'You Lie!' - US Rep Joe Wilson Wants Permanent Zelensky Statue In Capitol!
Is this peak Zelensky worship? US Rep. Joe Wilson (R-SC), who famously yelled out to President Obama "you lie" during a speech, has introduced legislation that would spend taxpayer money to create a bust of Ukrainian President Zelensky and to place it in a prominent position in the US Capitol...forever. Also today, nothing will change in the military budget because the re-treads who have squandered our money have been put back into positions of Congressional power.
Hello, everybody, and thank you for tuning in to the Ron Paul Liberty Report.
With us today is Daniel McAdams, our co-host.
Daniel, good to see you this morning.
How are you this morning, Dr. Paul?
Doing well.
All right.
Well, all right.
We're going to talk a little bit of art.
Yes, you know, I've talked a lot about the idea, this is a radical idea, that when you're in Congress, you're supposed to sort of tell the truth because, you know, they accuse people of lying and all these things, and this guy's probably going to get kicked out for lying.
But what about the people who take the oath of office?
I guess that doesn't matter.
But anyway, we want to talk to somebody who is the expert on lying and will criticize people in public.
That's Joe Wilson.
He became a hero for a long time, or at least several months.
I don't know where he is now because I'm trying to figure out what his politics is all about.
But he was in the news yesterday, and he's had, he's been to Ukraine a couple times.
He's really into this foreign policy.
And guess whose side he's on?
He's not on the side of the American taxpayer.
He's not on the side of American national sovereignty.
He's on the side.
He just loved the idea that Zelensky came and talked at the Congress.
I guess it's okay, but it doesn't excite me.
For some reason, it annoys me more than I think it should.
I guess it's because of what he's going to say.
I guess if we had a really, really great libertarian allowed to come, I might be a little bit easier on it.
But no, I just generally think that the House floor is not the place foreign dignitaries come over.
And, you know, a lot of times, you know, when they get that, they're in close with the military industrial public.
That means they were approved.
They were approved.
Anyway, that's what's happened.
And Joe was very impressed with all that.
He's been over there, and that's his position, and that money doesn't count as being spending because it's so important.
But he really, really likes Zelensky.
I mean, he thinks that he should be honored, right, in the Capitol.
And I could think of a few Americans should be honored instead of them rooting around on who they were going to get rid of.
Yeah, really.
So he wants a bust in the Capitol on the house side of Zelensky.
Wow.
You know, this is putting him really on the pedestal.
He compares him, even though we may have a complaint a little bit about the individual because he wasn't exactly a libertarian, and that is Churchill.
But anyway, symbolically, he's been a great historic figure.
So, you know, Joe Wilson said this guy is equivalent to Churchill.
He's comparing him to Churchill.
But that whole thing is a mess.
It invites talk about foreign policy.
It invites talking about honesty and straightforwardness.
But Joe covered over that because he was liked by a lot of conservatives, and he came across very conservative, but him shouting out and telling Obama he lied, a lie, but that was probably the truth.
But anyway, there's going to be a bust, and it's going to bust the budget, that's for sure.
And we'll have to keep an eye on this, but I don't think much good is going to come from this other than it might raise a discussion.
So, fortunately, there's been some good answers coming, but I'm afraid the majority of the people are budget busters as soon as it comes to spending for the military-industrial complex, which is, I think, from the very first day they got around to doing this budget work.
It's the thing that I've been trying to get people to alert to because what they say and what they do, and you know, we owe them the praise, and you bring it up when you find out, well, the American people are starting to turn against Ukraine, our money over there.
So, this is good, but right now, this isn't good.
Getting a bus for Zelensky makes no sense at all.
Yeah, and in the episode that you talk about, that was back in September of 2009.
I think it was a State of the Union address where Obama was talking about how illegals would not be eligible for Obamacare.
And Joe Wilson said, you lie out in public.
And I was just thinking about this.
It just goes to show how innocent those times were, because we were genuinely shocked.
I mean, everyone was genuinely shocked.
It broke the decorum of the House.
It was really a big deal.
