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Aug. 4, 2022 - Ron Paul Liberty Report
30:14
A New ‘Giuliani Moment’? With Guest, Rep Anthony Sabatini

Florida State Rep. Anthony Sabatini, in a recent candidate forum, dared to make a stand for non-interventionism in the Russia-Ukraine conflict. He was interrogated by neocon moderator Marc Levin who could not believe anyone could advise staying out of the war, calling the Florida Rep’s views “the most radical I’ve ever heard.” Sabatini held his ground…and the crowd roared in approval.

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Time Text
Discovery in Politics 00:02:18
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 this morning?
I'm doing well, and we're fortunate.
We're doing something a little bit unusual.
We're going to talk to a politician.
Uh-oh.
Somebody running for something.
But, you know, it's not that easy to find the really good candidates.
And, of course, our program is not designed for this.
We're interested in the issues.
But boy, what a delightful discovery.
And, of course, we had a little hint.
Trump sort of pointed his finger and said, this is a good guy.
But I think I have somebody in my family said that same thing, too.
So the good guys that we do know have come along and they have endorsed Anthony Sabatini.
Anthony is a state rep in Florida, and now he's running for Congress.
And it looks like he's doing very well.
But the people in the Republican Party aren't all that happy because he's pretty independent, you know, which is a shame.
You know, he's the constitutionalist, and he's set aside, like, he's a radical.
I mean, Levin had a little confrontation with him.
I'll tell you what, that really points out a lot of things, the problem with Republican parties, to go after Anthony for defending the Constitution, not an intervention of foreign policy.
Anthony, this is this great discovery.
And I'm glad you were able to come on the program today.
Say hello to our viewing audience.
Well, thank you, Dr. Paul, for having me on.
It's an honor.
I'm a big fan.
Well, very good.
Daniel.
Well, Anthony, as you say, you're a state representative now.
You're looking to take the 7th District of Florida, which, as you pointed out before the show started, is now pretty solidly read.
So you've got to deal with your primary.
And with that in mind, you participated in the Sunshine Summit last month, a couple weeks ago, I guess it was, with the other candidates.
And something interesting happened.
And even some folks have said it's kind of a mini Giuliani moment.
Mark Levin's Questioning 00:08:02
You were questioned by Mark Levin.
Why don't you go ahead and tell us what happened in your own words?
Absolutely.
Well, you know, here in Florida, I'm proud to have the most pro-Constitution record in the state house, and now I'm running for U.S. Congress.
And our governor, our great governor, Governor DeSantis, said, you know, our state convention is quite boring, so let's mix it up this year and bring debates into the convention.
So as a guest host moderator, Governor DeSantis invited Mark Levin.
Well, as you could possibly, as you could imagine, anybody who's familiar with Mark Levin's views, his neoconservatism, his Bush-era radical, I call it radical interventionist foreign policy came up within a few questions.
So he asked me how I would describe my foreign policy.
I said very sort of quickly, you know, carry a big stick, walk softly, Teddy Roosevelt style.
And he said, well, what would you do in regards to Ukraine?
I said, at this point, I'd be very much closely observing what's going on, but I would not be directly involved in any way, not in military assistance or even in economic assistance at this point.
And he sort of lost it, and it became a broader discussion about NATO.
And of course, I told him, well, listen, you know, if they attack Poland, that's one thing.
But the truth is we should never have expanded NATO.
We need to be looking at getting out of NATO historically.
And so when that came up, that is sort of one of the big divisions in the modern Republican Party now.
Obviously, the great Dr. Paul kind of helped bring the party to a point where our classic roots of non-interventionism have now actually have some voice in the party.
But there's a huge division between the neocons like Mark Levin and the Ron Paul, or I would say even Tucker Carlson sort of wing of the party, which is much more rooted in classic realism.
And so when I argued with him for about a two or three minute exchange, it did get national attention because it was probably the first sort of recent example of these two wings really fighting in a strong dialogue, at least in a congressional, a congressional forum.
And so it did not end well for him.
He got very angry.
The crowd was obviously with me.
When I told him unless there was direct harm on an American citizen, we shouldn't be involved.
The crowd was totally with me.
