The surgeon general is calling on Congress to approve warning labels for social media websites and apps, alerting parents and young users to the dangers these sites can pose. Also, the Supreme Court has overturned a signature accomplishment of the Trump administration by reversing the order that banned bump stocks on non-automatic weapons. 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 Surgeon General is calling on Congress to prove warning labels for social media websites and apps, alerting parents that young users have the danger of having mental side effects. I’ve got Ring of Fire’s Farron Cousins with me to talk about it. As I read this story, God bless him, Murthy trying to do something. At least trying to do something. I don’t know that it means much, but he’s trying to do something. The real angle on this to me is all they have to do is congressionally act on 230, which is this immunity that these sites have. If they would do away with that, this problem would solve itself.

Farron Cousins: Yeah. And it’s not just doing away with 230. I think we need to amend it just because we don’t want these sites overreacting and saying, okay, well now suddenly we’re liable for any kind of defamation that happens on our platform. So do a little carve out for that and I think we’re good here. But Murthy as the Surgeon General doesn’t have a lot of authority. He really can’t even do what he’s calling for here, which says we need warning labels and he says, but I can’t do it. Congress, I know y’all can’t even get along with each other for five seconds, but you guys really need to do this because we’ve got scientific studies, we’ve got lawsuits out there. All of this mountain of evidence showing that these social media sites are psychologically damaging young users.

Mike Papantonio: Overwhelming. The numbers are overwhelming when you look, well, actually we’re involved in some of those lawsuits. When you look at the documents, most of them understood exactly what they were doing with algorithms. They understood what they were doing with addiction. They used, as a matter of fact, if you take the profile that they used to addict kids to this, same profile they used on tobacco, which was a case we started as well. So I see so many parallels including the parallel to where Congress won’t do what they’re supposed to do. So this Surgeon General is saying, look, at least let me state the obvious that we’re having bad psychological effects that we’re seeing in children because of social media.

Farron Cousins: Well, and what’s even sadder to me is the fact that the Surgeon General didn’t come out and say this in a big grand press conference. He had to write an op-ed.

Mike Papantonio: Yeah. New York Times. Right?

Farron Cousins: So he has to sit down, write this out, put it in the New York Times, hoping somebody is gonna see it. But what he’s gotta do is you gotta get louder. You have to be more adamant about things like this and you have to go and address Congress.

Mike Papantonio: We’ve done so many stories on this and of course whenever we say it, we’re called old fuddy duddies, you know, God, the old guys are talking about kids. No. Is there any doubt in your mind when you review all the material we’ve done on this and you take, I don’t know if you’ve followed the lawsuit that we’re actually handling, but I’ve seen, I’m looking at the documents. Is there any doubt that this is having a dramatic effect, the social media in general, it’s having dramatic effect on the mental wellbeing of young kids?

Farron Cousins: Oh, it absolutely is. And like I said, there’s tons of scientific data now proving that this is happening. And to be honest too, and the Surgeon General mentions this, he says, look, part of the issue here too is parents, y’all gotta do your part too. You can’t just wait for Congress or for the Surgeon General to act and say, parents, here’s what you do. Maybe take a little initiative in your kid’s life, keep ’em off the screens for certain times a day. Not all the time, but maybe say, hey, it’s dinner time. Put the social media away. And he mentions that specifically.

Mike Papantonio: Well, I gotta tell you, the 230 is a problem.

Farron Cousins: Oh, it is, it absolutely is.

Mike Papantonio: Maybe me saying do away with it is overkill. It needs to be modified. This was a Clinton gift, you understand.

Farron Cousins: Oh, yeah, yeah.

Mike Papantonio: This is Bill Clinton saying, hey, if you take care of me, I’m gonna give you this. That’s exactly what it was. And they did just the opposite. He said, well, these are gonna be my friends now. They absolutely destroyed his presidency after the Lewinsky issue. But it was his way of saying, hey, I’ve got an in with you guys now. I’ve given you 230. You have this weird immunity that nobody else has, and so life’s gonna be good.

Farron Cousins: Well, and it was almost 30 years ago that that was put in place when the internet was just beginning. And so, obviously with the way it has evolved, the law needs to evolve with it and it hasn’t.

