The Pentagon is denying reports in The Intercept from earlier this week that it is contracting with outside firms to monitor the social media postings of US soldiers to weed out "extremism" in the ranks. Is "white nationalism" really a problem in the military, or is this an attempt to purge those not adhering to the emerging cultural Marxism and "woke-ism" that is plaguing the country? Also today: Uniformed US soldiers giving the covid jab at bars? Mayor Lori "Racist" Lightfoot. And Ted Cruz goes "Russiagate" conspiracy theorist...
Hello everybody and thank you for tuning in to the Liberty Report.
With us today is Daniel McAdams, our co-host.
Daniel, good to see you.
Good morning, Dr. Paul.
How are you?
Doing good.
Doing good.
So we want to talk a little bit about our military.
You know, we talk about, you know, the foreign policy of our government, which is a major, major problem.
But what we're going to deal with today is more particular checking up on the troops and how they've been treated and what are their beliefs and do they affect policy.
And it looks like some of this modern stuff, social engineering type of thing, has entered even the military.
So The Intercept has a real good article on this that we took a look at.
And the title was, The Pentagon Plans to Monitor Social Media of Military Personnel for Extremist Viewpoints.
Oh boy, that's the thing about what, and I kept thinking, well, what would be extreme?
Well, like somebody defending the Constitution.
I remember a case, I think it was in probably the 90s or so.
You probably remember the case.
There was a young soldier who didn't want to put on a UN badge and stood up against it.
I think he got kicked out and probably got into a lot of trouble, but that was a terrible thing and that was an extremist view.
And just, you know, everybody, we take an oath of office to defend the Constitution and all, but we know, just from the experience in Washington, nobody either cares or understands it, but it's just words, words, words.
But now they're looking into this and I understand the Army's challenging the interpretation of their release, but they actually, you know, allowed us to know some of these plans.
But the Pentagon, if they start doing this and measuring the talents of our military, I would say that it's not going to improve in any way the ability of a soldier to be a better soldier, maybe more obedient to the Constitution and even a better soldier if they're involved in more challenges.
You know there'll be challenges.
You know, this guy just looked at a website and he was looking at Facebook too much.
So what are we going to find out?
So the whole thing is just sort of snooping.
Yes, you have to have discipline in the military and I understand all that.
I was there.
But I think this is one step further.
It represents the culture that we live in, that we need to know about people because we need to have the red laws on guns.
We need to study people and find those people who might commit a crime.
And I guess they're going to be looking, I don't know whether they were ever specific in this and say, this is what we're really looking for and this is what we're going to weed out.
If they are, I would say most of the things that they're going to find would probably be more subjective.
Because if it's objective, it's not spying and finding out what you're looking at.
It's what are you doing?
Are you doing harm to people?
And have you committed crimes?
And military personnel have been known to commit crimes, especially when they get a little restless and stationed in foreign government, foreign countries.
That's when they're more likely to produce some problems.
Well, the military has now since pushed back against the intersex reporting.
They've said, no, no, no, no.
But we'll get into what they said specifically, which makes me, when they say no, sometimes it means yes.
But, you know, this isn't, Dr. Paul, this isn't about some white soldier saying Sieg Heil or beating up on black people.
That already would be a huge problem.
They would already get really, really in trouble for doing it, and rightly so.
This is about using algorithm, using artificial intelligence, and more importantly, hiring outside firms to get around First Amendment issues, hiring outside firms to try to get into the minds of soldiers.
It's like pre-crime.
They want to be able to get into the minds of these people before they do anything so they can weed them out.
And the real question is, what are they actually looking for?
Are they looking for people who secretly have a stash of Nazi memorabilia and worship Hitler?
Or are they looking for a political type who they want to purge from the military?
And you remember when the Communists took over in the Soviet Union, they gave Trotsky the job of politicizing the army, turning it into the Red Army.
And the Red Army wasn't the army that was loyal to protecting the country.
You know, it was loyal to the Communist Party.
And so it makes you wonder: is the goal really to get rid of really bad actors and bad dudes, or is it to politicize and make the army and the military subservient to the Democratic Party and to the, as you would say, the cultural Marxists and the radical leftists?
That's the big concern.
And there's still one other possibility, but what you just said is a logical conclusion to what maybe is going on.
But, you know, in studying this vaccine stuff and the CDC, you know, on again, off again, confuse the people.
I just don't think they're that dumb.
And I think one of their goals has been to have chaos.
You know, and they certainly do that to get people all confused and divisive and citizen against citizen.
But in a way, this produces the same thing.
