Desperation Speech? Biden Feels 'In His Bones' That Democracy Is At Risk
President Biden delivered a speech from Union Station in DC - a once-thriving marketplace that is now empty - that smacked of desperation. He avoided mentioning the economy - which polls show concerns Americans the most - and instead focused on the "dangers to democracy" if his party does not win the midterm elections in a few days. He again trotted out the January 6th "insurrection" as his proof. Will it fly? Also today, realizing the economic price they are paying for Russia sanctions, a new poll shows UK citizens souring rapidly.
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.
Good morning, Dr. Paul.
How are you this morning?
Doing well.
Getting all set here, but I'm sure you did your homework last night.
Yeah, the president.
You watched the television, and this is good civic lesson.
Find out what a diplomatic, well-educated president is supposed to do, and he's supposed to talk to the people and explain them what is exactly going on in Washington.
Well, I wouldn't want to make fun of that because he might have been doing his very best.
You can never tell.
But I didn't get the numbers of how many people watched.
You know, that's usually an important number.
Probably a lot of people did.
The people who like them and the people who want to see them stumble.
Yeah, yeah.
That's probably it.
That's always the case.
But, you know, Politico has written an article, and they're pretty much up to date on stuff like this.
And their title for this is Biden, they're quoting Biden.
In our bones, we know democracy is at risk.
That's weird.
And I think that was more or less the theme of his whole speech, was the danger to democracy.
But then again, you know, when I got to thinking about this, because it bothers me all the time, because, yes, I understand when you might take a vote to find out who should do something, but to have pure democracy be put on such a high pedestal, I think it's very, very dangerous because it's been said and it's been written that the dictatorship of the majority is really a danger.
And the Democrats and others, I imagine a lot of Republicans put democracy at a very high level.
And as long as there's a Democratic election and the Democratic process, that's echo available to us.
But you know, when I saw that thing, in our bones, we know democracy is at risk.
I thought, in our brain, we know liberty is vanishing.
Really?
Something like that.
Absolutely.
But, you know, the whole thrust of it was, you know, just, well, it's fluff, but they do it in campaigns.
You could find a lot of things in there.
He said, you know, those words by themselves didn't mean anything.
But it's really what people, how much trust they put into it.
When I hear them say things, I said, I could have said that.
But I know that we're not on the same wavelength.
So anyway, but I think that this is the fluff stuff, and this is very important.
It reminds me about when I was in Congress, I was determined to recognize that if you see a bill and it says, cut the budget 50%, we know it's increased the budget by 50%.
The titles were always misleading.
And some of this propaganda stuff, especially on international situations, they talk about their opposition when they're in a campaign.
And they are always charging their opposition with exactly what they have done.
And I think we could probably apply that to a few things that's gone on here in the last six years, that the one party that disliked Trump, you know, would charge him with these terrible, terrible crimes.
And still, they say that a lot of people still have heard it so much.
They don't question that part.
But they're questioning it part of policy.
And so I anxiously waited.
I wanted to hear about policy.
What was he going to do?
At least Trump says he'd have an audit of the Fed, you know, if necessary.
But I was waiting and waiting.
But I don't even think he talked very much about the economy.
I don't think he talked about the cost of living or printing too much money or unnecessary wars and whatnot.
So it was, I haven't not seen this statistics.
I'm sure somebody's going to take it and say, well, somebody went up 0.5% of a point or somebody went down two points.
But I just don't think that speech changed very many people's minds.
Yeah.
Well, let's put up that clip.
This is from Politico, that first clip.
And this is, as you say, Dr. Paul, the title they chose, Biden in Our Bones.
We know democracy is at risk.
And you look at the optics here.
It's not as bad as the red Nazi speech that he gave a while ago.
That was scary.
But the whole concept, you're right.
First of all, economy not mentioned.
I wonder why.
But secondly, the whole thing is so weird.
So if democracy is all about voting and we're about to go voting, how can democracy be at risk by definition?
You know, what is he talking about?
It doesn't make any sense.
But he tries to sort of chew his way through it.
Let's put on that next quote, and here's what he says.
We're not often faced with questions of whether the vote we cast will preserve democracy, he said at another point.
But this year we are.
Well, any vote would preserve democracy because the act of voting is the act of preserving democracy.
So even by his own terms, their own terms, the whole thing is such gobbly goop.
Basically, if you vote for the other guy, you're a Nazi and we hate you.
Yeah, you know, but there's a lot of hypocrisy floating around there.
I always get a charge out of the fact that both sides do this.
They say, well, whatever you do, you have to go out and vote.
Everybody vote.
And you know darn well what they want is, if you're voting for me, I want you to vote.
But if you're not voting for me, just stay at home.
That's what they're really thinking.
But they put this democracy and all and voting on a pedestal.
