Politico has trotted out an "expert" on the Tea Party Movement to put forth the idea that the Tea Party was always ONLY about McCarthy, Paul Ryan, and Eric Cantor, and with the fall of McCarthy the movement is finally dead. What does Politico get wrong? Everything. Also today Ukraine "freaking out" over end to US gravy train.
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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 this morning.
Is it still really?
No thunder, no thunder.
Where's my intro?
We better get our 30 minutes in in two minutes.
I paid for that thunder.
Maybe if we talk faster, we can get more information out.
But they might not understand.
But anyway, we have important things to talk about.
And somebody wrote an article today.
Bring back some memories.
And we have to sort of dissect this out because for somehow or another, my name has been associated with the Tea Party movement.
And I think there's some misunderstanding, even back early on, how it got started and what it meant and how long did it last and what did the Republicans think of it?
What did the military-industrial complex think about it?
So it was a big deal.
But here we come across an article in Politico.
We've been using Politico more often lately.
We have.
So, well, if they present something that sounds like they're making an effort to give us some news and truth, I think that's what we should do.
But this article, it looks like it might be one of their main articles.
And it heads up.
Of course, the subject is timely because it has to do with the speaker and the speaker deciding not to be speaker anymore after he lost the vote.
Okay, Kevin McCarthy's downfall, this is the title in Politico, is that downfall is the culmination of the Tea Party.
Now, I need to protect myself because I had been associated once with them.
Some people have a different interpretation than others, but since my name is tied to that, I have to find out whether I need to defend myself.
Who is the Tea Party?
I thought nobody was talking about it.
And I guess for some people, they don't want to talk about it.
But let me just make a few comments on how I remember the Tea Party started.
And it wasn't a political decision.
I didn't have an idea about, oh, let's emphasize the Tea Party movement and emphasize what we were doing in our campaign.
No, it didn't happen that way.
There was no one key person in our campaign that came up with this idea.
But anyway, it was very, very spontaneous.
People started talking about it at rallies and off it went.
It was a big deal.
But it reminds me sort of how the campaign worked.
That's sort of what happened on the money issue is we didn't start with and the Fed and the Fed.
And that came from the college students who started recognizing me talking about the Fed.
And they came up with the slogan, and the Fed, end the Fed.
And, you know, also the fundraising was sort of a spontaneous thing, too.
And we did quite well.
And that satisfied me because I wasn't that anxious to make calls and convert all the rich people to libertarianism.
So that didn't happen.
But this is interesting because of the Tea Party thing.
Now, they have the picture they have on here that is to symbolize the Tea Party.
And that is McCarthy, Paul Ryan, and Eric Canter.
You know, what do they call themselves?
The party of movement.
The young guns.
The young guns.
They were running the show, but each one of them faded pretty quickly.
And this is, of course, McCarthy, not as quickly, but he didn't last long when he finally got the position of power.
And I think it's interesting to think about how this went on.
And I think I mentioned something to you is I was looking at this and how it came about.
Because of the miscellaneous arguments for what they really believed in, it was sort of distorted ideas of interventionism and conservatism.
And, you know, that was hard to define.
It wasn't like we have a definition of non-interventionism as a foreign policy.
Nothing like that.
It turns out, and one point I'd like us to try to make today, is the more I read about what happened the last couple days, the more convinced I get that, you know, foreign policy is a big deal and for us in a positive way because, you know, people are panicking.
Oh my goodness.
The money, the money is, it's almost like the money for Ukraine is like the Bill of Rights, you know, if this goes.
So this is very fascinating.
And I think it's a shame because I think there's a lot of mixed understanding about what was going on with the Tea Party movement and where we come in.
Although we never shied away from it, but we were anxious to try to define ourselves about the Tea Party and what it meant.
And that was sort of the constitutional limited government libertarian views and monetary policy.
And that's what I believe because the people and the students I was talking to, they helped and they stimulated this and created this movement.
And if somebody said, well, why don't you describe what you think they were doing and why was the Tea Party established and your name attached to it?
See, that's a different story because it didn't take long when I heard whispers, well, yeah, it sounds good, but we have to deal with this foreign policy thing, you know, because they have heard about it.
But it's fascinating.
It came and went.
But what I'm hoping for and what I'll work for is to make sure that the image and the beliefs and the momentum and the ideology of what we were talking about is worthwhile defining and preserving.
Yeah, and this is the article we're talking about on Politico today, if we can put that first one up.
