As an article in Politico reports today, the Biden Administration is being "ghosted" by a China reeling from US meddling in Taiwan affairs and shooting down balloons. As China takes a more active role in the Middle East is American influence on the wane? Also today: Biden sends another couple of billion to the black hole in Ukraine while US Republican leaders claim "overwhelming" support for Ukraine in Congress.
As an article in Politico reports today, the Biden Administration is being "ghosted" by a China reeling from US meddling in Taiwan affairs and shooting down balloons. As China takes a more active role in the Middle East is American influence on the wane? Also today: Biden sends another couple of billion to the black hole in Ukraine while US Republican leaders claim "overwhelming" support for Ukraine in Congress.
Hello everybody and thank you for tuning in to the Liberty Report.
With us today is Daniel Mick Adams, our co-host.
Daniel, good to see you today.
Good morning, Dr. Paul.
Happy Wednesday.
Good.
Humpty.
Good.
We're going to talk about China.
That's a favorite topic.
You know, we have a lot of people I know on our viewership that are very interested in the subject for good reason.
It's a big deal, and there's lots of historic things happening.
And I see this whole thing as a big shift in world politics.
And unfortunately, in some ways, it means that the United States is going downhill.
And there are some other countries that are found to be less favorable, especially in this country by a various number of people.
They're going uphill, and that means the conflict that seems to be smoldering and getting worse between the United States and China.
But unfortunately, a way we see it is that, you know, the activity that we have is a little more aggressive than it has to be.
Our side in the last several years, I wouldn't give them a high grade for diplomacy with China.
But anyway, you know, we had a couple of things happening.
They were unhappy with the meeting in Taiwan and also the balloon incident.
And so the meeting that was scheduled, I guess, pretty much so with Blanken.
Yeah.
Oh, we canceled it.
Yeah.
Biden says, oh, you guys are a bunch of.
You know, they don't say those words, but that's what they're saying.
We don't want to put up with you little guys like this.
So what happens?
You know, after a while, when the dust settles and they hide the balloon, they made sure the balloon didn't come down in the United States because who knows, it could have been maybe something complex like blowing up pipelines.
They blew up the pipelines.
Whose balloon was that, really?
Anyway, this is something that is ongoing, so they've canceled that trip.
But now the United States say, well, maybe Blanken ought to do it.
I mean, he hasn't been busy these last couple days, and he's tired playing golf and things like that.
So he thinks he better go over it.
And can you believe it?
The Chinese has the arrogance to give us the cold shoulder on that.
You know, you can't accuse China, but we can be a little bit more precise because we live in the United States.
We vote in this sometimes, and sometimes we run for office, and therefore we can be more critical.
And unfortunately, this is a mess.
And like I said during the campaign, we have a couple hundred thousand diplomats.
Why don't we just use the diplomats to sort some of this things out instead of sanctions and bombs and shifting of troops?
And they took my advice.
They hire out somebody else to do their fighting.
So we didn't have to send ground troops.
We just sent the CIA agents, a few other people, and special forces.
But anyway, I don't know what will happen here, whether the Chinese will cave in.
I'm all for meetings, but these circumstances don't seem to be favorable to me.
Yeah, I think one of the problems with those thousands of diplomats is that they're not very diplomatic.
You know, they're not trained.
They're trained in an era where the U.S. says jump and you say how high.
And the world is changing.
That's just a fact.
Well, here's the article we're talking about.
And again, we found it on Politico for all its faults.
They do cover things pretty well.
And this is poor, they see lonely looking Blinken.
He's waiting by the phone.
He's not getting a call.
China is ghosting the U.S. Beijing has effectively frozen high-level bilateral diplomatic contact in the wake of the Chinese spy balloon incident in February.
And as you point out, Dr. Paul, the U.S., the Biden administration, called off the Lincoln trip to Beijing after supposedly a Chinese spy balloon, followed by a bunch of kids' balloons were all shot down with hundreds of thousands of dollars in missiles.
It seemed to me at least a convenient way to get out of the meeting.
But the issue is China is irritated and the U.S. doesn't think they have a right to.
But what they don't understand is that, you know, China is very, very conservative.
And I remember when I worked for you on Capitol Hill, I met regularly with my Chinese counterparts and we talked about the U.S. economy.
And I remember telling them once that there's going to be a day that the dollar is no longer the reserve currency and they looked at me as if I was insane.
I'm sure I told that story before.
But they don't want to lose their customers.
You know, it's like in The Godfather, this is just business.
