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June 15, 2023 - Ron Paul Liberty Report
31:04
Shock Poll: RFK Beats Biden On Favorability!

A new poll from The Economist and YouGov released yesterday brings more bad news for Biden, as Democratic rival RFK, Jr. surges in favorability with voters while Biden slumps. No wonder Biden refuses to debate RFK, Jr. and is desperately trying to move the first primary to a more favorable state. Also today: Did Massie fumble on the Schiff censure vote?

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Time Text
Rfk's Primary Potential 00:14:59
Hello, everybody, and thank you for tuning in to the Liberty Report.
With us today is Daniel McAdams, our co-host.
Good to see you, Daniel.
Dr. Paul, how are you this morning?
Struggling.
A little rough, yeah.
But we got to keep it going.
Got to move it along.
But you know what to do if you get tired of my voice.
No, everyone will hear what you want to say.
Sorry about that.
We want to start off by an interesting topic today because we've reported on a special candidate.
He's special to us because he's a friend and he doesn't call himself a libertarian, but he doesn't know it.
He's leaning strongly toward libertarianism and away from the two parties.
And that happens to be somebody that questions the lockdowns and the pharmaceuticals and interventionist foreign policy.
So he's very much on our side on many issues.
That's RFK, Robert Kennedy.
And he's somebody that we visited with.
He's been on this program.
And he's been to our seminars.
Now it turns out, and I don't think he fudged this.
They were measuring favorability.
And I was saying, you know, if you just looked at that, I could understand why somebody would feel comfortable.
Favorability is sort of like, who would you be most comfortable with?
Do you think that people are going to be comfortable in the next four years, if there's another next four years of Biden?
Or does anybody ever feel real comfortable with Trump?
But that's one thing is, you know, favorability or comfort.
I think, you know, Robert Kennedy sort of fits that.
But he rated the highest of Republicans and Democrats.
That's so interesting to know.
They ought to take notice of that, the other candidates.
And every once in a while, when I was in Congress still and running for the presidency, people would come up and want to know what's your tricks, what's your current, how do you do this, how do you raise this money and all that.
But, you know, I never shouted it in their face, but my thoughts were very strongly.
Well, why don't you pay attention to the way I vote?
Maybe that's something that does it.
Maybe they ought to pay attention to what he's saying.
And that might make a difference.
So let's hope that happens.
Yeah, it's very interesting.
Let's put up this first clip.
We saw this on The Hill.
This was a poll that was released yesterday.
It was conducted by The Economist and YouGov.
And here is the headline.
RFK Jr. ranks higher in favorability than other major 2024 candidates according to a poll.
Go to the next one.
Here are the numbers that are very interesting.
The poll from The Economist and YouGov released Wednesday showed Kennedy was viewed favorably by 49% of respondents, giving him the highest net favorability rating of 19 points.
He was viewed unfavorably by 30%.
So net favorability, 19.
President Biden and former President Trump each had the second highest percentage of respondents viewing them favorably, with 44% saying so.
But Biden had a minus 9 net favorability, and Trump had a minus 10 net favorability.
And I think that might be a little bit confusing, but I think what it means is that a lot of people like RFK Jr. They view him favorably, and not a lot of people view him negatively.
And I think you sort of captured it when you said early on, who would you rather spend time with?
Who would you rather spend an afternoon chatting with?
Biden, Trump, RFK, he seems like an intelligent person.
He seems, if you listen to his speech, and this is not an endorsement, of course, but he's so fluent in all the issues, from foreign policy to domestic policy, civil liberties.
He's got a handle on everything.
He's conversant and everything.
I think it's a pretty easy yes.
Could it be part of our fault?
We haven't invited Biden to our conferences.
We should, yeah, we could invite him, yeah.
Oh, well, I might be straight and he might come.
Might be some confidence.
You know, the one bit of surprise, but not totally so.
I think Ramaswamy is on the air a lot.
Fox, I think, is giving him credibility and some others.
But he rated it at 26%.
For somebody just out of the blue, I think that is interesting.
But if you listen to him, he's a smart person.
He has some good ideas.
But you know what?
He impresses you because he believes in something.
And he works hard at trying to be consistent.
He has some libertarian views.
But I thought this was pretty amazing at this point that he's ready.
