes, but I’m not optimistic that it lands well. A lot of folks came out with, as soon as this happened, they said, well, this is the end of the election. This is it. Trump has won.
Farron Cousins:: It, honestly, historically speaking, yeah. It would indicate that. Reagan got an eight point bounce after he got shot. Teddy Roosevelt, he was in third place in a three-way race. He then surged to second, he didn’t win because it was a three-way race. Even George W. Bush, after the Iraqi reporter threw his shoes at him during the press conference, his approval rating went up. So, it doesn’t even have to be a bullet. It could be a shoe, but whatever.
Mike Papantonio: Did it grow for a while? Did it grow and then abate? I mean, what are we, we’re five months out, right?
Farron Cousins: Well, under four actually.
Mike Papantonio: Under four months, excuse me.
Farron Cousins: Wow, God, time’s ticking too fast here. But yeah. So, it depends. Happening right now, there’s a chance he could ride it through the election. But I think he’s gonna overplay his hand. He always does.
Mike Papantonio: What would you advise him to do, keep his mouth shut?
Farron Cousins: Basically. But okay, so not the day after, on Monday of this week, they already sent out the fundraising email with that image of him, with the fist in the air, and the blood.
Mike Papantonio: Iconic image from this time. I’m telling you, it’s gonna.
Farron Cousins: But they’re gonna overplay it. And eventually the public’s gonna say, well.
Mike Papantonio: Numb to it. Right.
Farron Cousins: You got hit in the ear. Another guy is dead. Left a widow, left kids, and you’re not even acknowledging the man who is dead. And you’re whining about you got a cut on your ear. You’re gonna see some people chill out on it. You’re gonna see the MAGA folks, they will not, this is with them forever.
Mike Papantonio: Yeah. Interesting. In other words, they’re gonna overkill it till people become numb. I think is what I heard you say.
We’re a country of more than 330 million people and the top two candidates for president this year, it’s a man with one foot in the grave who can’t remember where he is most of the time. And the others is a narcissistic, convicted felon. Hellbent, apparently on revenge. Is this really the best this country can do? What do you thin, Farron? It’s amazing to me, when you think of the numbers and qualified people out there, this is what we have to choose from. This makes a person who has enough sense, has enough sense, to try to defend the indefensible with both of them. Okay. When we do a segment, what do we have to do? Are your eyes not working? Are your ears not working? Can’t you see this guy’s falling off a demented cliff? Or when you almost every day talk about the things that Trump does that are just absolutely reprehensible. But they can’t see it. Or can they see it and they’re just saying, what the hell? I just gotta live through it.
Farron Cousins: Well, and you know the funny thing about the critiques of Biden wanting him to step down is, people like Rob Reiner, last week he reiterated again, Biden you need to step down.
Mike Papantonio: Meathead. Yeah.
Farron Cousins: And everybody in the comments are like, F you Rob Reiner.
Mike Papantonio: I know.
Farron Cousins: It’s like, he didn’t say he’s not gonna vote for a Democrat. He’ll still vote for Biden.
Mike Papantonio: Or how about Bill? I mean, all of them. Bill Maher, my God, you think he’s become a villain. Jon Stewart, he’s become a villain. Rob Reiner. These are, George Clooney, these are people that have been in the middle of protecting this guy when they knew, when they absolutely knew that he was toast. That he was brown bread. They understood. But nevertheless, they defended him anyway.
Farron Cousins: Right. And asking for something better to these angry people online is absolutely unforgivable. You can’t ask for better, really? 333 million people in this country and these are the two we get to choose from.
Mike Papantonio: Well, okay. We get, the comments we get, apparently, from what I can tell are that, well, this is our candidate. Why are you talking about this? Well, we’re talking about it because Biden needs to do the best thing he should do for the country and step down and put somebody who can beat Trump in that place, maybe younger by about 50 frigging years.
Farron Cousins: Well, that’s what Trump did by picking JD Vance.
Mike Papantonio: Oh, JD Vance was brilliant. It was a brilliant choice. He’s saying, look, I get it. We’re too old. We got old congressman. We got old people running for president.
Farron Cousins: I think JD Vance is younger than me.
Mike Papantonio: He’s 39.
Farron Cousins: Jesus.
Mike Papantonio:: Yes, he’s 39.
Farron Cousins: That hurts
Mike Papantonio: Yeah. He’s 39. You have a better beard though. So anyway, as I’m looking at this, my conclusion is that they’re gonna have to live with it because they created themselves. Voters created this themselves, didn’t they?
Farron Cousins: Well, they created it I think based on the media feeding it to them. This is what the media has pushed us. Right wing media quickly fell in line with Donald Trump. Left wing media, obviously with Biden here. So the media feeds this to them. And anybody who may be on the fence, like we’ve said, like, hey, wish we had somebody else. We get attacked relentlessly. And we’ve seen other people, Joe Scarborough’s a great example.
