America’s Lawyer E115: A gunman was apprehended on Donald Trump’s golf course over the weekend, sparking new fears of domestic terrorism and potential assassination attempts. We’ll bring you the latest details. Boeing is in deep trouble as workers have gone on strike demanding better wages. This strike came after 16 years of workers being forced to give up benefits with few, if any, pay raises during that time. And some of the worst war mongers in this country are lining up to endorse Harris for President – and Democratic voters aren’t exactly thrilled about it. 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. A gunman was apprehended on Donald Trump’s golf course over the weekend, sparking new fears of domestic terrorism and potential assassination attempts. We’ll give you the details. Boeing is in deep trouble as workers have gone on strike demanding better wages. The strike came after 16 years of workers being forced to give up benefits with few, if any, pay raises while Boeing is making record, record numbers of profits. Now it’s turned around. They’re not making profits, and this has all come home to roost. And some of the worst war mongers in this country are lining up to endorse Harris for president. And Democratic voters aren’t exactly thrilled. They look like the party of war because that’s what they’ve become. All that and more. It’s coming up. Don’t go anywhere. America’s Lawyer starts right now.
For the second time in three months, Donald Trump was the target of an assassination attempt. But this time, the Secret Service was able to subdue the gunman before he fired a shot. But this hasn’t alleviated any of the fears about political violence in this country. It’s getting worse and we’re acting like there’s nothing to it. Like this is okay. Like this is normal. It’s not normal, ladies and gentlemen. I’ve got Ring of Fire’s Farron Cousins with me to talk about it. The most disturbing thing I gotta tell you as I read these stories is the idiots, these talking head idiots on cable news, basically cable news, whether it’s Fox, whether it’s CNN, MSNBC, hell, now it’s gotten into traditional corporate media. This ain’t a big thing. This is nothing to it. He was 500 yards away. He was five football fields away. He only took one shot. It’s like the same BS we heard when Trump was almost shot in the head. Okay. We’ve got, whether you like the guy, I’m not voting for Trump. Let me just, no way I’m voting for the guy. But we’re talking about an important part of democracy here. When you have these idiots, these talking heads that show up on the scene and say, there’s nothing to this, there’s nothing to see here. It’s infuriating to me. And not only that, it is such a threat to the Democratic process in this country. We don’t kill people who we disagree with
Farron Cousins: Exactly. Look, I don’t disagree with you on any of that at all. And I do think that obviously this time was different because the Secret Service was paying attention. Had they not been paying attention, it wouldn’t have mattered if it was 500 yards away, 200, 150, because he would’ve kept getting closer. The Secret Service through almost a miracle you could call it, saw the barrel of a gun sticking out from a bush. I wouldn’t recognize that. And because they did, they were able to get him. He ran, they chased him down. You had the local cops helping as well. But to me, part of this story that is driving me crazy, the more we learn about this guy is this is somebody that should not have been a free citizen in this country. This is a man that should have been locked behind bars, at least as early as the nineties, possibly going back to the 1980s. When you listen to the police in North Carolina where he lived tell the stories about, oh yeah, we had an armed standoff with him this time. We had another armed standoff with him here. He had weapons of mass destruction.
Mike Papantonio: Never spent one day in jail. Has never been to jail one day for any of this stuff. And all the idiots, the talking head idiots on the cable cabal is what it’s become, a cable cabal of talking idiots get on the scene and say, oh, well this is, just crazy statements. Like, if I have to hear Joy Reid use the word existential threat one more time, all the talking heads, everything’s an existential threat. He’s Hitler. He’s going to destroy democracy. He’s never gonna leave if we elect him President. That has an effect whether we want to agree with it or not. Again, I am not voting for the guy. I think he’s a nutcase, but this kind of talk that’s accepted by just run of the mill Democrats who say, this is the new norm. And it’s okay for people like Wallace or Joy Reid to go on the air and equate him to Hitler. And if he’s elected that we’re gonna lose democracy, that he won’t leave office if he’s there. I mean, I could go on forever. And we want to say this is no big deal? This isn’t important? 25 years ago, if there had been an assassination attempt on a past president or a presidential candidate, this place would be going crazy. Tune on MSNBC right now. Tune on CNN. See how many times they try to downplay this, like it ain’t a problem. It’s a hell of a problem. It’s a fundamental part of democracy that we should allow people to state an opinion, whether we agree with it or not, and not go out and freaking kill ’em because we disagree with ’em. That’s where we are in this democracy right now. And you know what? Democrats, just like Republicans are all part of it.
