You’ve got Nancy Pelosi falling, breaking her hip. Mitch McConnell, he goes into these freezes. It’s time for us to move on from these folks. Plus, Nancy Pelosi, edged out AOC in favor of another octogenarian politician because AOC is too fringe.
Transcript:
*This transcript was generated by a third-party transcription software company, so please excuse any typos.
Mike Papantonio: You’ve got Nancy Pelosi, Klippenstein did a great job with talking about kind of the elderly in this business to begin with. But Nancy Pelosi falling, breaking her hip, and she’s back in the game. Mitch McConnell falling, I don’t know what he broke, but he’s had head problems for quite a while. He goes into these freezes. These are 80 plus, these are politicians that are 80 plus. We’ve talked about this so much. What does it take for us to say, these are dinosaurs? It’s time for us to move on from these folks. What do you do?
Farron Cousins: Well, I think we need to get serious. Both parties really need to get more serious about primaries. You have got to challenge these people. You have got to put up other options because I know we hear about tough primary races for some members of Congress every two years, but it’s not enough. Some of these really safe people that have been there forever, they’re not facing tough primary challengers. So that is step number one. But number two, people do need to demand, right. You need to be out there with your protest signs outside of Congress, get rid of the gerontocracy. Do something, be active. Draw more attention to this, because right now these, what are we octogenarians, are literally falling apart. Right. Their bodies are failing them. We have had two lawmakers die of old age in office in the last 18 months. As Klippenstein puts it, it’s brilliant, they’re dying to stay in office.
Mike Papantonio: Yes. Okay. Klippenstein, and I love this. He says, look, the ballpoint pen wasn’t even invented when these people were born. Okay. You’ve got Nancy Pelosi in her 20th term in Congress. Everybody says, oh, that’s fine. You got McConnell who’s this bizarre, freezing episode that takes place more than once. Some of it they’re trying to hide. You can’t hide that. And we’re saying, yeah, this guy, this is who we want running things. Bill Pascrell just died 87 years old. And the voters were thinking, well, God, he must really be smart because he’s so old. No, he’s frigging senile. These people are, they’re losing their edge to even analyze. And we’re saying, well, it’s just like Biden. I mean, look how long we pumped. Not we, but the media pumped up Biden. Just sign after sign. What is it that we have an impasse there? Why aren’t we willing to go ahead and pull the trigger and say, look guys, you know what? Goodbye. We need a 40 or 50 year older in there. We need somebody who can still deal with conflict.
Farron Cousins: And I do think, not that I agree with him on policy, but Trump picking JD Vance.
Mike Papantonio: Yeah, that was smart.
Farron Cousins: He’s actually younger than me, I think, by a year or so. So you’ve got this younger blood on the ticket with you. And I think that played a big role in that as well. Possibly one that hasn’t been analyzed to the degree that it should have been. Again, I’m not trying to give JD Vance any credit, but that was a smart move in terms of I’m the oldest guy to ever run for president now.
Mike Papantonio: I got the youngest VP.
Farron Cousins: I need to have this guy here with me versus Nancy Pelosi who says, okay, well I can’t even trust my own body anymore, but I’m gonna stick around. Mitch McConnell, who doesn’t know what his body’s gonna do at any minute. Biden who doesn’t know where his brain is. These are the people running the country right now. We’re talking about the three basically most powerful people in this country. It’s horrifying.
Mike Papantonio: I think last time we did a show a couple weeks ago, and I think we got it right. It is mommy and daddy complex. Right. The Democrats, mommy Pelosi, we gotta have her. The Republican’s, daddy McConnell. It doesn’t make any difference that mommy and daddy are frigging demented and falling apart. We want mommy and daddy rather than just saying, look, it’s time for something new. Almost scares both parties. Voters for both parties. Hell no, you can’t continue down this road where you’ve got 89, almost 90 year olds, making decisions that affect our lives. They’re so disconnected from the rest of the country. And it’s very apparent with both of these two people, Pelosi and McConnell. It’s like they are, may as well be on Mars where it comes to understanding what the American public is thinking.
Farron Cousins: They’ve been in office since I was in diapers. Put it that way.
Mike Papantonio: At the same time, Nancy Pelosi, what do you think about her trying to edge out AOC? Now, I would too, because AOC is too fringe. The Democrats are trying to get away from that fringe. They think it affected their last election. I do too. I think they just got so fringey that everybody was saying, hell no, scares us.
