Rep. Thomas Massie On Coronavirus And PATRIOT Act Suspension
As with everything else, the government is making the coronavirus outbreak much worse. Rep. Thomas Massie, one of the few original thinkers in the US House believes government should step out of the way and let the free market address demands for things like testing kits. Plus, Massie briefs the Liberty Report on the ongoing threat to our civil liberties posed by the PATRIOT Act as it has been temporarily renewed. Don't miss today's program!
Hello, everybody, and thank you for tuning in to the Liberty Report.
With me today, our co-host, Daniel.
Good to see you.
How are you this morning, Dr. Paul?
Very well, thank you.
And we have a very special guest.
He's been with us before, but he's a famous person.
I understand he has a unique home that he's very proud of because he built it with his own hands.
I've always marveled at that.
That's the well-known famous freedom fighter from Kentucky, Thomas Massey.
Thomas, welcome to the program.
Hey, thanks for having me on, Ron.
It's an honor.
Very good.
Someday I'm going to get up there to see that famous house that you built, but I don't know.
Anyway, we have serious things to matter.
But somebody said the other day that, Ron, Paul, you're smiling too much.
So today I'm not going to smile at all.
We're going to just be concerned about the policies.
So, no, there's no reason why we are not allowed to smile, but we have to smile because we know what the problems are.
It's just that they won't listen to us.
We know how to prevent breakdown of society, how to prevent the bubbles from forming.
And we know what the Fourth Amendment says, that the government shouldn't be snooping on us and we shouldn't have things like the Patriot Act.
And we have guys like you, Thomas, there protecting us.
So welcome to the program and tell us what's on your mind.
I know our audience is very interested in your opinion about what's going on with coronavirus.
Yeah, well, before we get to coronavirus, let me tell you what the government is doing, particularly Congress, while everybody's distracted by the coronavirus.
They passed a reauthorization of the Patriot Act last week.
I railed against it.
I tried to stop it.
I voted against it.
They had, I say, a thin varnish of reforms on there, but it was designed to whitewash the unconstitutional activity that's been going on.
But the Americans are the ones who got shellacked by this bill.
Now, it had some small reforms in it to the FISA and also to the Patriot Act.
But when it went over to the Senate, and this just happened in the last 24 hours, instead of passing the House bill, which was bad, they just did a clean reauthorization of the Patriot Act with no improvements whatsoever.
The only good news is, is that's a 77-day reauthorization, and we'll have to come back and address this later, as if people will have more willpower to fix this or better yet, just get rid of it after 77 days.
I don't think that willpower is going to be there.
But anyways, that's what's happened while we had the weapon of mass distraction, the coronavirus going on.
And I don't mean to downplay the seriousness of the coronavirus.
I think it's very serious.
But I think the cure that our government is coming up with is worse than the disease.
I think there'll be more suffering and more deaths because of the things that government, particularly governors, are doing right now.
They're shutting down entire industries, depriving people of their livelihoods.
And they're saying it's all okay.
We're going to send you some money.
And we're going to print more money.
And we're going to bail out the airlines.
And we're going to bail out the banks.
They're basically, you know, when they make the interest rates zero and the banks still loan money at 3%, that's a gift to the banks.
There are other gifts that are going on, but there's not a whole lot to be happy about.
Yeah, I still try to smile, though, too.
All right, very good.
Daniel.
Well, you know, President Trump, Mr. Massey, has been pretty good on the FISA stuff, and I think a lot of us, because he was a victim of the abuse of FISA courts, you know, obviously with this campaign, I think he tweeted recently about, you know, that they shouldn't be able to spy on campaigns and, of course, should be able to spy on anyone.
Do you get any sense as to where the president might be?
I think he was threatening to veto if they tried to pass it as it was, you know, completely.
Any sense of where he might be even if they just kicked it down the road?
I think he'll probably sign the one that kicks the can down the road 77 days.
I think he should veto it.
I think he should have, if the House bill had made it through the Senate, I would have hoped he would veto that.
He's got so much power here to fix this.
The problem is he's got advisors like Attorney General Barr who are saying, oh, no, just let me fix this myself.
And that's a problem.
Like some of his advisors are steering him in the wrong direction.
The president has immense, immense negotiating leverage on this.
All he's got to do is veto it and say, no, take out the spying power.
And they've tried to put stuff in there that says to make it harder for you to spy on candidates and members of Congress.
The problem is people like Carter Page weren't candidates, right?
And so, and the whole of the American people, most of them, thank goodness, aren't politicians.
