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March 15, 2023 - Ron Paul Liberty Report
29:20
GOP Civil War? With DeSantis And Trump, Realists Take Both Top Slots

Florida Governor and presumptive Republican presidential candidate Ron DeSantis shocked the GOP establishment with a statement rebuking further involvement in the Ukraine/Russia conflict. Suddenly a neocon paper like the Washington Post are panicking about a new "isolationist" GOP. Also today, what about that US drone brought down near Russia? Finally: another Covid-related scandal.

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Hawkish Republicans Shift Foreign Policy 00:15:12
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 today.
Good morning, Dr. Paul.
How are you this morning?
Doing well.
Doing well.
We're going to talk politics.
A little politics, yeah.
How do we do that?
I wanted to get out of politics.
Everything is politics.
Well, at least to some degree.
But we're interested in politics, but we're interested in refining what the politicians think and what their understanding is of economic policy.
You know, I was always bewildered after getting to Washington, either being interviewed or other members, and there was essentially nobody had the vaguest idea or interest in thinking about what is Austrian economics.
That was just a total mystery.
And of course, we place more emphasis on the ability to define what free markets are like and why, and really in a utilitarian way.
That's why I like some of the Austrians, because some it's on a basic principle of human rights and the right to own property.
But others, Mises, as a matter of fact, was a utilitarian.
He says it's the best deal.
Things work out.
So I see a combination if people understand this, but they don't get it in their colleges.
But I think compared to what it was like in 1976, the first time I was elected, there's been a lot of inroads made.
And, you know, in 1976, the Mises Institute didn't exist.
A few years later, it was established.
So that's why we've had an inroad.
And I think what we're going to talk about today is a sign that maybe the foreign policy is shifting.
And that has to do with the polling of the Republican members of Congress, presidential candidates, that they were asked questions about their foreign policy in Ukraine.
And DeSantis assails, this is a headline from Politico.
DeSantis assails U.S. policy in Ukraine breaking with much of the GOP.
That's a little dramatic, but there's something to that.
And where I see the positive here is Trump broke before.
And even though he's been, you know, America first and implying that he would always deal with our policies, we found that he was pretty flip-floppy on his own positions.
But anyway, DeSantis was saying, you know, Trump made a big point the other day that we don't need to be fighting Russia politically speaking because the atmosphere in Washington and national press is if you don't hate Russia, how could you ever be the president of the United States?
That's one of the qualifications you have to have.
And yet Trump made the statement.
It sounded like he wanted to at least be reasonable.
And then along comes this, and they get a quote from DeSantis.
And we sort of like it, you know, because he says that he's breaking away from the overly hawkish position that the Republicans have.
Of course, this coincides with the overly hawkish position of people that I have followed a long time, Democrats, and they're coming across, and they wanted to align themselves with the Republican hawks.
And I guess right now they're saying, oh, yeah, that's Mike Pence.
That's going to be the alternative to this.
But anyway, this was an interesting thing.
The GPO stunning realignment on foreign policy.
And I think this represents the fact that prevailing attitudes had a lot to do with it.
That means, and I think DeSantis' decision, you know, to change his position of being very hawkish with Ukraine is a sign, you know, Trump had mentioned it, but I don't think for a minute that the campaign of DeSantis didn't do a little polling on that position and thought, hey, you know, this is not the best thing in the world.
So it got changed.
In a way, that's pretty sloppy and it's not overly principled, but it's also a reflection that if people wake up, you know, in a way, that's many times the issue.
Certainly, the superficiality of the position of people on COVID was that they didn't understand all the reasons, but the people started shifting and policy shifted.
So I see this as a break.
We have a ways to go because there's going to be a lot of bad mouthing about anybody who's not willing to put more nukes about five miles from Moscow.
Exactly.
Well, the mainstream media is in a panic because they, of course, didn't see this coming because they only believe their own rhetoric.
It's not as big a surprise to us, I don't think, and to a lot of people who are paying attention that there is a big shift.
And this whole thing came about, again, not, shouldn't be surprising, but Tucker Carlson sent out a questionnaire to all the, as you pointed out, to all the main candidates for the Republican presidency, potential and declared candidates.
And so everyone pretty much knew what Trump's view was on this.
And so the big question was, what would DeSantis say?
And let's put up this first one because this is from Axios.
This is a response to DeSantis' response.