Sometimes the people who make a very deliberate choice not to vote is a very powerful vote.
It's just, you know, I'm not going to participate.
This is a surcharade.
Yeah, that's familiar.
And all the other thing that he tried to point out is that basically the other side, anyone who opposes his politics are basically in favor of violence.
And again, our Nazis.
And he brings up January 6th, the insurrection.
These people who are on the other side are supporting the insurrection.
He also brings up the recent attack on Paul Pelosi, the husband of the Speaker of the House.
Implication is that he was attacked by a MAGA hat-wearing Trump supporter.
In reality, it was a drug-addicted Berkeley nudist.
My guess is, you know, not a viewer of Fox News, what have you, but this is the only thing that he has going.
And really, and you had some thoughts about this violence.
You know, if the body cam on the policemen would verify what they're saying, it would be out there.
Yeah, sure.
But no, the people are not going to get to see that.
But, you know, this is serious and it's commonplace and this is system and the democracy that they brag about is not working all that well.
But that January 6th stuff, the more I think about that, the more upsetting it is, because most of the people, you know, even the ones that ended up there and they had a minor infraction and they say, yeah, give me a ticket and I shouldn't have stepped over the line, that sort of thing.
But I'll tell you what, this whole thing, the most accurate statement I heard about how they're feeling there is there were some that had been in there for two years in prison.
One guy said, you know what, I'm ready.
Send me the Guantanamo.
Yeah, really.
Yeah.
That's it.
Give me a little bit of relief from that.
That is a real sore spot.
And yet they're talking about democracy.
It'll work perfectly as long as you don't get caught at lying and cheating and stealing.
Well, I've said it before on the show, but I remember when Occupy Wall Street occupied our offices in Capitol Hill.
We didn't call, you know, 911.
We didn't call for an airstrike on these people.
We just kind of laughed at them.
You know, it wasn't such a big deal.
And again, there are maybe some bad things happen.
Yeah, you should be punished.
But the other thing I was going to bring up, Dr. Paul, is the idea of votes and vote counting.
We all know what happened on the last presidential election, and we don't know what it means, not claiming to know what it means, but all we know is that we went to bed with one result that we thought was the final result, and then the next day, completely different result happened.
Could be completely legitimate.
We don't know.
But they're setting the stage for the idea that voting counting takes days.
And here's something from his speech.
Put this next one up.
This is from Politico.
Again, along with the broader themes, Biden suggested Americans should be closely watching for two possible upcoming developments.
He issued a warning about scores of Republican officials and activists trying to undermine the vote.
And he set expectations that it would take time to count ballots legally.
He said, quote, we know that many states don't start counting these ballots until after the polls close on November 8th.
This means in some cases we won't know the winner of an election until a few days after the election.
It takes time to count all legitimate ballots in a legal and orderly manner.
I just dispute that.
We just saw an election in Brazil, very hotly contested, a lot of political violence, yet we knew in the same day, in Brazil, I don't think they have our infrastructure.
We knew on the same day who won.
And the person who lost Bolsonaro did finally concede.
So we know that.
So the idea that we have to be conditioned that it will take days to count the votes, I just don't buy it.
And here's an interesting thing.
On Twitter, which may or may not be getting better, I hope it is.
But here's Jesse Kelly.
He is a right-wing talk show host, I think.
And he said, made this point.
Pro tip, if your state cannot count every vote on election night, there's cheating in your state.
Entire nations count their votes on election day.
If you can't, it's because you don't want to.
He was slapped by Twitter with a warning saying, misleading.
Learn why election experts, who are they, say elections are in the U.S. are safe and secure.
That sounds like the fast speed, right?
And then it also leaves it on.
It just also says, this is the important part.
This tweet can't be replied to, liked, or shared.
So they blocked this guy's tweet for sharing the opinion, which I will say again, I hate to keep putting it up.
When I was an election observer, that was accepted wisdom.
If you can't come up with a result that night, cheating is going on.
That was always, always what we presumed when we were election monitoring overseas.
But Twitter went a step further, Dr. Paul.
I don't want to beat this dead horse, but put this next one up.
And I clip this because it was really interesting that they keep putting this out.
Twitter puts this out.
It takes time to count all the votes.
It's expected to take multiple days to count the votes.
So the projected winners of some elections may not be announced yet.
This means you could encounter unconfirmed claims that a candidate has won their race.
This is building the basis for skepticism about the elections.
That, hey, if you see one guy winning the day before, that might not necessarily mean he or she wins.
I just don't buy it, Dr. Paul.
I think it's fake.
Well, they know that democracy is a slow process.
They have to take their time because we have to count all these votes.
And that's true, democracy.
But then they say, well, if there's any question about it, you can always call the FBI and they'll come over here and help you along to make sure the ballots are secure.