And so where's the protection for them in this bill?
It's not there.
You know, you mentioned something about distraction.
Of course, it's easy to distract people from ordinary events when they think about coronavirus.
But the economy is in shambles, and it's all because of the virus, which I disagree with because I think many of us have talked about it.
And you agreed that the monetary policy leads to these kind of bubbles at burst.
But at least now they are distracted by it, and nobody's talking about the real culprit, and that is the Federal Reserve.
But it's also a distraction from an ongoing foreign policy that is not exactly the best foreign policy.
And unfortunately, it's a bipartisan foreign policy.
So the bombing and the friction in Iraq and Iran has actually picked up because when we go after Iran, we have to go to do it in Iraq.
But then we put on more sanctions, and Iran's already in shambles.
So the policy, that part of the problems that we have is generally ignored because it's much easier to lock people off because they have a real bad cold that could get worse.
Yeah, I think there was a lot of attention actually being paid to Afghanistan and Iraq.
And I do believe the president wants to get us out of there.
But here again, he listens to advisors who aren't advising him well on this, many of whom would like to see us in war forever.
But I would hope that the American people get really angry at their government for spending all this effort, time, attention, and money overseas on a war when we've got a war here domestically against a virus.
Like that should be our top priority.
And now we're having our resources drained off.
I did see one idea that I liked.
One of these veterans groups called for calling back every member of the National Guard back to the United States.
Like bring them here and let them work for the states.
Get them out of the foreign countries.
This would be a great opportunity to do that.
That's a great idea.
Yeah, absolutely.
You touched on, Thomas, the way the governors are reacting to this.
And even mayors are reacting to a disease in the U.S. that's killed now just over 100 people.
We suspect that the numbers, of course, it's never a happy occurrence when people die from disease, but we know there have been at least 22,000 people who died of the seasonal flu over the past few months.
We didn't shut down the country, so this whole shutting down the country over 100 people, you can't even get the sanitary facilities you need for a decent life.
Something seems to be happening here.
It's very chilling.
In fact, on yesterday's program, we read a quote from a friend of ours that said, Suddenly we woke up and realized we're living in North Korea.
It almost feels like that way.
It feels like that a little bit here in Kentucky.
There was a man who the government claims tested positive, although they didn't provide him with these test results.
And he went home and they told him to self-isolate or quarantine.
And he said that, you know, he wouldn't, or at least that's what the media is saying.
And so they posted a sheriff's deputy outside of his house.
And my question is: what would they do if that man walked out and got in his car?
Would they shoot him?
Would they suit up in hazmat uniforms and drag him off?
Those are the images that we saw in China two months ago, and everybody was appalled at those images.
And now we're literally, we could be five minutes away from that happening here in the United States, here in Kentucky.
I think it's crazy.
And what concerns me the most is that once people start accepting that in our own country, the fact that somebody could immobilize you without due process that when this virus is over, people will have a more paternalistic view of government and more tolerance for ignoring the Constitution.
You know, Thomas, your suggestion about bringing home the National Guard, you know, I think is a great one.
The whole thing is, they shouldn't have been sent over there in the first place.
And while this is building up in the last 10, 15 years, people, when they got in the National Guard, so many of them, it could be single women going into it for financial reasons, and then up four or five tours in the Middle East in wars that we didn't win or never intended to win.
But, you know, there was one bit I thought was a good news, and Daniel and I have talked about this, and that is NATO.
Does It Make Sense?00:12:23
You know, they have these big war games ready to get started, and we have troops over there ready.
We're supposed to send a total of 20,000 troops to practice war.
And all of a sudden, they're changing their tune.
Oh, we're not supposed to be doing this.
So they quit sending them and they're supposed to bring them home.
And my prediction has always been the empire will end, not because we come to our senses, but because we run out of money.
And right now, we have a lot of money, but it's going to lose its value rather rapidly, the way it's going.
But maybe we can look for a good side of this: that our troops will come home out of necessity.
Well, I'd like to see them come home.
I'm not sure that that's going to happen.
They'll probably just pause things.
They probably won't pause the war in Afghanistan.
But to your point about the monetary implications of this, you know, we're about to see the mother of all bailouts.
You're going to see congressmen competing with other congressmen to brag about how much money they're willing to spend on this.
And we passed an $8 billion package that I'm ashamed to tell you I voted for, but I felt we needed to do something.
But then they came back and they wanted a $50 billion package to pay people to stay home and not work, okay, which are going to put the small businesses out of business if they can't get workers.
