America’s Lawyer E111: Meta is once again in trouble after it was revealed that they are allowing ads for illicit drugs on both Facebook and Instagram, and now lawmakers want answers about how this was allowed to happen. President Biden gave a moving speech to the Democratic Convention this week, but reports say that he doesn’t have much love left for the Democratic Party after they pushed him out of the race. And an elderly lawmaker suffered serious age-related health emergencies last week, but they are STILL running for reelection. 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. Meta is once again in trouble after it was revealed that they’re allowing ads for illicit drugs on both Facebook and Instagram. And now lawmakers want answers about why that’s happening. And President Biden gave a moving speech to the Democratic Convention this week. But reports say that he doesn’t have much love left for the Democratic Party after they pushed him out. All that and more, it’s coming up. Don’t go anywhere. America’s Lawyer starts right now.
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg pledged earlier this year that his platform would do a better job protecting children. But it turns out that wasn’t exactly true, and it never happened because of both Facebook and Instagram have been allowing advertisements for illegal drugs to be placed on their platforms. I’ve got Ring of Fire’s Farron Cousins with me to talk about this. Don’t get me started on the topic of Meta algorithms and their ad system. But go ahead. We gotta talk about this. There’s so much more than this part.
Farron Cousins: Yeah. This is, it’s utter insanity at this point. And what lawmakers have said, you got a group of, I think 19 lawmakers that are demanding answers from Zuckerberg and the rest of the leadership at Meta as to why there have been hundreds of ads between Facebook and Instagram for drug dealers. They’re selling cocaine, they’re selling fentanyl, they’re selling heroin, and they’re just running these ads. Facebook and Instagram are approving them and saying, yeah, sure, it’s fine. You go click on this ad, go buy your cocaine if you want to. We don’t have a problem with that here at Meta, but God forbid you try to actually put an ad out for something that could save people’s lives, then you got a real issue on your hands.
Mike Papantonio: Well, there’s a grand jury probe, and you know what, if I was the prosecutor on the grand jury probe, I can promise you I would get a bill on this one. And you know what, the thing about it is we think, okay, well this isn’t really Meta. This is some dark web, right? Oh, the drugs are only, no, they’re not. The drugs are sold on Meta, as you point out, cocaine, heroin, you name it, it’s available on Meta. Facebook, you can find it. Instagram, you can find it. Democrats are strong on this, man. They’re going after ’em and they should. The Democrats are raising hell along with about a half a dozen from what I can see, Tim Walberg from Michigan, Castor from Florida, they’re leading this up in a really strong kind of way. I haven’t heard a good excuse, have you?
Farron Cousins: No.
Mike Papantonio: I haven’t heard anything other than the same thing we hear, oh, it’s the algorithms. Okay, let me tell a quick story here to put this in perspective. Last week we put out a story that told about Johnson & Johnson killing women with a product that they were making, baby powder that had asbestos in it, and a whole host of other bad chemicals. Killed women, a horrible death with cancer. Okay. We put that out on Facebook and even though there has been half a dozen trials where the jury came back and said, hell yes, this stuff killed those women, even after 11 judges said, hell yes, this stuff killed women. We were told we couldn’t put the ad out there, we couldn’t put the message out there because it didn’t reach their standards. Okay. Didn’t reach their standards. This was a story about a corporation killing women, where the proof is overwhelming.
There’s not even, nobody’s even asking questions about it anymore. Yes, it kills women. So they told us, oh, we can’t do that. You know what really happened? Johnson & Johnson called them, they complained and they said, take this off the air, and that’s what happened. But here you’ve got Meta, you’ve got Instagram and Facebook that are selling drugs that, oh, by the way, are causing overdoses. They have case after case. Here’s Elijah Ott, 15-year-old, case that they’re using as kind of the headline case here. Bought his drugs from Instagram and overdosed. And when they were approached by it, it was like, oh, gee whiz, it’s not really us. No, it is really them. And Zuckerberg knows exactly what’s happening. Management knows exactly what’s happening. And we’re so tired of hearing our algorithms did it, you know. Hire enough people to make this work. Isn’t that what they do?