This is Kevin McCarthy's Downfall is the culmination of the Tea Party.
We both, it caught our both of our attention, Dr. Paul, and what it essentially is in an interview with Theeda Skokpohl.
Now, she's a political scientist at Harvard, Dr. Paul, so I'm sure she knows way more than we do about the Tea Party and everything else.
She's an expert on it, in fact, and that's how she is described in the article in the interview.
So I looked at this article.
The first thing I did when I saw the Tea Party is I did a little word search.
Go to the next one.
I did a little word search for Ron Paul, and it came up as zero.
So they wrote an entire article about the culmination of the Tea Party, and it did not include the words Ron Paul in it.
And I thought, well, hmm, let's go back down the history memory hole.
And I went and I did a little bit of Googling, Dr. Paul.
And hold on one second.
And so I went to a magazine that is not known for being pro-Ron Paul or pro-libertarian, and that is The Atlantic.
And they came out with an article in 2010.
So according to Theida Skokpoll of Harvard, the Tea Party has nothing to do with Ron Paul.
According to The Atlantic, which has always hated Ron Paul, let's go to the next one, November 2010, Ron Paul, the Tea Party's brain.
So apparently, you're the Tea Party's brain according to even your enemies.
But now when we talk about the Tea Party with the Harvard professor, you're not.
And here's the opening article from Joshua Green.
The opening of the 2010 Atlantic.
One way to measure the surprising rightward political lurch, okay, they'll say that of the past two years and the rise of the Tea Party is to chart the relative position of Ron Paul, who has never flinched from his beliefs.
He's not alone anymore.
That's all you need to know about what it was before good old Theda was interviewed by Politico yesterday.
Now, the conclusion by some, probably not in that article, and after explaining what you said, he has to go.
You got to get rid of this guy.
Yeah.
Absolutely.
Well, here's more from the, I just want to refresh people's memory.
And here's more from the Atlantic article, if we can put the next one on, because I think it's important to remember this.
So Paul is also a loner because his ambitions lie mostly beyond Washington.
He wants to inspire a national movement, but from the outside.
And this is all from the article about Ron Paul as the brain of the Tea Party.
Like Obama, Paul inspires people of widely varying beliefs to see him as a vessel of their desires.
His opposition to the Iraq War, strident criticism of the Federal Reserve, and early warnings of financial collapse, which he derived from the theories of semi-obscure Austrian economists, brought all sorts of people into the fold.
Important to remember how it brought all sorts of people into the fold.
And if you'll indulge me a little bit more, Dr. Paul, if you can go to the next one.
From that same 2010 Politico article, it talks about the clearest sign of this, i.e. of you bringing all sorts of people together.
The clearest signs of this is the loose affiliation of angry conservatives, disaffected independents, Glenn Beck disciples, strict constitutionalists, and assorted malcontents who gather under the Tea Party banner.
That captures exactly, as we both remember it, as everyone involved remember it.
But going back to present time and our favorite Harvard expert on the Tea Party, Dr. Paul, if we look at the next one, it wasn't about all of that.
She says, it was never about cutting the deficit.
The popular side of the Tea Party was about anger and fear of a changing country in which a guy with Hussein as his middle name and black skin could be elected president.
So Dr. Paul, the Tea Party wasn't about you.
It wasn't about grassroots.
It was purely about racism.
Well, I can't remember calling her up and thanking her for the fair article.
But what you were just reading is the sign.
Anger and Fear00:02:53
I said, I think I'd roof for that guy.
He sounds pretty good to me.
But no, and I think the biggest problem for people to really understand, and to me it's important, and I think for promoting ideas it's important, is how it got started.
It was spontaneous, which I encourage, and it was a reflection of young people who were taking what I was saying in philosophy and interpreted into a political action.
The same thing, you know, happened with the ending of the Fed.
They started shouting, and the Fed, end the Fed, after just hearing the story about this.
So it's to me a wonderful thing on how it started.
But then it was taken over quickly, you know, afterwards.
Matter of fact, you said that was in 2010.
2010, yeah.
How come you never showed me that article?
I just found it.
It's a good article.
No, that's wonderful.
That's why, you know, sometimes we overly complain and put everybody in a basket, but some of them deserve it, you know, that we hear nothing.
But there's things out there.
But quite frankly, I think we had more freedoms in 2010 than we have now when it comes to the First Amendment rights.
