How does it gets any crazier than to have the President of the United States pardon two judges that allowed children as young as eight years old and to put them in criminal facilities? Then, Van Jones is saying mainstream media is the fringe 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, where every week we dig behind the headlines to give you the details and information that corporate media won’t give you because their advertisers won’t let ’em, they’ll lose advertising dollars if they talk about most of these stories. Farron, I don’t know how it gets any crazier than to have the president of the United States pardon two judges that allowed children, they were getting kickbacks, getting paid money to take children as young as eight years old and to put ’em in criminal facilities. It just so happens, I just finished writing a book about that for Simon and Schuster Skyhorse be out next year, but those facilities create criminals. Okay. This is a judge who knowingly took bribes from the people that were running the facilities to take kids with minor, very minor kinds of problems. One typical thing is they found drug paraphernalia, maybe a pipe.
Farron Cousins: Or you were underage drinking at a high school party. Shoplifted a candy bar.
Mike Papantonio: Right. Exactly. They throw you in prison and this dirt bag, Biden okayed it. We’re gonna let this dirt bag out. One story about one boy committed suicide. Comes out of the facility. Great kid really, ends up committing suicide. And Biden, my position is he’s so freaking senile, I doubt he even knew what happened. He’s so senile. He, it is time for Biden to be institutionalized somewhere. Old folks home or something. Somebody put it in front of him and he signed it.
Farron Cousins: Yeah. I hope that’s what this is because if he put conscious thought into this and still made this decision, then that changes everything I’ve ever thought about this guy, because this is one of the worst clemency, or commutation decisions, I think I’ve ever seen. This judge because it was Judge Conahan is the one he granted clemency to.
Mike Papantonio: Yeah. We’ll have pictures of both of these judges so everybody can see who they are.
Farron Cousins: It was the infamous kids for cash scandal. And like you said, they took these kids that had minor offenses that really should have just been a teachable moment. And instead, they were getting kickbacks from the prison industry and said, okay, I’m sorry. You were called at a high school party drinking. You were called at a high school party with a pipe on you. You’re going to actual real prison and we’re gonna stick you there for a month or a year in some cases. And then if you get in trouble again, guess what? Instead of just a minor infraction, we’re sending you back for even longer. And that’s what happened with that young man who you mentioned committed suicide. His mother right now is rightfully outraged that President Biden would tell this corrupt as hell judge, you don’t have to spend the last two and a half years of your sentence behind bars. It was a month or so ago, he went in front of a court and said, hey, I’ve been behaving. Can I please get out early? Do I not have to serve the rest of my sentence? And that judge said, hell no. What you did was so egregious, I am not letting you out early for good behavior. You got two and a half years left. Bye-bye.
Mike Papantonio: Okay, living down at some posh resort area in Florida. That’s where the judge is now. You understand? They agreed to house arrest. He’s living in this posh area in Florida, Delray Beach, that’s his prison confinement. And even that’s, even with that, Biden says, well, I gotta do better than that. I gotta pardon him. 300 kids, this dirt bag and another dirt bag.
Farron Cousins: Ciavarella.
Mike Papantonio: Ciavarella. We’ll, these are the guys here. You’ll see a picture. These guys understood the whole history of what happens when you put a child in confinement like that. They run the risk of rape. They run the risk of becoming truly a criminal just to survive. These judges deal with criminals all the time. They know how ugly the system is. But they were taking thousand, $2000, $3,000 to take little Johnny who caught drinking, okay, throw him in prison and creating a new criminal. There’s just not enough bad. And the best I can hope for as I read this is that I honestly think Biden is so frigging senile right now. He is so demented and out of it that somebody came along, put that in front of him and he signed it. I hope, because that’s the best I can hope for here. This is a guy that thank God he’s at the end of his term because it scares the hell out of me that he’s making decisions. To make a decision like this tells you he’s making a lot of bad decisions. People are throwing papers in front of him. He’s so out of it. He’s completely bonkers at this point and people just throwing papers and, hey, sign this would you. Well, what the hell? It’s the whole republic is in danger and nobody seems to put all that together.
Van Jones, oh my God, saying mainstream media is the fringe now. ABC, CBS, NBC, they’re the fringe because media has really moved towards social media because they can’t get news. You cannot get real news off of cable news anymore. Pick it up.
