Gaetz To Biden: 'Tell Congress Where Ukraine Aid Is Going!'
Rep. Matt Gaetz has introduced legislation to compel the Biden Administration to inform Congress of the number of US troops in Ukraine and all information about US military assistance to Ukraine. This is an important oversight function and should be supported. Also today: Ted Carpenter tells us why sanctions don't work. Why do we have 200 troops in Taiwan?
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Rep. Matt Gaetz has introduced legislation to compel the Biden Administration to inform Congress of the number of US troops in Ukraine and all information about US military assistance to Ukraine. This is an important oversight function and should be supported. Also today: Ted Carpenter tells us why sanctions don't work. Why do we have 200 troops in Taiwan?
Get your tickets to the Ron Paul Institute's June 3rd Houston Conference:
https://www.eventbrite.com/e/they-lie-nihilism-and-the-war-on-truth-tickets-590534212727
Show Sponsor
Just go to https://4Patriots.com and use code RON to get 10% off your first purchase of 4Patriots Survival Food. That’s https://4Patriots.com, use code RON.
Show Sponsor:
American Financing - tell them Ron Paul Liberty Report sent you:
https://www.americanfinancing.net/ron
(Disclaimer: NMLS 182334 nmlwconsumeraccess.org)
Hello, everybody, and thank you for tuning into the Liberty Report.
With us today is Daniel McAdams, our co-host, coming to us remotely.
But Daniel, welcome to the program today.
Thanks for having me on, Dr. Paul.
Wonderful.
Good to have you.
And we have some foreign policy stuff to go into because events are happening and there's wars going on.
I think you know that.
And there's never been a declaration.
I feel like we solidified that attitude.
And that was back in the old days.
And I remember, and you remember when I suggested, if you guys want to have a war, you better declare it, you know, play by the rules.
And they mocked it and said, you still listen to that stuff in the Constitution.
They mock the Constitution.
So I think that solidified their position that Nehibits the chairman of the committee.
So he must have been the authority.
So therefore, now not many people are concerned.
But I think there are several things, Daniel, that we'll be mentioning today that they're acting outside of the Constitution.
But big news.
I think sometimes if we were to describe our program, it's counteracting the total abuse and ignoring of the Constitution domestically and internationally.
So this is something that we do continuously, but we do want to update this right now.
The first I want to start off with, Daniel, is Gates has a resolution introduced.
And he's a pretty independent person, wouldn't agree with everything, but he's not bashful.
So, and this is from anti-war, Representative Gates' resolution would make Biden disclose the number of U.S. troops in Ukraine.
Now, the one thing I would qualify to start with is, you know, in World War II, if Germany declared war against us first, and then we're in the middle of war and we're preparing for retaliation and defending our country, you know, it seems like there's a limit to how much you could demand.
This is, to me, so different.
This is sneaky war.
This is ignoring the Constitution.
And why don't you go ahead and make some comments on there, what you think about Gates' resolution?
Well, I think one of the interesting things is I think this is the first fallout from the release of these classified documents, which has essentially shown that, you know, the media wants to only focus on the so-called leaker or suspected leaker.
They don't want to concentrate on the contents of the leaks.
What the leaks show is that the administration has been lying to the American people.
The Secretary, Junior, the Secretary of Defense, went before Congress and lied to Congress about Ukraine.
And the leaks have shown this and demonstrated it absolutely clearly.
And I think this resolution by Representative Matt Gates from Florida is the first response to that leak.
And I think it's absolutely appropriate.
And what it actually is, it's a privileged resolution of inquiry.
And you remember those from your days back in the House, Dr. Paul, where you require the White House, the administration, to provide you with information about something.
And this is part of the House of Representatives oversight role, completely constitutional for them to do.
Hey, what are you doing?
You need to tell us.
And so what it does is two things, Dr. Paul.
The first is that it forces the White House to send all documents, all documents outlining their plans for assistance to Ukraine.
And this is partly in response to what we've discovered from this and probably from the Seymour Hirsch article demonstrating that even just in diesel fuel alone, apparently some $400 million has been skimmed off the top.
