I’m Mike Papantonio, and this is America’s Lawyer where we dig behind the headlines to give the details and information that corporate media just is incapable of giving you. As always, I’m here with Ring of Fire’s Farron Cousins, the best, absolutely the best progressive voice in the business. I know I say that a lot, but I truly mean it. In case you haven’t figured out.
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 where we dig behind the headlines to give the details and information that corporate media just is incapable of giving you. As always, I’m here with Ring of Fire’s Farron Cousins, the best, absolutely the best progressive voice in the business. I know I say that a lot, but I truly mean it. In case you haven’t figured out.
Farron Cousins: I appreciate it.
Mike Papantonio: The stories are all over the place this week. There’s so much coming at us. You found a story I thought was brilliant. It was the story about corporate America sucking up to Trump the same way that Joe and Mika sucked up to Trump. I read this story and I said, my God, is this now, is this the new thing? Do we show up in Mar-a-Lago and kiss his ring? This is pathetic. What I’m seeing with corporate America is pathetic. Pick it up.
Farron Cousins: It really is. And Joe and Mika really did kick it off, so you gotta give full credit to them. They really started this, we all have to suck up to Trump thing. And then Mark Zuckerberg, who Trump a few months ago, threatened to send him to jail for the rest of his life. Zuckerberg goes down to Mar-a-Lago day before Thanksgiving. They have a wonderful dinner together. And Zuckerberg, of course, well, Elon Musk was not happy about this, right? That’s his big competition in the social media world. But Zuckerberg down there, because Zuckerberg knows, okay, I’ve gotta come over here and kiss the ring. I don’t want regulations. I don’t want anybody coming after Meta because they actually just had a horrible court ruling against them in Washington.
Mike Papantonio: Yes, yes.
Farron Cousins: Tens of millions of dollars. So he knows, okay, look, I have probably got a lot more lawsuits that could be on the back burner.
Mike Papantonio: He’s on the ropes right now.
Farron Cousins: Yeah. Let me go cozy up to the guy that’s picking the DOJ. Let’s make sure that we don’t get any antitrust suits or anything like that, because that’s what it’s about. We don’t want to get investigated. We don’t want to get sued. I’ll stay at Mar-a-Lago. I’ll book a bunch of rooms. I’ll pay all the money. Just please let us do whatever the hell we want for the next four years.
Mike Papantonio: Farron, okay, wait. You’re Zuckerberg, right? You go down to kiss Trump’s ring. When you do, here’s what you know, this is a guy that said, if you screw up again Zuckerberg, you’re gonna have life in prison. He literally said that. He complained about the fact that Zuckerberg has hustled him, become a Democrat spokesman, a Democrat voice that gave $400 million to some of the issues that the Dems were talking about on Covid and some other issues. So he says that you’re gonna spend life in prison if you don’t come into understanding what I wanna say to you. Alright, here’s what I remember about Zuckerberg. I don’t think I ever heard him talking, I mean, two years ago, where this overused word existential. I love that you never use that word existential. It’s like every idiot in the media has picked up on this word, existential threat to democracy, existential threat to whatever. So he’s using the existential word almost nonstop about what a threat Trump is. It’s a tough turnaround, man. And if you’re Trump, what do you do with it? You’ve got him, basically. You’ve got the little guy. And as you say, the lawsuits have just started. We have a whole string of lawsuits we’re getting ready to bring in against this little guy. So take it from there.
Farron Cousins: Yeah. And those are damaging enough. What Zuckerberg is truly concerned about are the potential DOJ charges for antitrust, monopoly, those kinds of things. Google has already been hit with that. So he knows I have to play ball. I can no longer criticize this man. If I gotta start writing some checks, I’ll do that. I’m gonna do whatever it takes to keep the DOJ off my back.
Mike Papantonio: It’s pathetic.
Farron Cousins: It is.
Mike Papantonio: It’s his business. But it’s pathetic. It’s just as pathetic as this story that you found. I love this story. You found this, I guess it’s a, maybe a Wall Street, yeah, Wall Street Journal article, oddly enough. But it’s these sycophant types in corporate America, gee whiz, we’re here to talk to you. We’re different now. We know we gave a bunch of money to your opposition. We know we’ve been hugely critical of you. We know we’ve made it look like you’re a threat to democracy. But you know what? All that’s history. So what are they doing now?
