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July 12, 2023 - Ron Paul Liberty Report
28:49
NATO Throws A Furious Zelensky Under The Bus

NATO's message to Ukrainian president Zelensky at its Vilnius summit was essentially, "you keep fighting and we'll keep sending weapons. But no NATO Membership." Zelensky was furious when this became clear and he lashed out. Slowly it is becoming obvious that NATO and the US means to fight Russia down to the last Ukrainian without getting their hands dirty. Next move?

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Time Text
NATO's Vague Invitation 00:14:48
Hello everybody and thank you for tuning in to the Liberty Report.
With us today, Daniel McAdams, our co-host, Daniel, good to see you today.
Dr. Paul, how are you this morning?
I'm doing fine.
It's this talk about Ukraine.
You know, we haven't talked about Ukraine for 24 hours.
Yes.
Somewhere in there.
A few hours.
But people have, and we have talked about Ukraine for a good while, and they were in the news, especially even after the Cold War was breaking down.
There was wheeling and dealing back then.
And we had promised Russia to behave yourself.
And we're not going to put anything near your borders.
So we're going to stay out of Eastern Europe and the whole works.
Didn't work out that way.
Somebody did some fibbing.
I don't know whether you'd call it lying, but it was diplomatic fibbing.
And people are unhappy.
And there's a lot of negative consequences from that that we're dealing with now.
Because the headline this morning, because of course the NATO meeting is going on, Zelensky slams NATO's vague commitment on Ukraine's membership.
That is the big deal.
You know, are they going to become members?
Now, the White House had a statement about this that should tip us off.
White House says Ukraine joining NATO means war with Russia.
And that's probably where we might be closer.
I don't know whether you can be absolute, but it introduces the notion that they're moving in that direction.
Not much good can come about that.
But all this globalism anyway just leads to war.
It's just picking up the pieces of who's going to benefit.
But yesterday before when it was just opening up, the leaders of NATO was making a statement.
I thought, well, reading this, you know, if you are very naive and very hopeful, you say, well, they're talking like decent people, you know.
He says, and their note and their announcement was the NATO heads of state and government participating said, we fully support Ukraine's right to choose its own security arrangement.
Ukraine's future is in NATO.
We reaffirm the commitment we made at the 2008 summit in Bucharest and Ukraine will do this.
And they said that, I'll get this, yes.
And we'll now begin a period of intensive engagement with both higher political levels to address the question.
That sounds diplomatic.
Then I thought, holy man, he must be demanding something like, don't fib with me, don't mess with me, just send more money.
We need weapons, and you're all in this together.
And if you don't do that, somebody's going to start World War III.
And even Biden says, watch out.
We have to be cautious about what we're doing here.
But that whole thing, that's why I have so little respect for these international conferences getting together.
It's all grandstanding.
And I think a little bit of that was done here, maneuvering behind the scenes.
And what we hear in these statements usually have very little meaning compared to what they're saying and planning.
And Zelensky, one thing is, is he's smart enough, and from his viewpoint, not bashful, is stating the facts.
So he takes on his allies by saying, yeah, this is good, but I'm sick and tired of what you guys are doing.
The money's not coming in fast enough, and you're going to suffer if you don't do it.
So he's not been bashful.
No, that's for sure.
Well, I think, you know, this is the Vilnius Summit, the annual summit of NATO.
And I think really in terms of what happened with Ukraine and the NATO members, there are three things to kind of unpack.
One of them is pre-summit.
The other is what happened in the final communique.
And then the third is the fallout from what happened.
And so here's at least how I can piece it together.
Now, this is the Washington Post.
If we can put that first clip up.
Now, before the summit even happened, Zelensky infuriated NATO.
This is the Washington Post.
from yesterday.
Zelensky slams NATO for admitting a timeline for Ukraine to join.
So he's on his way to this conference.
I don't know if he really thought this is what he was going to get, but he's furious because he got wind before he got there of the fact that there's going to be nothing concrete.
They're basically going to say, you know, same old, same old.
And so he's furious.
If you can put the next one on, this is from that same article.
Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky on Tuesday, which is yesterday, jolted a summit of NATO leaders by blasting their joint statement on his country's prospective membership, decrying its lack of concrete timeline as, quote, unprecedented and absurd.
That is a tough, tough call on his part.
And a lot of people have speculated that this is kind of a negotiating bluff.
