Johnson & Johnson has been hit with a new lawsuit accusing them of fraudulently using bankruptcy to avoid paying the victims who got cancer from their deadly products. Plus, a college professor named Allan Lichtman has been called the Nostradamus of American politics for accurately predicting nearly every presidential race for 20 years. 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: Johnson and Johnson’s been hit with a new lawsuit accusing ’em of fraudulently using bankruptcy to avoid paying the victims who got cancer, clearly got cancer, from their deadly product that they’ve known about for 50, 60 years. They’ve understood that what they were making would cause cancer in women. So, let’s talk about this lawsuit.
Farron Cousins: Yeah. This, to me, it’s absolutely a huge lawsuit because Johnson and Johnson, for many years now, after a stunning amount of courtroom humiliations with these talcum lawsuits, they go and they do what’s called the Texas Two Step. And that is you create a shell company that previously did not exist, and you spin off, you give the shell company all your liability saying, okay, we, the big Johnson and Johnson, we keep our billions of dollars, but this company now owns all the talcum litigation. And then that company that existed up, didn’t exist up until a day ago, they go to court, usually in Texas, very corporate friendly there and they go in front of the judge and they say, judge, uh, look, I’m poor little company here. I just started and now I’m facing tens of billions in lawsuits. I’m bankrupt. And those Texas judges will say, well, by golly, you are, you don’t have to do this. I’m so sorry for you, little company.
Mike Papantonio: Farron, it’s the equivalent of you being worth 400, you Farron Cousins, you are worth $450 billion, but you don’t want to pay $2 billion for something that you’ve, a horrendous issue that you’ve caused. So you don’t want to spend the 2, 3, 4, 5, $6 billion. You’re worth $450 billion. You know that you’ve killed people. You know that people are dying an awful death from cancer. And if you’ve ever done any research of what these women go through as they’re suffering for this cancer, I mean, the medical costs alone are in the millions every year. And the attentive care is, it just, but the problem is this is a company, and I think this lawsuit is gonna show this history, long history of fraud, all the way back to the time that they knew this was a problem. And so the fraud, virtually everything this company’s done becomes part of that fraud. You know, every element says, well, this you’re covering up and this you’re not completely telling the truth about to the American public. You’re not telling the truth to the courts. They’ve hustled the courts. There have been judges that, already a bankruptcy judge that was just attacked by the third circuit by saying, what in the hell are you thinking letting these corporate types get away with killing all these people? And just saying, well, we just can’t afford it anymore because we’ve moved all of our money, judge, we moved it into these fraudulent little holding companies. So we asked, and those fraudulent holding companies, when we moved it, we said, okay, little fraudulent company, you take responsibility for all of the future. And there’s not enough money to do it, you know?
Farron Cousins: Right.
Mike Papantonio: So this is important. The fellow that’s handling this, Andy Birchfield, has just been a warrior. They’ve done everything they can to get him kicked out of the case. I mean, you name it. They’ve done everything they can to make it difficult for this guy that’s been doing this now for 11 years.
Farron Cousins: Wow.
Mike Papantonio: He’s been fighting this war with Johnson and Johnson. This is after they were hit for $4.6 billion in a trial down in, just several years ago. So they’ve been hit time and now they’ve won a few. But after you’re hit for $4.6 billion, don’t you say, we must have done something wrong?
Farron Cousins: Right. And so the women that are involved in this lawsuit, obviously, because this is a class action, they’ve been victimized twice, right?
Mike Papantonio: Correct.
Farron Cousins: Because they got victimized with the product and then they got victimized again once this whole bankruptcy shenanigans took place. Is that what’s?
Mike Papantonio: That’s exactly it. Farron, you ought to be there talking to family members that have watched their mother or the sister die this horrendous death from the cancer. It’s, if it doesn’t bring tears to your eyes, there’s something inhuman about you. Well, this company, they’ve heard all those stories. But nevertheless, they’re doing everything they can to avoid just ponying up and paying what they should. They’ve offered money, but it’s not even close. The money they’ve offered is not even close to being able to pay for the damage they’ve done across this nation. And they have the ability to do it, but they just want to, let’s go to bankruptcy court. Let’s hide our money with these little fraudulent companies. This lawsuit is going to tell a big story. I promise you.