Mike Papantonio: Joe Brzezinski, as I like to call him.
Farron Cousins: He came out and said, Biden needs to step down, got bullied to the point where he says, I am sorry, I tow the line now.
Mike Papantonio: Oh, isn’t it disgusting?
Farron Cousins: Biden is the guy.
Mike Papantonio: Isn’t it disgusting?
Farron Cousins: And it’s obvious what happened.
Mike Papantonio: I mean, here’s this guy that blows in the wind, whatever the hell is happening, I’m gonna go over here because the wind.
Farron Cousins: He used to be good friends with Donald Trump.
Mike Papantonio:: Oh, I understand. I understand. You know, he used to work here at this law firm that’s firm for God’s sakes. So I’ve watched his entire career go from crazy right wing, left wing, crazy right wing, left wing. What the hell? Because all of these folks doing MSNBC, CNN, Fox, they’re just taking marching orders from the front office. That’s all it is. They don’t really have, they can’t have an opinion, Farron. If they have an opinion, it’s like Ed Schultz. Ed Schultz had an opinion, well, we gotta get rid of Ed Schultz because he didn’t like TPP, he didn’t like Hillary Clinton.
Farron Cousins: And the Comcast takeover of MSNBC.
Mike Papantonio: He didn’t like the Comcast takeover. Let’s get rid of him. But these guys, they have to, hey have to cow down to whatever that little freak in the front office. It used to be Phil Griffin with MSNBC, he’d send a memo out, this is what we have to say today and by God, they’d deliver. That’s what happened to Joe, you know. Joe speaks out of his heart, says, my God, this guy is a train wreck. And he gets the memo. What have you done? They actually took him off the air. Took him off the air Monday morning. Would not let his show go up.
Farron Cousins: They were afraid of what he was gonna say about Trump or Biden, I guess.
Mike Papantonio:: Exactly. Yeah. It’s just, there’s no, it’s dead. Corporate media, the last remnants of corporate media are cable news and you’ll never be able to get me to say that that’s actual news.
Corporations in the United States have been taking part in something called surveillance pricing, which means that they’re charging some people more for the same items based on the fact that those people can pay for it. Their zip code shows they can, other purchases show they can. This is an ugly story. You gave me, we’re talking about this this morning, the way I see it is airlines all the time, right? Talk about the airline issue to make people understand what’s really happening here.
Farron Cousins: Yeah. So, I do think the airline issue is the biggest, best example of this kind of surveillance pricing. So what happens is you get on your computer and say, you know what? Either I have to take a trip for work, or I’m thinking about taking the family somewhere. So you just quickly, you look at the flight prices, you get an idea in your head and you say, okay, so that’s what we’re looking at. You go, you talk to your boss about the price. You talk to your spouse about the price. You go back a couple days later, suddenly it’s $800 more per ticket. Well, that’s weird. Nothing’s changed. You still have the same number of seats. Why is it different? Because the surveillance pricing tells the airline, this person has now looked for it twice, they’re serious about this trip, which means they’re gonna pay whatever you want to charge them. You can up their price. Meanwhile, you take somebody else doing the same thing. They delete their browser history, they clear their cache, clear all the cookies, you get the same price on Monday that you do on Friday.
Mike Papantonio: In other words, it’s starting to look like a Caribbean straw market, right? Let’s barter, only there’s no barter. They know that you’ve got the ability to pay for something. This person has less ability. So they charge you more. And the ugly thing is, of course it doesn’t surprise me, you know what I think of Wall Street, this is being taught in a required course at MIT and Harvard, and it’s called this pricing lab. And pricing lab is where they teach people how to do this. They teach CEOs how to take the system, create algorithms to where they said, well, we can charge Farron more because he makes a lot of money and we can charge him a lot of money, but we can’t charge this other person. You know what their argument is? Their argument is, oh, that’s okay. It’s good capitalism. Because what it does, it extends, let’s talk about a handbag. You wan to buy handbag for your wife, right? So they’re gonna charge you more because you got a lot of money. Or they’ve got this person over here that doesn’t have quite as much money. And they’re saying, well, the very fact that that person could buy a handbag, even though we charged ’em less, it enabled ’em to buy handbag. We sold more handbags.
Farron Cousins: Yeah.
Mike Papantonio: You see how crazy that kind of rationale is? And then they say, this is good for the American consumer.
Farron Cousins: Yeah. And it goes so much deeper than people realize. David Dayen wrote this for the American Prospect. He’s phenomenal on all Wall Street issues.
Mike Papantonio: Oh, he is. I agree.