Farron Cousins: We had a time in this country, most of the history of this country, when you had any kind of tragedy or almost tragedy, whatever you want to call it here, everybody came together. We saw it after natural disasters. We saw it after 9/11, of course. And I think a lot of that really changed after Hurricane Katrina because that was a natural disaster where everybody should have come together. But instead of that, there was a lot of finger pointing and I will say rightfully so. We had massive government failures with that. And then ever since then, every disaster, every response has become more and more polarized. The BP Deepwater Horizon disaster was polarizing. You had people defending BP. So we all became more and more tribal over the years to the point now where you have plenty of people right now saying, well, it happened because this guy is actually a Republican and he was sick of Trump and wanted him out. And others say, no, he’s supported and gave money to Democrats. That’s why he hates Trump.
Mike Papantonio: That’s the talking point.
Farron Cousins: It doesn’t matter who he is.
Mike Papantonio: Can you imagine, here’s a picture of the sticker on back of his truck. It says Biden and Harris. That’s the talking point. And these idiots, I swear to God, I have to turn the television off when I see Joy Reid come in or Wallace or any of those people start talking about this stuff. And if I have to hear existential threat to democracy one more time. He is, look, he went through four years as president. Okay. There was none of that that happened. January 6th is an issue we have to talk about, but it’s not like turning democracy on top of its head. And you would think these folks on cable news, the cable news cabal, are scaring the out of everybody to where it’s time, let’s go kill the guy. That’s why this is happening. And they’re talking about, well, is he a Democrat of is he a Republican? Who the hell cares?
Farron Cousins: He’s a crazy person.
Mike Papantonio: He’s a crazy person that threatened the life of an ex-president. Okay. And we act like that’s no big thing because it’s Trump. How much time do we spend on this network where you blast Trump every single day, five times a day? We do that for a reason, right? We do it because we believe that. Have you ever said it’s a good idea to go out and shoot the son of a? Has that ever happened?
Farron Cousins: Nope.
Mike Papantonio: Of course not. Have you ever glorified the idea of a guy like this going out and taking a shot, potentially killing an ex-president?
Farron Cousins: No, absolutely not.
Mike Papantonio: Of course not. But right now on cable news, it’s all Trump’s fault. Trump has brought all this on himself. You know what? There’s some truth to that. But you cannot ignore these idiots on corporate cabal news that are pumping this up to where we don’t even have anything that looks like a frigging democracy. When we can say that we put on Liz Cheney, great example. How in the hell have we started embracing people like Liz Cheney, who is nothing more than an extension of daddy who was a psychopath war criminal? Okay. Who pumped him up after he killed thousands of people in Iraq for a no good reason. Lied us into a war, weapons of mass destruction was his lie. And his idiot daughter is out there extending that argument. Like saying, we gotta get tough. We gotta get tough. She’s one of the talking heads, she’s one of the people that go this far to saying, go kill the guy. I mean, if you listen her language, it’s ugly language. And the Democrats, hell, they’ve embraced her. She’s like one of us right now. Really? She’s not one of me.
Boeing is facing even more problems as workers have now gone on strike, which means an almost complete halt to all aircraft production for the company. The employees are fighting for better wages after the company gave a golden parachute to their former CEO, who bankrupt this company. This guy has taken the company into absolutely disaster. What do they owe $300 billion? The debt is unbelievable. What is it? Something in excess of $300 billion.
Farron Cousins: Yeah. Several hundred. I know that for sure.
Mike Papantonio: $33 billion. I’m sorry.
Farron Cousins: So, you’ve got Dave Calhoun, who is the outgoing CEO. He’s the one who oversaw all their disasters, all their little plea deals with the DOJ, where he didn’t have to go to jail for his grotesque failures. He gets a golden parachute that could be worth up to $45 million. He was only CEO for three years, by the way. He made over $60 million during those three years. And the workers watching this, watching the corruption he brought to the company as he’s out the door are saying, listen, we’ve been screwed for 16 years, since the last time we had to go on strike. You gave us a little bit of a raise at that time. However, you took away most of our benefits.