They all of a sudden start talking about this, and people say, we've already reacted to it.
Well, what are they doing this for?
You know, and all of a sudden, and then as soon as it looks like, oh, they've been caught at it, they really are doing it, and they're in denial, that stirs up this chaos and disruption.
And if you're looking for things to make an army less efficient, I would say that's a possibility.
There are other things they've been doing with the military.
You know, some of the affirmative action things that they all do.
And I would think this would make it worse.
But maybe there are some people that think that's a very good idea.
And this is a reflection.
Yeah.
Well, you may remember Mike German.
We used to work with him when I was working for you on the Hill.
He was with the ACLU at the time.
Really good guy.
He was former FBI.
And he was really part of this broad coalition that we had for civil liberties.
But he chimes in on the Intercepts article and he says using keywords to monitor social media isn't just an unnecessary privacy invasion.
It's a flawed strategy that will ensure it's short-lived.
So he's saying this is a really dumb, boneheaded move, and it is.
But here's one of the things that the intercept mentioned in the piece.
One of the firms, I guess, it's about to get the contract to start snooping around.
It's called Babel Street, is a company.
Their stock in trade is buying up bulk cellular location data of Americans and selling it to national security agencies like the FBI and the NSA so that they can get around the problems of trying to get a warrant to spy on people.
So they already are, I would say, a pseudo-government agency gathering our data and selling it to the government, basically getting rich off of spying on us for the government, which is bad news.
But here's the part.
Here's John Kirby.
He's a Pentagon spokesman.
He's back.
He was there with Obama.
And he said, this is misreporting.
This is from Military Times Today.
And this is the way he says it, though.
He's a slimy guy.
He says, quote, I am not aware of such a contract with such a company.
Okay, well, that doesn't mean it doesn't happen.
And he also says, quote, there is no pilot project being run.
Well, the reporting, if you look at it, wasn't that it's being run, it's that it was being planned.
So I would say that Kirby, my guess is he's weaseling his words around.
He didn't tell a lie.
So he feels better about this.
So, you know, I wanted to go on another thing dealing with troops, unless you have another point.
I think there's one other thing about that that I wanted to point out, Dr. Paul, because this is what's happening in the military.
And I do think it's a very sort of Trotskyist thing, and it also happened in Communist China.
They've started this countering extremism working group.
And that is basically to ferret out extremists, quote unquote, from the military.
And they're kicking out a lot of people.
Well, the person in charge of this, his name is Bishop Garrison.
And if you want to put someone in charge of countering extremism, he would not be my first choice.
Let's look at a couple of his tweets.
This is the kind of guy that we're going to put in the military to get rid of extremism.
Let's put that first clip up if we can.
Here he is.
He's got a Black Lives Matter thing.
He says, the latest truth from so-and-so, the deafening silence of veteran service organizations on Black Lives Matter.
So, hey, you know, that's, it's, it's, it's Black Lives Matter is a radical Marxist group, self-admittedly so.
It doesn't mean you don't like black people if you don't like Marxist groups.
And here's the next one from Bishop Garrison.
Let's do that next clip.
Silence, this is about Trump.
Silence from our congressional leaders is complicity.
He, meaning Trump, is only going to get worse from here.
And his party and its leadership are watching it happen while doing nothing to stop it.
Support for him, i.e. Trump, is racist, is support for all his beliefs.
So here's a guy who publicly tweets, anyone who supports Trump is a racist.
And so this is the guy you have in the Pentagon ferreting out racists.
I think it's a Trotsky move.
Yeah, and in some ways, though, I'll go back to the motivation.
I don't believe that they're going to achieve winning more converts to their position.
That somebody sees this and say, oh, yeah, I guess they're right.
I missed it.
I didn't know that Trump was really this horrible racist.
Now I believe him because I've heard it.
It's going to do this.
It's going to drive those wedges in there.
Civil war.
Yeah, and that's it.
Bad news.
Sorry, now we can get it.
No, that's okay.
But it's another military story, the second one, in similar vein.
Yeah, it's, you know, we train our soldiers supposedly, I thought, you know, to defend our country, you know, if we're attacked, not to go looking for a monster to destroy.
And if you have, it's also, the Constitution provides a purpose of defending ourselves domestically from certain types of violence.
But we have found out that the troops are being used and they may need a special training for this.
This is not, you know, how do you stop an invasion of military tanks and weaponry and bombs coming?
No, this is to get the people, get the soldiers to know how to act and make sure they don't aggravate anybody.
But they're part of the group that have been known to go to bars now, and their job is to go to bars and get people registered.