Farron Cousins: Yeah. And just to kind of build upon your story there, it’s not like this was being run as an ad either. This was just a promotion to allow it to reach more people as an educational FYI piece. Just to educate people like, hey, here’s what’s happened with this case. Here’s where it stands so far. Here’s what’s happening with their so-called bankruptcy. That’s it. It was an educational informational piece, and Facebook, Meta, said, no. This somehow violates our standards.
Mike Papantonio: Do you know why? Because the people they have doing it are so freaking stupid that they have no life experience. They probably don’t even read news like that. And so these idiots, I don’t know what their ages are, but they’re people that don’t have any notion at all about what’s happening around their world. And so they look at it, they get a call from Johnson & Johnson saying, take this down, or we’re gonna sue you. And they take it down. There’s nothing to sue. I gotta tell you something. This is just an example of how dysfunctional social media’s becoming, and this story right here, they’re gonna break some eggs on this story.
Farron Cousins: I hope they do. This is far more serious than I think people realize what’s happening here. The fact that it was allowed to go through it all, let alone more than 450 instances, that the Wall Street Journal alone found 450 different advertisements for illegal drugs.
Mike Papantonio: Guardian, Wall Street Journal, a whole host of ’em are finding these stories, and Meta continues to do business just like this. Now we’re gonna post this article, we’re gonna post this story. Matter of fact, we’re gonna promote this story on their own site. I’m anxious to see what they do with it. What idiot that has no world experience is gonna make the decision, gee, that’s slanderous. We can’t say that. They’re lying. Like that’s not true, because they don’t have enough life experience and world experience to even know what the hell is happening around them.
Harvard has decided that they will not be removing the Sackler name for several reasons from their building after years of pressure from the families of victims of opioid deaths. Other universities, other museums all over the world, didn’t hesitate to remove the Sackler name. But Harvard, well, in their ivory tower, they decided that they simply don’t care. They’re above the fray. Right?
Farron Cousins: Yeah. Come on down to Sackler Hall. Come to the Sackler Museum over here at Harvard and you have just countless, these families of the people who died from people who overdosed on opioids, been begging the university for years, just take the guy’s name off it. Arthur Sackler, his name is on multiple buildings at Harvard. And they said, please, this is now a monument to our child’s death. And you’re honoring it and this is disgusting. Just take the name off.
Mike Papantonio: This is their own students. This is their own graduates who have enough sense to have a moral compass. A moral compass that says, look, Harvard, you’re already in a demise. They’re in a total, total demise right now.
Farron Cousins: They’ve had a lot of problems recently.
Mike Papantonio: Whether it’s, you hear about 2020 where you’ve got the cheating scandal and they’re finding that these kids that are supposed to be so bright are actually taking the actual exam at home because they have a copy of it. Or the medical school where they’re falsifying data in the medical school, at the Dana-Farber medical school, the cancer center right there, they’re actually falsifying data is what these reports are. And these people are being caught doing that. Or the issue of plagiarism, my god, when the university president has to resign because of plagiarism, and then story after story comes out of Harvard, plagiarism stories, you start going, this is a university that is in total, total demise right now. They are just spinning down the toilet and nobody seems to care. This is just another story here, isn’t it?
Farron Cousins: It absolutely is. And Harvard gave the, what I think is probably one of the dumbest excuses we’ve ever seen, because the buildings are named as they point out after Arthur Sackler. Well, Arthur Sackler died a few years before Purdue Pharmaceuticals actually came up with Oxycontin, so technically he didn’t do it, so we’re gonna leave his name. So you families, yeah, you’re grieving. Oh, we lost our students, oh, that’s sad. But this is a different Sackler, so it’s okay. No, it’s not. It’s the same guy who started the company that did this.
Mike Papantonio: I mean, you had 150 people every day dying in this country because of what the Sacklers did. They created a scam. They created something that they knew was no different than any other narcotic. They put it on the market. They spent billions of dollars convincing doctors that it was different. They even went as far, Farron, as creating their own metrics. It was the face, you know, the smiley face, the not so happy face, the sad face, scale 1 to 10 that they created, and they told doctors, you must do this. You must use this scale or you’re gonna be sued. Now, full disclosure, I handled the cases against all the other distributors. We settled that case for $52 billion. And you had Sacklers that thought they were gonna escape from it. Okay. They declared bankruptcy, they got gazillions of dollars, and they declared bankruptcy.