And now we're in the era where Pelosi is ripping up speeches and people are getting in fights.
It really kind of makes you long for the old days.
But Joe Wilson, let me put on his picture now here.
He's in South Carolina.
He's been there for quite a long time.
He's not necessarily a nasty person in person.
He gave a lot of goofy speeches, but I don't think he's an evil person, but I do think he's very susceptible to propaganda.
Now, let's look at here.
Here's the resolution that he introduced into the U.S. House of Representatives.
And it's very short, so we can even take a look at it if we look at that next clip.
If you can put that up, it's House Resolution HRes 10 directing the fine arts board to obtain a bust of the President of Ukraine, Vladimir Zelensky, for display in the U.S. House of Representatives.
Resolve that the House of Representatives directs the Fine Arts Board to obtain a bust for display in a suitable, permanent location, maybe next to George Washington.
Who knows?
I mean, or get rid of Washington.
He's an old dead white guy.
Let's put up Zelensky in his place.
It's probably one of those absurd things we've seen.
And it's funny because I don't want to steal your thunder, but you mentioned how you thought it must have been something from the onion.
And here's an example of great minds thinking alike, because put on the next one, here's a tweet from Thomas Massey.
He said, I wanted to believe this legislation was satire from the Babylon B, but it's not.
So he was thinking exactly what you thought.
Thank you, Freedom Works, for calling out this terrible idea.
Well, someone else that we follow that's very, very good on many things is Tucker Carlson, of course.
And he's probably the only person on TV worth watching, at least consistently.
And he had a little commentary that I was going to play.
I think it's about 30 seconds or so.
You might want to listen in on this.
Here's Tucker Carlson's reaction to the Joe Wilson suggestion that we need a statue of Zelensky in Congress.
So members of Congress who are, again, decent people are now trying to spend your money on a monument to a foreign leader in the U.S. Capitol.
That's insane.
And of course, that foreign leader is President Zelensky of Ukraine, who is dictatorial.
It's not even a Democratic country.
He banned opposition parties, trying to ban an entire Christian denomination.
The person leading this charge, we're sad to say, is a really nice guy.
He was pretty conservative, actually, Joe Wilson of South Carolina, Republican member.
He's just sponsored legislation to display a bust of a foreign leader, Zelensky, in the Capitol building.
The legislation he's putting forward would ensure that Zelensky's bust is on display, quote, in a suitable, permanent location in the House of Representatives wing.
So we can worship him daily.
This is crazy.
Let's hope people.
So Carlson makes a good point, Dr. Paul, which is this is a person who shut down the opposition parties, completely shut them down, who shut down the media, the non-state media, and who shut down the church.
And he's being hailed as a hero to people like Joe Wilson.
At the same time, Joe points out what's been going on over there, and he wants to compare it to the American Revolution.
You know, I don't like any violence, and I even read the people who say maybe we didn't have to have the revolution.
Maybe it could have been all philosophic.
But anyway, it is respected and honored as a fantastic thing that happened where the colonists were able to take on the British.
So that's the American Revolution, and that's the symbol that we have.
So that's what he's comparing what's happening with Zelensky and what's happening in Ukraine.
This is just like the American Revolution.
This is fantastic.
And you have already just pointed out, well, I wonder if he would have voted, I wonder if he'll vote for the Bill of Rights.
It sounds to me like that isn't on the table.
So it's more likely that this is the further ignition of the Cold War.
And the way they want to do this and keep this money going.
And when you talk about that money, it's military-industrial complex.
But this is the symbolism, and this is the politics of it all.
And it's looking for something worthwhile to say, at least it calls attention to it.
So when you, you know, and even I think you were polite to Joe and Tucker was.
He's a decent guy and he comes across with a voting record that's decent.
But it's also one of the biggest things that we do and talk about the Institute is to point this out.
You know, who's telling the truth about national defense?
And we think the national offense and non-interventionism is a big deal.
And that's why we like to, you know, go with this.
And now that they're talking about it, we'll have to wonder, is this going to go away in a week?