So that's telling the White House, you need to bring us in on this as we get closer and closer to being involved in the war.
You need to bring us in.
We need to know what's going on.
And the second one is that it forces the Secretary of Defense to disclose the full number of U.S. armed forces in Ukraine, because one of the things we learned from the class of five leaks is that there are American troops operating in Ukraine.
We don't know, but more importantly, I guess, so to speak.
Congress doesn't know how many are there and what are they doing and what kinds of tripwires might they be stepping on leading us to war.
So it's an absolutely appropriate response to learning that the administration has been lying to the American people and to Congress about what they're doing in Ukraine.
You know, the contest seems to be between the government, whether it's the Congress or the president, to level with us and the people.
There was a time in our history that I found fascinating, and that is a conflict between, or at least a discussion between the Congress and the president over the war powers.
And a member of Congress came to Grover, Cleveland, and they were agitating for war against Cuba.
And the member of Congress said, well, he says, you know, Mr. President, we have the authority to declare war.
And Grover Cleveland's answer, I thought, was so dramatic.
He says, yes, that's correct.
You have the right to declare the war, but I am the commander in chief, and I'm not going to send any troops.
So that, to me, I think, sort of set the stage when you have an executive and a president to stand up and know what it is.
You can stop some of that short.
But now it's a mixed bag because even who speaks for the, who speaks for the administration?
Who speaks for the executive branch?
Because we do know there's a lot of pressure behind the scenes and everybody in a high diplomatic position has been endorsed by the military industrial complex and the deep state.
So you don't know who's really speaking for it.
Grover Cleveland spoke for the presidency that he respected and he honored the Constitution and he knew exactly he didn't have to go to war.
And right now, it isn't so much who's deciding, it's who's going to sneak into the war, who's going to spend the money and get the war going.
And the subject of whether you declare war or not, in a way, symbolically, I guess when we were there and I offered an amendment to say that we have to declare war, even before that, they weren't doing it.
They haven't followed the rules very often.
But anyway, I think this is a good example.
You got a good explanation of why they're doing this and what's the purpose of this.
And just in general terms, I can't see any good coming from it.
A lot of times, Daniel, you know, we look for something.
Yeah, it's bad.
It's bad.
But the benefit is, so right now, this is going to be a hard one to come up with, other than the fact that if we get our message out, maybe it'll wake some people up to what's really going on in Washington with our foreign policy.
Yeah, and the other thing it tells us, Dr. Paul, is that Congress is sleepwalking as we go into war.
You know, cats off to Representative Gates for doing this.
But why is there only one representative?
And I don't know if he has any co-sponsors.
I haven't seen the bill as introduced, but why would it only be one or even a handful of members of Congress?
Why are they so uninterested in what's happening that leads us to war?
You know, it's such a big question.
But one of the documents that is referred to is a document showing that there are 97 NATO special operations soldiers in Ukraine, including 14 Americans.
And it's certainly realistic to want to know what these Americans are doing, special forces.
I would think certainly they would want to know what the CIA forces on the ground are doing.
And obviously that can be handled in a secure environment, but Congress has an obligation to look into this and to show some interest at least rather than what they've been doing, Dr. Paul, which is just cheerleading more and more and more, send more, more, more.
And in fact, I think we're looking at yet another tranche of money that the administration is thinking of sending to Ukraine.
This after we know the corruption from Hirsch and from others, and even from these papers, we know how badly the war is going for Ukraine.
We know that it's not winnable.
Our own military and our own intelligence community says this war is not winnable, essentially, if you look at what the documents say.
Yet they still want us to pump more and more money into it.
So, you know, hats off to Congress, Congressman Gates, for at least showing some interest.
And in fact, here's a quote he had, Dr. Paul, and I think it's a very good quote, and I'm going to read it.
He says, the Biden administration and other allied countries have been misleading the world on the state of the war in Ukraine.
There must be total transparency from this administration to the American people when they're gambling with a nuclear adversary by having special forces operating in Ukraine.
It's well said, but it almost seems like a no-brainer.
Why aren't you telling this stuff?