But the third installment of this is at $850 billion.
It'll probably be over a trillion by the time it passes.
And what's going to happen is that's not going to be the last installment.
If we all subscribe to this idea that nobody needs to work, that the best way to cure this virus is to stay home and do nothing, and that the government will pay you for it.
Our economy is over $20 trillion.
How are you going to borrow $20 trillion?
Let's say there's a 25% diminishment of the economy.
That's $5 trillion the government's going to inject.
This may finally be the thing that breaks.
the back of the dollar of our economic underpinnings.
It could get to that.
You know, the one thing they have to consider is the fact that as they print more money and spend it and the Fed's involved is that the faster they print it or think they can, well, if we do 5, 10, 15, 20, that'll do it.
But this money goes out and as it circulates, it goes down in value.
So they're adding no wealth at all.
It's a diminishing return on the money.
So it can't possibly work except for the short term.
But the short term is coming to an end, I think.
That's also true.
With fewer people working, you're going to have more dollars chasing fewer products.
And so I think you could see some big inflation here when we start paying people to stay home while we're simultaneously printing money.
I had a reporter ask me just yesterday, well, we're looking at economic indicators.
Do you think the fundamentals of our economy are sound?
And I say, whoa, I don't know what economic indicators you're looking at.
But the fundamentals of our economy is when somebody wakes up and goes to work and makes something.
That is the absolute fundamental part of our economy or provides a service.
And those fundamentals are broken at the most basic level.
That's my big concern.
Right.
You know, what's interesting about this coronavirus, Thomas, is that, you know, there is, by all estimations, a very small percentage of a society.
We know this from Italy.
We know this from what we've seen in China among those who have died.
A very, very, very narrow, small layer of society that is particularly susceptible.
I think the majority of people in Italy were 80-plus years old with at least two pre-existing life-threatening conditions, according to a study that I looked at.
And I think it was similar in China.
Does it make sense to lock down the 98% of us who are not particularly susceptible to this in the name of saving supposedly these 2%?
And in the course of things, completely ruining the economy, as you've said, they're well on their way of doing.
I mean, there have to be some crazy proposals you're hearing in Washington.
Maybe you can enlighten us to some of those, but this seems like one of the craziest.
Look, you know, one thing that would solve this is if you would let the free market work on this problem.
Imagine how much economic incentive there is right now to solve this problem.
And if we could come up with like a $5 test that you could take every morning before you went to work, okay, and when I say we, I don't mean the government, I mean the free market.
Think of how many of those tests they would make or sell.
They would make billions of dollars, but ultimately, it would be like one-thousandth of the drag on the economy as it is to shut everything down.
And so you take the test before you go to work.
You find out you're not shedding the virus.
You go to work, and your employer would probably pay $5 for a test to know that he's going to get $200 or $300 of utility out of you that day instead of shutting down.
But that's only possible if you get the government out of the way and let the free market work.
There's another test I think we need very soon.
That's like today, if somebody could work on this, is to know whether you have the antibodies in your system.
How many hundreds of thousands of people globally have got this virus and recovered, many of them who don't even know, who are now immune to catching it?
Okay, I'm presuming they're immune.
If you're not immune after you've caught this once and survived, then we've got bigger problems.
But let's presume you have some level of immunity.
Those people should never be immobilized.
They should be the school teachers.
They should be the ones working at the nursing homes.
And, you know, ironically, you're holding up Italy as a sign of failure, okay, because their socialized medicine was overwhelmed.
Wow.
So I'm so shocked.
Okay, but I am sad for the people who have died over there and the people who are going to die.
But wouldn't it be ironic if three months from now Italy has recovered from this and we've still got our own economy shut down and now they, who were in such a bad shape compared to the rest of the world, if they can go on with their lives because they have mostly immunity within the country, they could become a manufacturing powerhouse after this.
You know, you're mentioning we have the crisis and sometimes what we do is we make it worse.
You were pointing out, and Daniel mentioned it, and that is the people that aren't sick and aren't having trouble, they end up with a lot of penalties and you know, a loss of their liberties.
It reminds me of the Patriot Act.
You know, the Patriot Act was supposed to be, you know, we had a crisis.
We had jihadists around.
We had 9-11.
So who got punished?
The American people, the average citizen going to the airport, and it's never removed.
It just stays there.
And the TSA exists.
And that's what comes of episodes like this.
And then it lends support to the people who say they can't be that dumb.
Somebody's trying to harm us.
And they're doing it within.
We didn't need an invasion of some jihadists from Iran or someplace to come and take away our liberties.
