The Department of Justice announced that they had indicted several individuals last week who were allegedly using Russian government money to spread propaganda in the United States. But even if everything in the indictment is true, these efforts were lackluster, at best. 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: The Department of Justice announced that they had indicted several individuals last week who were using Russian government money, according to them, to spread propaganda in the United States. But even if everything in the indictment is true, these efforts were so lackluster. I was glad to see Ken Klippenstein is, you know what I think of him, he’s a great writer. He’s just so on point. But he says, look, he made a comparison. He said, all of the money that these two people have been accused of doing, they were able to generate 2000 videos. Okay. And the views were 16 million views with the 2000 videos. He said, if that’s a success, Klippenstein said, I generate 463 million views with just what I do in my little blog. We’re kinda the same situation. If all we generated was 16 million views with what we do, we’d be out of business.
Farron Cousins: Right. And if we had 2000 videos that only got 16 million views, it’s time to pack it up. We get 16 million in about a week or two weeks at this point.
Mike Papantonio: Exactly.
Farron Cousins: And that’s off 50 videos. So it is laughable how pathetic the scheme was. And just so everybody knows, the podcasters and the people that were being paid, none of them were hit with any charges. Basically they were doing stupid things without even realizing it. They didn’t ask questions about where the money came from, and technically they didn’t have to. But common sense would say, well, wait a minute, where’d you get $10 million? But anyway, they were just happy to get the money. But the two individuals were only charged with acting as an unregistered foreign agent.
Mike Papantonio: That’s what I was gonna say right there. Now, okay, you had Garland. What a disaster. Garland’s up in front of, like, we have uncovered the most vast spy network ever uncovered in America. Well, no, you really didn’t, Garland. You’re making an issue out of something that, yeah, it’s good we’re paying attention to it. But to tell the American public that the DOJ has really uncovered this vast conspiracy, it’s a disservice. Because as I’m listening to that, I want to say, you know, Garland, how about you prosecute, if you want to prosecute somebody, how about you prosecute the manufacturers of opioids that killed 150 people a day for 10 years? Okay. Addicted more people than we can count. They could easily be charged with manslaughter. I don’t think there’s any question about it. Why don’t you do that?
Or Garland, why don’t you deal with the thousands of people who were dying from exposure to PFAS because the manufacturers knew exactly what they were doing. They put it into our, they spread it all over the world, and people are dying because of it. Why don’t you do something about it? Why don’t you do something about HSBC or banks, all the banks that were with HSBC who admitted, admitted, signed a document, yes, we washed money for terrorists? We washed money for drug cartels. We washed money for cartel traffickers involved in human trafficking. Why don’t you do something about that? Why don’t you prosecute them? Instead, every one of those, those three facts that I just gave you, they had all of the information and they let ’em walk. Nobody was prosecuted. But here we’ve got ’em acting like this is just revolutionary. We’ve got this huge spy ring taking place in the United States. It’s disturbing to me, man.
Farron Cousins: What about Boeing? Right. Boeing kills hundreds of people. The DOJ announces this year, uh, we’re gonna let ’em go. They violated the non prosecutorial agreement we had. But we’re gonna be okay with that.
Mike Papantonio: Well, talk about that just a second. Explain that a little bit just to show how ridiculous this is. That’s why Klippenstein said, you guys are a bunch of freaks. You’re wasting our time.
Farron Cousins: This very same DOJ that did a press conference about this issue, they a couple years ago made a deal with Boeing after the doors were flying off and hundreds of people were dying in crashes. And they said, listen, we’re not gonna prosecute you. We really, really, really just need you to make these changes. Put these kinds of bolts in. Do this, have the regular safety checks that you weren’t doing. Do that. We’re not gonna prosecute you.
Mike Papantonio: And they said, okay, give me the document. We’ll sign it.
Farron Cousins: Yeah, Boeing says, yeah, we’ll do that. And then Boeing didn’t do it. The DOJ investigates again and says, well, you didn’t do what we told you to do and we said we’d prosecute you if you didn’t, but we’re still not gonna prosecute you. You just give us some money. What was it, a billion dollars maybe? Or no, I think it was a couple hundred million. And now you’re free to go. But on this one, the issue here, and look, I’m not saying I condone what happened at all. This shouldn’t happen.
Mike Papantonio: No, of course not.
Farron Cousins: But the reason these people aren’t being prosecuted is because they didn’t fill out a piece of paper. If they’d have filled out the piece of paper and said, yep, I’m a foreign agent here. Here’s where the money is. There’s your paper. This would’ve been perfectly legal.
Mike Papantonio: Yeah. All I’m trying to say is, if we’re gonna call BS, let’s call BS. Okay. And if you want to really do something Garland, do something about the kind of cases we’re talking about, prosecute some white collar criminals. They don’t look like criminals to the Department of Justice because they’re dressed up in Armani suits.
Farron Cousins: And it’s the people they used to work with a lot of times.
Mike Papantonio: That’s right. It’s like this revolving door. I don’t know, man. To me, Klippenstein got it. He made it into a joke and the column is great. It makes it look how ridiculous the whole thing is.
