Smackdown! House Dems Desperately Walk Back Letter Urging Diplomacy For Ukraine
How it started: 30 Members of the House Progressive Caucus penned a relatively timid letter to President Biden suggesting a bit of diplomacy before we march to WWIII. How it's going: The House Progressive Caucus almost immediately began furiously backpedaling from their own letter. Meanwhile the US 101st Airborne is in Poland and "ready to fight." Also today - MSNBC pundit: if you worry about inflation, you might be pro-Hitler. What?
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 this morning.
Happy Tuesday, Dr. Paul.
How are you?
I'm doing well.
Did you feel that front go through last night?
Oh, no, I slept through that.
That was pretty loud.
You thought it was 4th of July or something.
I'm happy.
But it was dry on the roads early in the morning, so I was able to get out at 6 o'clock, and I knew it rained, but I got my walk.
That's what's important.
And that makes my day go better.
That's right.
But we have some news here that's just so confusing.
Can you imagine it be confusing what we're getting out of Ukraine?
You know, the other day, you know, and we've mentioned, you know, about the progressive, progressive caucus.
Jayapaul, the chairwoman on this thing, comes out and say, hey, you know, the headline was, maybe we ought to have a little diplomacy.
But Barry didn't hear, man, but you got to keep hating the Russians.
But it made a lot of news, but that was one thing.
And we postulated, you know, why are they doing it now?
And of course, the first thought that came to our mind was, politics, politics.
This is trying to confuse people to show that they're strong supporters of Ukraine, but we still have to be careful and hate the Russians a lot.
So anyway, this happened.
And then something else happened afterwards.
There were 30 of them, and it got a lot of attention.
And the headline usually was, you know, 30 progressives now or so.
Now they question, you know, the whole policy that we should be negotiating.
And they had, you know, half of it was suggesting common sense.
And we said, well, that's good.
Maybe things are breaking.
Maybe they are, you know, responding to a popular opinion.
And it's an election time coming up.
Maybe that's why they're doing it.
And it still could be some of that, you know, to show that they're more fair and balanced on foreign policy.
But, you know, there was a big answer.
Somebody had to answer back.
Hey, wait a minute.
You guys are going too far.
We didn't mean all that.
So they sent out, there's more material on the follow-up than there is on the original thing.
That almost got by.
But now there's several articles just dealing with this because it looked like they backed off.
And, you know, wonder where they started using the word walk back.
You see, it's like something happens.
They say something and say, well, they'll have to walk back.
They'll have to be walked back on that one too.
So they figure, well, you said it was dumb.
It wasn't right.
It was a lie.
So somebody has to correct it.
Or Biden lost his notes.
Something like that.
But anyway, it's significant because it tells us a little bit about what they're thinking.
But I just wonder, too, whether, you know, it's only two days from the election.
Somebody has to be thinking about politics on this.
How's it going to help somebody and hurt somebody and this sort of thing?
The big problem is, is we sense that there's a growing number of people that are coming our way and saying, why are we over there?
Why are we spending this money?
Why are we protecting the borders in Ukraine?
Why we won't do anything here?
And besides, we're going broke.
And so maybe, you know, that is such a powerful message.
I think that's one of the reasons the Democrats are doing poorly.
So maybe this was the message to say, oh, we'll back off.
We have somebody that will, even though they had to contradict themselves the next day.
Yeah, it was amazing.
You know, yesterday afternoon you sent over the article.
My first thoughts, my little gear started turning in my head from back when we were in your office and we did so much about coalition building.
I thought, and I think it was Glenn Greenwald who responded to the letter on a tweet saying, boom, which is that, you know, the other shoe has dropped.
I'm pretty sure it was him.
So I was thinking the other shoes dropped.
It's a big boom.
This is a great opportunity to do what you all did back then in the Iraq war, which is create then a bipartisan coalition to get together.
And I'm imagining in my mind people that have been questioning this who would make quote odd bedfellows, someone like MTG Marjorie Green, who's very controversial, or Goetz, who's very controversial.
And I'm sort of picturing them in my mind.
I guess I was having a fantasy.