Farron Cousins: So one of the things he talks about is that, like you mentioned, they’ll look at your zip code and they will say, oh, okay, well this person’s in an affluent neighborhood. So everybody in the zip code, whether you’re affluent or not, you are gonna be paying higher prices. Then they can tell what kind of device you’re on. Well, this person’s using a 7-year-old laptop that’s barely making it by.
Mike Papantonio: Oh man, okay.
Farron Cousins: So they can’t pay the high prices. This person’s got the brand new top of the line MacBook Pro. Go ahead and jump those prices up 10, 15% for this person.
Mike Papantonio: Just by taking a look at what you’re using.
Farron Cousins: And they can tell, oh, he’s on an iPhone 11. Obviously he hasn’t upgraded, he doesn’t have that kind of money. Charge him less. Oh, she’s got the brand new phone that came out two days ago, yeah, she’s gonna pay 25%.
Mike Papantonio:: And they also have, Farron, they know what your purchase history is.
Farron Cousins: Exactly.
Mike Papantonio: Because your purchase history on everything, they see if you bought something for your wife that was hugely expensive, they said if he wants to do it, if he’s really motivated to do it, he can do it. So what they do is they push that person as far as they can to the point the person says no, or the person makes the same mistake and pays too much for it again and again. There’s gotta be some FCC involved here overseeing this, right?
Farron Cousins: Well, no.
Mike Papantonio: Not right now.
Farron Cousins: There needs to be. But another thing that happens too, and this is something that.
Mike Papantonio: When you said no, when you said no, there is no FCC, no surprise there, right?
Farron Cousins: Yeah. But one of the things that is so damaging about this too, is the fact that they’re now using AI to determine patterns. And a good example of that, which you and I both know, is twice a year you’re putting on this massive legal conference. So you’ve got about 200 people in one building that all have to book plane tickets.
Mike Papantonio: In this building, yeah, buying plane.
Farron Cousins: Right. Twice a year to the same place. So these AI, artificial learning, machine learning, they realize, okay, well hey, every June 200 people from this address are gonna be purchasing tickets to this place. And they have to do it because they’ve been doing it for 25 years. So let’s increase the prices for them. So, we’re getting screwed.
Mike Papantonio: It’s even broader than that though. I mean, we bring in 2000 lawyers from all over the world.
Farron Cousins: Right. And so, it understands these lawyers.
Mike Papantonio: And that lawyer sees, okay, twice a year we know that they’re gonna go to Vegas. They have to be in Vegas. So let’s jack it up. This is so ugly, I don’t think, but FCC as you point out, I don’t even know why I even said surely the FCC’s doing something. Obviously they’re not.
According to a military think tank, the rise in dementia cases for people with top security clearances, is posing a clear threat to our country’s security. As leadership gets older, the number of cases of mentally declining people that have access to the top, very top of our security are making decisions for us. And they’re only screamed one time. That’s what so ugly about it. Let’s talk about it.
Farron Cousins: Yeah. A great story here from Ken Klippenstein, and he talks about this RAND study that actually came out a few months ago that says, listen, the Pentagon knows that you have people with top secret security clearances that have dementia. And they’re talking about Dianne Feinstein, even though she’s no longer here.
Mike Papantonio: But she had huge clearance till the time she died.
Farron Cousins: She did. They mentioned Mitch McConnell, the man who just freezes up out of nowhere. And of course, other people that have been in Congress 30, 40 years, Nancy Pelosi, of course, in her eighties, President Biden and his cabinet. So what the worry is with the Pentagon, even though they’re doing nothing about it, is, okay, we’re giving these people the most sensitive intelligence on the planet and they can’t even trust their own minds. So they may go out and say something because they forget.
Mike Papantonio: At a bar, you know, at dinner or whatever.
Farron Cousins: It’s terrifying.
Mike Papantonio: Well, okay. So in 1981, only, only 4% of Congress, 4% were above the age of 70. Right now it’s 23% of our Congress is above the age of 70. And the real question that you, what I thought Klippenstein did such a good job, is making us understand why it’s so important. When these people say, ah, you’re just being critical of Biden’s age. Hell no. I’m talking about national security. I’m talking about the fact that this guy has to make critical decisions quickly. And it’s the same way with everybody that’s on a committee, the Senate Intelligence Committee, the House Intel, whatever it may be, they have to make important decisions. They only have to be tested one time. Okay. The testing is steep. They do polygraph tests. They do interviews. The FBI talks to old teachers and old friends and finds out everything they can, but that only happens once. And then as they get older, nobody says, what the hell’s a matter with Mary? She’s drooling on herself. Maybe we should test her again.
Farron Cousins: I mean, Bob Menendez another great example, right?
Mike Papantonio: Yeah.
Farron Cousins: That’s a guy that had access to all this information and he may not have dementia.
Mike Papantonio: But he’s a criminal.