I mean, get them vaccinated.
And the one ad that was on TV or something that we saw, it was so, oh, this, you know, the person was just so pleased to participate in it.
Such propaganda.
So That's a different role for the government or for the military, but it's those kind of things that might say that they're designed really to make us weaker, not stronger.
I mean, we don't need, and we could prevent the need for militarism and military fighting by a different policy.
But then again, they have policies that are liable to make, put our troops in harm way.
And it's this kind of stuff that would weaken and confuse the military.
But they're going to get confused anyway about it because it's such a challenge.
But it's also going to end up with conflict even in the military.
There has to be some of this stuff that they put onto the soldiers.
You know, there's going to be this genderism and things.
I know there's going to be factions in the military that are going to like it.
So this is not exactly the way you, if your goal is to build an efficient army well-versed in defending our country, it's not doing that.
Well, the problem they have is that they have a huge surplus of this vaccine because nobody wants to get the jab.
Tons and tons of it to try to export.
They don't know what to do.
So the Dallas County Health and Human Services had a brilliant idea.
A light bulb went off in their heads.
Let's go around to bars, to convenience stores where young people hang out.
And hey, here's an idea.
Let's bring uniformed soldiers from the National Guard along with us.
Take them around.
Let's put that first clip up.
Take them around to bars armed with jabs in each arm.
Bam, bam, here you go.
Get your jab.
Let's look at this first one.
Here's Dallas County HHS.
We're going out tonight to administer the COVID-19 shot to bargoers in Deep Ellum.
By getting vaccinated, you'll be able to enjoy going out again knowing that you're safe and protected.
Okay, but look at what they're doing.
And Zero Hedge had a great take on it.
And this is the problem, Dr. Paul.
Let's put up that next link.
I'm just going to read what they had to say.
If we can put that next clip up, because this is a very good point.
And here you see a soldier in a convenience store.
A guy's probably going in to get himself a beer or something.
And here comes a soldier with a shot in his hand.
It says U.S. Army on his coat.
And this is what Zero Head says about it, Dr. Paul.
When a vaccine crew of literal uniformed soldiers randomly walks up to citizens saying they, quote, need to get vaxed, do the individuals understand it's entirely an option and not an authoritative mandate?
And would, in the example of the video, a recent immigrant to the country or even new American citizen understand the nature of the encounter?
And that's a very good question, I think.
You know, there was a big debate, I believe it was after the Civil War.
The debate was whether or not you can have the military running the show and having militarism domestically.
And they had passed this bill called Posse Comitantis.
And I was thinking, maybe they ought to call that up and redo it.
It's saying that they shouldn't be in this war against the American people by participating in forced vaccination.
The Reality of Chicago00:04:29
You say, well, they didn't force this guy.
Yeah, but I would say, you know, if your boss can intimidate you, you don't want the shot, but the boss says you're going to get the shot or you lose your job.
People take the shot.
So you can imagine if the military shows up, you're going to have a shot, aren't you?
And the implication is that it's patriotic.
Your soldiers here, do you hate America?
You're going to refuse a soldier?
It's pretty insidious, I think.
Right.
Well, let's move on to, I think, the kookiest.
It's really, it's a tough one, but I think this is the kookiest mayor in the country, if I'm not mistaken.
Maybe we can find someone kooki here.
But let's put on this next clip, and I'll throw it over to you, Dr. Paul, when everyone has a look at Mayor Kook, Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot.
You know, when I see this in another story, and most people know about her, and all they have to do is watch her on television.
The first question that comes to me and to a lot of others, how did she get to be mayor of one of our biggest cities in the country?
And yet, possibility is that even with all the silliness going on, and the wreck that Chicago is in, she's the kind of person that would defund the police, restrain the police, in the midst of rioting, and then everything gets worse, and there's a lot more killing, and the killing is that of mostly minorities that are being killed.
The majority of the minorities are being killed.
And she does this, and people would probably re-elect her.
But I think maybe she's overstepped her bounds now because, well, let's hope.
I guess we can't be optimistic.
But she said that we shouldn't, they, the, oh, I said they, mayors like her are saying that she's not going to talk to white reporters, and she's never going to respond to them.
And, you know, I imagine, I wonder if there's anybody out there that thinks, could that be racist?
Could that be racist that they're not going to ever talk to somebody?
And she was very specific on the people she didn't like.
She didn't like white people.
So it's a mess, and it'll be interesting to see what happens because, you know, on one side, we see some mayors and some governors losing their credibility, and that's a good sign.