They're all there with Barbara Lee and Jaya Paul, and they're saying, you know what, guys, we don't agree on very much, as you all know.
However, we do agree that we cannot progress to World War III.
And I had the whole thing set up in my mind.
And then I went back to reality and looked, and they walked back the letter.
Let's put up that first clip because in the space of my little fantasy, the whole thing switched.
And this is from Zero Heads.
30 House Dems urge dramatic shift in Biden's Ukraine policy to get serious about diplomacy or risk nuclear miscalculation.
And you wonder, well, why did they do that?
Well, Dr. Paul, I think you hit the nail on the head probably.
Let's do that next clip because this is from Business Inside, and we have referenced this on the show before.
New poll suggests Americans are growing tired of support for Ukraine without diplomacy.
So they're reading the polls.
They're concerned about what's going to happen.
They throw this out, and then the proverbial, you know what, hits the fan and put on that next clip because this is what happens, Dr. Paul, as you said.
Progressive caucus tries to clarify a call for Biden to find diplomatic solutions to Ukraine.
But the other point they made gets a little silly.
We pay all the money.
We ran the coup.
Back in 2014, we were involved in that.
We continue to send weapons.
We spent $67 billion, and they're going to send more.
We know that.
And then they say, well, we can't, we better be cautious here because we don't want to get involved.
Zelensky has to, he makes all the important decisions for Ukraine.
And I thought, well, how do they get up with this stuff?
And they think people will fall for it, and there will be some, but it is just ridiculous.
You know what it made me think about, though, the way we're doing this?
That back when we had two individuals around that were very interested in China, and that was Nixon and Kissinger.
And actually, I was in favor of moving in a direction of trading with people.
But what did they do?
Did they have people leaking things and talking?
What they did is, you knew it was serious because they went over there without making a big news out of it.
They didn't want it discussed in the public.
So they went over there and they were able to open up some doors there.
Of course, we have a bunch of people now trying to close all those doors, which is sort of sad.
It is.
And in fact, you make a good point.
And when I sent this over, this is a briefing from Politico, who does a good job on a lot of these things because at least they will tell both sides.
If we can put that next one up, because this is from their morning briefing, and thanks to our good friend Norm for sending it over.
Jayapaul later issued a second statement, quote, clarifying the position of the letter.
And then they go on, but rather than clarify, it reversed the heart of the letter's demands.
This is a quote, diplomacy is an important tool that can save lives, but it's just one tool, as we explicitly made clear in our letter and will continue to make clear.
We support President Biden and his administration's commitment to nothing about Ukraine without Ukraine.
Now, it sounds good and it rhymes well.
However, as George Beebe from the Quincy Institute points out, while nothing about Ukraine without Ukraine has become a mantra for the Biden administration, the Quincy Institute has endorsed the J. Paul letter and the Richard Hollisman, Council on Foreign Relations, who did not, they both said there's a problem with this concept, as you point out, Dr. Paul.
And do this next one, because this is George Beebe.
He says simply saying it's up to Ukraine to decide is abdicating the responsibility America's leaders have to preserve global security.
And Hawes added, the United States cannot subcontract out its foreign policy to Ukraine or anyone else.
It's a great point that they make.
What are you talking about?
It's not up for Zelensky.
It's up for you.
You're the representatives.
But the solution is so easy.
Just come home.
Save the money.
Don't send another $67 billion.
You know, we haven't gone a whole year yet, but pretty soon we'll be counting, not months, we'll be counting years, just like it was in Iraq and all these other places.
But this hope they wake up a little bit sooner this.
But you know, I don't know who's going to win from this, which politicians are going to say, see, this was a thing, send a message, and we won that election.
We wouldn't have won it if we hadn't made that statement and softened our stand on that.
I don't think anything like that's going to happen.
I think if there was going to be anything, any effect on this little scramble here is going to have, it's going to make the administration look inept, the foreign policy and all.
And I think that's just going to add fuel to the fire.
I think if they thought they were sort of appealing to the progressives and getting some support, because maybe, you know, there's some progressives, you know, what they might do, and this may turn out, let's say the Republicans do extremely well.
It may be a bunch people don't count the ones who stay home.
Yeah.
And a good progressive might just jolly well just stay home after this.