Farron Cousins: Look, I don’t think you can say that the Democratic party ran too far to the left in this last election, when they’re out there campaigning with Liz Cheney and their list of 300 Republicans who’ve endorsed them. They moved too far to the right. And that is what happened in this last election.
Mike Papantonio: Going into the election, did you think that, though? I mean, going into the election, would you have ever characterized it, now, we did a lot of stories on what the hell are you out here with a war criminal for? She would’ve killed a million people, just like daddy killed a million people in Iraq. She was the daughter of a man who should be in prison right now. And she supported him. Nancy Pelosi, I mean, excuse me.
Farron Cousins: Harris.
Mike Papantonio: Harris. So you have this thing that’s working that in my mind, I look at it and I just say she has to do something because she’s concerned about are we moving too far left? And that’s what AOC brings to the table.
Farron Cousins: Yeah. And look, AOC is obviously further left, but to the point of we need universal healthcare here in this country. We need the Green New Deal, which Nancy Pelosi trashed as that green new thing that they’re pushing a couple years ago. That’s how she described that.
Mike Papantonio: Did she say that?
Farron Cousins: Yeah. She called it that green new thing.
Mike Papantonio: Okay. I missed that.
Farron Cousins: So, if that’s considered far left, then I am proud to be a part of that too. But AOC eventually, because they did hold this vote Monday evening, she lost to Connolly, who was the person Pelosi was pushing. Connolly, a nice young 74-year-old. So it goes back to that gerontocracy we’ve got here. You’ve got AOC who maybe you like her, maybe you don’t like her, whatever it is, doesn’t matter. Replaced with a 74, not replaced, but edged out by a 74-year-old who shouldn’t be in office anymore. He is a centrist. He is a down the middle, like, oh, I don’t want to make this side mad or this side mad. So he is a very mealy mouthed blue dog Democrat, basically. Give me all your corporate money. AOC rejects the corporate money. And so I think this was a huge mistake.
Mike Papantonio: Okay, but look at the squad. The squad is in tatters right now. Okay. This thing, the squad that she was kind of the head of that whole thing. They have no influence. They’re not getting on committees. They’re falling apart. There’s a reason for that. Okay. I think the leadership structure within the party is saying, whatever happened last time, now I get it. You say, well, they tried to show that they were these right wing war fanatics by bringing in Cheney, Liz Cheney, and what was it, 132 folks that signed?
Farron Cousins: It ended up being over 300.
Mike Papantonio: 300 warhawks that signed this document that was supporting Harris. Now that doesn’t mean that that’s what the imagery was going into the election. Going into the election I think the imagery was, the American public thought these people have become wackos. That’s what I think was going on. And so they dressed it up by, let’s bring in Liz Cheney, whose daddy’s a war criminal, and she would bomb the hell out of everywhere, every place in the world if she could. She’s a nutcase. And let’s have these generals and right wingers sign this document to try to give us the appearance that we’re this moving to the right. And it didn’t work. That’s what I think happened. And now Pelosi’s looking at AOC saying, hell no, hell no. We don’t wanna go back to that imagery. That’s the way I see it.
Farron Cousins: Well, look, you may not be wrong about the imagery and obviously why Pelosi is doing that, but what she’s doing is stifling all new leadership. She is stifling younger blood. She is saying, let’s keep it in the old folks’ home instead of moving on as you should and letting new people take over the party. When the Democrats themselves are treating AOC and Rashida Tlaib and Ilhan Omar as these weird people, when your own party is doing that, then yeah, the public is gonna think that. But that was your decision to do that. You as the Democratic Party made the decision to try to cast them as, we don’t agree with them, even though on the issues they support, overwhelming support from the public. When it’s not tied to a political party, universal healthcare, climate change action, debt-free college, they poll through the roof when not tied to a political party.
Mike Papantonio: Oh, okay. That’s interesting.
Farron Cousins: They support winning issues. Pelosi does not.
Mike Papantonio: Well, but whatever is projecting, that’s not being projected to the American public. They’re regarded as a bunch of wackos.
Farron Cousins: Right. And I think Pelosi started that. That wasn’t even coming from the right at first. That was coming from people like Pelosi.
Mike Papantonio: Really?
Farron Cousins: Yeah.