But so far, you think these cities are so embedded, and they've drifted this way for maybe 50, 60, 70 years, where it became a socialist state, and they always depend on federal money.
So I tell you what, if we had the authority in Washington, I wouldn't say to send in the troops and clean up that mess.
I would say quit sending money.
Quit stealing the money from Texas and sending it into Chicago and feeding this group, you know, and let them work it out.
Maybe they would come up with a different system of government if they see that they can't afford runaway welfarism.
Yeah.
Well, here's the reality of Chicago.
And just as we were talking, I just looked it up out of curiosity, ABC Chicago headline 18 hours ago.
Chicago shootings, 108 children shot, 16 dead so far this year, police say.
That's the reality of Chicago.
And let's put that picture of Lightfoot back up.
That's the reality.
And here's what Lightfoot is obsessed about.
Rather than the 100 kids getting shot, let's put that Mayor Lightfoot's picture back up.
Rather than 100 kids getting shot, Chicago Mayor reaches her two-year midway point.
As mayor, her spokeswoman says she's granting one-on-one interviews only to black or brown journalists.
So meanwhile, black and brown people are getting blown up, shot, killed, kids, and she's saying, I'm not going to talk to you.
So I don't know.
You're right.
I mean, would they re-elect someone like this?
It would be kind of sad if they did.
But she sort of fits example that I talk about, and that is my experience in Washington as those individuals, and they were well known, shouted racism, racist all the time.
And they were very anxious to paint everybody else.
Like now, did we just read something that said that Trump is a horrible, horrible racist?
Russia's Blame Game00:05:52
And that goes on and on.
But my argument has always been the people I knew in Washington, the people who shouted the loudest and the most frequent epitaph against another person, say, racist, racist, racist, they themselves were the most racist.
So I would say that her charges, I think she qualifies.
It's not like we're making this up, but I think most people would say this is racist, what they're doing with.
And I think a few people have jumped the line and went over and started criticizing her.
But how long can it go on?
And that's why I have to say, well, in order to satisfy yourself on why, once again, create the chaos, disruption in the street.
We want disruption.
And they want economic and social injustice.
That's the way cultural Marxism works.
And she may be a hero among the Marxists.
Yeah, yeah, she may be.
Well, should we move on to Cruz?
Oh, yes.
This is my nomination for dummy of the week.
Let's put up this next picture.
We saw this this morning.
Ted Cruz.
Four months into it, Biden is crawling in bed with Putin in Russia.
So here's Ted Cruz, Republican from Texas.
What a shame.
What a disgrace.
But basically what he's doing is he is adopting the Russia gate, the Russia scenario that the Democrats misused and abused for the entirety of Trump's presidency.
He's saying, well, it wasn't them, it was you guys.
You guys are in bed with Putin.
You guys are in bed with Russia.
It's taking the same ridiculous conspiracy theory and repackaging it and throwing it at the Democrats.
And it's just awful.
Of course, he said this was just the fact that they haven't followed Trump's American First policy.
You know, and that would solve all the problems.
I got to think, well, America First isn't the worst term in the world if you define it properly.
Maybe America First means mind our own business and work with people and trade with people, and that might serve our interests the most.
So he's arguing we need more of this American First stuff.
But what he wants, he says he's the champion of American First, but I think he's the champion of Empire First.
You know, whatever fits the empire.
And then he gets into this whole argument about the pipelines.
You know, Biden closes one down now and then he urges another one, you know, North Stream.
And he's right in saying that.
But the problem is, why are we involved at all?
Why should we be deciding who builds a pipeline from Russia to Germany?
You know, that to me would be maybe a move toward peace.
You know, because Eastern Europeans, Europeans would be more dependent on Russia and maybe they'd be less likely to bomb each other.
But we can't stand the idea that they're working with our allies and our allies.
And this is what he inferred.
Our allies shouldn't have this privilege of deciding whether it's good for them or not.
It is really crazy.
If people want to find something and get upset, and that's not hard to find something.
This little argue article just is so annoying because he represents a significant group.
He's getting more popular, not less popular, because he's an American First, strong military, now gets along with Trump and all this sort of stuff.
But if you look at him from a good foreign policy standpoint or the Constitution, I think he's nowhere close.
I think he's just the worst kind of neocon, the worst kind of neocon.
It makes me think we need another Senator Paul.
Two's better than one.
But no, it's an embarrassment to have him in Texas.
As you point out, first of all, he flat out blames Russia for the colonial pipeline supposed hack, which is ridiculous because even the intelligence agency said they have no evidence that it was the Russian government who did it.