And the court said, hell no. You don’t have bankruptcy. The Supreme Court said, hell no, you don’t have bankruptcy protection. So we’re going after them with a vengeance right now, and we’ve just started cranking up that case. But, if you look at our results from the other, from McKesson, AmerisourceBergen, Cardinal, CVS, name ’em, we went through them and we collected, at this point, paying into to try to solve this problem where they’re setting up institutions for rehab. They’re setting up guidelines on how people can use or should not use opioids. They’re doing what they should have done years ago when the media was ignoring this because pharma was spending so much money advertising on their channel. But now this $52 billion is at least a start, and we’re not done. We’re not done.
And Sacklers, buddy, they are absolutely right within our radar. But, when you’ve got a university that has this kind of checkered history, you don’t just say everything’s okay. The last one was where the Jewish kids were suing them there at the university because they were being physically attacked. They were being harassed. They couldn’t even go to class. And so they’re being sued and friends of mine are bringing that lawsuit. And the guys bringing that lawsuit, the women bringing that lawsuit, it’s gonna be a bad day for Harvard if they don’t settle that one.
Farron Cousins: Well, I do think, just one more thing about this that I want to point out is, there was a great quote because the Louvre, the Louvre Museum, world famous museum, they had Sacklers name on one hall and they took it off. Because they said, oh, hell no, we’re not gonna be associated with that. And there was a quote where somebody had said, do you think you’re better than the Louvre? And no Harvard, you are clearly not better than the Louvre.
Mike Papantonio: You are not. And you are going down the drain by the day, it looks like.
According to multiple new reports, President Biden is still fuming behind the scenes about his friends in the Democratic party pushing him out. His anger is mostly directed at Nancy Pelosi, but he’s also angry with Obama and many, many other people that he felt like he was betrayed by. Pick the story up.
Farron Cousins: Yeah. This to me is a bit of a weird one because for Biden to sit anywhere right now and be angry about where the Democratic party is, is absolutely ridiculous. He should be able to see the writing on the wall with this massive Harris and Walz surge that this country has seen over the last couple weeks. He should know like, okay, people don’t like me. And what’s really great about it is that there is this one quote that says, Biden views Pelosi as ruthless and willing to set aside long-term relationships in order to keep her party in power. So he’s mad that, oh, well we had a friendship. How dare you put the good of the country ahead of our friendship? That to me was such a ridiculous thing because Pelosi did the right thing here for the first time in a long time.
Mike Papantonio: Well, look how long they resisted, Farron. Okay. How many shows did we do where we said, okay, what the hell? When are you gonna make your move? So these people did what they had to do. It might have saved the Democratic party. If you’re looking at the polls now, they’re in the fight. It ain’t over by any means.
Farron Cousins: Yeah.
Mike Papantonio: But they’re in the fight. And so that would’ve never happened with him staying, and then the other side of it, I guess this is Pelosi’s way to make nice, she wanted to put his face on Mount Rushmore. And so that probably ain’t gonna happen, but it was Pelosi’s way of saying, ah, I’m sorry. You know, these folks did what they had to do. He doesn’t, he has no reason to be angry about it. As a matter of fact, had he done what he should have done to begin with, it never would’ve come to that.
Farron Cousins: Well, And you know what’s really interesting to me is there was a poll that came out about a week and a half ago, and it’s so far been my favorite poll because it showed that one of the big factors in Harris’s polling advantage is because what she’s done is she has won over the double haters. And a month or two ago, you and I did a segment about the double haters.
Mike Papantonio: Yeah.
Farron Cousins: An enormous amount, millions of people who hated Biden and hated Trump, they wanted quite literally anybody else. And when he dropped out, those double haters said, oh.
Mike Papantonio: Yeah, I can live with it.