Mike Papantonio: Right.
Farron Cousins: Here we are, 16 years later, we want it back. We want what we are owed because 15% of the cost that Boeing sells these plane for, only 15% of the cost goes towards their actual expenses, including labor.
Mike Papantonio: Yeah. But Boeing says, oh, look how we treated you when we were making billions of dollars. Look how they treated them. They actually took benefits away from the workers while they’re given this cat who bankrupt the company, they’re giving him $15 million worth of stock, $45 million worth of total compensation. The numbers are crazy. The stock is in the tank. People won’t even buy their product because this idiot allowed the whole supply chain to fall apart. There was no quality assurance. And now you know what the argument is now, I don’t know if you’ve caught this, they’re trying to blame it on the workers. They’re trying to say, well, we need immigration right now to replace these workers. And you know what the workers were saying? The workers were saying, we don’t even have adequate kind of machinery to do what you’re asking us to do. We don’t have enough people for quality control. So now Boeing, who is $33 billion in the hole, is saying, no, it’s the workers, it’s the workers’ fault. That’s why we’re not giving ’em any breaks. At the same time, they’re giving $45.7 million to a guy who is an absolute failure. Golden parachute the rest of his life. He never has to work. What is he 67 years old?
Farron Cousins: Yeah. He’s got plenty of time to do whatever the hell he wants. He’ll probably end up at another company, by the way. They always do.
Mike Papantonio: Oh yeah. That’s how it works. Okay. You know what this is called? This is called quick profits disaster. There’s a term, and that is where a CEO moves into a company. The CEO says, I want to extract as much profit as I can in the 10 years, or the five years, or the four years that I might be here. So they extract every dime of profit. They build their own war chest, their own income, to a guy like this, $47 million and more and more every year. And at the same time, they put all the risks on the consumer, they put all the risks on the employees, and the employees are saying, don’t dare say this is our fault. Don’t you dare say this is our fault. We told you we needed better machinery. We told you we needed better oversight. We told you we needed more employees. But no, this guy thought, hell, I’m gonna make as much money as I can and move on. That’s the new norm for a CEO.
Farron Cousins: It is because going back to about the mid eighties ish, the average tenure of a CEO for major American companies, 15 to 20 years. These days it is three to five.
Mike Papantonio: That’s right.
Farron Cousins: Well, Calhoun had his three years, made over a hundred million dollars, including that exit compensation. I’m outta here. Deal with it.
Mike Papantonio: They literally teach this in MBA school, get in, maximize profit, get out.
Farron Cousins: Parasites.
Mike Papantonio: Parasites, take just like a locust. They’re like locusts moving around from company to company, extracting as much as they can. And that’s what this guy did to Boeing and Boeing is rewarding him for it. The guy should be in frigging prison. They should perp walk this guy because he knew exactly what was going on. Tell the viewers about the agreement that he violated.
Farron Cousins: Yeah. He had this agreement with the DOJ going back a couple years after the disasters that claimed the lives of hundreds of people across the globe. And the DOJ said, listen, all you gotta do for us to not prosecute you and send you to jail here, all you gotta do is just get the planes up to code. Right. We’re not even saying go above and beyond. We’re saying, do the bare minimum and don’t lie to us about it and you don’t have to go to jail. Well, a couple months ago, the DOJ says, all right, Boeing didn’t do it. They lied to us repeatedly. We’re not gonna punish them again. But we’re super serious this time. Don’t do it again. And that’s it. That’s the end of the story.
Mike Papantonio: It’s because they’re a defense contractor. Okay. And like it or not, we have a war economy. We have built a war economy that has been building since Bill Clinton was president of the United States. That war economy keeps building and building and building to where Democrats now align themselves with neocon war pimps. That’s the new norm. And that’s why we look at Boeing and say, well, by God, we gotta keep them alive. Really?
The Department of Justice has announced that they’re preparing to file criminal charges for the hacking of Donald Trump’s campaign that was done by the country of Iran. The only problem is that the DOJ doesn’t know even who they’re going to indict. Oh my God. Garland, Garland, Garland. Get rid of this guy. Go ahead.