And we might talk about that in a little bit, that it's been restrained.
But it did change.
And the Republicans, the only thing I sensed that I knew was going on was, you know, I was out of it.
I wasn't campaigning, so the activity was changing.
I was doing more average things.
And all of a sudden I found out, talked to Republicans.
Republicans, you know, they were grabbing a hold of this.
And I said, well, is that a compliment?
Not really.
What they're doing is they're usurping the ability.
One time when we had this spontaneous fundraiser, we raised $6 million a night, which was a bit of a record.
And I had a Democratic, no, a Republican friend, conservative, who generally was voting with me on most of the issues.
He came over and sat down beside me.
And he says, tell me how you do this.
What is your program?
And it was, you know, they wanted to explain how, where did I get this computer knowledge to be able to manage this?
And, you know, we were voting on something, and I was the only one voting against it.
And somebody said, I really missed an opportunity because my thoughts were that looking at him and say, why don't you just look up on the board?
Maybe that tells you something.
But that wasn't of my nature.
So I hope that somebody else looked up at the board and figured out where that came from.
Reveling in Opposition00:09:24
So I liked that, but then I saw that that spontaneous movement, which I was very happy for, I don't think it's dead at all, to tell you the truth.
The original intent there, because people still believe these things, and I still feel like they're acknowledged when I go to the college campuses, and they still want to hear that same message.
But politicians tend to want to take what they want and say, oh, you know, they're the Tea Party movement.
And that's it.
Sounded good.
And then it's changed now.
But it looks like now they want to bury it for good.
Well, the big difference is that you were excited in 07 when you had the money bombs, when you had the college campuses.
You were excited about the ability to transmit the philosophy.
The rest of them were excited about your ability to raise the money because it was always only about that.
And so they took that.
But, you know, the whole point of the Tea Party is it demonstrated the broad appeal that could not be honed in, cannot be contained by the campaign itself.
And I remember Kent sometimes complaining, and Kent Snyder complaining, your first campaign manager, kind of half jokingly, is we can't get these people to do what we want them to do.
They can't be corralled.
They were on their own, and that's where the energy was.
And I know it's going to take a second because at the last minute I wanted to have a bonus clip.
So if you can start searching for that, I'm sorry about that.
But, you know, this is what the Tea Party started as.
This is the beginning of the Tea Party.
This is one of the first graphics.
Here we go.
Ron Paul president 2008.
This is a YouTube video.
The Tea Party started in 2007.
Ron Paul is the Godfather.
This is a film, YouTube about it.
So that is the fact.
Patriot Act, Iraq War, CIA, IRS, Open Borders, Federal Reserve, they're throwing these over the Ron Paul ship.
This is the origin of the Tea Party.
And I mean, I was thinking about this, Dr. Paul, you know, about defending the fact that you were the ideological godfather of the Tea Party.
And this isn't about sour grapes on our part, because it's about dispelling the idea that there can never be a grassroots movement against interventionism, because that's why they are trying to rewrite history.
That's never possible.
You can't have that.
But that's exactly what did happen.
Now, you're telling me that the blimp most likely wasn't originated by the campaign.
And all of a sudden, somebody did that and had it out there.
Which to me is, I get excited about it, not because, you know, I'm getting a little bit of attention.
I get excited about it because you already mentioned it, that the ideas can't be stopped.
You know, the guns of government can't stop us.
I'm just hoping that we can work hard enough to make sure that the authoritarians that are in charge of both parties who would like to silence their political opponents.
And that's what's going on now.
And a lot of threats and innuendos because most Americans, though, are already on our side because they don't believe the government anymore.
And they don't think the court system is fair.
And so this is, and right now, we can look and say, you know, this whole thing about the speakership may have come down on one item in foreign policy, and it was narrowed down to eight votes and money.
Now, a lot of people are saying, don't say anything nice about that.
But that was the issue.
It was the money, and there was a motivation.
It'll be interesting to see how those eight individuals do to see if the people will give them support.
But I think that for us is it was the foreign policy that did it.
Not that the Democrats who came over and participated in this little episode, because there's a lot of pragmatism thrown together, so you can't say it was all this or all that.
But I think it's very, very interesting that the people were dealing with a foreign policy issue, and a lot of them felt very strongly about it.
And we still have a job because we need to refine that too, because, you know, getting sick and tired of the filthy waste and going into Ukraine and protecting nobody, not their sovereignty, our sovereignty, everybody, the whole work.