You know, then they get around and say, well, we don't have troops over there.
And yet we have CIA, their troops, and there's a lot of assassinations and things like that that go on, you know, secretly like that.
And then the special forces, that to me even sounds military.
You know, it is part of the military.
But they escape this detail.
Well, we don't have troops over there.
And they'll lie, lie through.
And like we said, like I've said anyway, there's no remorse about being caught in a lie because the slicker they are in telling a lie and deceiving the American people, that's how you get support, or at least you get silence.
They're not going to fight it.
So it's, and we're always hoping that there will be a better coalition on issues like that with some of the progressives that have, you know, not gone along with the warmongering stuff, joining with the libertarian leading individuals on the conservative side that would oppose this.
So this hope that develops.
But right now, it's just more sneakiness, backdoor to war and all that nonsense.
Daniel, I want to go on to the next subject we have for today.
I want to talk about economic sanctions, which we have talked about many, many times, because I feel very strongly economic sanctions and blockades and interference with trade and blowing up pipelines.
They're acts of war and we ought to recognize that.
Yet we engage in it and our government gets away with it.
And then if you say boo about it and they shouldn't do it, then you're accused of being a traitor to your country.
Well, we'd like to dismiss that.
The standing up for liberty in the Constitution is supposed to be what patriotism is all about.
But they have that all twisted around.
But anyway, I wanted to deal with the subject of economic sanctions.
So one of our favorite people who's been writing on foreign policy for a long time, Ted Galen Carpenter, he has a good article out today on anti-war.com.
And it's entitled, Economic Sanctions A Simultaneously Ineffective and Cruel.
And I agree with that.
And the whole pitch on this is when you do it, if you're a superpower, you can get away with it for a long time.
But getting away with it doesn't mean you get away with it forever.
Eventually it catches up with us.
And that's what's happening right now.
They're catching up to us because we've overdone it.
We have a lot of enemies out there and they're ganging up on us because they say that we want it to stop.
And that is why they're attacking us through the financial system and the dollar.
And we've made ourselves vulnerable to this.
So this is a big issue.
So I'm very anxious to talk a little bit more about the sanctions and what Ted's had to say.
Daniel.
Yeah, I mean, Ted's point, I think, is that sanctions are basically a propaganda tool.
They have no useful function other than propaganda.
They don't force countries to do what the U.S. tells them to do.
On the contrary, and all they do as a side effect is hurt average people.
And he starts this article by pointing out that although President Biden claimed that the sanctions against Russia were bringing it to its knees, the ruble would be rubble.
Well, it turns out the ruble now is one of the strongest currencies in the world.
And though Russia has certainly had some economic setbacks, they've now looks like they've turned the corner on their economy.
So it hasn't had the effect.
And they also want to, the Biden administration and previous administrations, they also want to claim that the rest of the world is behind us.
This is a global coalition.
But what Ted points out is that if you get outside of the NATO bloc, which is a small part of Northern Europe, essentially the rest of the world is not with us.
The rest of the world has not signed on to sanctions against Russia, Latin America, the Middle East.
In fact, the Middle East is making up with Russia faster than ever, Africa, for example.
So this huge part of the global south is not part of the sanctions, despite what the Biden administration wants to claim.
Daniel, one of the most ironic things about this interventionism and sanctions and punishment to go after our enemies or pretend enemies.
But we talked about this, I think, last week.
It's so ridiculous is that we send, what, $115 billion of money and weapons to a country that nobody in this country barely knows where it is.
We send it there and Zelensky is involved and he's been accused of taking some of the money and made his own.
There's a lot of corruption.
And I'm not taking a position on that, but they have a pretty strong history of doing this.
But the interesting thing is they're rolling in cash and they want more, more, more.
And guess what we reported last week and others have mentioned?
And that is they're taking their money and the economy is all messed up.
So they're taking some of our money and buying oil from Russia.
If anything is more crazy than that.
So we're at war with Russia.
Just listen to the TV, war with Russia, war with Russia.
And they'll say, well, they're just slipping through and getting it.
But that's the stupidity of the whole thing.