And so he got mad and endorsed my opponent.
Yeah, I heard.
Yeah, exactly.
I heard the roar, and I thought it was amazing.
I was very encouraged to hear the roar after you.
I mean, he just became obsessed with you when you dared speak out of turn.
And it did remind me of some other debates we know.
But the other thing that struck me is how tired and worn out the neocon argument is because the only retort he had to you is, well, oh, yeah, well, what are you going to do when Russia starts sending missiles over to the U.S.?
As if, you know, I mean, that's a reminder of Condi Rice.
You remember back in the run-up to the Iraq War, well, we don't want the smoking gun to be a mushroom clout.
It's always this absolute, you know, this absolute extreme example to try to put you on the hook and suck you in.
But it's such an empty-headed argument, as if Russia is going to start just lobbing missiles because they woke up one morning and decided to do so.
That's exactly right.
They have to caricature their opponents and make them into psychopaths.
There are no rational state actors.
Everyone's a psychopath, and we have to strike first and intervene.
If not, the whole world's going to go down in flames.
And it's a tired argument, not based on reason or fact, but they continue to make it.
The good news is I think the people are with us finally because of the good work that Dr. Paul and others have done over the years to bring back the roots, the Robert Taft roots of our foreign policy.
And now it's this guy's in a corner, and he's sort of, I think he's losing his audience.
I mean, people who agreed with Mark Levin on some of his domestic views, obviously a lot of it was pretty common sense stuff, have totally disengaged from him on his insane radical foreign policy, which is rooted in this recent failed past of the Republican Party.
Great.
And you're doing a very good job.
Why don't they ask a little bit about the group of candidates there?
How many are running for the seat?
So on paper, you have eight Republicans, but only about three of us are considered strongly competitive candidates, you know, fundraising out there, knocking the doors, making sure we can have a possibility of winning it.
Tell me a little bit how you perceive them.
You know a couple more because they're doing better in the polls, but in general, do they ignore you, fuss with you, agree with you?
Or how do they act toward you?
Oh, they're completely and totally obsessed with me.
I would say half of their messaging has more to do with me than them.
And I mean the top three or four candidates behind me because the polls came out.
I was winning in the most recent poll by seven points.
So now literally it's all they talk about.
You go their social media, they're campaigning, even the dollars they're spending in the race, it's all focused on me.
And what's interesting is they can't disagree with the message because generally it's an America for sort of conservative pro-liberty message.
So they just have to do personal petty attacks as often as they can.
You know, China and Russia are always in the news.
The hawks always have to stir up the enemies.
Even though they're imperfect, we have a few imperfections.
Early on in my career in Congress, I didn't have things down path and I didn't have really an audience.
I would keep going back to saying, well, what if they did this?
What if they did this to us?
Sometimes we were interfering in China.
Well, we've always interfered, telling them what to do.
Well, if you do this and this and this, you have to straighten out your violations of civil liberties with your own citizen.
And there was one time early on, I just spoke out and I said, look, don't you think we have a few violations ourselves?
And, you know, it was an answer that they just couldn't answer.
But they don't want to think about that.
That's when, you know, Levin and the other people come along and what they do and they throw it at you, and you've been a victim of this already, is that you're disloyal, you're unpatriotic, you're treasonous.
They even use those kind of words.
I imagine you have been on the receiving end of some of that.
Absolutely.
You know, they're calling me treasonous, un-American, you know, all these different things for just observing, you know, our classical American foreign policy that we've had for the majority of our history and trying to revive it and talk about it versus this sort of crazy neocom view that took over the party in the last few decades.
So, no, they have to come right at the throat because they don't have reason on their side.
They have idealism.
They have sort of, you know, sort of strange idealistic perceptions about what we can accomplish around the world, which has no basis in reality, but they have no reason.
And so if you get close to observing what they believe on reason, they start to get very, very angry very quickly.
You see it a lot.
And of course, the funniest part is they love to attack you as unpatriotic.
But unlike them, you and people like Tulsi Gavard actually serve your country in uniform.
And I think you continue to do so, if I'm not mistaken.
Absolutely.
Yeah, I'm still proud to serve as a captain in the Florida Army National Guard infantry.