So I predict that he's probably going to do pretty well in the primaries when you exclude the leader.
Yeah, no, he's no dummy and he makes some good points.
And as you say, he gets a lot of airtime.
And I think on the Democrat side, they're trying to give RFK Jr. the least amount of airtime.
They don't want anyone standing next to Biden.
Let's go to this next clip.
This is a little bit more from that same article.
The results come as Kennedy, the nephew of former President Kennedy and the son of former Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy, is sparking some concerns among Democrats who are feeding into the notion that they're worried about the primary challenger to Biden.
Polls have shown Kennedy with support from about one-fifth of Democratic voters recently, causing him to gain more attention in media coverage.
So he comes out of the gate with 20% of the Democrat vote.
I think that's just scaring the heck out of Democrats who want everyone just to fall asleep and vote for Biden.
You know, one other factor in trying to follow this is the fact that the Democrats can't get together on their primary.
Biden doesn't want to go to the first two.
And who knows?
Most people know exactly the reason because even if it's worse losing if you're running, losing if you're not there, that's a bit of an excuse.
And we remember that last time when Biden struggled early on and it looked like he wasn't going to get it.
And lo and behold, he got down to South Carolina and some magic happened and he won.
And in fact, that is related to our next story if you want to put that next one on.
Okay, on one thing.
They also, at the same time, locked him.
They locked him in the basement.
They locked him in the basement.
They got rid of him.
Yeah, don't say a word.
Just sit down there.
Keep your mask on.
But here's an article from Axios that's kind of related to the first one.
Biden could lose first two 2024 contests to RFK Jr.
Now, when you first look at this, you could think, wow, in a straight vote, he's going to lose to RFK Jr.
And while that's possible, certainly part of it is what you alluded to, Dr. Paul, which is there's a lot of shenanigans going on.
If we could put that next one on, about where the first state will be.
It's always traditionally been New Hampshire and Iowa.
That's been how it's always been.
But Biden doesn't want to do that anymore.
His excuse, Dr. Paul, is that those states are just too darn white.
We need some more diversity.
Whereas some people that might be a little bit more savvy or perhaps cynical would say he hasn't done very well in those states and he may actually lose them.
But as you were saying, he may just simply not compete.
If Iowa and New Hampshire say we're going to hold our primaries anyway, he may take his name off the ballot and thus lose by default.
You know, when they talk about diversity, I'm all for it.
Because I think the most diversity comes from libertarianism.
You go down to the individual rather than a contest between the special interests.
But this primary sort of reminds me of what was going on in 1968 over a war issue.
And Johnson was president, and it didn't do well in the primary up there.
I don't think it's going to happen to Biden.
It might be a little bit late, but maybe not.
But Johnson, and I remember this so clearly because I had the TV on and the listening because the primary was ending.
But I remember the announcement so clearly when Johnson decided I've decided not to run.
And it was Gene McCarthy did well.
And so who knows what will come of this.
So even whether he's, if he's not there, that'll be an excuse.
If he is there, the next time the same thing happens, besides, they might have to consider something.
Maybe he'll be talked into resigning or not running.
But now there's news out there on the liberal station.
They really want Kamala Harris.
I don't know how they could even say that.
Why wouldn't that invite it?
You know, the other thing I found interesting is after Trump started making a point, well, oh, yeah, they're going to indict me and they're going to do all this.
We'll have a rally that night and we're going to raise some money, a couple million bucks.
So he did that.
And I think it was Pelosi and somebody else were advising, you know what, let's stay silent.
Let's not jump on this.
Let's lay off.
I think they're sort of catching hold, but they're helping him.
You know what?
What happens?
And it turns out that the Republicans have a spy in their camp distorting their policy.
That could be.
Well, as RFK moves along, he's demonized as an anti-vaxxer, which is not the case, in fact, if you look at anything he says about vaccines.
He's actually pro-normal vaccines.
He questions some things about them in terms of the schedule.
But they're going to demonize him.
He's a kook.
He's a radical.
He's this and that and the other.
But a lot of people in our circles, libertarians, people who I think are sound on foreign policy.
And I think I've mentioned on this program that I listen to the Duran as often as possible.
I think the two gentlemen who do that show are extremely astute in world affairs.
