A functioning press is vital to any democracy and the president of the united states is
being dismantled by both major political parties. I have Farron Cousins here to talk about it.
Farron, you are a real journalist. I mean, there's, nobody gonna argue with you are a
real journalist and you write reports that really matter. And in those reports, you do
the damnedest things. You ask questions, and maybe you disagree with the narrative out
there for the day. That's what journalists do. There are, journalism is dying. We have
a whole generation and I'm going to, they're snowflakes. I mean, you got these snowflakes
political correctness. It's destroying our ability to even ask questions. This, this
Matt Taibbi story that it was brilliant. Matt Taibbi is a real journalist. It's brilliant.
The guy's one of the best in the business. Talk about it. I want to spend some time talking
about what he had to say here. Well, this, this has been, you know, a piece
that absolutely blew up all over social media. You had a lot of people on the left, mostly
saying Taibbi's lost his mind. Taibbi's gone off the deep end. He's going conservative
now because he dared write a piece that said, listen, folks on the left, it's okay to ask
questions if you're a reporter. It's okay to say, wait a minute, slow down a second,
we may have something wrong. And Taibbi names, names. He calls people out as well he should,
because that is what a journalist does. And I think a lot of times, especially on the
left, we like to think, hey, we're much better than conservative media, but that doesn't
mean everything we say or do is right. Okay. Let me preface this. You and I have
been doing progressive left wing media for how many years?
Oh, almost two decades. Almost two decades. Every time we do a story
where some, some numb nut out in numb nut land on social media, disagrees with what
we have to say, all of a sudden, oh my God, we're fascist. We've said something that they
can't process. It's like, they have an inability to think. So Taibbi does this story. Now,
let me just tell you this Akela Lacy, Akela Lacy works for the intercept. The, Lee Fang,
who you and I have interviewed so many times. He is brilliant. He is an actual, a real investigative
reporter. Actually, he's probably the person that had more impact on campaign financing
than any journalist in the business, changing the way we go about it and talking about it.
So all of a sudden, this Akela, Akela Lacy, she works for the intercept who, by the way,
I'm always talking about what a great organization that is. I don't know anymore. I literally
don't even know what the hell is happening at the intercept. So pick it up. What did
this, what was this horrible thing that Lee Fang did?
Lee Fang had the audacity to, you know, speak to a African American activist who said, listen,
we also need to be talking about crimes against African Americans, by African Americans. Which,
you know, you can agree that maybe this isn't relevant to what's happening at the moment
in this country. But the response from, from Akela Lacy, from entire social media against
Lee Fang was absolutely disproportionate to the fact that the man asked a question while
reporting a story. That is all he did. He asked the question,
shouldn't we think about the idea in our, this broad society, how we get under control
black on black crime? I mean, what, 35 African Americans shot in the streets up in Chicago.
You read it about every weekend. So he's, he's asking about it. He says, can't we do
better getting this under control. Well, the snowflakes on social media go crazy. Why?
Because they're unable to think for themselves. They're terrified of questions. They it's,
I call it virtual, virtue signaling. Oh, I don't, you know, I think like the celebrities
think, let me, let me be on this side that everybody else is on and God forbid I should
ask something that's politically incorrect, according to social media standards. This
Matt Taibbi got it right, didn't he? He did. And I'll say, you know, too, maybe
this isn't probably the best time to be asking that particular question in the media. That
doesn't mean that Lee Fang was wrong to ask it, but it just means that it may be, it's
not related to what we're seeing right now. And again, I agree with almost everything
Taibbi has said here. Maybe not a hundred percent of everything, but one thing I certainly
don't agree with is the response that this has triggered from the left on social media.
I spend a lot of time on Twitter, just reading people, basically, learning more about how
people react to things. It's a fascinating case study in humanity, just reading through
Twitter and they lost their minds. Not because they disagree with him on everything, but
because he questioned what the left had become. And that is something we do have to do, because
again, he's, Taibbi's not going after Progressive's here. He makes it clear in the piece.
Oh he is a progressive. He's probably one of the most progressives, important progressive
journalists in America. It's these middle to upper class, you know,
liberals who probably have done a horrible things in their past and now they're trying
to atone it by being the tone police. The virtue, virtue signalers. You know, this
story talks about how Lee Fang for doing that story was brought before the HR department
at the intercept. You know who I would've brought? I would have brought Akela Lacy,
whoever the hell that is. Akela Lacy would have been sitting in front of me. I'd say,
look, what is the problem with asking questions? What's the problem with original thought?
What's the problem of saying I can't be politically correct because I'm a journalist? That's the
person, Akela Lacy would have been sitting in front of me and that job would have been
in question, not Lee Fang. Well, you know, and the other thing that Taibbi
brings up in here is the Tom Cotton op-ed. Now that, that's obviously spurred a lot of
anger all over social media. You had the editorial chief, I believe from New York Times have
to resign over this. And it's because everybody now and look, I despise Tom Cotton with everything
I have. Of course. How many stories have we done on
Tom. We've done tons of stories about the guy. He's a nut.