I mean, can they keep defending this administration, this war-mongering administration?
So they may stay at home.
And I think this policy right here, we don't even know what they're doing.
So it remains to be seen, but even after that, even after the election, there will be a lot of postulation to who did what and why.
But right now, I think this is politically driven, but it's pretty hard to pin it on exactly who thought they were going to get a benefit from it because it doesn't make any sense at all.
Yeah, and this just shows to Americans they should understand the War Party is the uniparty in Washington.
When even these so-called progressives, they timidly step out to say, well, hang on just a second, and they're brutally smashed down and they beg for forgiveness.
That shows you the strength of the military-industrial complex, the war party, all the powers aligned in Washington.
But the thing is, Dr. Paul, in this context, as we're talking about should we go to war right away with Russia or should we wait a little bit?
This is what's happening in the meantime.
And put up that next clip.
Because you'll see, and this is our second topic.
The 101st airborne deployed to Ukraine's border, quote, ready to fight tonight.
And this is from anti-war.com's Kyle Anzalone, who was also with the Libertarian Institute.
He said the White House has deployed thousands of American soldiers just miles from Ukraine to prepare for war, according to CBS News.
And I highlighted this part.
Officers speaking with the outlet revealed that they were there for combat against Russia.
So this incident came up, and that's what I have on it.
I have all this other stuff on what they're doing in Ukraine and that letter and what our policy is.
But it almost suggests to me that this might be the most important thing.
Yeah.
Because this is terrible.
You talk about escalation.
And yet, that didn't get much news.
And they talked words about that.
The people, I would guess that most of the people who signed that letter voted money for Ukraine.
I mean, there weren't that many that ever voted against the money, but there were certainly some in there.
Look at how AOC is all over the place with how she spends the money.
But this, I think, is a very serious problem.
They're sending a bunch of troops over there, too, thousands of troops.
And right on the border, you talk about antagonizing Russia, which we've been doing ever since there was a gentleman's agreement and more than that.
If some people argue that really NATO had agreed not to put weaponries up anywhere close to their borders, and we've continued to do it.
Now we're getting closer and closer.
And now it's a blame game.
And of course, the name of the game for the warmongers is they have to demonize Russia.
Even if you argue the case, which is closer to my position, is that both sides probably have some faults, but you have to look at who's really on each side.
Who are the Russians fighting?
Oh, those poor Ukrainians.
They invaded it, took over Ukraine.
They're the aggressor.
Well, maybe it's NATO.
Maybe it's the United States.
Maybe it's the American taxpayers.
It's mostly American taxpayers' money that's being involved in this.
And then they say, well, we'll just be neutral.
We'll put on sanctions for them.
But morally and legally and constitutionally, we're responsible for so much of that.
It would not happen without our policy and the American people going to sleep and say, go ahead.
But what we were hoping is that letter would be an awakening of the people, and it still may serve that way.
We want to urge them to, you know, keep looking at this stuff, but just to lie back and let them do it and never say words and say, oh, yeah, we have a Fed there.
They can always put the money if we need it.
But I think we're fast approaching a climactic end to that policy that we've been following for so long.
And hopefully we're not pursuing a climactic end to the world.
Well, on the other end, that's right.
Every bit is bad.
I mean, the thing is, we recognize, particularly as people who like small government and individual liberty, that Russia is hardly the model that we would want to emulate.
It is an authoritarian type of state where speech is almost as bad as ours, right?
Defying Constitutional Intent00:06:15
There's no free speech as we know it.
So it's not to praise that, but it's to recognize that even in the depths of the Cold War, even with Khrushchev hitting his shoe on the desk, we were never this close without someone with a cooler head prevailing.
And I would actually recommend, I didn't put it up, but our good friend Doug McGregor has a great piece in the American Conservative called Playing at War in Ukraine.
And he is our actual military man.
He's not like people like Petraeus, who is a perfumed prince.
He's actually a warrior.
And he broke it down saying, these guys are putting the troops there.
They're ready for war.
They don't understand what it would entail.
And here's just a sentence or two of what he pointed out that people should realize.