Mike Papantonio: Yeah, exactly.

The Supreme Court’s overruled a signature accomplishment of the Trump administration by reversing the order that banned bump stocks on non-automatic weapons, that they’re not equivalent to a machine gun. You know, when Trump came out with this, I thought, wow, great job, man.

Farron Cousins: We talked about it.

Mike Papantonio: We did.

Farron Cousins: Said, hey, this is good. I’ve mentioned it in interviews that I have done since Trump has left office, I said, he did ban the bump stocks. You gotta give credit where it’s due. And for the Supreme Court to come out, it was a week ago, and say, no, no, no, we don’t understand things. Clarence Thomas of course wrote the opinion here.

Mike Papantonio: Oh, Clarence Thomas had diagrams and everything about how this is not a machine gun. That the separation is too much between shots. It’s not a machine gun. Really?

Farron Cousins: He said somebody with a fast finger could do the same thing, which is not even how the guns work.

Mike Papantonio: Yeah. But in Las Vegas, that same gun killed 58 people and it wounded 500. And so what’s the difference? It wasn’t a machine gun, but the guy, as fast as he could pull his trigger, it was killing people.

Farron Cousins: Yeah. Because the bump stock that uses the recoil to.

Mike Papantonio: Yeah. Supreme Court says, ah, I don’t know. I don’t think that’s a problem.

Farron Cousins: Well, what gets me about this, is during Trump’s years, there’s two things that I always say, like, he did two good things. One was the bump stock ban, which of course the courts have now overturned. The second good thing that he did, which was overturned years ago, was remember the order he put out that said that drug companies had to put the prices in their commercials?

Mike Papantonio: Yes, yes, yes.

Farron Cousins: I don’t want to give him too much credit, but you do give credit where it’s due. That was good.

Mike Papantonio: Well, full disclosure, you beat the hell out of Trump just about every day of the year.

Farron Cousins: Yeah.

Mike Papantonio: So, okay. But, every now and then, you gotta say, okay, well, this happened. Now if I say it, it’s like, oh my God, Pap’s a Trumper. He’s gone right. He’s a right winger. I mean, where do these flakes come from? Where do they come from?

Farron Cousins: But this is why the courts, especially the lower courts matter so much, and people need to pay more attention because.

Mike Papantonio: Oh, the lower courts.

Farron Cousins: We had Obama put out some good labor rules that were overturned by judges he put in office. Trump does these two good things overturned by judges he put in office. They’re so blind to think that, oh, this person’s a Republican, or this person’s a Democrat, so it’s a good pick for me.

Mike Papantonio: Or that it’s all I have to worry about is the presidency, Jesus Christ, that is so minor compared to what the courts are able to do. And that’s, I’m not just talking about Supreme Courts. I’m talking about appointments, the appellate courts, all below the Supreme Court. Even the trial, the trial courts, some of the appointments that I’ve seen Biden make, I mean, when I compare ’em to even George Bush’s appointments, the appointments I’m seeing with Biden are horrendous. They’re coming from silk stocking defense firms. Huge defense firms. Thousands of lawyers billing billions of dollars and these folks are coming from those law firms. They’ve never represented an injured victim at all. They’ve never represented consumers at all. They’ve represented corporations. They have nothing in common with the average person out there. But those are the people that are being appointed because they’re from big defense firms who gave big money to both Democrats and Republicans. Mostly to Democrats though.

Farron Cousins: Well, talking about not having the kind of experience, not dealing with actual human beings. I guarantee you Clarence Thomas has never talked to anyone that was present at that Las Vegas shooting where the bump stock was used.

Mike Papantonio: Yeah, for sure.

Farron Cousins: I have a friend of mine who was there,

Mike Papantonio: Well, my friend represented, my friend handled that case.

Farron Cousins: Yeah. And it’s these people still have PTSD from and will probably forever. It was a traumatic experience and if those people could have told their stories, I don’t know that it would’ve had an effect on Clarence Thomas, but perhaps on the lower courts, maybe. I don’t know.

Mike Papantonio: You almost had to work to get that decision. I mean, you had to do metaphysical gymnastics to get there.