The man committed borderline treason with the Iran deal. But what they perceived him
to be saying, what social media said he said, didn't get said in the op-ed.
Exactly. Because nobody took the time to read it.
Nobody, they'd might have actually read the narrative.
Right. It showed up on Twitter crazy world, where,
you know, it's okay to be, it's okay to be certifiably crazy on Twitter these days. And
if it's not politically correct, oh my God, all I am so disgusted and tired of these folks
that call themselves journalists that don't have an original thought. They're terrified
to ask an original question and look, can you imagine this editor on the Tom Cotton
story going to leadership of the New York Times and groveling like a damn domestic animal
saying, oh, I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry. That's, that's the level of journalism nowadays and
it's terrifying. It's almost like, you know, I look at Chaz right now that, you know, Seattle.
Up west, yeah. Okay. It reminds me of Lord of the flies.
Now. Here's what I mean, Lord of the flies, here you had these kids they're in charge,
you know, they're, they've got control of their space. Look, what's happening in Chaz.
Okay. What's happening there is you have literally warlords telling, you can't be here because
you don't agree with this. You can't be here because you said this. It is insane and we
don't even appreciate the level of insanity. Well, you know, I do have to point out too.
Like I disagree with everything Cotton does say in the op-ed because I took the time to
read it. But at the same time he had a right to say it, New York Times has a right to publish
it. And as Taibbi points out, unfortunately for, you know, those of us who disagree with
it, polls show majority of people do agree with it. That's what we have to accept as
well. Journalists on the left have become left wing
grifters. Yeah.
They're, they're so, they're so worried about approval. They have become left wing grifters
who want to sell more ads on their site because it'll, it creates, it creates interest. They're
grifters. They're nothing short of grifters. The millionaire in charge of the treasury
department has decided to keep the names of the companies getting coronavirus bailout
money completely secret. Okay. SBA, SBA, that's where the money's coming through, has always,
always made that information available, but not under the little munchkin, right?
Steven Mnuchin. You know, he's going to do what Steve Mnuchin does, and that is keep
everything secret, give money to his powerful friends, you know, powerful financial interests,
and then hide it from the public and that is exactly what's happening here. And the
reason he's doing it now is because we know from the first round of stimulus, that 245,
at least publicly traded companies, got their hands on some of that small business loan
money. And Steve Mnuchin says, wow, I took a lot of heat for that because yeah, I shouldn't
have, but I did. So this time, I'm just not going to tell you. You have no way of knowing
until a new administration comes along and releases it, where this money goes. But this,
this to me is appalling. Not just because he's hiding it because we know what's going
to happen. We know where it's gonna go. Well, okay. We know there's fraud. We know
there's hustle. We know there's all types of iteration of fraud. We know that. 4.5 million
companies split up $500 billion and the SBA has always said, you want that information
who got the money, we're going to give it to you. But the little munchkin comes on and
says, no, we can't do it. Why? Because he is useless in his job in that department.
And here's the problem, here's the real problem. It was a failure. It was a total utter failure
and his name goes on the failure. His picture goes on the failure and if this information
ever comes out, we can then start talking about what a huge failure the guy is.
Right. I mean, Steven Mnuchin is nothing short of a bond villain. I mean that, that's what
he is. That's what he's doing in this administration. But regardless, everything right now is infuriating
with the response from the federal government with coronavirus. American citizens were given
what, 1200 bucks, two months ago and they haven't gotten another dime. Even though it's
not safe to go back to work. We're seeing the numbers spike everywhere. There is no
relief for working class people in this country and Mnuchin is trying to hide this program
so that the wealthy corporations. That's right.
Can get more money. We already know it's happening. We already
know that the CEOs that, you know, have involved in hucksterism to get the money, we know there's
been con jobs for them to get the money. We know that there's hustlers out there that
in 13 days, now think about this, in 13 days they were already out of money because the
first people in line where the affluent. The first people in line with these corporations
that had their lawyers collect the money up and mom and pop that's got a store on main
street that really needs the money, they ran out of money. We had it happen right around
here in Pensacola. We are getting calls like crazy. What do you mean there's no money?
This is a restaurant, three generations in the family. It, but it's not a CEO of a major
corporation. And they would create little shell companies
and little new, you know, oh, I have five employees with this business that was started
three days ago. I need $10 million. That's how the scam worked and that's what Mnuchin
is trying to hide. And he is terrified by it because he's an
idiot. You've always called him an idiot in everything you've ever written and everything
you've ever done in social media. I applaud that because he is a true idiot.