And then, as you say, he criticizes Biden for doing something semi-sensible, which is saying, okay, we're going to stop standing in the way of the Nord Stream 2 pipeline, which, as you say, brings in the gas from Russia to Europe, to Germany, to Europe.
And that means that they're going to get the gas cheaper, they're going to get it easier, they're going to have no problems.
I guess what he wants is for the Germans and for the East Europeans to have to buy gas from America on a ship and all the way over the ocean at two or three times the price.
And I guess that's America first.
But you're right.
You know, saying that somehow it's absurd for Russia to sell its gas to Europe is just insane.
You know, it's just insane.
That's economic planning for the special privileges of our close friends and a club.
I do want to talk a little bit more about the Keystone.
Because from our viewpoint, when we're talking about Nord Stream, I think a lot of people can visualize this that we just explained.
Why are we over there?
Why can't they decide where the pipeline should be?
And just leaving alone, I think it's going to make sense to a lot of people.
But if you use that same argument for Keystone, you say, no, the federal government has to get out of it.
And somebody else has to deal with it.
It's a little more complex than that because we've drifted into a situation which is a mess there.
Why should a president have this much power?
It has nothing to do with the free market.
Why Federal Power Matters00:04:27
Matter of fact, the one thing that if you wanted to really solve that problem, you'd have to recognize the principle of eminent domain is not a freedom principle.
And that's difficult.
But the other thing is, states should have more prerogatives on what they do.
It should be done in privacy, but you'd have to deal with eminent domain if you want it to be privately owned.
But, you know, I think that this whole thing that it becomes a federal issue, only a federal issue, it really bugs me to think that the president come in the first day writes a thing and it's closed down.
And, you know, maybe when you've dug a hole this deep and it's the wrong place you would dig the hole, do you have to just fill it in with dynamite?
Or maybe you can salvage something from all the mistakes they made.
No, just turn it off.
So it's not very good.
That's why non-intervention from the very beginning is best and it's also the fairest thing that we can do.
It also fits into the Constitution pretty well.
Pretty well, yeah.
Well, I'm going to close with one little thing, and it's an update on our favorite congressman, our favorite House of Representatives member, Thomas Massey.
Remember, he got into a little bit of trouble because he got a group together and they decided to go down there on the floor without their masks on, and they stood there and they chatted and chatted and chatted.
Well, he got a letter from Pelosi's people yesterday.
They're not happy at all.
And he said he's going to file that letter away properly.
Let's look at this last clip.
Here it is, Thomas Massey.
I just filed House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's letter warning me to follow her mask rule.
And for those of you listening, it's in the trash can.
And here's what the letter says.
It just says, this letter is to inform you that a further violation of House Resolution 38 will result in a $500 fine.
The next violation will be $2,500 fine.
I'm glad to see, Dr. Paul, that Congressman Massey has properly filed that warning.
And that's good.
The thoughts that came to me was: I wonder when the rules permitted this.
You know, I guess the House Pelosi types can pass rules like this, and that's the way it's been established.
But I wonder if that was ever done in the early years.
So someday I'll probably try to get somebody to figure that out because it's ridiculous.
You know, if you don't do what Pelosi tells you, don't sit here, don't sit here.
It's just pretty foolish.
Well, I'm done with that actually for a lighthearted industry.
And I want to thank our viewers today for tuning in.
It's been great having our viewers as often we do.
And I think today we did a little bit, you know, discussed a little bit both on foreign policy and domestic policy.
But we have had some really good responses on interest in both.
Right now, the foreign policies are stirring up.
The Middle East is a time bomb.
At the same time, the finances are getting bad.
The whole thing about the deficits are being excluded, and inflation has stirred its ugly head.
So there's a lot going on, and just like I have said so many times, the problems are not dropping out of the sky.
Sometimes we do get problems out of the sky, but most of the time, the problems that we really have to deal with are designed by people in government.
And I think the inclination for people to create these problems on their own, like I've always argued, the case, the 18 to 21-year-olds don't go out and start wars.
It's somebody else that doesn't.
It's the governments that do it.
It's a bad policy, bad economic theory, a bad monetary policy.
And this is where the problem is.
But I am always made a bit more optimistic when I meet a lot of young people, really serious about it.
And when we have good information and good news, we like to report it too.
Because that's something, to tell you the truth, we don't have a whole lot of else because we can't use the tools of force, which is the temptation that so many people use.
We have to do it through providing information, trying to persuade people with the ideas of liberty that they're much more superior to the ideas of authoritarianism.
I want to thank everybody for tuning in today to the Liberty Report.