It's been an honor of my life.
I enjoy it.
And I believe that the National Guard has an important domestic mission.
Of course, I've also pushed what they call the Defend the Guard Act here in the state of Florida, which says that no governor or I'm sorry, the federal government shouldn't be able to deploy troops unless Congress, in accordance with the War Powers Clause, actually declares war on a nation.
Until that happens, they shouldn't have the authority to use the National Guard.
So I've been very proud to push that in the last few years.
I do think we'll get it through eventually.
Well, maybe we'll get Levine to sign up, you know, because he's so in with it.
Well, my suggestion has always been, anybody who votes for war or is financing war and didn't vote for the war, they should be put in the front lines.
Propaganda's Impact on Politics 00:14:01
I'll tell you what.
Give them a chance.
Give them the chance to have some fun.
Yeah, there you go.
Enjoy it.
This morning, there was a poll released by our friends at Zero Hedge, and this should be very helpful to us who believe in a lot less intervention and not taking the position that everything Russia does is wonderful and neat because I worry about some things, but I also have a greater responsibility and a lot of reasons for worrying about our own people in Washington, D.C. and what's going to happen to us here.
But the poll came out that they reported on shows that this, this, I don't know whether I should believe this.
I'm going to double-check it.
That's your job.
Only 1% of Americans see Russia as a major problem with all that propagandizing.
That is just, that's excellent.
So I wish more Americans would take a look at that.
Absolutely.
That's a very encouraging poll.
I'm glad you referenced that.
It's a recent Gallup.
It's a Gallup poll that just came out.
And it just goes to show the massive chasm between what the Beltway says, what the media says, despite all the propaganda you say, Dr. Paul, despite all the relentless propaganda, Americans, again, have come to their senses and they're not biting on this stuff.
They are more worried about paying five bucks a gallon.
Of course, it was Putin's price hike when it went up, but it's not Putin's price cut now that it's going down.
That's all Biden fixed.
Anthony, you just have to have the confidence.
I know you'll have your ups and downs, but when you're doing the right thing, it's all going to work out to your benefit, regardless of who's counting the votes and all that other stuff.
And when they were hitting me hard about being unpatriotic and not supporting the troops, yeah, I want them to stay at home and not get involved in undeclared war, so I'm not supporting the troops.
So I think one of our answers turned out to be, and you might, as time goes along, be able to do it also.
And that is several others in the campaign were also in the military.
Well, they were all candidates, and somebody added it up.
Our campaign didn't even do the adding up.
They added it up and they found out that I got more money from the military than anybody else.
It finally dawned on me.
I was in the military.
And Anthony, you're in a reserve.
You're not saying, hey, I can't wait till I can go and shoot my rifle at people.
It's so insane that we work on the assumption of the propagandist.
The reassuring thing to me has always been, Anthony, is that the people are more numerous that support our side.
At the same time, the control of the message, the propaganda, the media, that's where our greatest challenge is.
Absolutely.
Yeah, if they didn't have control of some of these institutions, they would have no sway with the American people.
Most people want realistic, nationally focused, constitutionally embedded foreign policy.
They don't want this globalist viewpoint, which is more similar to what the Democrats sell than anything else.
But that's what they have right now, is those institutions.
Hopefully we can continue to have more alternative media, which gives people all their viewpoints.
And once again, very encouraging to see that poll that people have resisted the amount of propaganda that have gone out this last four months because I'm sure you would agree, it's been the most concentrated pro-war propaganda I've seen in two decades.
It's crazy.
Well, why don't we step back a little bit, Dr. Paul, and let's talk a little bit about how you came to the position that you are in philosophically, how you got into politics, what inspired you.
A little bit about your earlier background, if you don't mind.
Sure, absolutely.
Well, coming out of high school, I was watching sort of the quagmire of Iraq and Afghanistan 2007, 2006, 700, 8.
And so I sort of came in with the viewpoint that this policy was wrong.
I was coming into sort of the age of reason and politics at the same time that the results were being born of that bad doctrine and those mistakes made in terms of foreign policy.
So I had that viewpoint going into my emergence in politics.