But I think this is, you know, some of the people are waking up where they were blindly accepting anything that has been said by the other party, you know, the Democratic Party.
But I think more people are realizing they're not here getting this straight scoop from them.
And I think, you know, the Republicans talk about it, but I don't think they've really tried to explain exactly what type of rule the legal process has been on these January 6th.
Union Station Reflections00:03:10
That is so bad.
You know, if they don't count the votes, they're not going to count the rules, and they won't count the judges, misplacing them, people put in prison.
And when you think of it, well, just Guantanamo, they finally released somebody the other day that had been in prison for 20 years.
They found out he had nothing to do with 9-11.
It's terrible.
Terrible.
And that doesn't mean anybody knows exactly.
But the rules are, I think, one time there's something in our Constitution.
It's supposed to be a fast trial and get it done early.
You can't just do it in 20 years.
It's a real, real mess.
And I think our job is trying to point out the mess who's really involved in it and try to get them involved themselves to see if we can straighten out.
Well, I had another thought on the speech being given at Union Station, Dr. Paul.
I spent a lot of time that was very close to our offices, and I would take my lunch break and walk around often to get a little exercise.
But it really, a lot of people have pointed out, they're probably conservatives, but they point out it's a pretty appropriate venue for the president, and not for the reasons we might suspect, because it is a beautiful neoclassical building.
It was built, I think, in the turn of the 20th century.
It is a beautiful building.
It's a beautiful train station.
But let's look at this next clip because this actually shocked me.
And I'm not often shocked, Dr. Paul.
This is a tweet from Susan Perecchio.
Biden plans to deliver an address Tuesday night from Union Station in D.C.
This once thriving shopping center is now practically a ghost town.
I took this photo of empty stores on Saturday.
And that, I will say honestly from the heart is depressing because I went to some great lunches there that used to be full of great restaurants, hustle and bustle of people, the excitement of a train station, beautiful souvenir stands, all sorts of things.
And to see that, that is, I have to say, what a Democrat-run city looks like.
They did it with COVID.
It destroyed the entire business of the whole thing.
And what did it become?
It became a homeless camp.
And let's put this next one up.
This is another tweet.
Just before the speech, they had to go in and get rid of all the homeless.
Sweeping the homeless away from Union Station so Biden and the cameras could go there of all places and tell us democracy will die if you vote MAGA or whatever.
Read the room, bro, is what this fellow said.
And it is very, very sad.
And I'll tell you how bad it is, Dr. Paul.
And I've been to Starbucks in D.C.
And you can see homeless people, crazy people, smelly people, not even buying anything, just sitting around and making really an obnoxious stench through the whole place.
Even Starbucks, put on the next one if you don't mind.
Even Starbucks, a home for the homeless, has had to exit Union Station.
Look at this.
This is from July.
As Starbucks exits, Union Station struggles with safety in empty stores.
That once beautiful shopping center is a den of crime and iniquity.
And there's only one principle that I think could do a tremendous help in sorting this out, and that is understanding what private property is all about.
Sanctions and Free Trade Misconceptions00:08:44
I mean, this whole thing.
And you say, oh, no, well, they're out on the street.
That's collective.
Well, it doesn't need to be.
You know, it can be privatized.
And people have such a thing called neighborhood effect.
If you're out on the street or next door and you're ruining the value of the property, you're really destroying the property.
You're stealing from people.
But there's no concept like that because everything is collective.
And then when you start dividing up what goods and services we have, it's all done by affirmative action.
Make sure every single person is equal to another materialistically.
And it just doesn't work very well.
And it ends up in the chaos that we have now because people try to say, I mean, I think they're well-intended.
Everybody should be treated equal.
Yeah, equal justice is a lot different than making equity and everybody is equal and there's no competition in the world.
Actually what happens is people depend on debt, press money, and living off somebody else until it comes to an end.
And I think we're witnessing that.
Yeah, we are for sure.
We'll move on to our second piece because it's just kind of interesting.
And I am a sucker for polls.
I always like polls.
And if we can put on this next one, if you're ready to move on, Dr. News.
Yeah, this is from Sky News.
And this is an Ipsos poll that was commissioned by Sky News about perceptions in the UK of their current Russia policy.
And the title is Ukraine War, Cost of Living Crisis Could Erode Public Support for Sanctions Against Russia.
And I don't have the first chart up, but the first chart says that support for sanctions remains strong.
In March, 78% supported sanctions.
It has shrunk, though.
It's now down to only 70% who support sanctions against Russia.
But here's something interesting, because as you've always said, Dr. Paul, there's an idea that sanctions are always cost-free.
We put sanctions on the bad guys.
They change their behavior.
It's a win-win.
Well, it's never happened, but that still is the perception.
Look at how perceptions change when they start to understand that sanctions also have costs and unintended consequences.