And they had Jeffrey Sachs on, I think, yesterday.
And you spoke with Jeffrey Sachs at Bumper, at Jacob Hornberger's conference on JFK.
And that was a great conference.
But they had Sachs on, and he was recalling some of JFK's famous peace speech and some of the other speeches.
And he was saying that RFK really is in that vein.
He really is a peacemaker.
He really goes down that line, the JFK line.
And I thought it was really a fascinating discussion.
You know, it's not complex, and it should be.
You know, when I blurted out because I believed that, and people remember that freedom is popular.
But peace is popping, too.
Peace is popular, and that's a good rallying cry for a candidate.
Make it simple, clear-cut, and have people believe you.
And you have to wonder if some of these early numbers like this and the possibility of losing those first two have driven the decision to not have a debate on the Democrat side.
And obviously, when you are the incumbent, you're not super keen on stepping up on the stage and possibly getting beaten up, so that's understandable.
But interestingly enough, if you can put on that next clip, the Democrats aren't happy about this.
The voters aren't happy about this.
80% of Democrats think Biden should debate RFK Jr., including 72% of those who support the president, even though he's insisted he won't face primary rivals.
And this is from the Daily Mail just a couple of days ago.
They took a poll that says a vast majority, eight in 10 Democrats, think that Biden should take on RFK in a debate.
I don't think that's going to happen, Dr. Paul.
I don't know how you feel.
Well, I do because, you know, things are bad.
Freedom of speech, the First Amendment, it's a mess.
And both sides are complaining about it.
But it's not that bad.
I mean, it is still, he can't hide.
He can run, but he's not going to be able to hide.
So we'll see what happens.
Last time, it was easy to get the whole media, you know, control and protecting him.
And they're still doing it.
But I think the people are catching up and just disgusted with the imbalance between how Hillary and Bidens are taken care of by the FBI and the legal system versus what's going on with Trump.
And the whole thing is, they want to say, well, if Trump is doing something dumb, therefore they want to take it away from how dumb they are, how they're prosecuting him.
But I think there's a lot of people saying, now, this does not sound good.
You know, the issue, the issue of a president, you know, trying to punish the guy running against him, why shouldn't that be an automatic?
So that there's something fishy there.
Something fishy there.
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Let's move to the next one, Dr. Paul.
And this is from a good friend of ours, Ted Carpenter.
As you know, he was drummed out of the Cato Institute because he's actually anti-war.
You're not allowed to do that.
But he did a great piece on sanctions.
Were they waiting for him to get more experience before they'll keep him on?
How many years?
37 years, something like 10 or 12 books he's written.
They must have had a real sense of loyalty, didn't they?
Especially since we can be assured that he was pretty consistent over all those years.
Well, their loss is our game because he's now able to speak a lot more freely.
He's writing for anti-war.
He's writing for the Libertarian Institute.
He's really a lot more hard-hitting, and that's understandable.
They tried to punish him.
Yeah, they did.
Therefore, they're helping us.
Yes, exactly.
So let's put up that first clip then and just look at this.
This is just Washington's Never Ending Love Affair with Sanctions.
And he points out how sanctions have been ineffective.
And I think you've got a couple of comments on the piece.
Trade Wars Backfire 00:08:00
Yes, and I've been talking about sanctions for a long time because I think they backfire.
I think they hurt the little people and the average person.
It destroys free trade.
It's usually people think it could lead to war.
No, I say it is war.
If anybody would put sanctions, they're like blockades, and if they're going to interfere with our imports, we would be furious.
And yeah, we're in the driver's seat.
And to be in the driver's seat, it works better when you have control of the world's biggest military and you have control of the reserve currency of the world.
Then sanctions are possible.
But then also, for them to do it, that country that throws their weight around and does it, they have to have a lot of say in the international organization.
And because we're the big financers of that, we do have something to say.
And this is why we have this to say.
And this is why I think it breeds a bad, bad feeling between nations.
And yet, it's nothing new what we're saying because it's been old, it's old history, economic history, that free trade is very, very beneficial.
I mean, hundreds of years or more that trade, well, trade always is a natural thing.
Trade is a natural thing when people are left alone and governments are minimal.
People trade, you know, even under the worst of circumstances.