And of course, as you say, Dr. Paul, the GOP's stunning realignment on foreign policy, I wouldn't call it that exactly, but that serves their purpose.
If you go to the next clip, you'll see how they're trying to frame it now, of course.
This is what they always do.
If we can go to that next one, they always try to frame it this way because DeSantis, in the next clip, I'll tell you exactly what he said, but his main point that it is not the vital interest of the U.S., that has panicked Axios and all of the other neocon publications.
And he says, why it matters?
The move by DeSantis, echoing the isolationist views of his likely rival, former President Trump.
So they're trying to frame them as isolationists, and they say represents a sharp contrast for most of the past four decades when Republicans typically have subscribed to the Reagan era's peace through strength internationalism, otherwise known as neoconism.
They only want to portray Reagan, Dr. Paul, as you know, in the way that they, very, very selectively, they don't want to talk about the Reagan that met with Gorbachev, that was ready to give up nuclear weapons, that went over his own advisors to meet with Gorbachev in an historic meeting.
They don't want to talk about that Reagan, who would talk to even the Soviet Union.
No, they want to have their caricature of Reagan.
So that's how they're framing it, Dr. Paul.
Well, Chris Christie voiced his opinion, which wasn't exactly an independent-minded thing, but it was just a demagogue talking.
Former New Jersey governor Chris Christie told Axios, DeSantis sounds like Neville Chamberlain.
Oh, no.
Is there any worse person than Neville Chamberlain talking about when Germany has designs on Czechoslovakia?
So they didn't say the word Hitler, but that's what they're talking about, you know.
And that's supposed to be an adult discussion.
It's not a discussion of the pros and cons, the financial, the civil liberties, the budget, and all these things that go into this.
And above all else, because always the pretense is we need to do this to make our country safe and to protect our Constitution.
And that's where I get very annoyed when that excuse carries any weight at all.
Yeah, speaking of carrying weight, Chris Christie, never mind, I won't say it.
Let's turn to the next one because this is from the article, and it's an important article because it's a recognition of the shift.
And here they go again.
The Florida governor's stance on foreign policy means that so far most of the GOP electorate is siding with candidates who differ from the more hawkish views of GOP leaders in Congress and other Republican presidential contenders.
What they're saying here is that by far the vast majority, and if you put the numbers for Trump and DeSantis together, you're talking about eight and a half in ten voters, you know, 80-some percent of voters are supporting this stance.
So yes, they're at odds with a tiny minority of neocons.
Now let's cut to what DeSantis actually said and go ahead and put this on.
He says, while the U.S. has many vital national interests, securing our borders, addressing the crisis of readiness within our military, achieving energy security and independence, and checking the economic, cultural, and military power of the Chinese Communist Party, becoming further entangled in a territorial dispute between Ukraine and Russia is not one of them, DeSantis said in his statement, which Carlson read on the air.
Now that last part is so key because he downgrades it with this statement from this war for civilization, war for democracy.
He downgrades it to a territorial dispute in which we have injected ourselves and saying this is not a vital national interest.
That, I think, is causing a lot of panic.
Well, I think another thing that is working on waking the people up is they're getting pinched.
They know what inflation is all about.
I think they're learning more that when governments spend too much, inflation can come and we get too much involved.
And then people start asking, why are we in Ukraine?
You know, they start asking these questions.
And then when you bring up the subject, do you know how much has been spent on Ukraine?
It's over $100 billion.
We might have had secure borders or something.
We might have been able to do some good.
Maybe we could even return it to the taxpayer.
That would have been a real doozy.
But anyway, those kind of statistics are going to be coming.
And why I think it's especially good, it isn't at the end of the Vietnam War, when people finally say, enough is enough.
I don't think this is going to last that long.
I think the American people are going to rebel.
I think our ability, when they talk about we have to be ready for World War III, I make the case that that may be a dream because I don't think we're in a position of our strength in the military and financial strength right after World War II as we are now.
So there's going to be limitations and I think that is one of the reasons that some of these cracks are occurring and that's why I sure hope the coalitions against this war keep growing.
And the thing is, we talked about it before the show.
Both Trump and DeSantis are not taking this position because it irritates the electorate.
They're taking this position because they can see that this is where the GOP electorate is going.
This is where Republican voters are going, that's shifting.
And by trying to ridicule these people as isolationists and what have you, the mainstream media may actually find that this backfires on them.