Look at this next, look at that chart if you can put that up.
Now, this is fascinating.
This compares perceptions between March and October.
As energy bills rise, support for sanctions is increasingly fragile.
I would say something like they collapse.
Because in March, 73% of the people asked replied in the positive, would you support UK government continuing to implement economic sanctions against Russia, even if they lead to increased energy prices in the UK in March?
73%, almost three-quarters, said yes.
We continue to support sanctions even if they hurt us in the pocketbook.
By October, just this past month, that had disintegrated down to 41%.
A minority, less than half in the UK, when they have gotten a taste of the price rises, are now in favor of sanctions.
You know, and that's most of it, or a good bit of the problem.
And the sanctions are well known and they're put on.
And I think a lot of people saw the fact that the country we were punishing ended up making more money than ever because all of a sudden they were still getting their oil out.
And also we lost prestige in world economic policy and caused other people who don't have a soft spot in their heart for us, they get together and banned against us right now.
But there's an additional factor here.
The sanctions, I'm thinking more about us and not the UK example, but applied to us, we put sanctions on everybody all the time.
And we certainly, you know, are doing our best to really, really stick it to the Russians.
But then there's the domestic policy on top of it.
The domestic policy is insane.
And even if you didn't have the bubble formation of the Federal Reserve and excesses and too many regulations, but it was this policy that was so different when they came in and closed down pipelines, closed down drilling.
And then they don't even blink an eye and they say, well, Saudi Arabia, we're not getting along real well with them.
But they have a lot of oil.
I think I'm going to go over there and talk to them.
Maybe they can bail us out.
You know, the people see through this.
And I would think that if there's another country that has oil and I have an axe to grind with it, why should they bail us out when we do it to ourselves?
So even if you had some of this that wouldn't change immediately, you know, the inflation and all would still be there if we're still spending money.
But I'll tell you what, this policy, this domestic policy is just horrible.
But I could use that same argument with what's happened with COVID and the lockdowns there.
And then when you look at what backfire, how many people have died and have been harmed by the policy?
And a lot of people got sick.
A bunch died from it.
And they just go on and do this.
And so the whole policy totally backfires.
But I would say the American people now, even though there's some out there still think it's a super good idea, they haven't given up.
But I think the average person hasn't caved in.
They know that it wasn't worthwhile.
They know there was a sham on this.
Well, I'm going to close out and do a couple shout-outs if you're ready to finish this up, Dr. Paul.
First of all, Dennis Markberger chipped in 21 bucks today on the Rumble Chat.
We appreciate that.
He says, onward and upward for liberty.
Dr. Paul Daniel and RPLR friends, it's a great big Michigan liberty movement.
Thanks a lot, Dennis.
And we have from Gypsy Magic $20.
Best wishes to all attending the shut up conference.
Get educated, make connections, and have fun.
Sounds like Gypsy might be listening in on the show.
I'm kidding.
I know he's a regular and regular commenter.
And we do appreciate your support.
This will be our last show together, Dr. Paul, before our Saturday event, and we're looking forward to it, and we're looking forward to seeing a lot of you.
Thank you for watching the show, and thanks for coming out on Saturday, Dr. Paul.
Very, very good.
I'm looking forward to it, and I'm glad somebody mentioned about having a good time because there is a little bit of a cost in getting involved in doing this.
But if you're doing something that you think is worthwhile, you will feel good about it.
But we always feel good about our events because the people seem to be having a good time.
If they were all frowning and leaving early before the speeches, I would have to go retire or something like that.
But we have some good people come to our conferences, and I think they all do have a good time.
But we still will have problems.
We'll continue to have the problems, and they're not brand new.
We talk about current events and how they affect us.
I was just thinking about the free trade thing.
You know, it took years and years and years for people to come around to understanding.
And it seemed like left and right, Republicans and Democrats always recognized that free trade was a good idea.
It benefited the consumer.
And all of a sudden here, a few years ago, the attitude has changed.
Now it's competition on who can put the most sanctions on a different country.
But I think people should think more in terms of free markets and freedom of choice.
People want to say, well, no, what we need to do is we should put a prohibition because the Chinese, we can't trust them, so you're not allowed to buy anything from China.
Oh, okay, take the poor people in this country that pay $150 for a pair of shoes and they can buy them from China for $50.
We have to prohibit that.
Well, if you had a concept of freedom and property, the people who have their money should be allowed to spend it where they want.
And it would be an incentive to be a competition.
That's like squeezing out the competition.
It's been around for a long time, but there was a reprieve.
But right now we're moving in the wrong direction.
But eventually we'll have to face up to this and once again come around to the point of believing that free trade and essentially none of these sanctions are necessary to live with peace and prosperity.
I want to thank everybody for tuning in today to the Liberty Report.