The questions of how much ground combat operations in Eastern Europe and Ukraine would demand in terms of U.S. manpower, logistical infrastructure, ammunition, medical support, and evacuation are relegated to secondary consideration.
For example, he said, in the 11 months after the landings in Normandy, in Normandy, when the U.S. Army was sustaining 90 to 100 casualties a month, the divisions that landed at Normandy replaced 100 to 300 percent of their fighting strength.
So Americans should ask themselves, are we ready for something like 100,000 casualties a month?
It's all fun and games until the bombs start dropping.
Well, that's for sure.
And it's easy to be deceived.
Because sometimes people want to be deceived, you know, to face up to the facts and the truth of the cost, you know, manpower and the costs and all these things.
It's too painful to think about it.
So yes, that's welcome.
Welcome the deception and the false promises.
But right now, what I think is happening, the false promises, not of this Biden administration, the false promises of 30, 40, 50, 60 years, the distraction by the monetary policy we have, the fiscal policy we have, the foreign policy we have.
And I think what we're witnessing is the coming to an end of all of that because it's unsustainable.
And that is what people aren't quite ready for.
And they will be looking for somebody to come with a panacea and take care of them.
But I think our job is to wake people up and say, look, just because the politicians tell you they're going to take care of you, you better be aware.
And remember the one thing that we discovered in Washington.
If they have a bill that comes out and said it's going to do ABC, you can be sure it's going to do exactly the opposite.
Oh, we're for peace and prosperity and national security.
No, we don't have peace and prosperity with the foreign policy we have, and we don't have national security.
And then we have to worry about what's hope.
Do we have a Department of Justice that provides justice in this country?
Oh, if you have a problem, just call the FBI.
They'll help you out.
So you don't put you, if they don't help you out, they'll put you in jail.
Well, you know, the strength of the military-industrial complex, if anything, it's increased since the COVID when it was the pharma guys who made out.
And Colonel McGregor sent me something this morning.
We talked about it a little bit on the show before, but it's from Defense News.
And this is all about how they're streamlining this procurement.
It basically is going to open the gravy train to Lockheed Martin.
Endless money.
You don't even have to come to us to ask.
Just keep cashing the checks.
And this is spearheaded, you know, by Jack Reed and Jim Inhoff.
And that's going through in the Senate.
So that's a big deal.
This is a big windfall for these companies.
And I don't believe that anyone believes that we're going to start a war with Russia, World War III, but these things often happen by accident.
You know, often miscommunications.
I think Graham Ellison did a great job talking about what happened in the Cuban Missile Crisis about how, and he did it many decades ago back when I was in grad school, about how communications and miscommunications can lead to tragic, you know, tragic consequences.
See, this has to go along with the open-endedness of a president being able to start a war without really getting permission from the Congress, which has been going on since World War II.
And now they have to have these weapons flowing in, unlimited ways.
And they probably will technically argue against, oh, we don't appropriate money.
We just authorize it, and it's going to be an automatic.
Nobody's going to back off and not pay the bills.
So that's what they do.
But they are defying the thrust of the Constitution, what was intended by the founders to limit our ability, the executive branch, as ability to go to war.
And yet it's easier than ever because we don't go to war.
You know, NATO goes to war.
And, you know, our government never violates our civil liberties.
It's just our corporate friends.
Our corporate friends, they do it for us.
But we still lose our liberties no matter what kind of lies they tell us.
And people will ask, well, what can we do?
I mean, if it means for me, and I'm actually even thinking about it, contact your congressman and your senator.
No more money for Ukraine.
We may support them in our hearts.
We may not like Russia.
Whatever the case, we don't want World War III.
It's not worth it protecting borders overseas like that.
But let me mention again, we've had talked about this before, is I'm for that, I'm for that, but our problem is national security.
It's going to be in the big budget of $700 billion.
And I support half of that.
Well, you know what my position is on that?
You vote against it.
Yeah.
You know, until they clean it up and tell them why.
Because, you know, if you had Democrats and Republicans doing this and the president going against the president, the president will veto it.
And then if they really want it, they override the veto or the president has to back down.
But that's all it is, is circumventing the restraints that were placed in the Constitution.