You know, we talked about the AP poll that came out last month saying that a full 50% of Republicans said that the U.S. is doing too much to help Ukraine.
So DeSantis and Trump are no dummies and neither are the people that are around them.
They're looking at the way these polls are going.
They're looking at the way Americans are viewing this aggressive foreign policy.
And what do we get for it?
You know, and they're looking at Afghanistan where we leave a couple billion dollars worth of weapons on the ground.
The Taliban picks them up and says, thanks very much.
We appreciate it.
And they're starting to say, what's in this for us?
And that's why I think you're seeing some of the panic, Dr. Paul.
And here's the panic.
I think you can sense it in the Axios article, if you can put this next one on.
Because you have eight out of ten voters endorsing a more realistic foreign policy.
And here's what Axios says.
This provides an opening for a third candidate, perhaps former UN Ambassador Nikki Haley, or former Vice President Pence or former CIA Director Pompeo to win support among traditional Republican hawks.
Those are, they have a minority in the party.
What they want to.
Now, here's, I'm going to go over again what you said.
Do the next one.
Chris Christie.
Of course, this is Neville Chamberlain.
Hitler's coming.
How dare you?
The next one is Mike Pence.
They say maybe he's going to be the one.
He gave a full-throated defense of the American-led alliance, saying, There is no room for Putin apologists in the Republican Party, is what he wrote.
Well, how were the Americans viewing Pence and Christie and Nikki Haley?
Well, it's not looking that good.
Do the next one.
Here's a new CNN poll out this past week.
Former ambassador to the UN, Nikki Haley, and former Vice President Mike Pence locked in 6% of the vote.
While every other potential candidate, and that includes Pompeo, received less than 2% support.
So literally, no GOP voters want this hawkish foreign policy to continue.
And I share your sentiment, Dr. Paul.
This is an encouraging sign.
Yes.
And you know, even though they haven't looked at the big picture and they're responding, you know, to political sentiment, that's sometimes all you get.
Eventually, when the people get annoyed and it might not be the principles we lay out for us minding our own business and we're more secure and we have more liberties and less war, they don't want to look at the big picture as much as, you know, what's it going to do politically because these are political decisions.
But I think you take them any way you can get them as long as they're going in the right direction.
And hopefully they don't back off.
Now it's going to be pretty difficult for DeSantis and Trump all of a sudden say, well, we made a mistake.
We shouldn't have been so soft on it.
We need to be much more hawkish on it.
And we're going to appeal to Mike Pence to see if we can make him happy.
Yeah, we'll beg Bill Crystal to rejoin the party.
Yeah.
Well, I want to just do one other thing before we tip out of this one.
We're definitely going to keep our eyes on this because it's a very good thing.
But if you can skip the next one, go to that Washington Post because it wasn't Axios alone who reported on this massive shift.
In fact, it was all over the mainstream media.
If you can put up that Washington Post headline, here's how the Washington Post framed it today: A Republican civil war on Ukraine erupts as Reagan's example fades.
I love how they lionize St. Reagan when you know that the Washington Post hated his guts the entire time he was president.
And thereafter, now all of a sudden, when there's a danger that the Republicans might not be as hawkish as the Washington Post and the neocons that read the Washington Post would like, then all of a sudden they're abandoning Reagan.
How dare they do this?
U.S. Drone Near Russian Territory 00:05:57
It's very funny the use of that propaganda.
The fact that in the last month there's been two, one rally that we went to to demonstrate against the war and another one getting ready to demonstrate.
I think that's very good.
And that's the people speaking out.
And numbers make a difference.
Look at what they're doing around the world today.
You know, we think we have a bunch of people now standing up to it, but in Europe, they're standing up against the war over there.
And I guess they're tired out about COVID and some other thing.
But in a way, the two are related.
It's government intervention and planning and meddling and spending.
And it's a whole philosophy of government that precipitates these problems.
Yeah, and it's not just in these anti-war rallies.
I think it was a Washington Post article that pointed out, even at CPAC, Carrie Lake, the governor candidate from Arizona, she was talking about how terrible it was that we're spending all this money on this war, and she got a huge round of applause.
They even had a quote from the new president of the Heritage Foundation saying, We don't support this.
We can't afford this foreign policy anymore.
So it's definitely a broader shift than we think.
But there is a danger that remains.