We'd do it to ourselves.
That to me is the sad tragedy that we face.
It is sad.
I mean, people are being deprived of their livelihoods right here in Kentucky because governors are shutting down businesses.
People aren't questioning it.
How do people buy food, medicine, and shelter if they don't have a job?
I mean, I think the suffering from the government's version of the cure could be immense.
And to your point, Ron, they're talking about all these temporary programs, like temporarily paying people $1,000 a month for the next couple months.
They're talking about temporarily forcing small businesses to pay for medical leave, even when the person themselves is not sick.
And they're saying this will all expire in a few months and that the paid leave will expire at the end of the year.
But you know what's going to happen, Ron.
You were in Congress.
When it becomes time for that program to expire, people will be in my office saying, don't take this away from me.
That's the way it works.
Daniel?
Yeah.
You know, as someone mentioned to me earlier today, that back in 68, the Hong Kong flu, who remembers that?
Nobody does really.
It killed at least 100,000 Americans, maybe more.
And it's not to, you know, again, downplay what may be happening here in the U.S., but that's a good chunk of people.
I think it infected maybe a million people here in the U.S.
But nothing was shut down.
Things went on as normal.
In fact, the summer of 68 was a pretty eventful summer.
We had a couple of big assassinations, unfortunately, riots in the streets, but people weren't sheltering in place, and you had orders of magnitude more happening.
So it does make you wonder if something is more, I mean, there are a lot of conspiracy people out there thinking this is a practice run for martial law, and it does make you wonder.
I love the saying that conspiracy theories are unnecessary when uninformed self-interests are at work.
And I think that's what you have in Washington, D.C. and in the state capitals, is uninformed self-interest.
They're worried about getting blamed if they don't do something.
They're worried about their next reelection.
They may, in fact, be intelligent enough to know that they're going to cause more harm by shutting down the economy than this virus ever could.
But they're doing it anyway.
So I don't think it's a conspiracy.
I do think it's malpractice.
And I'm really, I'm genuinely worried for our country.
And I don't know how you put this genie back in the bottle.
I mean, I do take the virus seriously.
You know, I'm taking my own precautions, but you just can't shut down life as we know it.
It will just cause more suffering.
And it's already starting to.
Right.
Yeah, we're going to finish up.
I want to ask you to just think for a minute and what you can talk directly to our viewers and what you would tell them they should do.
You've already mentioned some of the commonsensical things that we do for ourselves.
But is there anything politically that they can do, or is that a lost cause?
But we're in the business of politics.
I used to be, and you are directly so, even though I believe everything is philosophic and ideological.
But what would be a few things that they could do if they really, what can I do to help bring sense to all of this?
Well, tell your representatives and your elected officials that you don't want assurances, you want facts.
If an elected official shuts something down, you should ask that elected official which epidemiological model and which economic models are you using to justify this, right?
Show me your data.
Show me what are the tripwires for turning it back on.
And when would you turn it back off again?
Because force them to tell you what data and facts they are using.
And because I'm afraid it's all a big cargo cult.
The governors are trying to outdo each other in terms of shutting things down.
The congressmen are trying to outdo each other in terms of spending money.
But ask them the hard questions.
And don't lose faith in the free market.
It looks on its surface that dictators have an advantage during a pandemic, right?
Because they tell people when to come to work, when to stay home, what to do, and where to go.
That would seem like it would be a great advantage to adopt some of that over here.
But look, dictators are also notorious for killing millions of people with bad decisions.
Central planning doesn't work.
Tell your elected officials to waive regulations.
Right now in Louisville, Kentucky, we have police who say they're not going to respond to hit and runs and drunk drivers and alarm systems.
Waive Regulations, Please!00:01:00
Okay.
Wow, that's very comforting.
I wish, for instance, they would suspend some of the regulations that are hampering small businesses and hampering some of these researchers who are going to come up with cures and tests that we need.
They're abandoning the free market.
That's what I'm saying.
Don't fall for the seductiveness of socialism, central planning, and dictatorship.
We don't want to be China.
We want to be the United States.
Very good, good advice.
And we are going to finish up.
But Thomas, I want to thank you very much for being with us today.
And we'll be in touch with you.
Thanks, Ron.
Thanks, Daniel.
Thank you.
Very good.
And I want to just say thank you very much to our viewers today for tuning in because we're going to continue to do our very best to bring what we think is sanity to this situation that we're facing today.
And I think it's possible, but a lot of people have to get active and a lot of people have to know what the proper answers are.