So that to me is bad.
But I think, and I think Ted does a good effort in his closing paragraph.
He summarizes how it backfires on people, how it's not a good policy, and we shouldn't engage in it.
Yeah, and he makes the good point that 30 years ago, I think it was, and he mentions the book, Economic Sanctions Reconsidered.
30 years ago, it was completely proven in this book how sanctions are ineffectual, counterproductive.
He makes the point that they are actually cruel and painful to people who they're supposedly helping.
But then he goes down in this article and talks about Cuba, Venezuela, North Korea, Iran, China.
All of these have had sanctions, some of them for decades.
I think he said Cuba for 60 years, of course, has had sanctions.
It hasn't done anything.
It hasn't had the desired effect.
It doesn't do anything positive.
And in fact, you know, the latest one is Russia.
There's been various sanctions on Russia.
But when the special military operation began last year, they thought this is going to be a KO punch.
We are going to KO.
Remember what Biden said?
We're going to turn the ruble into rubble.
And then the ruble became the strongest currency in the world after that.
And of course, there has been some effects on the Russian economy.
It wasn't as easy at first to sell their gas and their products, but they've had workarounds and they've done it.
And in fact, I think they're in better shape than Germany.
I think the German industry minister just said next year our factories are going to have to shut down because we don't have any gas.
So it's almost become a joke in a way, Dr. Paul, that sanctions, so many rounds of sanctions on Russia haven't brought it to its knees.
And in fact, if we can have a little bit of a humor break, the folks over at RT made a pretty funny video.
Now they use deep fakes and AI.
These aren't the real people.
But they use that to kind of troll the idea that sanctions are so great.
And the whole, well, you'll see the joke if we play this.
it's just a funny one minute clip.
No, no, no, that's bull.
That's nonsense.
We need some fresh ideas that are stronger and effective.
So that's making the rounds.
That's going viral on Twitter and stuff.
It's just a funny way to making fun of the fact that they're just desperate to find sanctions that they don't work.
I think humor and sometimes ridicule goes a long way to get the point across.
But, you know, it is so often we have said the people in the libertarian movement, free trade, argue the case that there's much better relationships.
The founders believed that principle, and that's why they tried to institutionalize that.
But even back then, they thought about it.
And I can even think about the decade that was so vivid in my mind.
And I'm trying to understand what was going on in the world.
Because I was drafted in the 60s, and the war was raging, the war, the Vietnam War, ended.
And tragedy, I think it was 58,000.
I say 60 because they never counted the people who never came back.
60,000 American soldiers killed.
And we lost.
They talk now about leaving Afghanistan in a mess.
And I agree with them.
But they shouldn't forget about how we left and what we lost.
They talk more about losing weapons, leaving weapons behind in Afghanistan.
And I think about the people we left behind, not only the Americans that died, but about the Vietnamese as well.
But we lost, we left, we were humiliated.
But guess what?
There was an introduction of some American principles, and there was peace.
And I often say all those wars with the French and the Americans telling the Vietnamese how to live, you know, never did very much.
If nothing, maybe did more harm.
And just think of what was accomplished in a world of peace and trade.
You know, and it didn't take long for that to happen.
And you compare it to the end of the Korean War.
Okay, we'll divide it in half and they'll live peacefully ever after.
And there's nothing more than been contention and no free trade between the countries, the parts of Korea.
So people should really argue it's the basic principle of a marketplace.
It's your stuff and you should have voluntarism, how you get rid of it.
And, you know, I heard a discussion not too long ago of why.
Well, this, he wanted to be reasonable and saying, well, there is too much waste and fraud, and we have to do this.
But he never mentioned once, because people were abusing it and they were stealing.
But they never mentioned the fact that in order to get the welfare system, you have to steal it from the people who produce.
And whether it's done that way or whether it's managed international with regulations and sanctions.
And I think it's going to change because I think we're weakening.
A superpower can get away with this.
Adam Schiff's Concerns 00:03:35
But there's a time when they're getting around our sanctions.
Russia doesn't seem to have suffered quite as much as we thought they would.
We thought they'd be crawling to us to get off our back, but that didn't happen.
Yeah, absolutely.
Well, let's finish up, if you're ready, with an interesting, and this is kind of a follow-up to what we talked about yesterday.