But the money isn't going to go away in a week.
And they might quit talking about it, but we'll see what happens.
And this brings up a real misconception.
I've talked about it before, but there's a misconception among the American people that members of Commerce, Congress, are better informed than the average person.
Oh, if I only had the access to the information you have.
Well, the fact is, and I spent 12 years up on the hill with you, Dr. Paul.
I've very, very closely watched what staffers read and what members read.
The fact of the matter is they're worse informed than the average American who's remotely interested in things because all of their information is carefully crafted and given them.
Their staffer will cut out just the articles that the staffer thinks are important and puts it in front of them.
Invariably it'd be the Washington Post, the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, what have you.
And this is all they get.
They're in a bubble.
And I will guarantee you that Joe Wilson went to every single classified briefing on Ukraine.
And you know this very well.
You've said it out loud.
Walter Jones, the late Walter Jones, has said it.
John Duncan, both of whom were on our board, they said it that when they go to these classified briefings, it's just a dog and pony show.
It's just a pack of lies to get you to go along with what they say.
So people think that members are well informed, but in fact, they're among the least informed people in the United States.
And talking about Walter, you know, he said that those briefings really, because Walter was an honest person, listening, he says, they didn't tell me the truth.
And then he saw, I'm going to run this down.
And he started going around and quizzing.
He found out that they were lying to him at these briefings.
And I think it's not a lack of information.
It's misinformation that they're doing.
passed this out and the people are supposed to the same type of a of a pr problem that we had with covid yeah it's it's uh who's Who's speaking for the truth?
And on the COVID and a foreign policy, that can be the same thing.
You have to be silenced.
We in our history have silenced people and arrested people, Civil War period, World War I period.
I'm sure it happened in World War II.
You can't oppose it because then you're not patriotic and this sort of thing.
So that is a problem, is getting the right information.
And of course, I see ourselves as striving for that.
Can we keep up well enough to find the information and help people sort this out?
And that is really what we want, is an honest discussion on this.
To me, I was reading some of the things for today's party, and I thought, you know, I have these readings, and they come from different people.
And I thought I was getting the most accurate information from RT.
Yeah, isn't that interesting?
And that's a judgment on my part, but I imagine there's a few other people that when they hear this.
But the trouble is, as you know, RT is not mainstream media, is not social media.
Yeah.
They've silenced them.
Well, this is a systemic issue.
And I don't want to harp on this too much.
But the point is, staffers who want to get ahead in the House will play ball with the permanent state.
And the permanent state are the high-ranking permanent staffers who've been there for decades.
They have a lot of power.
If you walk in there as a regular staffer and you've been sending your boss articles from anti-war.com and LewRockwell.com and Mises and et cetera, et cetera, like we gave you to give you the whole picture to make, well, that doesn't go over well with the important, powerful people that actually run the House.
In fact, there are people that have been running Ukraine in the House for decades and they still have control.
So if you want to play ball, as you know, Dr. Paul, except for your office, staffers would come and go.
And you come and you ratchet up because you start off very low and you keep doing this.
If you keep playing ball, then you start making some money and then you become a lobbyist.
If you don't play ball like we didn't play ball, well, guess what?
You don't go very far in the Washington establishment.
That's a fact.
Yeah, you know, but there are a few, and that's what we have to concentrate on.
We frequently mention Thomas.
And of course, we recognize our friend, and sorry we don't have him with us, is Walter.
Oh, yeah.
Because he was one of the rare people that I ran into that was thoughtful.
Playing Ball in Washington00:06:05
He was thoughtful and he was honest, and he changed his mind.
I can remember the light in his eyes when he didn't have to defend the wars going on in the Middle East.
But you know what was surprising is he was hesitant for a while because this truth was contradicting conventional wisdom and he had a huge military base.
And the conventional wisdom was, you can't do that.
You can't do that.
So he was concerned about that.
But you know what?
It never hurt him politically.
Never hurt him once.
And same way with Jimmy Duncan.
Jimmy, when he voted against going to war, there were six that did that.
And he was convinced.