You know, they don't want to lose their customers, but they're about fed up with the way the U.S. behaves, with the balloons, with the pushing them around, with the relations with Taiwan.
We had Pelosi going over there, remember, last year, I think it was.
So they're just about fed up with being kicked around.
And I think the real issue with all of this taken into consideration is that new options are emerging.
And I have a little couple of things later that I'll bring up to your attention, Dr. Paul, but new options are emerging.
And as China's playing a new role in the Middle East and elsewhere, it's starting to see new markets opening.
And while I don't think they want to lose the American market, they certainly don't.
They're starting to see the changing world and I think they're starting to adapt to it.
You know, what I have observed these last few years, a lot of people have, is that the attitude has changed.
And we complain about some things that are rather benign in a way.
And that is, oh, the Chinese are investing outside of their country.
And we, like in Africa, for instance, and we're saying, look, look, look, they're spreading their militarism and all this kind of stuff.
Sure, they're looking at that too.
They're in their business of self-defense, too.
But the United States is busy internationally, but we're busy in a negative activity.
And that is provoking, putting on sanctions.
Every country has to have one or two people sanctioned or we weren't doing our job.
And then the issue of peace, I think the Chinese came out winning that fight.
Then we pretend we're the peacemakers.
And then we make an effort and then we drop out and then we beg and please to get back in.
And sometimes they have talks and they don't even invite us.
So I think there's a sea change going on, not only in political power around the world, because it is always associated with economic power.
And the Chinese, although they have a long way to go to catch up, but at the rate we're declining and they're increasing, it has to be of concern.
But they have improved tremendously compared to, say, 20, 30 years ago when changes were pretty messy.
Mortgage Incentives Explained00:02:05
But I think they're more interested in investments, protecting their interests and their security.
And we're more interested in declaring that we are top dog.
We're the boss.
And you'll do as we say.
We have an empire to defend, and we are not going to let you take over the empire.
And I think there are other factors that will determine who runs the empire.
It'd be good if we just didn't have anybody that thinks they can run the whole world.
Yeah, that's for sure.
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Seeing Through Oil Interference00:05:47
We will put a link in the description so you can go there and get other.
Thanks again to the folks at American Financing.
The other thing I wanted to mention, Dr. Paul, and we suggested it earlier, but one of the reasons China is miffed is this whole, we sent Pelosi over there.
Unfortunately, she came back.
But now we're going ahead and have the Taiwan president come to the U.S. because even the Taiwanese said, look, we don't want McCarthy, the Speaker of the House, coming over here because it's just causes too much tension.
If you can put up that next link, it hasn't assuaged the Chinese anger over the whole thing because they feel like it's meddling.
We officially have a one-China policy.
We recognize Beijing, you know, as the capital of the one China.
Yet we're still fooling around.
Do the next one if you can.
We're still fooling around pretending that the head of Taiwan is the head of China.
But China is rebuffing U.S. efforts, that people said, and is U.S.'s willingness to fully engage, China's willingness to fully engage hinges on the drama around Wednesday's meeting in California, that's today, between Taiwanese President Tsai Ng-wen and Republican House Speaker Kevin McCarthy.
And that's going to be a big deal.
As we mentioned, she asked, you know, don't let's not meet in Taiwan.
Let's meet in California.
The article points out what is the tone of the meeting going to be.
Is it going to be a state visit-like looking thing?
Then China's going to get even more furious.
Yes, and the image is a big deal.
And I'm sure they're not going to be discussing how rapidly we can move to a more market economy for the world.
And of course, that would put the burden on us that we might have to consider the use of sanctions and tariffs and this sort of thing.
But it's also an attitude I think we have.
And it's not going to change quickly, even though the realists have to come around to this.
And that is the invincibility of the dollar.
You know, that you can never knock it down.
But we're seeing that change.
We're seeing the coalitions coming through.
We're seeing more trade.
You know, priced in won.
That must drive some of the people.
I bet Bernanke.
I could ask Bernanke, is the wand a real car.
He said, oh, no, we like gold.
So The trade issue is something that I thought for sure would be helpful after the Cold War finished and the Europeans actually talked about talking with their neighbors to the east and building a pipeline.
That is a great idea.
It fits the category.
Both sides benefit.
Somebody gets cheaper oil and the other people make some money.
And yet they did.
They had the pipeline and now they're still fighting over somebody blew it up.
And we have a pretty strong suspicion whom to believe.