But ultimately, the greatest danger is it gets out of hand and people become enemies of ours.
And that is what's happening.
We put a sanctions on so many countries.
And now that we're weakened with our foreign policy and weakened with our economic policy and the dollar, they are delighted at participating with Russia and China and the various countries to go along with attacking the dollar.
So that is, that's a war that's going on.
At the same time, you know, the precipitation is the willingness to have this silent war.
Sending Troops to Taiwan00:07:18
You know, we had to face that when we were in Congress, you know, saying that, you know, the progressives were against the putting the money into bullets and guns and bombs, but putting it on sanctions and economic sanctions, that was okay, which we considered a fallacy.
It's misleading.
They think they're doing something, which it eventually is just as harmful as if you were dropping bombs on people.
Yeah, I think the idiocy of sanctions is best encompassed in a nutshell in what Marco Rubio said, and we put it on the screen last week.
He said, if all these countries keep ditching the dollar, we're not going to be able to put sanctions on them.
That's the only purpose.
But before we go on, Dr. Paul, I would like to mention the sponsor of our program today, and that is American Financing.
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Now, Dr. Paul, I guess on our third topic, it's almost similar to our first topic, and that's it.
We're sending more troops overseas without Congress being involved, right?
Right.
You know, my memory comes back when I read this stuff because I was starting to look at our foreign policy way back when I became of age and had to register.
And then I based some of my judgment, my long-term judgments, like going into medicine, because I detested the idea someday I'm going to be drafted.
Sure enough, I had my MD degree out and in the early 60s, I get drafted.
It was over both Cuba and Vietnam.
But in the 60s, though, they talked about Vietnam all the time.
But I remember both parties were involved.
They wanted to send, no, we're not sending troops.
We're not sending troops because some of them still remembered Korea, but they go on a CIA agents.
They're not troops.
They bomb and kill secretly.
So you never know about it.
And then they come up and they say, Vietnam, what we have to do is send trainers.
And we did that.
We did that for a couple of years.
And even under Eisenhower, I believe he was sending people train over there.
And then it's up, you know, they send some CIA agents and secret forces to go over.
But then again, we would be there originally and we continue to do that.
You send it, it's going to expand.
It's the beginning.
You won't be able to stop.
Just think of how this whole nonsense with Ukraine has expanded.
Well, we need to help them out.
They're being attacked.
The Russians are coming.
The Russians are coming.
It goes on and on.
And now it's been so bad, Daniel, that American people now are saying, hey, enough is enough.
We're running out of money.
Why did you send us more?
Cut it out of Ukraine.
So that might be the very little optimism that I can come up with right now, because it will.
And it ends, you know, the financial things end because they're not sustainable.
But there's so much pain and suffering that has to go on before the people wise up.
Sort of like how much pain and suffering went through COVID before the people said enough is enough.
So we say, before you start, enough is enough.
We've had too much in the past.
Why don't we learn from our past failures?
Yeah, the problem, unfortunately, in Capitol Hill is a lot of the members who are saying enough is enough on Ukraine, their second sentence after that is because we've got to focus on China.
And this is what we're talking about.
And this is again, it's from our friends at antiwar.com.
The U.S. has sent over 200 troops to Taiwan.
So we're sending troops over there.
We're purposely provoking the Chinese.
And we, you know, the thing is, one of the things we learned from these leaked documents is that Taiwan has no chance against China.
The military knows it.
The administration knows it.
The intelligence community knows it.
They know that if Taiwan does something to provoke an attack by China, they're going to be eliminated.
They're going to be extinguished.
And you have to wonder, like, so why is the U.S. provoking this so much?
If Taiwan is our best friend or our good buddies, why are we pushing them to do something that will get them annihilated?
You know, it's like, you know, you're in a pub somewhere and there's a skinny guy and there's a huge tough guy and someone is provoking the skinny guy.
Go punch him in the nose.
Go ahead.
Go punch him in the nose.
I mean, you wouldn't do that to a friend.
Yet that's what we're doing to Taiwan, sending more troops, sending weapons, sailing our ships again through and through the Taiwan Straits.