Farron Cousins: Well, I guess I’m a single hater now. And the poll shows that they overwhelmingly moved to Harris. So, yes, he himself personally was dragging that Democratic ticket. And I still honestly don’t think he understands that.
Mike Papantonio: Do you remember all the criticism we got?
Farron Cousins: Yep.
Mike Papantonio: Oh my God, the hate we got.
Farron Cousins: That quieted down recently.
Mike Papantonio: Yeah. That quieted down recently. You’re right. And they saw, well, maybe they were right when they were beating the hell out of Biden.
Farron Cousins: I mean, we’ve been telling ’em for a year to do this.
Mike Papantonio: No question.
Donald Trump’s allies are growing increasingly concerned about his campaign with some who are close to the former president saying that it’s almost like he’s trying to lose this election. There’s no doubt that his campaign is faltering, whether he can change it, it’s up to him. It’s really up to him. But this petulant child thing that’s going on is really hurting him. I mean, we kind of accept that that’s the way he’s gonna do things all the time. That’s a good shot. But he’s going over, why not talk about policy. Right? Compare his policy to Harris’s policy is what his advisors are telling him. Instead, he wants to make up names like a fifth grader child. It’s always been his MO, right?
Farron Cousins: Yeah. And that’s what’s so weird about it is none of this is unexpected, but at least in the past he had, whether you agreed with these ideas or not, he had things he would say that also sounded like policy.
Mike Papantonio: Presidential.
Farron Cousins: Well, build the wall. Let’s stop the immigrants from coming over here. And that was, to a degree, that is technically a policy and it is something that obviously in 2016 and 2020, his base rallied around that idea. But he’s not even doing anything close to that anymore. He’s just out there saying, well, the images of people at her rallies, those are fake. Uh, let me try to test a new nickname for her this week because the other ones didn’t work.
Mike Papantonio: I mean, even the nicknames, you look at it and you just go, what the hell?
Farron Cousins: Kamabla
Mike Papantonio: Kamabla. And then he says, his response is, I know what I’m doing. Hush. I know what, that’s literally what he’s saying right now. So, I don’t know. You know, there’s some question about whether he has PTSD on the attempted assassination.
Farron Cousins: I’ve seen that. And honestly, that makes sense. If that is what the campaign wanted to go out there with a message of, that actually may work at this point to say, listen, the guy was a half an inch away from having his head blown off on live TV. That’s gonna mess with anybody. So give him time, give him space. We’re gonna right the ship. But he’s put what I think is just the dumbest people possible in charge of his campaign, because he doesn’t reward intelligence or capability. It’s all about loyalty.
Mike Papantonio: No, it’s all basic. It’s apeism. I call it apeism. Well, okay, here you’ve got, for example, why do you go after Brian Kemp? What did that do in the big picture? He was angry at Kemp because Kemp didn’t do what he wanted to do. He didn’t do his bidding. So he makes an attack there. He attacks everybody rather than just saying, look, stop it. Hush, you idiot. Start talking about policies. You can talk about policies, but this fifth grade attack of everybody who’s not his friend has just become, it’s like a petulant child. It’s like, Frank Luntz says, shut up. Shut up, and go talk like a president. I don’t know that he’s capable of doing it.
Farron Cousins: I don’t think at this point in his life, he is at all. And it’s also, what’s so weird about it is remember in 2020 towards the end stretch there, his campaign was starting to do a little worse. So what did he do? He finally said, let me bring in an actual Republican that knows what they’re doing. He brought in Karl Rove.
Mike Papantonio: Yeah, yeah.
Farron Cousins: Because we sat here and talked about that at the time.
Mike Papantonio: Yeah, exactly.
Farron Cousins: It didn’t help him to the degree he thought it would, but he did it a little too late.
Mike Papantonio: Well, they know he’s still well in striking distance. There’s nothing going on out there that he’s going, oh my God, it’s over. That’s why the advisors need to advise. But I don’t know if you can advise him, that’s the problem.
Farron Cousins: No, he’s 78 years old. He is set in his way. And back in 2016, this bullying, this name calling, that worked. He got past Hillary Clinton, threw her off her game with nothing more than these insults. But he saw the success of it one time and thought, well, okay.