A new poll has found that a large amount of Americans from both political parties say that they’re embarrassed by both Joe Biden and Donald Trump being the nominees this year. And I gotta tell you something, it’s nothing gonna change. This is what we got. We’re gonna continue, I think just to be clear, we’re gonna continue going after Biden until somebody has enough sense to say, look, let’s replace Biden with somebody who’s younger. Somebody who’s not drooling and bumping into things and can maybe finish a sentence, doesn’t have sundowner syndrome. Let’s replace them. But you can say the same thing with Trump. Trump, every time he walks in a room, all it brings is Trump hysteria. People have this crazy hysteria that there’ll be a DSM-5, I promise you, a diagnostic guideline for people who have Trump hysteria. I promise you, we will see that in next few years. Win or lose.
Farron Cousins: Well, and what’s interesting too, though, is with Donald Trump, you see the same cognitive issues that you see with Biden.
Mike Papantonio: Oh yeah, of course.
Farron Cousins: Forgetting the people’s names, not knowing where he is, who he’s talking to. So they are both equally embarrassing. And right now, the Republicans, because Trump is officially the nominee because the convention, they are stuck with him. Now, Democrats, y’all still have time.
Mike Papantonio: They still still have time.
Farron Cousins: You got a month. I mean, if you were to do it.
Mike Papantonio: Hey, let me make a proposal, as off as people might be when we start talking about the idea, drop the guy.
Farron Cousins: The idea of doing better.
Mike Papantonio:: The idea of using your brain, I don’t care. I hope you don’t because I don’t. And it’s what we’re gonna continue doing. And when they say, you just leave my guy alone. No, we’re not gonna leave your guy alone. Your guy is dangerous. He’s a national security threat. He barely can do his job after eight o’clock at night. And the next person in line, oh, by the way, is Kamala Harris. Really? So, no, I don’t have any intention of stopping. I hope you don’t either.
Farron Cousins: Right. No, I’m still gonna go after this because yes, we can do better and we should do better. And look at this, a majority of people want us to do better. A majority of Democrats say, we wish we had somebody else. But also, this wonderful new survey, 63% of voters say that both these men are embarrassments.
Mike Papantonio: Yeah, embarrassing. Embarrassing is the word, right?
Farron Cousins: But it’s those same people who gave us these people. So you don’t get to go and vote for these people to be your nominee when you actually have a chance to get somebody else and then say, oh, wow. I’m so embarrassed by what I did.
Mike Papantonio: Now let’s talk about that just a minute. Okay. The people who love Joe Biden count, they absolutely rely on MSNBC and CNN every night taking a propaganda shot. I mean, all you’re gonna hear is MSNBC propaganda and CNN propaganda. They’re comforted by that. Okay. So your point that those voters actually drive this is completely correct because MSNBC and CNN does exactly what the voter wants. Fox, they’re predictable. We know they’re gonna come out and what they’re gonna say about Biden and what they’re gonna say about Trump. But why is that? Because the voters who are their very, by the way, very, very small group of people in the big picture for both of these, for both of these stations. MSNBC, Fox, what is it, less than 2%, 3% of the entire?
Farron Cousins: Yeah. Less than three.
Mike Papantonio: The entire American public. But the voters are gonna go there because they don’t have the ability to think critically. All they want to hear is what pleases them. And if you say it might please you, but it’s ridiculous, and here’s the problem. They can’t even process that because they’re not able to critically think. Is it an entire generational issue, or has this always been the case?
Farron Cousins: Well, a lot of this is driven by the older generations. They are the ones who are tuning into the cable news.
Mike Papantonio: Yeah, true.
Farron Cousins: And they’re the ones who get so angry when you bring up, hey, we have a chance to get a better person. They say, no, how dare you? Like, how dare I want somebody better that can beat Trump? Why is that bad for me?
Mike Papantonio: And you’re right. I think it’s 50 and above. It’s like late baby boomers who were maybe Haight-Ashbury back when they were in college, and now they’ve made this transition. Well, we’re just going to maintain our position, regardless of whatever information you give me about the dangers of Trump or the dangers of Biden, we’re gonna maintain our position because that’s all we want to hear is our position. That’s why you have those folks on MSNBC that spew the propaganda, or CNN spew the propaganda or Fox, they spew propaganda every day because that’s what their people want to hear. So indirectly, you have these voters who don’t like either one that have created this problem.
Farron Cousins: Yep.
Mike Papantonio: That’s the way I see it. Farron, thanks.
Farron Cousins: Thank you.
Mike Papantonio: That’s all the time we have. But all these segments will be posted right here on this channel in coming weeks. 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 don’t allow for it, or their tribal politics won’t allow for it. If you’re a Democrat, you have to color within the lines. If you’re a Republican, you have to color within the lines. And so the great thing is we’re not beholden to corporations or political parties, as you can tell by this very show. 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.