And if we can put that next one up, this is something that happened when we finished the show yesterday.
Now, we don't know the full story.
We know the U.S. version.
We know the Russian version, so we don't have privy to what exactly happened.
But we do know that there was an American Reaper drone, unmanned aerial vehicle, that was about 18 miles from the shore of Crimea when it went into the water.
Now, the U.S. side says that the Americans says that the Russians used, I think it was a Sukhoi-25, to spill a bunch of gas on it and then go ahead and hit it with the plane and knock out the rotor.
The Russians say that they did not do that and that the drone itself was flying crazy and smashed into the water.
Whatever the case, it's probably the most direct clash we've had with Russia since the war started.
It's a very dangerous, dangerous situation, and it remains to be seen how, if at all, the U.S. will react to it.
Yes, and the fact that they haven't reacted immediately doesn't mean they're not still thinking about it because they have the same problem.
Maybe they want to have the absolute facts too before they retaliate.
But, you know, in this whole issue that we're talking about, you know, when they switch these positions, you know, away from Ukraine, what they're really mad about is priorities.
And yet, you know, we could make a case for saying, do you think you're doing something, you know, that's a lot more safe by taking on China rather than going into Ukraine?
But they're arguing that China should be the first priority.
Well, someday the American people say enough is enough and we'll run out of money and we're going to mind our own business.
Yeah.
Well, the interesting thing about this whole encounter, Dr. Paul, is the issue of the U.S. drone being so close to Russian territory.
Now, apparently it was not in Russian territorial airspace, but it was very, very close.
And I went and looked up our old friend Larry Johnson, former CIA analyst.
I think he has his finger on the pulse very, very closely.
And here's what he wrote about.
And I think his analysis is probably as sound as you'll see on this incident.
If we can put up that next clip, he says, don't be confused.
The alleged collision between a Russian Sukhoi-27 jet fighter and a U.S. Air Force MQ-9 Reaper drone was not an accident.
Russia was sending an unmistakable message to Washington and its NATO allies.
Russian patience with NATO arming and prolonging the war in Ukraine is waning, and Russia is prepared to act against targets that enable attacks on Russian forces in Ukraine.
He said the drone in question was an MQ-9 Reaper.
While the Reaper can carry a combat load, it's likely, highly likely, that this one was configured only to do ISR missions, i.e., intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance.
Now, if you put that together with the fact that the U.S. just very recently said, we've got no problem with Ukraine hitting Crimea as such, and we know that the U.S. is providing targeting information to Ukraine.
I don't think it's a stretch for the Russians to see this drone just 18 miles offshore.
It's probably looking for targeting data to share with the Ukrainians.
And instead of turning a blind eye to it this time, it looks like the Russians may have acted to send a message.
And in fact, the Russian ambassador to the U.S. was called to the State Department to explain what's going on if we put this next one up.
And here's what he said.
And there may be a danger of us getting in trouble by agreeing with him, but he makes a pretty good point.
He says, U.S. aircraft shouldn't be flying near Russian border.
Imagine Washington's reaction if foreign military aircraft appeared near New York or San Francisco.
That's the Ambassador Antonov, his response after he was called to the embassy.
That was my immediate thought, because that's a point that I've tried to make many times, because they want to make an excuse.
But I remember when I had them, I had our committee vote on a declaration of war in Iraq, and one of the younger members got up and lectured me, because I said, they haven't committed any aggression against us.
So he explained to me, you know, in a demeaning manner, he says, they've been shooting at our airplanes, you know, hundreds of shots, and we're just flying over their country.
Double Billing Scandal 00:06:38
But he actually believed that was aggression against the United States.
That means they believe that we own the empire, and that's our property.
But anyway.
It's not fair when they shoot back.
And the question is, at what point is the U.S. going to be viewed as a combatant in this?
You know, if you're providing targeting data, you're providing weapons, you're providing training, you're de facto part of the war.
And I think the Russians are trying to make that point.
I think you could possibly look for more aggressive Russian reaction to the transport of military equipment from Poland and elsewhere into Ukraine.
So anyway, with all of these worrying developments, I do want to thank the sponsor of our program for this month, and that's 4patriots.com, the number 4patriots.com.
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Very good.
Very good.
Let's go to the next one, a little bit of Wuhan scandal.
I cannot believe that there's corruption in the distribution of our money in Wuhan.