That was my last question.
That was it.
And a few years later, he talked about he thought that was the most significant vote that he ever had to cast.
Yeah, I miss Walter.
I can hear his voice as we're talking about him.
I love that.
I loved his accent.
It was so nice.
Anyway, let's go back to reality.
And I just want to put on one more clip before we move on, Dr. Paul, because you'd ask, well, you know, what's in it for Wilson?
What's the big deal?
Maybe he's ill-informed, and we know he's ill-informed.
He's not a bad guy.
He's not evil, but he's playing the game.
And here's this next one is from a piece in Breitbart that I think says a lot, Dr. Paul, in what makes these people function and do what they do.
By people, I mean members of Congress.
This is from Breitbart.
While Congress has authorized more than $110 billion in American taxpayer money to be sent to Ukraine, much of the funding is ending up in the hands of highly powerful and well-connected Defense Department contractors like Lockheed Martin, Boeing, Raytheon, General Dynamics, and Northrop Grumman, all of which are donors to Wilson.
This is Wilson giving a little bit back to his donors, and this is the deep, I would say, corruption of the system in D.C. You know, there's been an estimation made, you know, what is it, close to a trillion dollars, more than a trillion we put in there.
It is estimated that probably the minimum the contractors have gotten is over $200 billion.
I just have trouble believing this, but the one thing that took me a long time to understand, and it's not only on the military, it's some of this foreign aid.
Foreign aid doesn't go to the countries and help the poor.
The foreign aid goes to universities to propagandize.
And in this case, you've mentioned a lot of times, the money doesn't even go over there.
Oh, I guess I'll buy an airplane and to get their advice from somebody.
No, they come over here and have barbecues together.
They have parties together.
You know, the people who are lobbying for the money and then all the arms dealers get together and then just to select politicians who have a lot of clout and they're on their side.
Yep.
And speaking of, that's a great transition of politicians with a lot of clout.
Let's put up this next piece because this is from Responsible Straitcraft and Connor Eccles does a lot of good stuff over there, I have to say.
And this is, we've been talking about this and harping on this, but I think it's still worth paying attention.
He says, GOP won't bird dog defense budget with these hawks at the helm.
Under the subtitle, Speaker McCarthy may have promised to cut defense spending, but his early action suggests he has little interest in rocking the boat.
Move to the next one.
He quotes Justin Amash, former congressman, libertarian-minded, good person.
Amosh says, this is about as establishmenty a list of committee chairs as one could put together.
For all the bluster about a new GOP, the people running the show are from the same mold as the ones who've been running it for more than a decade.
Oh, boy, that's so true.
And, you know, Justin, you know, was torn, I think, at times how he best could get his message out.
And he's tried different things, and I can't be critical of that because I tried a couple different things too.
And I usually approach it with not a lot of super optimism that all I have to do is go out there and all of a sudden change something.
Matter of fact, I emphasize the other side of, you know, you put the information out.
I don't think, I think we were very, very hopeful when we started Ron Paul Institute.
And we knew what we wanted to do.
But we weren't saying, you know, you just come back in two years and we will have changed the world.
And we're going to change the Congress because we understand the system.
No, it's a little bit slower than that.
And yet I think when a person comes around to it, they're so much more solid, you know, in what they believe.
And the other thing that SCOS is going for us that we don't emphasize enough is I think that because I believe we're on the side of truth, and I think we're on the side of being more credible and that we can get converts, but you have to match that up with the reality of what the obstacle is.
The billions, trillions of dollars now.
I mean, the propaganda machine and the money and the lobby and everything else.
But at the moment, I don't see any other alternative other than doing our very best to expose them and exposure.
You know, we made progress with the COVID thing when we would expose, and a lot of other people did the same thing, of the hypocrisy of it.
And there's a lot of that going around up in Washington, D.C. You know, and that's what we hear about so often.
Yeah, well, our budget is a bucket of water in the ocean.
But we do have a lot of influence because we also work harder, and that's just a fact.
Why Constituents Matter00:04:57
But here's a couple of things from the Eccles article.