Farron Cousins: Yeah. I love this story because Van Jones is correct about that, except he’s mad about it. He doesn’t want that to be the case. He wants people to go back to CNN, tune into us. He’s whining about how podcasters and YouTubers are getting more views every day than CNN. Well, don’t be mad about it. Look at the reasons why. Right. Why are people turning to podcasts? Why are they turning to YouTube and these independent outlets? And the answer is because they are independent. They’re not tuning in to get a watered down version of somebody’s opinion of the news of the day, which is what you get on CNN.
Mike Papantonio: The point, to me, that I think is important part of the story though, he’s saying that’s why we had a disconnect in the last election.
Farron Cousins: I agree.
Mike Papantonio: He said that’s why they didn’t understand what Democrats were talking about because Democrats didn’t appear on podcasts. They didn’t go to Joe. At the same time you got Trump and you got Vance all over podcasts, all over social media. And he says, we really dropped the ball. It was a total disconnect for the Democratic party because we didn’t participate in any of this. He said, this is the way everything is going. Mainstream media is now the fringe. I mean, that’s really where he has gone. They don’t deliver the news anymore. And if you think that you’re not part of it, test yourself. If you can turn on The View and you can watch The View for more than five minutes, probably you have fallen into that dinosaur way of thinking, believing that’s important. But the point is, after this last election, how can you ever stand back and say that corporate mainstream media has any influence on what Americans are thinking? Go try that. I call it the View test. Go watch that and if you’re watching that and you’re saying, oh my God, that’s making good sense to me, you’re a dinosaur. Something’s wrong with your ability to critically think. And that’s what Van is saying, isn’t he?
Farron Cousins: Yeah. And look, I do agree that CNN is a dying animal. It has been dying this very slow, painful, horrific death almost for many years now, losing viewers month after month after month. And the problem is Van Jones can point out the problems. That’s wonderful. A lot of us can do that. But you guys aren’t looking at why this is happening. You’re just saying, a problem exists and I’m mad about it. Well, that’s great. That’s step one. Step two, figure out why the hell it’s happening. Realize who you’re working for, Van Jones, because you’re not working for CNN. You’re working for the pharmaceutical industry.
Mike Papantonio: That’s right.
Farron Cousins: You’re working for the defense industry.
Mike Papantonio: I was just gonna say.
Farron Cousins: Those are your bosses, not whoever it is that’s sitting at the top of CNN any given month. The bosses are the corporations out there screwing over everybody else.
Mike Papantonio: Well, I had, you remember this, when I was doing MSNBC a few times a week just as a commentator, the number of times where there would be an important story. One story I think of is I wanted to do a story on the fact that this particular kind of wood that was being manufactured was soaked with arsenic. Okay. And the people making the wood wanted to take the wood and make it into children’s playground equipment. So a lawsuit was brought in saying, get all this stuff off of the playgrounds. It’s dangerous. And I remember going on to the air and telling that story. And the next day I get a note where I have to go back and apologize. Well, you remember what I said? It began with a middle finger, and so, but that was coming from corporate. Right?
Farron Cousins: Yeah.
Mike Papantonio: That’s coming from upstairs. That little dwarf, whatever his name is, Griffin, whatever his name. Griffin’s making these calls and telling his people what they must do. Report this, this is what you must report. This is what corporate wants you to report. And so the disconnect is social media, there’s nobody calling us saying, hey, you can’t tell that story. Just like I talk about every week. Nobody tells us what story to do. And that’s typical of most social media.
Farron Cousins: Yeah. And look, they obviously, social media, podcasts, everybody, we’ve got our own political bent, but we are unfiltered. We don’t have to water anything down. And I think that’s what people are looking for now. They just want, give it to me straight. What is it? And you don’t get that from these corporate media outlets anymore, regardless if they’re left or right. It doesn’t matter. It’s all the same. It’s a watered down, not even news, opinion. And that’s even worse.
Mike Papantonio: That’s why we get more traffic than CNN. I mean, literally we get more, this social media, what we’re doing here right now gets more traffic than CNN. And it continues to get worse. I don’t know how long they can even survive. What do you think is really happening with MSNBC right now with all these machinations? You got Comcast saying, we’re gonna spin this off, and who are they gonna spin off? Who are they gonna fire? If you take a look at the news daily, if I were a broadcaster on both CNN and MSNBC right now, I’d be looking for a safe haven somewhere in social media, because that’s the only way they’re gonna survive.