Farron Cousins: They are, this is almost hilarious, they’re going through and they’re scrubbing their websites about any language that includes inclusion, diversity, those key words that of course, Republicans seized on in the election, saying Democrats are more concerned with DEI than they are about your personal financial situation. So these corporations say, okay, we tried the left wing thing. We tried to pretend that we were allies with Democrats. Now the Democrats have no power nationally. We gotta go back to being on the right like we were in the Bush years and for part of the Obama years. So now suddenly no more diversity, no more inclusion, no more talking about women in leadership.
Mike Papantonio: We’re one of you.
Farron Cousins: All of it’s gotta go.
Mike Papantonio: Right. We’re one of you Trump. We see exactly what you see. We see it every time there’s this regime change. Look, you may not agree with me, but here’s what I’m seeing. I’m seeing a sweep of the old Obama, of the old Clinton, of the old Biden, the notion of globalism, for example. Listen carefully to what these new people are talking about. Listen carefully to what these folks that are coming up to be appointed to God knows everything. It’s all in there. And it is, we reject everything that’s happened for the last 15 years in America. And you know, what? We believe, whether it’s accurate or not, but we believe the American public has too. We believe the American public has rejected all that. They want to throw it all out. And that’s what corporate America has finally come to terms with. That’s what they believe. And right now they’re fighting for their, they’re worried about Kennedy. They’re worried about, the pharmaceutical industry is terrified of Kennedy. Why? Because he talks about the revolving door. He talks about how revolving doors are killing this country. Right? We’ve talked about that. Pick it up.
Farron Cousins: Yeah. But that’s why he should have been in charge of the FDA to prevent the revolving door to actually put more stringent regulations on drug approval and medical device approval. EPA is where he should be. You know, I’m not a fan of him personally at HHS.
Mike Papantonio: I know you aren’t.
Farron Cousins: But at the EPA, I would not have objected to a single piece of that, because doing research for him for years on Ring of Fire, that guy knows more about environmental issues. He was on the front lines. He was at the barricade. Got arrested so many times for it. The environment is where he belongs. That’s where his knowledge, in my opinion, is. I don’t like what he says about health. I know he’s taken on pharmaceutical companies in court.
Mike Papantonio: Big time.
Farron Cousins: Absolutely. But the things he has pushed about public health, a lot of it has been debunked. So that’s not where I trust him. I trust him on the environment. I don’t trust him over on this issue.
Mike Papantonio: Well, I’ll tell you who doesn’t trust him worse than you is the pharmaceutical industry.
Farron Cousins: Oh, their stocks have gone in the toilet.
Mike Papantonio: They are terrified. He came out the other day and said, why in the hell are we advertising pharmaceuticals? Why are we telling patients that aren’t even patients that if they’ve got a headache, this is the thing they need to go tell their doctor to give them? Or if they’re having kidney problems, you diagnose yourself and then go tell the doctor. There’s only one other country in the world that does that, it’s New Zealand. And he says, why are we doing this to where every three minutes on corporate television that is making a bundle on pharmaceutical, why is it that every three minutes we have to listen to this? Why are we letting the pharmaceutical industry take control of that? The other thing is, why are these costs so high? What is a PBM? Why are we allowing a PBM to take a cut? Just like, the middleman, like this book that I have coming out in March where the PBMs are taking a cut for no reason. So those are the things that corporate America’s worried about. They’re worried about across the board, though. They’re worried about the DOJ. They’re worried about Attorney General. They’re worried across the board. They’re freaking out right now and I love to see it. You know, to me, I love to see it.
Mike Papantonio: Well, okay, next story to me that is just so amazing is can MSNBC make it through the year? Can CNN even make it through the year? Right now, Farron, you looked, I looked at to verify, our views are higher than CNN right now. They’re higher in prime time. They’re even higher than MSNBC. But those folks believe that they have such huge impact on the politics of this country. Take it from there. You’ve been a long critic of this for a long time. Go ahead.
Farron Cousins: Rachel Maddow has agreed to take a pay cut. That’s how bad things are. Because MSNBC has purged, I think, what, 53% of their viewership, CNN, 47% of theirs. So they’re just hemorrhaging viewers in the last month. And to be honest, something similar happened on YouTube with all of the people on the left. There were massive subscriber exoduses, I guess you would call them and then within about two weeks, everybody had gained everything back. Everything’s back to normal and fine.
Mike Papantonio: Not MSNBC and CNN.