And these are, I think, the three top players.
And this is why I hate to say this.
This is cause for a little bit less than optimism, let's put it that way.
And put up this next one.
The first will be Kay Granger from our own state of Texas.
She will take over as the powerful chair of the Appropriations Committee.
She's climbed the ranks since 97, just after you went back, Dr. Paul.
And she is known as a real hawk.
And this is what Eccles says.
Granger is a strong proponent of increased defense spending and has praised the controversial F-35 fighter jet as integral to our national security.
As Responsible Statecraft noted last year, the establishment stalwart also hills from Tarrant County, which received over $12 billion in defense spending in 2021.
So there you have it again, paying back the money.
And so the next up on the plate is going to be Mike Rogers, the burly boxer on the floor trying to beat up Matt Gates.
Rogers has received an expected promotion to chair of the Armed Services Committee, where he had previously served as ranking member.
And there here, that's where you have the continuity.
Rogers had to be pulled away by fellow lawmakers during a spat last week with holdout rep Matt Gates.
He is a hawks hawk and a strong supporter of consistent annual increases in military spending.
And the third of the trio is Michael McCall.
Again, not a bad person personally, however, bad for America.
Representative Michael McCall of Texas, again, follow, how come there's only one good person from Texas?
Follow that.
Keep that up there if you will, please.
Followed the same path as his other colleagues and took the jump from ranking member to chair.
There you go.
And this time of the Foreign Affairs Committee.
After voting in favor of last year's $858 billion defense appropriations bill, McCall bragged that the House allocated $45 billion more than the Pentagon requested.
And he says it, quote, sending a message that America still supports our troops and will never back down in the face of global threats.
It's not supporting our troops.
They were kicked out of the military for not taking the shop.
Shot, it's supporting the military destroyer.
I keep trying to figure these people out because they're all over the place.
We just did it here in the program.
We say, he's a pretty nice guy, and we sort of like him.
We're not going to bash him.
But they're doing horrible things.
And I kept thinking, why do they do it?
And how do they get to this point?
Because they're not dumb people.
But what are they after?
A good retirement fund and all this stuff.
But I think, how does a person like Kay Granger, the plane, I guess the plane and a lot of that stuff's in her district.
So it's natural.
So they have to rationalize.
They sort of have to brainwash.
Does she really know of the waste and the uselessness of the airplane?
And then, if she does, is she just brainwash and overlook it?
Or does she say, oh, yeah, I know it's bad, but they're my constituents.
I have to do what my constituents want.
And I'm just, I don't have a brain.
I have to do what my constituents said.
And one thing they don't understand is sometimes they say they do this because that's the majority vote of the district.
And that's probably in a way indirectly direct democracy.
But if they do that, they could say that, well, I have a contract with my people.
And I make promises.
I take an oath of office.
So my dedication is to my promises, not to saying, well, no, no, your job is to do whatever your consistency, your people in your district are for.
And they always have, they don't take a vote, but they know what the majority is.
So in Fort Worth, they have to do it.
So that's where a real practical problem is.
But I often think, what's going on in their brain?
And because, like we say, most of them are fairly decent people.
And yet, why does it happen that they do so many things that are indecent?
Yeah.
And the thing is, it's not that hard.
And we did it when we were in your office on the Hill.
If Granger wanted to be informed and she wanted to say five people who were very, very prominent, very intellectual with great credentials who might argue for something different than the F-35, people like Winslow Wheeler and Chuck Spinney, people that we've known for years, we could easily put a briefing together for.
They don't really want to be informed.
They don't want to see the other side.
They have a lack of intellectual curiosity, I think.
Why Most Are Decent Yet Indecent00:05:56
And that's what it is.
Well, I'm going to skip ahead to the last one.
This is a piece by Bill Hartung.
We've talked about him before.
He's always very good.
And he's talking about the budget, too.
And this is about blowing a lot of hot air.
It's not going to change things.
And this little quote, I'm sure you have some quotes that stuck out to you, Dr. Paul, but this is one that stuck out to me about the military budget for this year.