It's not that.
It's how are they going to respond to this when it comes to voting?
Because some of them say, well, I'm glad we're doing this because it's all a waste.
But the real enemy, they have the real enemy lined up already.
But we do have to, it's rare that I counsel you to be optimistic because it's usually the opposite.
But for the first time ever, a speaker was brought down and it was brought down over the issue of interventionism and foreign policy.
So, yeah, we'll take the Dems and all of their conniving, what have you.
Still, we have to revel in that fact that this was an issue and it remains an issue.
If you don't mind, I just want to finish one last thing on our favorite Harvard professor and expert on the Tea Party, because here's something else that she said in the interview on Politico.
If we can put that next one up.
Now, I'm not going to read this because it's boring and hard to read.
But essentially what she's saying is that the entire Tea Party was a project of the Koch network.
The Koch network outflanked the Republican Party.
They brought a lot of pressure.
The young guns were in tune with that.
So according to this professor, the whole Tea Party movement was the Koch network identifying these three young guns and giving them a bunch of money to run.
And now it's finally over.
Well, this is the very same Politico that in 2012 ran the next article, if we can put that next clip.
This is back in 2012.
Even their own paper, Politico, said Ron Paul and the Tea Party playbook.
And go into that article, which is the next clip.
And this is 2012 in Politico.
The Republican National Convention this week announced speaking thoughts for Libertarian Senator Rand Paul and social conservative Rick Santorum.
Both claim the Tea Party brand.
However, the 2012 primary season reveals that the Tea Party playbook is more Paul than Santorum.
So the same Politico gives you the property.
This is real recent.
No, that's 2012.
Oh, so 2012, you are the playbook of the Tea Party.
In 2023, you don't even exist in a lengthy article about the Tea Party.
Well, you know, I said earlier that the way this was getting put together, it was inevitable that as the takeover occurred and control of the message of the Tea Party movement, that it was doomed to fail.
And I think it's not complicated because I think the people that were taking over were interventionists, and I think they were neo-Connish, and they were very much involved.
So their philosophy, they thought, well, this is just one little thing, because in a way, they didn't attack me on the Federal Reserve.
No, no.
You know, that went by.
But when it came to this foreign policy, it might also be just another reflection of the power and how vigilant the military-industrial complex really is.
I mean, they probably don't miss very much at all, even down to a minor seat.
You know, they're going to be very much involved.
And the think tanks that made a ton of money claiming the Tea Party mantle also made a ton of money from the military-industrial complex.
So I think that's why they soft-pedaled a lot of that.
As soon as it became popular and they realized they could mail on it, which is what it's all about, being able to mail on something, well, that's when they said, okay, we are totally 100%, well, not 100%, but almost 100% Tea Party.
There's just one little butt.
Or as you'd say, there's one big butt.
And everyone has a big butt.
So that's what happened, unfortunately.
Yeah, and I think for the people who opposed us had to do something to undo the popularity of the real Tea Party movement without being too personal about it.
They did because when I started asking questions about people that, you know, maybe at a gold conference, they could have been, you know, go either way.
But I'd ask them.
And they were too often saying, well, we have to have a strong national security, you know.
Yeah, that sort of thing.
Which you would argue, of course we do.
That's why we shouldn't be spending money on regulation.
That's why we have to try to save the dollar and protect our own country.
Well, anyway, this chapter remains to be written.
Someday we'll have to have Norm Singleton on to talk about it because he was more in the middle of it than us eggheads in the backward during the time.
But let's move on because this is a related article, and this is also from Politico.
Hey, we're giving them some love and some criticism, so it's even.
Let's go to the next one because this is what we both noticed this morning.
Ukraine As U.S. Tool00:07:58
Ukraine is freaking out as McCarthy chaos threatens USAID.
The Ukrainians now who have been attached at the teeth of the U.S. government now for the past year and a half or more, of all of a sudden realizing that as much as you want, as long as it takes, doesn't mean what they think it means.
Go to that next clip from the article because now they're seeing that days after lawmakers shelved a vital U.S. plan to send billions of dollars to Ukraine, McCarthy was ousted by Republicans, and Ukraine was named as one of the reasons.
Now, here's a quote.
In Kiev, officials are at a loss as to what might happen next.
Their staunchest military ally suddenly looks unreliable, despite assurances from President Biden that the U.S. will remain steadfast until Ukraine's invaders are defeated.