Farron Cousins: But not with the corporate media. And I think there is a good reason for this. I was actually talking to my wife about this yesterday. I think what sets this apart, why these corporate media outlets are dying and not Fox, of course, because Fox’s audience wants to tune in for the rabble, for the crazy. This is what we believe. But on the left here, you don’t want to sit there and have these CNN hosts or MSNBC hosts lecture you. You don’t care to sit there and watch them talk to the politician of the day.
Mike Papantonio: They’re not even journalists.
Farron Cousins: Right. Because when they’re talking to the person of the day, they’re not really getting news. They’re getting that person’s talking points about why they’re good, this side’s bad, blah, blah, blah. Thank you. But they’re talking to each other. Now, what I do every day.
Mike Papantonio: The bubble, the Democratic bubble.
Farron Cousins: Right. Well, what I do every day is I look into the camera and I’m talking to the person. Whoever it is that is watching that video, I’m talking to you, I’m having a conversation with you. When you listen to a podcast, people feel like they’re part of the conversation instead of just watching two people talk about things you don’t understand on tv. That’s the difference. That’s why YouTube has become far more popular. That’s why podcasts are surging. It gives you a sense of feeling like you’re a part of the conversation instead of being lectured by people who talk down to you.
Mike Papantonio: Well, not only that, you’re good at what you do. Okay. That’s one reason they watch. Second of all, you are not committed to a baseball team. You understand this is not. Now you absolutely have nothing but awful things to say about Trump and you have for years and years, and you regularly attack Republicans, but you also attack Democrats. When the Democrat comes out with boneheaded ideas and they’re so far out there, you’re not afraid to do that. They will not do that on MSNBC. They won’t do it on CNN. And there’s another thing that I read, I thought was.
Farron Cousins: They’ll attack the hell out of Bernie Sanders, though.
Mike Papantonio: Yeah. Well, or course.
Farron Cousins: They’ll absolutely go after that guy.
Mike Papantonio:: Because he’s not a real Democrat. So, I read something I thought was really interesting, and it is, the American public is tired of being hustled and lied to by MSNBC and CNN. Here they talked about Biden is fine. Right. Everything’s fine with Biden. Russiagate, most people don’t even believe it happened now and now they’re opening up to that. That Kamala is winning. Yeah? These are all lie after lie that corporate media, they turn on Rachel Maddow and she’s saying all of this, and they’re thinking, oh great, everything’s fine. But it’s all a lie and it’s a lie that’s being told because they pay Rachel Maddow $30 million. So she says, okay, I know that this is all nonsense, but I’m gonna say it anyway. That’s one of the big factors that I read that people are reacting to. They say, I don’t feel like turning into MSNBC and knowing that what they’re telling me is nothing but a big hustle because corporate is telling them to say that. Corporate says, this is our talking point for the day. You remember that, right? When I did MSNBC as a commentator with Ed Schultz, these memos would come down, this is what we’re gonna say about TPP, this is what we’re gonna say about Hillary. And Ed would say, hell no, this is not what I’m gonna say. And they freaked out about it. Right. Because they weren’t being listened to. Corporate leadership was being ignored by Ed Schultz. Right?
Farron Cousins: Yeah. And a big part of that too, with the whole Biden thing was that was something you and I for well over a year actually talking about how Biden was declining, we took so much heat for that. And hey, guess what? We were a hundred percent right about that. But the corporate media wasn’t there. They only got there when Biden crapped the bed during that debate. But everybody else that was looking at this objectively.
Mike Papantonio: For months and months.
Farron Cousins: We had been there. So that was a huge hit to the credibility of these networks that pretended everything is fine. Nothing to worry about here. And when you look at Biden today, he’s so much worse today than he was in that debate. I think this man right now is on borrowed time.
Mike Papantonio: He started to walk outta the Amazon jungle just three weeks ago. He did not know where he was. That was the only explain. He turned around. He’s looking, well, where’s my handlers? Well, there’s no handlers, Joe, because they’ve all left you. You are alone now. And so he starts walking into the Amazon jungle. I mean, it’s so sick. But they knew that. Rachel Maddow knew that. Joy Reid knew that. Joe and Mika knew that.
Farron Cousins: The White House people they had on their programs every day.
Mike Papantonio: Right. They all knew it. So Rachel, who, oh by the, she took a $5 million cut. She’s being paid $30 million. Why? Because she says what the hell needs to be said to please corporate. And that’s what Joe and Mika’s always done. Joy Reid, hell, I don’t know. She’s out like in the ozone. I don’t even know what she babbles about anymore. But they better have a come to Jesus meeting and they better say, this doesn’t work anymore. This is like an old model that doesn’t work. Comcast, what do you think they’re gonna do?
