FL Republicans Are Extremely Thin-Skinned & Rep Jayapal Takes On Corporate "Personhood"

Florida Governor Ron DeSantis is letting the whole country know how thin his skin is by pushing to change defamation laws to make it easier to sue journalists who report on his administration. Then, new legislation has been introduced in the House of Representatives that would put an end to the concept of “Corporate Personhood.” The goal is to undo the Citizens United Supreme Court ruling that has allowed corporations to take full control of elections. Mike Papantonio & Farron Cousins discuss more.

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*This transcript was generated by a third-party transcription software company, so please excuse any typos.

Florida Governor Ron DeSantis is letting the whole country know how thin his skin is by pushing to change the defamation law to make it easier to sue journalists who report bad things about his administration. Ring of Fire's Farron Cousins joins me to talk about what's happening and many other issues. Okay. No surprise here. You know, he hates the media. The corporate media has not been fair to him in his mind. And you know what? As I watch it, they really aren't. I mean, as I watch, I mean, even you and I are taking shots at him all the time, and people take shots at him because he's in the business. Okay. You gotta have, you can't have thin skin in this business. What's your take on this story?

This is really interesting one, because he has no authority to even do this.

No, no.

You know, this was actually put forward by our state representative Alex Andrade, who clearly does not understand how the federal law works. You can't change defamation, slander, and libel laws at a state level when these things are already set nationally.

Andrade is a goof. Okay. Andrade got mad at me for calling him, what'd I call him a punk, and said he had no life experience. What was going on was Florida Power and Light was raid, I mean, raiding everybody's money. I mean, they were just taking money away from everybody in this state, four or five times the amount that they should be paying for electricity. So I went after Andrade. I said, why is it happening? Why aren't you going to Tallahassee doing something about it? Called him a punk, said he was a child, a manchild or something like that. So maybe, maybe this is my fault, I don't know. But this is dead on arrival. I mean.

It really, well, they'll pass it.

Oh, yeah.

Because the goal and we see this all the time, especially here in Florida, the goal is not to pass successful legislation. The goal is to get somebody to immediately sue about the legislation so they can work it up to the Supreme Court and undo the New York Times versus Sullivan case.

That's the goal. Right.

That's the goal.

That's the goal.

And that's why, look, I get so incredibly frustrated because you have these well-meaning groups out there on the left. And I love these groups, but I hate that as soon as legislation gets passed, they immediately file these lawsuits because that's what these conservatives like Ron DeSantis want to happen. That's how you end up with the Supreme Court undoing Roe versus Wade. You've gotta take your time and analyze it and have the right argument instead of the knee-jerk reaction that we're gonna sue you.

Right appellate court, lower level appellate court, right Supreme Court state and right US Supreme Court. This, but I mean, look, the idea is to be able to say that we're gonna lower the standard to where if I say something bad about Andrade, he's gonna have an easier time suing me. Now, Andrade says, oh no, this isn't about public officials. This is to protect the average man on the street

Because they're getting slandered all the time apparently.

Oh yeah. You know, they're, everybody's slandering the average man on the street. No. The people that are slandering politicians is the politician deserves to be slandered. Okay. They chose to do this for a living. And when they do stupid stuff, people like you and I ought to be able to say, Andrade you did another stupid thing. I'm gonna do it anyway. And, you know, when you pass your legislation, I'm probably gonna be the one that tests it if anything happens there. So the point is this.