What got me really interested in politics in the beginning was a domestic focus.
I was watching the radical leftism sort of take over under Obama, especially in his second term.
And so that's what made me prompted to get on city council, go to law school, eventually get into the state house.
And I became much more of a pro-liberty guy just by experience.
When I got in government, I realized almost everything government was doing, it was making that issue worse and doing a worse job.
And so I realized I was very, very much a liberty-style Republican just by human experience because I was watching, it wasn't just doctrine that I was learning.
It was actually the real life experience of saying government's ruining everything, no matter what it wanted to do, especially at the state and local level.
So, of course, I got to Tallahassee and I ended up having the most pro-liberty record.
I have something like 100% plus from the Republican Liberty Caucus just because so much of what government does, it should not be doing.
It's not even that it's doing it wrong.
It just should not be in that government of that area of governance to begin with.
It just became very clear to me when I got in government.
And then, of course, a congressional seat opened up.
We talked a little bit earlier before the show about redistricting.
And I looked at some of the crop of candidates, and of course, they're all neocons, and they're using all the America First sloganeering, but they don't really believe in a restrained government, a constitutionally sound government, and don't understand our fiscal problems.
My favorite congressman for years has been Thomas Massey.
Yes.
And I realized there wasn't somebody like him running, so that's what got me to run for U.S. Congress.
But aside from that, I'm a lawyer.
I only take one kind of case.
I sue local governments that violate people's property rights.
I sort of very infamously or famously sued 15 local governments in Florida that had mask mandates.
That was an issue of enormous importance to me.
Awesome.
And I still serve in the National Guard.
That's great.
That is awesome.
You know, it does remind me a little bit, Dr. Paul, sorry to interrupt, but in 2010, there was kind of a perfect storm because everyone wanted to be Ron Paul, the Liberty candidates.
And that was great for Senator Paul, and it brought in people like Massey.
It almost feels to me, and I don't know if you feel this way, but it seems like with all the woke stuff, the cultural Marxism that's going on, this election also feels like that kind of perfect storm.
I don't know.
Yeah, and Anthony, I want to ask a little bit about your colleagues in the Florida House.
Do you have a close ally or are they all on the wrong side of these very important issues that we're talking about?
I would say out of the 100, there's 120 House reps in the Florida House of Representatives, 78 Republicans.
I would say there's three or four true Liberty guys, those who are willing to buck the party and do the right thing.
And I've been trying to assemble a Freedom Caucus within it.
We're not quite there yet, but I see that on the horizon.
The good news is when DeSantis took over governor, even though the legislature is very swampy and divided, you have a few Liberty folks, a lot of people in the middle looking to be told what to do, and then sort of the grifter establishment types at the other end, they all have to follow the lead of Ron DeSantis.
We're in this unique position where he had one of the most popular Republican Party politicians of our time in charge of the state.
So he's led the state in a much more liberty direction.
A lot of people say to me, hey, I love what you're doing in the Florida legislature.
And when I tell them, I say, listen, you know, I love what I'm trying to do there.
But the truth is, a lot of it's getting done because DeSantis is pulling the legislature in a much more pro-liberty direction.
And that's sort of the dynamic we're in right now.
And I welcome it, obviously.
He was a Freedom Caucus member in the Congress.
I mean, DeSantis was my congressman.
So I knew that he would be a much more pro-freedom governor than his opponent.
And so I backed him on day one.
And I'm not surprised by some of the better things he's been doing.
Great.
Yeah, we've watched him closely, especially over the COVID, and we've been really grateful for the courage that he's shown.
One rather unhappy note.
The Senate voted on the expansion of NATO to Finland and Sweden.
Unfortunately, only Josh Hawley voted no on this.
And I think you have tweeted something today in support of Hawley's vote against it.
He also took some heat for refusing to vote in favor of NATO expansion.
Oh, absolutely.
Yeah, I definitely agree to his position.
I tweeted about him and obviously Senator Rand Paul, who I think is opposed to it.
He had the, of course, the amendment that he offered that would have said that Article 5 of NATO doesn't trump our U.S. Constitution.
And sad to see only 10 Republican senators agree with that sentiment.