We talked about Adam Schiff.
We know he lied for years and years when he said, hey, I'm the chairman of the Intel Committee and I know lots of stuff about Trump and Putin.
I can't tell you, but wink, wink, it's some really bad stuff.
Turns out he was just blowing smoke.
So now the House, which is controlled by the GOP, as we mentioned yesterday, wants to pass a motion of censure.
And they did, in fact, put up a motion of censure against him.
If we go to the next one.
So the big controversy is that Thomas Massey said he's going to vote against it.
And it infuriated a lot of people who were furious with Adam Schiff.
And of course, we are not big fans of Adam Schiff.
But yesterday after we finished the show, I went and looked and I saw that Mr. Massey put out a couple tweets trying to explain his view.
And he said, Adam Schiff acted unethically.
But if a resolution to fine him $16 million comes to the floor, I will vote to table it, which means voting against it.
In fact, I'm still litigating a federal lawsuit against Pelosi over a salary reduction she imposed on me for my refusal to wear a mask.
And the next one, if you can go to it, he continues by saying, the Constitution says the House may make its own rules, but we can't violate other later provisions of the Constitution.
A $16 million fine is a violation of the 27th and the Eighth Amendments.
Can you imagine what it would be like if this got out of control?
So the speaker comes in each morning, okay, ABCD, we have 10 people that just got fined, and this is what you have to pay.
Oh, I'm not going to write you a check.
Oh, we'll just deduct it from your pay.
It's not a very good precedent to set.
And this whole thing, that was my first question when you remember.
I said, you know, I don't think I've ever heard of that, especially when I was there.
I'll think that through.
But it didn't take too long for me to realize that's not solving any problems.
It's opening up the door to more chaos.
It seemed weird.
And one of the commenters under, you know, and Massey's getting trashed by people because they're just full of emotion.
They don't understand that he votes with the Constitution, whether his heart is in favor of censoring or not Adam Schiff.
Someone else put this up.
I don't know if you think this is relevant, Dr. Paul, but someone pointed out that he believes this is almost like a bill of attainder.
If you can put that next clip up, this is from Cornell Law School.
A bill of attainder is a piece of legislation that declares a party guilty of a crime.
Bills of attainer allow the government to punish a party for a perceived crime without going through the trial process.
So this other person claims that it's the legislative branch acting as the judicial branch and convicting him of a crime and giving him a fine for it.
And the bill of attainer is usually targeting a person for a political reason.
And that's what that is.
They're a very bad precedent.
But it's great to have Thomas speaking back to them because he's going to do it in a dignified and an intellectual manner.
And he's going to defend the principles of liberty while doing so.
Yeah.
And so I think the people that were hypercritical of him, and there are a lot of them, they acted on a motion.
I think he's taking a big hit, but I think our verdict is going to be he voted the right way.
Yeah, there you go.
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Dr. Paul, over to you.
Very good.
You know, I saw that some of the Democratic leaders now are advising, lay off Trump.
Don't keep bugging them about his indictment.
And I thought, well, how are they going to do that?
They never leave people alone.
The only thing I can figure, it's not helping them.
That's the only reason that they might not do it.
So, in that, it could be the case, but that's not really going to happen because they will be bugging them and the fighting is going to go home because they think by now, oh, those Republicans have a little bit of control now.
They might fight back.
But I thought that was sort of amazing that they're saying, okay, lay off Trump.
Don't bug him.
But anyway, I think that we're going to hear a lot more about the election for sure this next year.
And hopefully people will concentrate on those individuals who are defending truthfully the Constitution.
I keep thinking about how many lies are told in Washington.
Lies should be punished.
There'd be nobody there because if you look at it, if you are doing it technically, and this is not practical, technically, to expect people to obey the oath of office.
You know, everybody takes the oath of office.
I swear to obey the Constitution.
And it must be 98% of everything that gets passed there technically doesn't fit the mold of the Constitution.
But that is not thought of as long as it's fair and as long as it's diverse and we're spreading the wealth out evenly and we satisfy all our special interests.
I guess we'll just limp along.
But there is a different way of doing it, and that is concentrating on peace and prosperity, which we do here.
And I think the whole world would be better off if we could do that.
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