He said, the top five contractors alone will split between $150 and $200 billion if the current budget holds.
Even as they pay their CEOs $20 million or more per year and engage in billions in stock buybacks to boost their share prices.
These expenditures are perfectly designed to enrich arms companies and their shareholders, but they have nothing to do with defending the country.
I wish the Hawks, who we just quoted, would just read that paragraph and understand this is a boondoggle for well-connected military contractors.
This has nothing to do with defending the troops or defending the country.
And that's the bottom line.
I wish we did have that magic wand that we can wave and have people believe that and understand it.
Well, I'm just going to make a point that on this issue, you know, there's been some movement and they had to appease the 20 individuals that were resisting.
And they maneuvered to the point where they had to give them something, and some of it is probably worthwhile.
But they also said that there were critics of that.
He gave too much, you know, limits the spending and all this.
But guess who came to their rescue on that?
American Enterprise Institute.
They came and said, hey, hey, wait a minute.
Who said that the representative there said that such a proposal, quote, makes only authoritarians, despot tickers smile.
So You become a purveyor of war and World War III, the whole work.
It'll be costly and this sort of thing.
So that's it.
The conservatives, the hawks, claim they can get their credentials by cutting food stamps to the poor, which is an exaggeration of the whole problem.
Because the real problem is the food stamps to the rich.
That's where it is.
And of course, the benefit of the monetary system is for the rich.
But it's locked in.
It's been there for a long time.
I imagine it really got started, you know, say, during the Depression period of time, and it's just grown steadily.
And that's how the elections are run.
And that's why, you know, philosophically, I think most people know that anybody who has thought about this know that there's not much change when you change a party, a leadership, and a party.
There'll be some good things.
If you put up Ron, you're crazy.
We did this, this, then this.
We had more airplanes than anybody else.
We read the Constitution on the floor.
So that's it.
Yeah, well, that's really the last argument they have.
Oh, you're a friend of dictators.
And that's because there's no other argument they can make.
That's the very last thing.
They tried it with you for years and years and years.
They tried to hurt you with that when in reality they are not friends of America.
I'm just going to close by thanking our viewers again.
Please don't forget to hit like.
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Pass it around.
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You can help us a lot without costing you a penny.
And thank you again for watching.
I'm going to turn it back to you, Dr. Paul.
Yes, very good.
I want to close with mentioning again about how there's so much distortion about spending on the military.
Because some who want to continue the spending, they say, we can save exactly the same amount if you just pass this law that we're going to stop waste, abuse, and fraud.
And that's a fake.
It's a fake.
Yeah, it sounds good.
And if a bill came up that said we're going to stop it, and there's a proposal there, I vote for it.
But I know it absolutely never works.
It's just as an excuse for them to say that we're doing something and we don't have to cut spending.
We just have to, they're right.
There is a lot of waste, abuse, and fraud.
But the odds of them getting enough people to really monitor it.
The Pentagon's not going to be reviewed.
They're not going to be audited any more than they'll allow the audit of the Federal Reserve.
I mean, that's deep state stuff, and that's what they thrive on.
But anyway, I'm very pleased with how things are going with our Liberty Report.
I want to absolutely express my appreciation for our viewers tuning in on a regular basis.
And I want to tell you that we really believe there's reasons to be optimism because we don't have time to be pessimistic and we don't have to be.
Besides, it's very boring.
You know, it doesn't give you any cheer.
And besides, this isn't the first time the country or the world ever faced problem.
And the question about right and wrong and lies and telling the truth, those are historic.
But there are good people out there.
Matter of fact, I work on the assumption that most people are very good.
It's just that we've lost control of the programming, the propaganda, the media, the Soros of the world.
Very, very shrewd.
Control the media and control the justice system, and we will control you.
That has to be exposed.
Then I think we might be able to curtail some of the authoritarianism that is creeping and growing and is like an incestuous activity because it's running our country.
And we know better.
We've been given a guideline.
It's not complicated.
And that's what we're going to continue to emphasize here at the Liberty Report.