Farron Cousins: Yeah. This is such a dumb story and I love it so much because of how dumb it is. I agree, obviously, they’ve hacked into an American presidential campaign. There needs to be accountability. But our Department of Justice, they know this, I assume they know this, they don’t have jurisdiction in Iran. They really cannot just go over to Iran and say, we’re gonna arrest these couple of people, take ’em back with us. We’re good to go. They don’t even have that. So they come out with this ridiculous announcement last week and say, we are going to indict people. And the reporters say, okay, well, who you got? Okay, well, we don’t know who exactly yet, but we are at the point where we are ready to indict people. You know, basically, if anybody can point us in the right direction, that would be really helpful right now. But we are taking this seriously and we’re gonna do something in a country again, where we actually don’t have jurisdiction and can’t do what we’re saying we’re gonna do, but we’re gonna somehow still do it.
Mike Papantonio: Well, Elon Musk had an interesting point he raises again and again, why is all this targeted to Trump? Why is Iran and China and Russia, what’s it all Trump, Trump, Trump, Trump, Trump? And he raises the question, and DOJ seems to be focused on this one issue, and that is that Iran went after Trump, hacked him and I don’t know that it caused any big problems, but it shows how viable that process is to change an election. Right?
Farron Cousins: Well, one of the things kind of on that subject is, okay, well yes, Iran targeted Trump, Russia’s been doing a lot of pro-Trump stuff out there.
Mike Papantonio: Right. They have been. You’re correct.
Farron Cousins: But in 2016, Hillary Clinton’s campaign was hacked. Those emails were released to media outlets and the media outlets all reported on ’em. Well, this one, the same materials sent to these media outlets that we know, and they said, no, we’re not gonna report on them. So there is a double standard here that I don’t quite understand.
Mike Papantonio: It’s a total double standard.
Farron Cousins: But there’s also the double standard of, okay, well, after that last time, the DOJ didn’t come out and say, well, we’re gonna find these people that did it. They blamed everything on WikiLeaks that only received them, didn’t hack them. So it’s such a weird dichotomy here where nothing, the situations are the same.
Mike Papantonio: Oh, exactly the same.
Farron Cousins: But nothing about the way they’re being handled is the same, and they’re both being handled incorrectly.
Mike Papantonio: Yeah. And then you have, of course, WikiLeaks pays with prison time, right?
Farron Cousins: Yeah.
Mike Papantonio: For God knows how long.
Vice President Harris recently received endorsements from some of the worst human beings on the earth, the worst war criminals on the earth and she seems really proud of that. It’s a list includes Dick Cheney and Alberto Gonzales. The campaign is thrilled about the endorsement of these war whores that seem to be the average Democrat nowadays when you look at what the party has become. Used to be the Republicans, I still think they are. Don’t get me wrong. Republicans on this issue they’re the same war pimps that we see with the Democrats. But the Democrats are trying to hide behind, no, we’re different. We’re different. I go back to John Kerry when John Kerry talked about what’s happening with the military industrial complex creating a crisis of historical proportions because he was concerned that the Democrats were embracing the war machine. John Kerry, now he said that while he was running.
Farron Cousins: 20 years ago.
Mike Papantonio: 20 years ago. And it’s just gotten worse. And now, like I said, now we have Liz Cheney. Dick Cheney is our hero for the Democratic Party? The Democratic Party is endorsed by 132 war whores, neocon war whores, and the Democrats, oh, this is wonderful. Well, you know why? because the money’s good.
Farron Cousins: Right.
Mike Papantonio: The money’s good. All of these people are part of the weapons industry. They are the modern Doctor Strange Love. That’s what’s going on here. And the Democrats seem to embrace them. I used to look at this and on front of this missile would be a Republican sign. It would not be that. It would be an elephant. Wouldn’t be a donkey.
Farron Cousins: Yeah. And I do think you’re absolutely right about that. I think with the shift of these war criminals, I mean, Dick Cheney, Alberto Gonzales, he’s the guy that wrote the torture memos.
Mike Papantonio: Right.
Farron Cousins: He should be in the Hague, not out here endorsing candidates for office. And these are people that when we started Ring of Fire here, we were trashing these people every week for the damage they were causing across the planet.