He wanted to come in hard and heavy and be very strong to try to shock them into changing their final communique, which had been pre-written and which surprised him.
But if you can put the next one on, now here's what he says.
This is the exact words he used.
And he was furious in his tweet.
Now on the way to Vilnius, we receive signals that certain wording is being discussed about Ukraine without Ukraine.
And remember, the thing has always been nothing about Ukraine without Ukraine.
So here he's saying, well, hang on, you're talking about stuff without bringing us into it.
And he said, and I would like to emphasize that this wording is about the invitation to become NATO member, not about Ukraine's membership.
It's unprecedented, absurd when timeframe is not set either for the invitation nor for Ukraine's membership.
And if we go to the next one, you can see this is his actual tweet.
It's a lengthy tweet.
He's blowing his top because he got wind of the communique, Dr. Paul, and he realized that the communique only included a vague reference to membership.
And as you pointed out in your opening statement, yeah, you can come in any time.
You know, you can apply anytime, but nothing concrete.
And so that was, I don't know if he expected to have one, but that was a huge letdown for him and he blew his top.
Since things are in flux and Zelensky is not getting what he wants, and the other side has more money and more weapons, and they're going to do what they want to do.
But I'll tell you what, there's always limits because the people behind the scenes may be able to manipulate events that puts a tremendous amount of pressure on even those who are determined not to go in.
And that is, you know, a false flag event.
You know, something happened that you can't ignore.
Look at what they've done.
And we have to really start doing more for Ukraine.
We have to go after Russia because that's exactly what they talk about.
We need this.
The origination of this in 2014 was very, 2014, was very clearly NATO versus Russia.
It always annoys me when it's routinely announced in the press and our media, both sides on the media.
This war, you know, was started by the Russia invasion of Ukraine.
Russia started the whole thing.
Unprovoked.
But there's a lot of qualification dealing with that, to accept that at the par, you know, openly.
But that's what they do.
But I still always fear that an accident can happen.
It doesn't even have to be done by smart people who know how to do it.
Sometimes blowing up these pipelines and all, they're not accidents.
They're not unintended consequences.
But so far, it takes probably some serious thinking with Russia because there's a little bit of ganging up on Russia.
And they're probably trying to get Russia to overreact or something and expand the war.
Who knows what?
But I think that that would be the worst thing where people just forget everything.
Just how quickly the sentiment changed from a little old virus that people were complaining about to three years of lockdown with the persistent destructions of our liberties, which have persisted since.
And that was a change like that because of an event, and there's still people wearing masks around.
Yeah.
Now, by saying what you said, which is the idea that this is unprovoked is not true, they would call you a Russian apologist.
We would say, in fact, no, our message is stop provoking people.
Don't provoke people with nuclear weapons.
You know, it's a dumb idea.
It doesn't mean a Russia is a saint, and it's wonderful what they did.
It's saying, don't provoke people.
This is good policy.
But so what Zelensky, I think, wanted from this summit is he wanted a concrete invite, but vague details.
Like he would rather not have vague details.
But his compromise is, okay, invite me, but give me like a vague timeline so I can go back home and say, we're invited.
We're going to go in.
Here's what we have to do.
But not specific.
He didn't get either, in fact.
And I think that would infuriated, well, that's what infuriated him.
But what he did get is an admission from Jen Stoltenberg, who's been the chief, you know, he's the NATO Secretary General.
He's been the chief cheerleader for this war from the beginning.
He got a dose of cold water and hard truth.
And we're going to play that first clip.
But essentially what Stoltenberg is saying in this press conference is unless Ukraine wins this war, i.e. prevails in this war, there's not even an issue of Ukraine becoming a member of NATO or getting any guarantees.
So we must ensure that Ukraine wins.
And everyone knows, even the U.S. government knows that Ukraine is not winning.
So let's listen to, in his own words, Stoltenberg, spilling the beans on this whole thing.
I agree that the most imminent task now is to ensure that Ukraine prevails as a sovereign, independent nation in Europe.
So the most important thing we can do is to continue to provide weapons, ammunition, military support to Ukraine.
Because unless Ukraine prevails as a nation, as a democratic nation in Europe, there is no issue to be discussed about security guarantees or membership in NATO at all.
I agree that the most...
What he's saying, Dr. Paul, is that we're going to keep doing what we have been doing, i.e. providing weapons, that is clearly not working.