And that it wasn't the Germans that did it.
The United States might have had something to do with it, protecting oil.
See, this is the kind of stuff that really prevails.
And even in this country, you know, lots of things happen.
And they talk about Republicans and Democrats and all the little things going on.
But really, the big things that go on are controlled by the CIA.
And I think their army is mostly CIA, special forces, military, and all of this.
And they have so much lack of wisdom that they're willing to blow up a gas line, which would be very, very beneficial to mankind.
And I think most people who have read into this issue would come to the conclusion that we were responsible for that.
It certainly seems that way.
I wanted to point one thing out in the article, and it's unrelated, but I just want to point it out anyway.
And if we could put that next clip up, because this is how American exceptionalism creeps into even reporting.
Actually, go forward.
There we go.
No, go forward one more.
Sorry, I got ahead of myself.
So this is just the writers of this article, but this is funny.
Some U.S. officials worry that Beijing's thin-skinned diplomacy is hampering crucial communications.
And I just, it's funny how he would put this editorialization.
We blew up their balloons.
We're interfering in their internal affairs.
We're kicking them around.
Biden is badmouthing.
Republicans are badmouthing him.
But somehow it's Beijing that's thin-skinned because they get annoyed about this.
Anyway, that's just a little quibble, but that works its way.
And if we can put on that next one, because this is just a couple more examples from the article about what's happening.
Jake Sullivan told reporters that the White House is hoping to nail down a phone call following the March 13th closure of the annual meeting of China's parliament.
China's foreign minister responded by making clear that Beijing was in no hurry to connect the two leaders.
We're not really that interested.
Communications should not be carried out for the sake of communication, is what China said.
And do one more, because this is now John Kirby is involved.
National Security Council spokesman John Kirby refloated the U.S. desire for a beaten Biden-Xi call a week later.
Beijing hasn't responded publicly.
So they're literally not responding.
And I'm going to add this as my evidence, Dr. Paul.
I looked this up, and this is just a little bill of particulars on why China is finding new options and how the world is changing.
If you could put that next one up, I'm sure you're going to have some comments on some of this, Dr. Paul.
Saudi Arabia Considers Chinese Currency00:02:48
And this is just from a financial letter.
This is a tweet.
And this is just fascinating.
He said, over the last two weeks, now look at all the things that have happened.
Saudi Arabia considers accepting Chinese won for oil sales.
China and France complete the first LNG trade using won.
France is using won to buy liquid natural gas.
Number three, Russia considers using Chinese won as reserve currency.
Number four, Saudi Arabia partners with China to build refinery for $83.7 billion, not dollars, Chinese won.
Number five, China and Brazil agree to use Chinese won in cross-border transactions.
The percentage of global reserves in U.S. dollars is down from 72% in 1999 to 59% now.
Is the dollar's dominance decreasing?
And this was the Kobiesi letter on Twitter.
I think that's really a fascinating little list of things that have happened.
You know, when we drift away from the conventional operations, our government will, you know, all of a sudden propagandize and say, you know, you don't even really care whether it's foreign policy or not.
You're just not patriotic.
And they identify that.
The dollar, the dollar is a symbol of greatness in the United States, and it's patriotic to do this.
So all these things occur.
They don't want to deal with the real issue because they want to demagogue it.
And then people, you know, go along with it.
The people are easily persuaded when it's done.
That's why you have to have that enemy out there.
Because if they can say that, yeah, we're good guys, but we have to do this.
We have to protect and make everybody safe and secure and rich.
And we'll have to do that.
And if you don't, you don't love your country.
And it should be exactly the opposite.
You know, that if you come up with a good policy, you should be talking about the policy and try to explain it.
But when you think about, you know, back to the educational system, if you try to present the case for free trade, they've all learned their economics from elsewhere, you know, and not part of the marketplace or, you know, the libertarian literature or the libertarian economists, which are, they're around.
So this is a game they play, but eventually, I said, no matter how powerful they are, military and economic power, and no matter how determined they are to bend the rules, eventually, you know, they cannot silence the truth.
And I think we've witnessed that.
But right now we need a little bit of, we need a dose of truth right now on sorting this, the relationship with China.
Power Generation Crisis00:12:55
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So let's move on if you're ready, because as long as we're talking about money, a billion here, a billion there, put up the next clip.
Because, Dr. Paul, I know this is going to shock you.
President Biden has announced another $2.6 billion in weapons for Ukraine.
We're going to send ammo.
We're going to send tanks.