Mike Papantonio: Republicans. This is what we did for years. We talked about Alberto Gonzales needs to be perp walked. Dick Cheney killed hundreds of thousands of people based on the lie of weapons of mass destruction. And then his daughter, Liz, who is now the favorite on cabal cable television, the talking head, she’s loved by the Democrats because she’s so critical of Trump. She is nothing more than a war pimp, just like daddy and just like the 132 neocons who supported, who absolutely now say, yeah, Harris is our woman. Why?
Farron Cousins: We disagree with her on some things. But we still think she’s better. Look, everybody that we’re talking about here that has come out and endorsed her right now, these are the very same people that for many, many years through the Trump administration, we had, you remember the way the old office was, we had these file cabinets filled to the brim.
Mike Papantonio: Yes.
Farron Cousins: Some of them with paper coming out the top. Filled with attacks on these people, lists of the horrible things they had done. We spent years, I spent years of my life researching how horrible these people are. And if they want me to get excited about Dick Cheney or Liz Cheney, they are kidding themselves. I’ve been going after Liz Cheney ever since Democrats started embracing her in 2020 because she hates Trump too and I said, no, she is not our friend. She does not believe anything we believe in. Stop falling for this charade.
Mike Papantonio: See, that’s the difference. The difference, you know why when I get a call, I get an email, we love Farron Cousins. You know why? Because you will step across that aisle and you will call BS. And it’s BS when you have numb nuts within the Democratic organization saying, yeah, these are our pals. This is who we are. We are not the party of war. Just like John Kerry said, we’re not the party of war. It started with Bill Clinton. Right. Bill Clinton wanted to take the party to the center. He wanted to get all the money from the weapons industry and it’s gotten worse. And then Hillary, hell, she was ready to pull the plug on Russia. She would’ve started a cold war with Russia had she been elected. Ultimately she did. But the point is,
Farron Cousins: She was back at it this week. I don’t know if you saw that. I’m gonna send you that story.
Mike Papantonio: Oh, absolutely. She can’t help herself because the weapons industry have done so much with her, for her globalism stand and we need to get tougher. We need to attack Iran. We need to attack China.
Farron Cousins: She called for the prosecution this week, I think it was yesterday, of anyone that uses Russian talking points as she calls them, and they should be thrown in jail.
Mike Papantonio: Wow.
Farron Cousins: Uh, so, so much for freedom of speech there.
Mike Papantonio: So she’s nothing more, just like unfortunately, the very heart of the Democratic party have become shills for war. They’ve become shills for the weapons industry. And that’s not to say the Republicans are any less, but we used to do stories, Farron, if you think about it, where we were only saying this because we could tie up the stories to Republicans. Now, Jesus Christ. I mean, it’s we are the party of war. You had 30 members of the Democratic Party, for example, asking Biden, please negotiate on the Ukraine issue. You remember that? Bernie Sanders, some of the people that’s saying, look, let’s go negotiate. You know who shattered him down? People like Schumer and Pelosi. People that were running the party, running it under the new guise of we are a war machine. We are a war nation. We are war Democrats. And now all those people are wrapping themselves around Harris. There’s no way to ignore it.
Farron Cousins: 20 years ago, millions of people took to the streets to protest the Iraq war. Those are the same people that we talked to, the people that were our audience at the time, and I think they still are, but I don’t know that they feel the same anymore. I think they have changed while we are actually sitting here being the same. We have not done anything different. But they forgot who they were 20 years ago when they were marching in the streets with Code Pink and the other groups, their names escape me unfortunately, with Cindy Sheehan. Right.
Mike Papantonio: Yeah. Cindy Sheehan.
Farron Cousins: Those people were in the streets saying these folks need to go to jail and now the Democrat party.
Mike Papantonio: And now they are these folks. Now this fellow right here.
Farron Cousins: I’m not saying Cindy Sheehan is, but, the party.
Mike Papantonio: Yeah, the party is. But this is now a donkey. It used to be an elephant.
Farron Cousins: Yep.
Mike Papantonio: Thanks for joining me. Okay.
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 the coming week. So 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 let ’em, they can’t tell you stories that’s going to affect their advertising dollars or because they’re so aligned with a Democratic or Republican party that they’ve become that. They can’t color outside the lines. They can’t be objective in their reporting and tell you the other side. We don’t have that problem here. If you’ve just watched this show, you understand that. Hopefully we’ll see you next time.