Farron Cousins: I really don’t know because you either have to retool this entire network, which takes time. It takes money, and there’s a horrible rebuilding process that goes into that. Or you go down with the ship. You keep playing in the band as the Titanic sinks into the water trying to keep everybody calm. But either way, it’s not in a good situation. I think you’ve got a serious credibility issue. I think a lot of people have already found better outlets to go to. Outlets where people can actually speak their mind without fear of the corporations, without fear of these overlords. They can talk and they can speak passionately and intelligently. You don’t have to be on cable news to matter anymore. And I think these hosts on MSNBC don’t quite understand that yet.
Mike Papantonio: So, while we’re talking about Biden walking out into the Amazon, let’s talk about the biggest screw up of his entire presidency. And there’s been a lot of ’em. But this pardon. The pardon of the manchild, the spoiled manchild who has grown up in an alternative reality, a reality that’s made him into a drug addict. Some kind of, I mean, go down the list of this. I’ve called this guy a dirt bag and people get so upset. He is a dirt bag. It wasn’t just addiction. Look, this is a guy who had a child, ignored his child, like she didn’t exist. He made films of himself with strippers and hookers and was proud of it. Put it out, you know, kept it secret until it hit the internet and they had no words to describe. What in the hell are you doing? Okay. I don’t know how. There’s no way I can see anybody defending the guy, because he did, he grew up in a bubble, a DC bubble. He’s a spoiled manchild. And Biden, by taking this move, has risked, I think he’s risked the validity of democracy, of the civil justice process.
Farron Cousins: Um, I’m okay with it.
Mike Papantonio: Too strong? Well, I know.
Farron Cousins: I first of all cannot stress enough also, I don’t care. We all knew this was happening. You and I actually stood here two weeks ago from this moment, and we talked about the fact this will happen, and at the time, both kind of agreed like, hey, this, whatever, it’s gonna happen. No big deal. I don’t think it was important enough for the New York Times to run seven front page stories on it on Monday, for the Washington Post to run six front page stories on it on Monday. So between those two alone, 13 stories in a matter of hours on the front page when we had information that Pete Hegseth, Donald Trump’s defense secretary, that horrible report from the New Yorker, buried because of Hunter Biden. Kash Patel, a guy who’s threatened to go after the media once he gets to the FBI. And by the way, hey, guess who that is too?
Mike Papantonio: That’s us.
Farron Cousins: Buried because of Hunter Biden. And look, I don’t think that Hunter Biden is a good person by any stretch. I’m not defending anything this guy has done.
Mike Papantonio: I’m sure you’re not.
Farron Cousins: But if I were in a position and my kid was in trouble and I could get my kid out of trouble waving a pen, I’d do it in a heartbeat.
Mike Papantonio: Okay. Here’s the problem I’m seeing with it, Farron. Two weeks ago when we talked about this, I did say, ah, no big thing. I really meant the gun charge. I thought the gun charge was ridiculous. They had to really work to do it. There are plenty of people in prison for the same thing that he was convicted of. You understand? A lot of people in prison for that. But to me, the $1.4 million for tax evasion, unacceptable. Especially when daddy makes the decision, I’m gonna put 90,000 new IRS people out there to make sure you or I play by the rules. But manchild, spoiled manchild, we’re gonna let him get away with $1.4 million. How about the other part of it? Here’s where you and I, I don’t know if we disagree. I’m seeing it a little different. I’m seeing why would you take this pardon all the way back to 2014? Okay.
Farron Cousins: Which is what I said he would do. I said he would go back all the way.
Mike Papantonio: You said he’d go as far as he possibly could, but I really didn’t even believe that would happen. When you said it, I was ah, I’m thinking, no, that’s not gonna happen. But he did it. He goes back to 2014 because of Burisma. Right? Because Burisma, whether, we don’t know all the facts of Burisma now, but we’re going to, and the truth is it’s gonna involve his brother. It’s gonna involve Jim Biden, Joe Biden’s brother, possibly the entire family. And they don’t have immunity. You understand? At this point, there has not been a blanket immunity all the way back to 2014 for the entire Biden family. It’s a problem for them. Whether you wanna accept that or not. If I’m a prosecutor and it’s payback time, I’m gonna go to Burisma and I’m gonna say, wait, let me get this right. Here you had a totally corrupt oil and gas company that was being prosecuted by somebody who had all the material on ’em. Here’s the list of material, bad material about Burisma. All of a sudden the President of the United States shows up and says, you better fire this prosecutor or there’s gonna be sanctions.