But, no, at the end of the day, what they did is very much common sense, widely in step with the wider American public, especially the ranked voter of the Republican Party.
But once again, we have so many Republican elected officials who are adverse to what the Republican platform is and what the people of the Republican Party believe.
And this media has warped them into thinking that what a lot of the Republican senators are doing is in accordance with their interests and it's not.
But no, I think I welcome more senators hopefully getting in who are going to be in step with Josh Hawley and Rand Paul and others like that versus the older wing of the party, which is hopefully fossilized in the next year.
Go in the door.
You know, earlier on you were telling us that just observing government was an incentive for you to look into this and come to the conclusion that everything they're doing is doing the wrong thing.
It was just the whole concept of inept government.
When I got interested, I got interested through economic policy a long time before I ran for Congress and I got fascinated with monetary policy.
Now, I would guess that you would be constitutional on the monetary issue, but has the money issue come up?
It should be coming up because a lot of people are worried about inflation, just the fact that they don't even fully understand this.
I would think this would be coming up like that debate, so-called debate you had.
Did the money issue come up?
Did you have a discussion on the economy?
Interestingly enough, it didn't.
Now, of course, I believe in auditing the Fed then ending the Fed.
I totally agree with your views on monetary policy.
But I will tell you, I think what's happening sort of empirically is the news cycle is still so dwarfed by these cultural and social issues.
I mean, this wokeism, this almost religious type fervor you see with the wokeism, is attacking basic institutions of human Western civilization that have never been questioned, you know, like the family and gender, et cetera.
And they're so, that is such a loud and sort of impressive attack that's shocking so many people that it's still overshadowing what should be a new focus on this fiscal issue we're in and this conversation that should be had about monetary policy right now.
So like the time is ripe for that to happen, but it's still being dwarfed by this wokeism, just because I think it's, you know, what you see in the wokeism is an attack on, like I said before, institutions that have never heretofore ever been questioned.
And it's just so powerful, you know, going against human nature in so many ways, you know, some of the stuff they're pushing, you know, and especially the critical race theory where they're trying to debias along lines of race that it still overshadows what I think should have been the conversation about fiscal policy.
But I definitely welcome that coming into the conversation.
Again, I think it needs to happen very quickly.
Good.
Well, I only have one more thing.
I know Dr. Paul has something else he wants to ask, but I was going to just end my part of it with some advice and a request.
The advice would be to follow the Ron Paul rule, which I didn't quite understand at first, but I understand very well now, which is when you are elected, and we do believe you will be, no beltway aides.
I always thought it was funny when I first met Dr. Paul.
He said, I won't hire anyone with experience, because I was worried.
The kind that we don't like.
I hadn't been on the Hill.
I was not a young lad.
I didn't have experience in government.
And that's exactly what he was looking for.
So when you get in, you're going to have a lot of friends, new friends saying, Anthony here, we've got some great aides for you to put on your staff.
They're wonderful people.
So much experience.
That is like, no, that's kryptonite.
You've got to stay away from that, in my view.
And the other one, I'm sorry?
Couldn't agree more.
It's actually been my policy already.
You only get two staffers in the State House.
Everybody in the world offered an experienced insider staff before they got to Tallahassee.
I said, absolutely not.
I brought in one of my best friends from law school who had never even visited Tallahassee.
And of course, another girl who hadn't either.
So we've done a good job, and I plan to do the same.
None of my staffers will be insiders.
They'll all be folks from the district, people who have my similar constitutional viewpoint.
I remember my first couple of days working for Dr. Paul on the Hill.
The person who I replaced was leaving, and he was still there for a couple of days.
And I said, Joe, is there a handbook?
Is there an employee handbook?
What am I supposed to do?
And he said, don't worry about it.
You'll figure it out.
It's not that hard.
This is a laissez-faire offer.
And the second thing is just, as you may know, the Royal Paul Institute has a Washington conference every year.
This year's is coming up in September.
We would like to request next year as a sitting representative, if you happen to be in town, to come participate.
We had Thomas Massey last year.
We've had Representative Duncan who's now retired and many others.
So we hope to see you next year at the RPI conference as a congressman from Florida.
100% count me in.