It's just, it doesn't make any sense, Dr. Paul.
You know, they've often talked in the past, we have to be prepared for a two-front war.
Others say, no, it has to be a three-front war.
Sometimes it gets awfully confusing.
We're trying to sort this out, but they're trying to start so many wars in different places.
But right now, you know, the people a couple years ago, it was only Russia, you know, because of Russia gay.
You know, we had a candidate that was dealing with Russia and, you know, selling out and treasonous thing, made up all these lies.
So it was always Russia.
But all of a sudden, it's shifted.
I mean, Russia is still very significant.
And both China, they're looking like they're turning this war into economics because believe me, they're weaker on the dollar and stronger on gold.
So that might be a very significant turntable.
But Russia and China, this has shifted to China.
And that was almost, even though they're both involved and everybody, there's still a lot of people who disapprove of Russia.
Definitely the pop, this is my opinion, the popular opinion of the people in America right now are much more conditioned to hate China.
And who knows what's really behind that?
But it's a shame because, you know, I get annoyed when they say China's coming over here and they're investing their money.
Well, that's what capitalists do.
Why?
Why are you?
Where did they get their money?
Did they steal it from us?
No, we sent it to them.
We bought their junk.
We brought it over here.
And where do we get our money?
Why We're Close00:02:31
Well, we printed it.
So is it any wonder that people are looking at the financial, the economics, and the foreign policy as something that's disintegrating?
And you're not supposed to say that because that's not anti-American.
But what if we're right or even close to it?
What if it's just a trend there?
And you're pointing out if you keep doing this, it's going to get worse.
And if you're looking at the statistics of how much debt's building over this ridiculous foreign policy, then you might realize, yes, we should have been doing a lot less, a lot sooner.
Yeah, that's a great point.
Well, I'm going to close out, Dr. Paul.
I think we've covered them.
But before we do, I do also want to mention our main sponsor this month, and that's 4patriots.com.
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And I'm just going to finish out, Dr. Paul, on my end by reminding our viewers: I've been away for a couple of days and I apologize for that, but we do have our conference coming up on June 3rd in Houston.
We've got tickets for sale.
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We've held the price down despite inflation because we want all of you to be able to join us in Houston for a great conference on how we're being lied to and how the nihilists are determined to destroy truth.
Closing Thoughts on Peace and Prosperity00:02:27
So, look for that in our show notes and come see us in Houston.
And back to you, Dr. Paul.
Very good.
And I'm looking forward to that conference.
It's great to get together with our friends and supporters.
And I want to just close by telling everybody once again the exact name of our organization: it's Ron Paul Institute for Peace and Prosperity with a sincere belief that we will expect that there will be wars and there will be problems and there will be people lying, you know, probably forever.
But it doesn't have to be carnage of a whole civilization.
And that's what a lot of people are worrying about right now.
And the conditions that we have to change aren't that difficult.
Some people get confused.
Well, it's so big and overwhelming.
What do you do?
Well, my suggestion is that if you're really confused, the Constitution is pretty clear-cut.
You can read it as a hint on what we're supposed to do.
And technically, it's still the law of the land.
We were on the right track.
So, but what bewilders me at times is if we're at least going in the right direction on this, isn't it a shame that we're not more successful?
I mean, why shouldn't people be for peace and prosperity?
And unfortunately, what happens is that too many people have been conditioned to think the government should, yes, that's true, we want peace and prosperity, but you know, everybody has some needs.
It turns out that people who have the latest voice and maybe the most weapons is the military-industrial complex.
And there's a lot of organizations that follow the routine of a military-industrial complex, scare the people, threaten them to call them unpatriotic, and therefore you have to go along with the spending.
And right now, they're discussing this big thing in Washington about the budget with the odds, the odds of them having a budget that really improves things.
The Republicans have a few suggestions of doing it, but it's going to continue.
It's locked in place until since we haven't woke up gradually and changed our position.
We will wake up suddenly and we better decide what we're going to do after that happens.
I want to thank everybody for tuning in today to the Institute for Peace and Prosperity and the Ron Paul Liberty Report.