We're going to send guns.
We're going to send HIMARS.
After all, it's just money.
Did you ever wake up for a moment and say, are we into millions or billions or trillions?
Which level are we at?
Well, we're down here just billions.
That's no biggie.
That's no big.
But anyway, the $2.6 billion is good for business.
But it's a narrow group of people who are in this business.
And those are the people who manufacture weapons and a few other things that they have to manipulate.
And that money is used to protect the deep state and build their power and prestige, which won't change anything.
But the market will continue to whittle away right now.
We announce every day a little bit of people leaving the dollar and using the wand.
And the other thing is there's been a significant purchase of gold by these countries, too.
And no matter what Bernanke says, some people must think, but they're those left-wingers, so they shouldn't count or something.
But no, people are moving in this direction.
So I think the market, in spite of how much we suffer from the problems, the bubbles and the depressions and all the inflation and unemployment that comes with the Federal Reserve, that the markets demand corrections.
And it's usually a threat because they have to challenge personal liberty to do that.
They're not realizing, return the liberty to the people.
Let them make most of these decisions and the prosperity comes.
No, we have to micromanage.
And then when they make a mistake, they're delighted.
We have two jobs now.
We wrote that regulation yesterday, but now we have two more problems.
Oh, we can write some more regulations.
So that doesn't work.
Eventually, that brings the market out.
It brings the people to their senses.
And I hope I'm not oversimplifying it or being too optimistic.
But it has happened, but the threat is very real.
And that's what motivates me.
Yeah, and hopefully people will see this money is adding up.
It's now $113 billion.
That would go a long way if you wanted to keep it here.
Well, here's a couple of things from the article on anti-war.com.
Here's just a small sample of what we're sending over there, or what we're buying from the military industrial complex to send over there.
We're talking about more Patriot missiles, more HIMARS, more artillery, more mortar.
We're talking about trucks, 400 grenade launchers, et cetera, et cetera, 61 heavy fuel tankers.
And the question you have, well, why do they need all this stuff?
We already gave them a bunch of this stuff.
The reason is because the Russians have blown it all up.
And that's a fact.
And that's what happens when you have air dominance.
As people like Colonel Doug McGregor have said from the beginning, when you control the skies, as we learned on all the wars that we had, you got to control the skies first.
And they do.
So we send this stuff over, the Russians blow it up.
The Ukrainians say, send us more stuff.
We say, okay, and it goes on and on and on.
But in the meantime, it's not only tanks and trucks that are getting blown up, Dr. Paul.
It's Ukrainians themselves.
And that's the one thing the U.S. doesn't seem to care much about.
Put this next one on.
This is from the Washington Post of all places.
Even the Washington Post is recognizing you can send all the weapons you want, but there's no people to operate them.
And this is the article from March 13th.
Ukraine short of skilled troops and munitions as losses and pessimism grow.
And here's a quote from the article if you go to the next one.
This is a senior, so battalion commander in the 46th Air Assault Brigade of the Ukrainian military.
His call sign is Kupol, and here's what he says.
A soldier who has survived six months of combat and a soldier who came from a firing range are two different soldiers.
It's heaven and earth.
He continues.
And there are only a few soldiers with combat experience.
Unfortunately, they are all already dead or wounded.
So we are throwing all this money into a broken Ukrainian army, seemingly without concern.
We're forbidding them from negotiating.
We're forbidding them from talking to the Chinese and see if there's some kind of a peace plan that will work out for everyone.
No, as you wrote from the very, very beginning of this, the U.S. is fighting Russia down to the last Ukrainian.
Oh, boy, that's for sure.
You know, I think Zelensky is hinting that his attitude and his competence has changed.
We said, well, I don't know.
Maybe we should be doing too much pressure on this Crimea deal.
So, I think the market in general and the people are changing attitudes because they're in big trouble.
And now Russia, once Zelensky comes in that direction, Russia, who still worries about their borders, and they're not going to roll over very fast.
But it's such a shame that NATO didn't have a few more brains.
That to me, I think, has been the greatest problem.
But I imagine there's less than 10% of the people in this country who would, he would say, well, you guys take up talking about NATO.
What are they doing?
They protect Europe, don't they?
But it's there.
But the attitude is we're running out of the money no matter how much money they send.
If you run out of the tanks, they don't fit anything.
And, you know, sometimes there's waste, and sometimes there's fraud.
Some people just literally steal this stuff or it moves into another warfront someplace.
The weapons show up someplace else.