I'm honored for the invite.
Thank you.
Sounds good.
Dr. Forbes.
Policies and Their Consequences 00:03:53
Anthony, I'm going to ask a question which is more theoretical than anything else, and that is trying to perceive and look into the minds of these people who do all these dumb things.
And there's a lot of excuses.
You bring up the word wokeism, you know, and that is a description of a policy and an activity that is just atrocious.
And when you look at lockdown and all the things that we do, the question comes up, and sometimes very dedicated libertarians will have a disagreement on the perception.
And they are really stupid.
You know, why are they doing this?
Let's take the complete political spectrum, all the things that's happened in energy, you know, since we've had the newer president.
And it's so stupid.
And then they say, well, it's bad policy.
They just don't understand it.
And they go on and on.
But other people will say, maybe it's deliberate.
And there are some people who argue that you can put the pieces together a little easier if you say, well, maybe some people think that they can benefit from chaos in the streets.
You'd wonder, why would the liberals do to our cities what they have done?
Why wouldn't that be an absolute negative politically?
And yet, that's what they did.
They destroyed the cities, and they still have no shame.
So since nobody has the only answer for this, I'm interested in your opinion.
Why do they do these things?
Well, I think I really do believe that there's sort of almost quasi-type religious viewpoint embedded in the liberal mind frame.
I don't think it's just based on reason.
I think they're affected by looking at things in a really strict fundamentalist way.
And so even though rising crime emerges, it's impossible for them to see that they've set the conditions for that rising crime to emerge by pushing policies that were necessarily going to result in that thing.
I think they just push what they believe to be right.
It's like being extremely soft on crime for very liberal reasons.
And if a certain result occurs, they have cognitive dissonance and they can't realize that it's their policy that created this result.
So, I mean, I just, I really believe the liberal worldview is very pre-rational, that they're not looking at ends and means and what policies work.
I think they're just trying to fulfill their sort of liberal do-gooder policies.
I follow Thomas Sowell a lot on this subject.
I think they have a special insight of the way the world results.
And if things turn out bad from their policies, it's not their fault.
It's somebody else's fault.
They always blame us for all their failures.
If there's rising crime in the cities, it's these Republican gun owners, etc.
So, you know, they're just blind to their own views, and they do what they do because it makes them feel better.
A lot of what the liberals push is to sort of create moral superiority over other people and to feel good about their policies.
And if they, like I said, result in negative consequences, it's not their fault.
It's always somebody else.
Well, at times, I get sympathetic with not in a positive way, but to explain things that the purpose is chaos, and chaos is what the Marxist position is because they think they can rebuild the world in a better way.
But anyway, the results and the policies we can deal with because they're pretty objective exactly why people do these things.
Sometimes it's just for dollars, you know, sometimes it's just for power and all kinds of reasons, I guess, enter into it.
Finish Up Positively 00:01:47
But we want to finish up now, but I want to give you an opportunity to make sure it's loud and clear on how any of our viewers can get in touch with your campaign and help you out.
Sure.
Well, once again, thanks for having me on the show.
I try to be as transparent as I can so they can always just call me on my cell phone, 352-455-2928.
And of course, my website is sabattini4congress spelt out.com.
And then I'm on every social media platform.
You could always just direct message me there, and I'm very, very responsive.
But would love to stay in touch with your audience.
And, you know, hopefully maybe some of the good people that you know would be interested in helping out in the campaign in some way, too.
So great.
One habit we practice, sometimes it's more difficult because we always like to point out the positives.
And most of the time during the day, we point it out.
And one thing when it's really bad, something really bad has happened, I finally end up and say, well, that just, you know, was just influencing more people who just gave up on their silliness.
So even the bad stuff, we turn into a positive.
But I want to say our program today, I see, is very, very positive.
You're a young person that sort of broke loose and it's done.
We know about numbers.
It's the small numbers that really make the, you know, have the influence on others.
And that's why I remain optimistic.
And certainly your presence in this race and the optimism around it, I think, is just great.
So keep up the good work.
And we'll be in touch with you.
Much appreciated.
Thanks for having me on.
Okay.
And I want to thank our audience for tuning in today.
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