Farron Cousins: The global community you mean. Not just our president, the global community.
Mike Papantonio: I understand, but the president participated when his son was on the board, Farron. You can’t ignore that.
Farron Cousins: Shokin was actually going after, no, no. He wasn’t going after. He was going soft on Burisma. That is what was happening at the time. So it’s not because he was going after them. Part of it had to do with the fact he was not going after them. But let me also say here though, is that we had for two straight years now we’re in the 24th month of it, Republicans in the House of Representatives on three separate committees every week investigating this stuff. They got nothing. Nothing. They brought in these so-called whistleblowers. Some they had to pull out of prison.
Mike Papantonio: But you know what they’re saying about that? They’re saying, whether it’s true or not, it’s a pretty good talking point, the talking point, the very reason we couldn’t get to the bottom of it was because we had the DOJ interfering with real information. That’s the talking point on that. I know exactly what you’re saying. But the comeback is, that’s the talking point. And so, I don’t know, the guy’s a dirt bag and to say, I’m gonna save this dirt bag and run the risk of every American thinking there’s a two-tier justice process in America. There’s the haves and the have nots. The have nots go to prison. The haves don’t. That somehow we can actually say we’re above the law. And when you add the facts situation up with Jim, Biden’s brother being involved in the Burisma thing, we don’t know where that really goes, or big guy being involved. It’s these little bits and pieces to where I used to prosecute and I gotta tell you, if I had these little facts and I wanted to make ’em count all of this we’re gonna see again and again. So I think he has to give a blanket, he needs to blanket pardon the entire Biden family, I believe.
Farron Cousins: Well, look, another part to me too is that we got a guy that’s coming into office that has 34 felonies, convicted of 34 felonies. So is Hunter Biden above the law now? Sure. We got a convicted felon walking into the White House. We got a pardoned criminal, a pardoned felon, kind of like Hunter Biden is now, that’s about to be the ambassador to France. So, if we want to sit here, not us, but the media has made this into such, this is the biggest story in the world, and it’s really not. It is a story of corruption, but my God, we see these kinds of pardons with every single person that goes through that presidency. Trump, when he pardoned Steve Bannon and Manafort and Roger Stone. Bill Clinton, when he pardons family members.
Mike Papantonio: Yeah. The rich, my God.
Farron Cousins: HW Bush did it with the Iran Contra people. And Reagan, we have to reign in the pardon power, because this is not a Biden problem. This a Biden, Trump, Obama, Bush, Bush, Clinton, Reagan, Nixon, Ford, everybody problem.
Mike Papantonio: This will be remembered as a Biden problem. That’s my prediction. This will be, when you talk about, pardon, look, you had all of the airbag talking heads two days before he did this, talking about what a wonderful President Biden is because he’s made this statement, I’m not gonna pardon., You remember this? MSNBC, you couldn’t turn it on without them, these accolades about what an incredible man this is, how honest he is. How above the law. How really the law.
Farron Cousins: And that’s what drives me crazy about that, is everybody with a brain knew this was coming.
Mike Papantonio: Well, I’m not suggesting we’re the only people with a brain, but we did, we talked about this a lot.
Farron Cousins: We even talked about it every time we talked about Biden, even possibly resigning the presidency, we said, go out there, pardon your son, resign from office. Pardon your son. Resign from office. We have so many clips of us saying that this is what was gonna happen. And so for anybody to act like this came out of left field like the media’s doing, you are too stupid to be talking about the news anymore then because my God, a child could have predicted that Biden was gonna pardon his son.
Mike Papantonio: How about Whoopi Goldberg and The View? You would’ve thought that they were inviting Biden on the show to have sex with him because he’s such a remarkable person for not, for not pardoning his son. That’s how crazy this is. And then today you got Whoopi out there, oh, well, he didn’t know he was gonna pardon? Have you heard that argument?
Farron Cousins: I haven’t.
Mike Papantonio: No. The argument, he didn’t know he was going to pardon? Like, he just woke up one day on Thanksgiving morning and said, by golly, I have figured something out.
Farron Cousins: He may not know that he did pardon him.
Mike Papantonio: He may not.
Farron Cousins: To be honest, he may see him at Christmas dinner and say, I thought you were in jail. I don’t know.