Or we give it to the Taliban.
Here.
And I don't know if you saw this.
It's not part of our script today, but the Taliban, they show this huge field.
They fixed up all the stuff we left behind.
Oh, this is brand new.
So, yeah, they're jobs.
We really help them.
Well, the last thing we really want to mention quickly, because I guess we've got a lot of stuff today, but this is from our friends over at the Libertarian Institute.
And if you can put this on, this is House Intelligence Committee Chairman Mike Turner.
He went to Ukraine.
He's over there with a couple of colleagues.
He says, we love this war.
We want to continue supporting you.
And he claims, and this is where we have a quibble, he says support for arming Ukraine is overwhelming.
We've done some polls here.
We've talked about some polls here.
I would say, especially for Republicans, you might be trading on thin ice.
Definitely a shift probably in the last three, four, five months.
There's been a shift.
And it's going to get much worse because the people are going to continue to get poorer.
And the people are getting poorer because of the financial system.
And you can't separate the economic policies from these international policies because they're spending money.
And you can't create money out of it.
Oh, yeah, you do create a lot of thin air.
It's just not worth as much as if you've earned it.
So that is the case right now that's going on.
And the people are going to be very upset with it.
But to go over there and pretend that things are, oh, we have the support that we need.
And he's representing the Republicans, the real hawks.
And the only disappointing, well, a benefit has been that people are awakening and moving in our direction.
But the disappointing thing is that some traditional people who opposed war would work with the few libertarians and conservatives who oppose the war and favor the Constitution.
They have faded.
But there is a realignment maybe this.
But I think some of those polls that we looked at were looking not at just a Republican base.
If Mike is just looking at the Republican base, you could probably find out, especially if you lived in a military community.
Oh, yeah, we like the war as long as we don't have to go.
Yeah, I don't want to go.
That's for sure.
That's understandable.
Well, I'm going to close out.
I'm going to skip ahead.
If you can just go to that very last clip, because I have a big announcement to make, actually.
And if we can go to that very final one, we had some hiccups, but now our tickets are on sale for the Houston Conference.
Dr. Paul, this is a subject taken right out of the work you've been doing for the last several years.
Conference we're calling They Lie, Nihilism and the War on Truth.
So there's a lot to be said.
I know you've got a lot to say about this.
It's going to be a great event.
Houston, June 4th.
I will put a link in the description of this show to where you can get your tickets.
We got hit, we got nailed hard with some inflation, Dr. Paul, but we're keeping the ticket prices the same as last year because we want everyone to go to this event.
We always have a great time.
We've gotten a great response.
They just went on sale, and we've got a good response.
So I will put the link in there, and you can go ahead and click and get your tickets and join us on June 3rd.
We'll have a great time.
Very good.
And I could argue the case that the price is actually better because in real money, you know, it's less, your price doesn't go up.
Most of the time, they try to compensate for inflation, but if you keep it the same, in terms of real money, it actually goes down.
But that's not the reason that people will come to our conference.
They're going to come because what we present is different.
It's different because we do approach it from a non-interventionist, non-violent perspective in politics.
And we also are sympathetic toward the Constitution.
And I've often said, not because it's perfect, but because it's better than most.
And the big problem is the good parts, we really have a difficulty preventing the far left and the socialists and the do-gooders and totally destroying it.
Matter of fact, my thesis is that the Republic is not here and the coup has occurred.
And when you look at what's happening in the streets and our elections and everything, it's not part of a republic.
And our job is to revitalize the people to believe that a republic is good and should be moving in that direction.
So it's a battle that's been going on throughout all of history, but we're facing it now.
I believe we're at a point that you could call a climactic point where we have to go one way or the other.
We have to rebuild and emphasize what a republic is like, what liberty is like, and also to come down on what the rule of law ought to be.
And we do know what the rule of law ought to be.
And most of the people, you know, that were involved in the Enlightenment and our establishment of our Constitution believed in a higher law.
And that confuses a lot of people.
But that just means you believe in not killing people and robbing people and hurting people.
It's not too complex.
And besides, the wonderful thing is, that's where all the prosperity comes from.
And we should be all for that.
I always blame myself and others.
Why aren't we better at presenting the case for liberty?
Because it's so, and now, with things going downhill, it should give us a wonderful opportunity.
But believe me, it's a dangerous project.
And sometimes you get accused of doing terrible, terrible things if you don't toe the line with the establishment.
We hope to help change that to an attitude where peace and liberty is worth fighting for.