And that's why the Constitution is a weak document as far as I'm concerned, because we have a lot of people who capitulate and they figure if they get an advantage, you know, you'd think the business interest would be for free enterprise.
Cost Of Living Concerns00:08:38
Well, not true.
It's not true.
They're not much into free enterprising.
A lot of, you know, I'm talking about the pharmaceuticals and the arms manufacturers because the small businessman still believes in it.
And that's why they have to be suppressed because they compete with the big guys.
No competition.
We don't want any competition.
We will become partners.
We'll do whatever you tell us, Mr. Government.
And if you need some information, we have more information than we know what to do with.
So just call us up.
We have supercomputers on everybody.
Exactly.
Well, let's turn to one of the greatest minds of our time, if we can.
Let's put on this next clip.
This is from The Hill.
Pelosi says the election fight is not about inflation.
And you mentioned it yesterday with Blake Masters.
It's definitely worth revisiting.
Turn on this next clip, please, if you can.
Here's Pelosi.
When I hear people talk about inflation, we have to change the subject.
Inflation is a global phenomenon.
The U.S., the European Union, the U.K., the British, they have a higher inflation than we do here.
The fight is not about inflation.
It's about the cost of living.
You know, that just caught my attention so fast because it she, you know, in this instance, it was not conspiracy as much as total ignorance.
She probably thinks that's a good statement.
It's idiotic.
You know, the fight is not about inflation.
Well, how do you lose?
How does the cost of living go up?
Well, the free market will go up.
What if there's a drought and the price of farm products go up?
And isn't that inflation?
No, it's not inflation.
It's an increase in prices on your food product.
But what they don't understand is if you don't inflate the monetary system, the people who have to buy the food and you have to pay more for this item, you have to cut it away from the other item.
And that is what they don't want.
But this whole thing is about the cost of living.
And I don't, I can't, it's just so hard for me to believe that people will swallow that.
But I think there are statements in the media now that shows that she's not the most popular person in this country right now.
So this is a sad story.
But it is the lack of understanding.
And I think that more and more people do.
You know, I was impressed with Blake.
He understood this was a monetary issue.
And I was also impressed that his dad, Al helped introduce us to our politics.
And he said he was reading some of my stuff and some of Murray's stuff when he was in high school.
So that was pretty nice.
That's pretty good.
Yeah.
Well, you know, this whole thing about don't talk about inflation.
It's obviously they're worried about it.
Polls consistently show that the Americans are concerned with inflation, not Ukraine, and they're getting worried about it.
But in reliably pro-regime mainstream media, it's taking a sinister turn.
And this was kind of all around Twitter this morning.
Matthew Dowd, who is a Democrat political pundit, used to work for the neocons, and now he's a Democrat.
Shocker, he was on MSNBC, and we can put up that next clip in a segment called Anti-Semitism on the Rise.
He said, and this is from Media, Matthew Dowd says Germans who elected Hitler were also scared of inflation.
They lost their democracy.
Let's do the next one because here's a quote of what he said.
It's very, very transparent what they're trying to do here with the propaganda.
Here's Matthew Dowd.
I'm not going to say that the GOP are Nazis, but it certainly sounds very familiar to what happened in Germany, which is a bunch of citizens, Adolf Hitler gets a third of the vote.
They went along because he said he would solve the economy and fix inflation.
So there you have it transparently.
If you worried about inflation, you probably would have voted for Hitler.
And they'll come and say, and we're not insinuating that they're Nazis, but the Nazis did this and ABC, and they mentioned Nazism a lot.
Then they say, well, we don't mean that they're a part of that.
Well, it's because they won't stick to the principles of the marketplace and good economic policy.
It's all available.
If anybody is confused out there by getting the information, believe me, it's available.
And for the most part, it's very free.
And that comes from the Mises Institute.
They have a habit of giving out information, believing, you know, I think what Lou has done with the Mises Institute is sort of what doctors are supposed to do in medicine.
You're supposed to share information.
Now you conserve information, distort information, and then you find out how much money you can make on it.
But that's exactly what they're supposed to do is share information.
But it's a real tragedy, I think, on what's going on.
And the people need to know why, you know, if we had a chance to really impose our policy, it's going to not be painless.