We're going to do the same thing and hope for different results.
That's basically it.
That's not a new policy.
It's been going on for a long time.
You know, this idea that you suggested that Zelensky was a little bit annoyed not being treated like a first-class diplomat, you know, and invited him to come there and move along.
But, you know, one thing that annoyed me, I guess it's been probably a year now, I don't know the exact date, is when Zelensky comes over here and he's in the midst of all this thing.
And he, you know, to say it politely, he's a crony, but he's been involved in very controversial politics.
And sometimes that we have welcomed some people in the midst of revolutions that turned out they were the bad guys.
I have no idea what's going to happen.
But for him to be able to come to Congress, you know, I just think that Congress, you know, they do so many dumb things and bad things.
If I thought that was a move that, you know, that is nice.
That's a peace offering, you know, to get along with people and let them express themselves.
But I personally, and I don't have a legal reason for not doing it or constitutional reason to not allow it to happen.
But it annoys me that they gave him that much.
And now he's annoyed because he didn't get the same reception at the NATO meeting.
I think that's essentially what he wanted.
He probably wanted to be the kingpin there and running the show.
Yeah.
Well, you remember when he spoke before Congress, he said, the battle of Bakhmut will change the course of the war.
Well, they lost that battle, and he was actually right because it did change the course, but not in his favor.
So here's what the NATO communique said, the final communique of the summit said.
Now skip that next one and go to the next one.
This is paragraph 11 of the communique, if we can have it.
This is the operative.
This is a key statement.
The alliance will support Ukraine in making these reforms on its path toward future membership.
We will be in a position to extend an invitation to Ukraine to join the alliance when allies agree.
Go back, please.
When allies agree and conditions are met.
That is exactly the statement essentially from 2008, i.e. nothing has changed in the intervening years.
You'll get in when we say you can get in, full stop.
So that is essentially what they gave him after encouraging him to fight this war.
And I added this picture because if you could put the entire Vilnius summit in one photograph, this next one is what it would look like if you put it on.
Here, if you can even expand it maybe, because this is going around the internet.
You see everyone else at the NATO summit greeting each other, having a good time talking.
And there's Zelensky just sitting there without a friend in the world.
You know what the problem is?
He didn't follow dress code.
That's right.
They thought he was the waiter.
They thought he was the waiter.
But then the final thing I'm going to say here, Dr. Paul, is then after this, Jake Sullivan really did say the quiet part out loud.
If you can put that next tweet up, and this is not an audio, I mean, I'm not going to put the audio.
I'm just going to read it.
If you can put that next tweet up, this is what Jake Sullivan said, and you referred to it earlier on, Dr. Paul.
The admission of Ukraine to NATO today would mean a war between the alliance and the United States with Russia, said National Security Advisor to the American President Jake Sullivan.
Quote, why NATO, including the United States, each of the 31 members, were not ready to accept Ukraine.
So that's why, because they finally said the quiet part out loud, duh.
Of course, if we do this and Article 5 applies, then we'll be at war with Russia.
And we've been teasing and pretending and waltzing around this whole issue for the past year, but the fact is we can't come in.
Just kidding, guys, keep fighting down to the last Ukrainian.
NATO Expansion: The Final Straw? 00:04:21
You know, you quoted that last sentence that was made.
This is the conclusion.
It was a one sentence.
It really, as you pointed out, it had been said before.
They're saying it again.
But all this other mishmash, she goes through it, but the position was stated there.
But still, I think the people behind the scenes sometimes have other plans.
And I'll probably be wrong, and that's okay that I worry about some type of an event that changes people's minds.
People do change their mind quickly, especially if it involves the people behind the scenes.
It might not affect our politicians quickly, but the people behind the scenes might say, boy, this is it.
Now the pressure is going to be put on our politicians.
And it's possible that even a person like President Biden might change his mind or something.
I don't know.
Maybe he will say it's not that dangerous.
Yeah, you never know.
I mean, the one thing that did come out of this, we didn't have this in what we were talking about before, is that the UK and France did agree to send long-range missiles.
The U.S. has not agreed to send attacks.
Those have a 300-kilometer range and they can hit deep in Russia.
That may provoke the final response from Russia if they do that.
It's probably, I think, a very bad idea.