I mean, there are people over there working diligently to save us from the horrible, horrible invasion of the CONE virus.
But here it is, new Wuhan scandal.
Of course, the whole thing is a scandal, not just this.
U.S. agencies double paid virus research costs.
And I didn't get the full thing.
You might know the full thing.
Who actually took, well, they take the money from the people, then they give it to somebody.
It has to be somebody that's doing the research.
And I bet the pharmaceuticals maybe benefited by this.
And they double paid it.
But that made them a little suspicious.
They finally looked at it.
And they generally don't do that.
You know, everybody trusts Fauci.
He's a trustworthy person, and they wouldn't want to quiz him.
So anyway, they have now discovered this, which is even more reason for people to just get out of the business.
You know, the way that Obama set that whole thing up, he recognized there was some danger.
He said, oh, there's a danger.
I don't want to be caught with doing this stuff on our property, you know, in the United States.
So he, you know, said, oh, we have friends over there.
The Chinese communists, they'll help us.
And we don't know who exactly benefited.
Maybe some people pocketed some money.
We do know that it's a scandal.
I don't know if we haven't put it up.
We can put it out yet.
This is something we've noticed and we'll pay attention to in the future.
And we saw this on Zero Hedge today.
Is the double paying, the double billing.
Maybe it was used to enrich them.
But I think what's important is that these are Americans who double bill.
These are possibly millions of dollars from the taxpayer that were taken.
But I think above all of that, as we see that the lab leak theory is getting a lot more credence, you know, at one time the lab leak people were people who were virulently, to use an appropriate word, opposed to China.
And I think what this shows, and it's very important, and as you point out in your previous section, is that the U.S. is neck deep in the Wuhan lab.
We funded the lab.
Fauci funded the lab millions of dollars.
So this lab leak, obviously the Chinese were there and they were involved in it, but they were not alone.
This was a partnership with the United States and the U.S. government and all these U.S. agencies that failed us so much during COVID.
See, they wait until it gets excessive and somebody wants to get double payment and they make extra money.
And yet the corruption is the first dollar because the process is wrong.
There's no constitutional authority for us to take money from the American people and send it over there and secretly get involved in manipulation of viruses.
And then they do that.
And then, of course, then they boost their payments and double their payment, double billing.
But it's the process.
We shouldn't be in it.
We shouldn't.
Matter of fact, we shouldn't even be in this type of activity with NIH and USAID.
Even in this country, that's not the way it was intended, that they would be the chief people for medical research.
But now that's, if you say that, they'll say, oh, yeah, just Neville Chamberlain.
Yeah, that's right.
Yeah, poor old Neville.
Well, I'm going to close out, Dr. Paul, if you think we're ready.
And I just want to thank our viewers.
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Dr. Hong?
Very good.
And I'm going to close out with talking a little bit more about our first segment.
And that has to do with DeSantis changing his tune on foreign policies.
He's assailing the U.S. policy in Ukraine, and he's breaking with much of the GOP, which is relatively true.
But the whole thing is, It's not much help if you don't also say, Well, we shouldn't be doing it just to shift gears in where we're sending the money and we have to send it to Taiwan and you know and provoke over there.
That's not helpful.
And that's that's what we're doing.
And of course, they're not going to, even with this talk, it's good that the Republicans are talking this way.
That is a benefit, but that is not going to solve the problem.
Crashing Foreign Policies 00:01:17
We have to get to the point where people accept these things on principle.
And non-interventionism and voluntarism answers the question: if you are non-interventionist, if everything is voluntary, you have free markets.
And if you were and if you're concerned about contracts, you have honest money.
You can't become the counterfeiters.
The answers are so clear-cut.
It's just that there's too many people who benefit on the short run because they can take advantage of people, and they do.
They've done it a couple years, a couple hundred years, a couple thousand years, because the manipulation of money has been around for a long time.
It's especially bad right now, and that's why we have such a fragile banking system.
And it won't stop until we decide we need monetary reform and we need to have a unit of account and we need to have a government that doesn't put pressure on the government to create money out of thin air and pay the bills and deceive the people.
It works for a while, but eventually it comes crashing down.
And I think we've seen a few things this past week of things coming crashing down.
But anyway, we're going to keep plugging away at trying to make the points of what personal liberty means and what economic liberty means because I believe so sincerely that if we want peace and prosperity, those are the principles we should follow.
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