It's sort of like you've got to take your medicine.
You know, we have to, if you're doing it with an individual and they said, well, I have a million dollars I owe in the bank.
Will you help me out?
What they're saying is, give me a million dollars and pay off my debt.
Or if you want to deal with the problem, you get another job, you work hard, and you cut back on spending.
But a country doesn't do that.
And they don't like to do it because the politics.
This to me is something that people don't understand either.
It's turned over to democracy.
As long as the voter's there, if the people say that in a way, sometimes democracy is silent, they allow us to get in.
Democracy was silent, and the people in Congress kept voting for all that money for Vietnam, all that money for the Middle East, all that money for Afghanistan.
So that is when the majority comes out and says this.
So that's why I think the economic policies are so important to understand, yes, you've got to cut the spending if you want to deal.
If you want to deal with, we want to help Nancy.
We want to help her understand this.
And as long as she thinks that the cost of living has to come down, but she's wrong, you're wrong.
The cost of living is up because people want to make profits.
They get greedy.
I was just going to say, I'll echo what you say about Mises.
I mean, literally every single American could get the best education in economics in the entire world for free.
I mean, for free.
That's never been in history, so it's an amazing undertaking.
I'm going to put up our last clip because we are in the final stages.
We do have some tickets left, but they are selling.
Down here in Lake Jackson, November 5th, Shut Up, Cancel Culture and the War on Speech.
Great speakers.
Dr. Paul, of course, will be there.
Jeff Dice from Mises Institute.
Del Bigtree, we're great fans of his work.
It's just going to be a great event, Walter Block, about what's happened to our university campuses.
So it's going to be a great time.
Go to RoyalPaulInstitute.org and you can get a link to get your tickets and I'll put one in the description after the show is over.
Just a few days left.
It's, believe it or not, Dr. Paul, about a week and a half away.
Nerve-wracking time.
I sure hope to see you out there.
We look forward to meeting as many people as we can because we are very strict on one rule.
We're supposed to have fun at these meetings, even though it's serious talk about how we're going to save the world and bring about peace and prosperity.
Of course, you have that goal and you've got to move in that direction.
But while you're doing it, you can't get despondent and think, oh, this is too sad.
This is too big.
Well, I'll tell you what, the alternative is much worse.
So we will work on those problems and we're going to have fun doing it.
But I want to close with making you think about problems that still exist.
I mean, we have Nancy Pelosi teaching us about the cost of living.
But here's another article on Zero Hedge, which caught my attention.
More People Coming Around00:02:20
It says, the middle class is dying.
I guess we don't need too many headlines to tell us that.
And I think the average person knows that middle class people are really getting hurt.
And that's the other real crime about what we have, is that the middle class gets wiped out.
Mises said that if you destroy a currency, you will wipe out the middle class.
And right before our eyes, that's exactly what's happening.
But does wealth just dissipate completely?
A lot of it does, but a lot of it goes into the hands of the few.
And that provokes a lot of anger and a lot of violence if we're not careful.
But the middle class is dying.
50% of all American workers made less than $3,133 a month last year.
You know, there was a time when that was a pretty good salary for a year.
But now, if you're below that, they're below it now, right now, each month, and half the people are doing that.
So, this is really saying at least half the people are, you know, in a poverty class, essentially.
I mean, they're not able to pay their rent bills, their doctor bills, and all these things.
And it all has to do with this poor understanding of economic policy, but also of what personal liberty is all about.
Because if you have liberty and private property rights, you don't have inflation because inflation is corruption, it's theft, it's fraud, and that should be illegal.
And under those circumstances, you can't have people stealing.
You can't have government taxing you without telling you.
This way, they can take half of your income by just doubling their inflation rate, and the value of the audit goes down, so they've taxed you.
The invisible taxation.
So, this is why honesty and money is so important.
Something I've talked about for a few years, but more and more people are talking about it now, and more and more people are coming around to understanding.
Well, I don't understand all that, but we sure do support the idea that at least we ought to know what they're doing, and that is why we should all join in in making sure we eventually audit the Fed.
I want to thank everybody for tuning in today to the Liberty Report.