But one other thing I wanted to point out about this, Dr. Paul, is a reaction from the UK, because the UK, as you know, has been the driving, driving mechanism in the war machine.
They've been the yipping lapdog on the U.S. neocons.
War, war, war.
They're all for it.
And particularly, Ben Wallace, the defense secretary of the UK, has been extremely, extremely pro-Ukraine war, pro-Zelensky.
But even he, after Zelensky's explosion, really had to say something.
And here's what he said.
The Guardian captures very well the sentiment that's arising in the UK.
We're not Amazon.
UK Defense Secretary suggests Ukraine could say thank you more.
So he is saying, look, guys, you could say thank you.
Let's put the next one up.
This is from that same article in The Guardian, because it's not just the UK, but the U.S.
And here's what he says.
Wallace says, whether we like it or not, people want to see a bit of gratitude, he said at the summit.
Sometimes you're asking countries to give up their own stocks of weapons.
Sometimes you have to persuade lawmakers on Capitol Hill in America.
And this continues, that's Wallace again.
And the U.S. National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan told a public forum at the summit he believed, quote, the American people do deserve a degree of gratitude from the U.S. government for their willingness to step up and from the rest of the world as well, i.e., Ukraine, stop yelling at us for more weapons.
Stop yelling at us for NATO membership.
Just say thank you, shut up, and keep dying.
That's the message.
You know, they talked about other things at the meeting.
And the one that caught my attention is they did mention China and Russia.
And I consider that very dangerous because, you know, we're provoking once again, you know, the whole situation there.
But we were criticizing China for talking to Russia.
You know, we put sanctions on both of them, and then they started saying, hey, let's talk this over.
What are we doing?
Could we alter this and do some trading?
And then if they do some trading above board and they don't use weapons to do it, and then they start outclassing us in some of our sales and moving ahead, then all of a sudden, oh, well, NATO has to go along because evidently that was the American position.
Slam China.
So that to me, that might have been one of the biggest deals that they sneak in there and they have to pursue that because if you listen to the U.S. Congress, see, that's going to be an easy fight to motivate the Congress.
It's the China issue.
So that to me is a shame that that's happening.
And this whole idea that we own the world and we can put on sanctions and boycott and blockade and everything else.
Affirmative Action Hypocrisy 00:06:39
But if somebody else does it, then you shouldn't do that.
That's not being nice.
We don't like you for that.
You're right.
I mean, that exposes the whole hypocrisy because when it comes to Ukraine, then the U.S. says, well, Ukraine has the right to choose its own alliances.
If it wants to join NATO, that's fine.
But then with China aligning with Russia, they don't have any right to do this.
How dare they do this?
And the rest of the world sees this.
They're not a bunch of dopes out there.
They know what's going on.
So anyway, let's move on to our second story.
This is kind of an interesting story because we saw this on Zero Heads yesterday.
We know the recent Supreme Court decision about affirmative action.
A lot of people are cheering that decision that it is proven to be unconstitutional.
Let's put up this next clip because the reaction among black Americans is kind of interesting.
They did a poll right after that.
And this is the headline.
More black Americans support the Supreme Court affirmative action ruling than oppose it, according to a new poll from YouGov and The Economist.
If you go to the next one, this is from that same article.
According to the poll, 44% of black respondents said they at least somewhat support the recent rulings in Students for Fair Admissions versus the University of North Carolina and Harvard, which eliminated race-based admissions practices from college campuses.
Only 36% of blacks polled approved.
So more African Americans are saying, yeah, we don't like affirmative action than the ones are saying, yeah, we've got to keep it going.
That's kind of an interesting development.
You know, what this does, it refreshes some people's memory that all this affirmative action is faking, faking this need, this moral high ground, that you have to help people.
And there may be some need for that.
When there's a policy like enslaving people, yes, you can specifically state it and say what has to be done.
But all this affirmative action and reparations, this gets way out of control.
And that's based on the assumption that on a daily basis, it's political power.
You can go back 100 years and say such and such happened that we have to do this.
But it's based on the assumption that the minorities who want or need help for various reasons, you know, they need this help and they're incapable of doing it themselves.
I remember so clearly Walter Williams, a good friend of mine who's passed away, is a libertarian black economist, which was a great combination because he could speak to this.
And he was always annoyed.
He said, he would say it in public and just sort of enjoyed saying it.
He said, I don't need a black leader.