Mike Papantonio: This works.
Farron Cousins: This is what I am.
Mike Papantonio: Let do it again.
Farron Cousins: And it’s just, it’s not sticking.
Mike Papantonio: Look, listen to him talk. I mean, very, very, very, very, this is very, it’s like a fifth grader. And so you take that and you say, okay, well why should we expect anything else? But he’s killing himself. Okay. He’s taken an election that’s his to lose. Really. I still think it’s his to lose. But if you look at it at this point, if he keeps this up, it’s over, man.
Farron Cousins: Well, and a month ago, November was gonna be a bloodbath for the Democrats. Probably losing the Senate. Definitely not getting the House. And of course, losing the presidency. And because of just the way he is, not listening to smart people, because the smart people are out there. They’re on Fox News every day.
Mike Papantonio: Oh, they are. They’re telling him, shut up.
Farron Cousins: They’re on social media. They’re texting him saying, just stop it.
Mike Papantonio: I know. You can’t help it. You can’t turn that around.
Farron Cousins: Yeah.
Mike Papantonio: Two elderly lawmakers suffered very serious age related health emergencies last week, both requiring hospitalization, in spite of their poor health, both of these men are running for reelection because it seems like the thing to do. And because all of these people that you see up here on the screen are old as hell. Now, I always get, Pap how old? I ain’t that old. And oh, by the way, and I’m not running for office. But the point is this, this is such a big money maker, isn’t it? Politics is such a big money maker for these people. Some of them went in and they had a moderate amount of money. Hell, they’re multimillionaires now. They stay in it for the money, don’t they?
Farron Cousins: Yeah, absolutely. And you would think if you’ve been in it for 30 or 40 years and you haven’t made enough money to retire.
Mike Papantonio: You’re a idiot.
Farron Cousins: Yeah, then something’s wrong with you.
Mike Papantonio: Yeah, you’re really stupid.
Farron Cousins: But look, you’ve got Steny Hoyer who last week gets hospitalized because he had a mild, as they call it, but a stroke and, okay, he’s in the hospital for a few days, gets out, and I’m still running for reelection. 85 years old, obviously having age related health problems. I’m not going anywhere. Well, I think God has other plans for you, but, okay.
Mike Papantonio: Is it just a need for power and acceptance? Are these people so unsure of themselves in their own skin that they can’t just do what, you know, step aside?
Farron Cousins: I think there’s definitely a psychological component. It’s not just about the money. There is something fundamentally broken in a lot of these people’s brains that force them to say, no, I need this in my life. I need this kind of approval. I need people to know that I’m important because something is broken in them.
Mike Papantonio: It’s as many Democrats as it is Republicans.
Farron Cousins: It is.
Mike Papantonio: And it’s gotta be, there is something broken. I really think that’s part of it. They just can’t be comfortable in their skin. They can’t be comfortable without that attention that they get, I guess. Maybe they go to the local restaurant and everybody pats ’em on the back. Congratulations, you’re running again. Some of these people run 15 and 16 times and they’re still there and we still allow it. And you still, actually, you know what? You still have people out there that say, under no circumstances should we have term limits.
Farron Cousins: And then if we put a challenger in any of these races, oh my God, you’ve betrayed the party. How dare we elect somebody in their fifties, just a young whippersnapper, as opposed to this octogenarian
Mike Papantonio: The safe seat. It’s a safe seat mentality, right?
Farron Cousins: Who’s got one foot in the grave. I mean, and it’s ridiculous that they’re saying, I’m still in this race.
Mike Papantonio: Yeah, it is a sad story, isn’t it? Thanks for joining me. Okay.
Farron Cousins: Thank you.
Mike Papantonio: That’s all for this time, but all of 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 and this has been America’s Lawyer where we tell you stories every week that corporate media won’t tell you because their advertisers won’t let ’em. If they tell the story, they’re gonna lose the advertising dollars or their tribal politics won’t allow for it. If they’re too Republican and they don’t color within those lines, they got a problem. If they’re too Democrat and they don’t color within those lines, they got a problem. Well, just to be clear, we’re not beholden to corporations or certainly not 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.
