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.