Farron Cousins: Well, best of luck with it. I really hope that this changes the way this works here.
Mike Papantonio: Yeah.
Mike Papantonio: A college professor named Allan Lichtman has been called the Nostradamus of American politics for accurately predicting nearly every presidential race for 20 years. He’s made his predictions this year. I’ve got Farron Cousins with me to talk about those predictions. Farron, it looks like Nate Silver, who’s calling a 63% chance of Trump winning versus Lichtman. Who do you believe? If you go back and look, there’s a lot of flaws in both of ’em.
Farron Cousins: There really are. And I think at this point, everybody is kind of throwing everything at the wall and let’s see what sticks. Lichtman, of course, oh, he’s got nine out of the last 10, and he only missed the one because it was Bush v Gore, which was a super weird situation anyway. But if you look at the regular polls, a normal person would say, okay, yes, it looks like Harris is gonna win. Seems like a safe bet. So I don’t know that you need the 13 keys if you’re just looking at what the numbers say, okay, this would work. But Nate Silver is looking more than just the numbers on the surface, not that he has been a hundred percent correct either.
Mike Papantonio: He hasn’t been.
Farron Cousins: And in 2020 and 2016, he was way off the mark. Everybody was way off the mark. But he’s looking more at the swing states. Forget these national polls. National polls do not tell us much at all. This race is probably gonna come down five or six states.
Mike Papantonio: Yeah. I was surprised to see the numbers spread though for Nate Silver.
Farron Cousins: That was massive.
Mike Papantonio: I’ve never seen him do that before. He’s been off three or four points, but here, 63% chance of Trump winning. And he says that, first of all, he does it with his mathematical data. He’s a guy that predicts baseball outcomes and basketball, and they do love him in Vegas. I mean, they really do love Nate Silver in Vegas. Now, the professor on the other hand says, I’ve had these 13 keys. We’ve talked about these keys in the past before, and they’re legitimate. They make perfect sense. But I think what we have to do is avoid all this. As you were talking about earlier, you’ve even got astrologers that are coming in, you know, the Moon is lining up with Venus, and that’s telling me that this candidate. At some point, don’t you have to say no? All that matters is what’s happening at the ballot box. Right. Go out and vote. Don’t be influenced by any of this stuff.
Farron Cousins: Exactly. And you’re right, because we don’t just have the professors or the numbers people, the psychics are out there making their predictions. The bookies in Vegas.
Mike Papantonio: Bookies are big on this one, man.
Farron Cousins: They really are. And it’s kind of gone back and forth. At one point, Trump was obviously way ahead, then Harris, now I think it’s swinging back.
Mike Papantonio: Now Trump is back.
Farron Cousins: Yeah. So, a lot of people want to make a lot of money off of it, but really nobody knows. This is all a guessing game until those votes start coming in November 5th. But right now, even with the polls, even if you look at these polls, okay, well, she’s ahead in four swing states. He’s ahead in the other four swing states. But they’re all within a margin of error. Even the national polls. And I don’t know, it seems odd that everything is so close and I do think the media to a degree, pushes a horse race.
Mike Papantonio: Oh, it is.
Farron Cousins: Because if either one of these people was running away with it right now, nobody’s tuning into anything.
Mike Papantonio: Look, don’t believe Nate Silver, don’t believe Lichtman, go out and vote. That’s the answer here. And if you want to read some astrology for the hell of it, read some astrology or talk to a psychic. It doesn’t make any difference. What makes a difference is showing up at the polls. Now, a lot of times you’ll see, we’ve talked about this, parties use polls, don’t they?
Farron Cousins: Yeah.
Mike Papantonio: Trump will go out and he’ll get some cat at a college, do a poll, make it look like I’m winning. Harris will do the same thing. And I guess what it does is it empowers people to say, I got a chance. I’m on the winning side. I want to go out and be one of the winners who votes. But look, at the end of the day, just go vote.