But in a way, there are a lot of black leaders, but if they're leading us toward liberty and less government, they're despised by the so-called black leaders that Walter Williams couldn't stand.
Yeah, like Clarence Thomas, how they hate him with the passion.
Oh, yeah, still.
Yeah, they hate him with the passion.
I mean, I can see this.
I mean, it cheapens the perception of the quality of the education that they receive that somehow they got a hand.
So it doesn't surprise me, and obviously I'm pleased about it, about this view.
But I also wanted, we talked about this before the show, to bring up kind of an interesting contrarian perspective that I know you do share.
And this came out from our good friend Jacob Hornberger, because he had a piece out this morning that we reprinted on our RonPaulInstitute.org website because it's a contrarian but a very interesting libertarian perspective on the Supreme Court ruling.
If you can put this next one up from Future of Freedom, why shouldn't a university be free to adopt affirmative action?
And that's a very interesting point.
And he goes on to say, if you go to the next one, he asked the real question.
So why does the Supreme Court wield the authority to dictate to a private university what its admission policy is going to be?
And then here's the key point.
The answer is that most private universities accept government funds and their students receive government grants.
So he makes a good point.
Why can't they have affirmative action?
How does the Supreme Court tell them they can't?
This issue has come up now with Harvard.
There's some people wanting to have a little bit of freedom of choice.
Oh, no, then you're immoral and irresponsible and that sort of thing.
But the answer, I really agree with Bumper because it's the issue of property.
Property solves so many problems, whether it's a spiritual privacy, sexual privacy, economic privacy.
It always has to be voluntary.
And things can happen.
But, you know, you know what my position is, and we've written about it, and that is that people have not only a right, but they enjoy being discriminate 30, 40, 50 times a day.
Everything we do is a choice.
We get up, we decide to do this, say hello, and it's a choice of doing one thing or another.
So most things are still voluntary, but it's when the government comes in and say, oh, we don't like so-and-so for some other reason, so we're going to deny him his rights.
And they come in and start regulating people, and that, of course, leads to a real problem.
So voluntarism and property rights is so useful in working out answers for this.
And I think people should realize to be discriminate.
There was a time, Daniel, that was to be good.
I think a good parent is very discriminating in raising children.
I mean, if you don't discriminate about who the kids hang around with, and that's one thing that our family understood very clearly.
The people they hang around with will give you a pretty good indication of some of the things you have to contend with.
But sorting all this out of, I think, is private property, private choices, and family members, and not only not the federal government, but government per se.
If the government gets involved when there is the private use of force, forcing people to do things, and the nonsense that went on on the cancelation during the camp, you know, the lockdown and all this stuff, that's not the answer at all.
Nonsense in Education 00:02:47
And they do it couched in the words of freedom and liberty and prosperity, and also the Constitution.
Nancy Pelosi, boy, if we believe everything, she said she was the greatest constitutionalist ever in Congress.
Well, I'm going to close out, and I'm just going to thank our viewers.
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Dr. Paul, over to you.
Very good.
I'm going to close by just making a short mention of an important report and legislation that occurred back in 1910.
And that came about in the medical field to look at the medical schools and decide, well, some of these schools aren't doing so well and they need this and that.
So we're going to analyze it.
So the AMA and the government got together and they came out with this Flexner report, which says, no, that is true.
There are some of these, they're not up to speed.
And it just turned out that there were women medical schools and minority medical schools producing physicians.
Probably weren't perfect, but there were some imperfect white schools too, and there still are.
But they closed them down.
They said there were too many doctors coming out.
The AMA, we don't like all this competition.
They closed that down, and it's been what happened.
There was a shortage, and then the government had to come in and make sure that everybody got to go to medical school that wanted to, especially the minorities.
So then they have to give them money, and then they have to give them control.
One leads to another.
There was a contrivance even back in 2010 to move in this direction.
But guess what?
I think 1910 is very close to that period we call the progressive era.
And that was some of this nonsense.
So many of our problems can be traced to bad government judgment, bad politicians who think more of power and money.
And we're facing that.
But they're still alive and well.
A lot of people are sick and tired of it, and they're waking up and they're rebelling against this nonsense.
So that's what we have to encourage people who believe in peace and prosperity to move in the direction of emphasizing personal liberty.
I want to thank everybody for tuning in today to the Liberty Report.
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