All of a sudden, it's not so sure.
You know, in this title to this thing caught my attention because at Kiev that Ukraine has become a tool, a tool of the U.S. domestic politics.
Well, when did that happen?
It didn't happen this week.
You know, it happened when they rolled over and they wanted to play with the big guys and they wanted to be involved in NATO.
They wanted to line up the battles and do all this and join the military-industrial complex.
They're still trying to get more involvement.
They want to be made.
They're lining up to set the Ukraine country for manufacturing weapons and things.
The whole thing is, as though, are they really helping themselves?
Are they helping the sovereignty of their country?
Are they helping the Europeans?
Are they damaging Russia as much as they like?
Fortunately, they're not destroying Russia as they attempt to.
They can blow up their pipelines, but it seems like they've been able to recover from that.
But it's a real pity that they all of a sudden are surprised.
How did this happen?
They become a tool.
We don't want to be a tool.
And yet, you know, they are a tool of us, and it's a tool of the empire, which is the independent, you know, that run the deep state and the globalist policies.
That's who's really in charge.
And so, therefore, there are still a lot of good things about what's going on in this country.
And with the people, and we talked about a little bit of it here, but it's something that it's the message and the ability and the right to deliver a message.
And that is where I consider a real serious threat because people are getting threatened if they speak their peace too often like ever.
Well, you know, we are critical of Ukraine's top leadership and the way they always are demanding money.
But at the same time, you can't really just blame Ukraine for the situation because, in fact, they are being used as a tool.
They're being used as a tool by the neocons here and the neocons in the EU for their long-standing fantasy of destroying Russia.
And they're the battlefield.
That's where the blood is flowing.
They're the ones sacrificing themselves for the neocons.
And we heard it yesterday.
Remember when we talked about the Dutch foreign minister who said, well, this is a cheap way to get at Russia.
500,000 people dead is a cheap way?
I mean, talk about life being, I know they have euthanasia and abortion and all sorts of things in the Netherlands, but I guess that's what happens when you start believing that life is cheap.
It's not worth anything.
Yeah, now they're getting skittish because they see the end might not be exactly what they thought.
But there were people around and friends of ours were making the point that this is foolish.
Even if you think it should be done for moral reasons, it's foolish.
It's not going to work.
And I think the failure of it was inevitable from the beginning.
And it's so evident now that even Biden is mincing his words a little bit.
How much can we do?
Because the people will rebel eventually.
And that's why it's part of that first section that we just talked about.
The people have made those dollars going to Ukraine in special funding is so important because that is what led to the changes in Washington.
So That is good, but we have to develop a system.
We have to get them to talk more what I mentioned a minute ago, the difference between interventionism and non-interventionism.
And you can't have balanced, you know, modest approach.
I always get annoyed about this.
You know, if you have an intervention, what you need is cooperation.
You need a balance.
You need to need bipartisanship.
You need to give up something.
Give up half of what you believe in.
So that's the tragedy.
Because if you give up half of what you believe in, that's 100% of the whole process.
Yeah.
Well, I think what's happening is that the tide has now turned.
This is the turning point.
This week is the turning point.
And I think it's because it's now become obvious that this whole operation has been from the very beginning a U.S. neocon operation, starting certainly obviously in 2014, but before that.
This is a U.S. neocon operation, and the ridiculous Europeans have allowed themselves to be drugged along by the nose ring behind the U.S. neocons who've always gotten everything wrong.
Everything they touch turns to garbage.
And I think one of the reasons one of the pieces of evidence of this fact is skip a couple of clips and go to that next politico article about the EU.
This is what makes it very obvious that now even the Europeans are realizing, and here's an article from today, Dr. Paul, EU to U.S., help!
We can't cope without you on Ukraine.
All of a sudden, they're looking around and they're seeing that Washington's, the possibility of support dropping from Washington leaves them holding the bag, as the neocons always do, Dr. Paul.
It's always someone else's fault.
It's never their fault.
And I found this graphic to demonstrate exactly what it means.
We can't cope without you.
Put on that next graphic because this shows how much Project Ukraine is a U.S. neocon operation.
Look at this.
The country sending the most military aid to Ukraine.
Now look at the U.S. on the left.
Now, this is a dated chart, but the proportions are still the same.
The U.S. in billions of dollars, 46.5.
The next closest is the U.K. at five.
So we're talking 10 times as much U.S. money going into Project Ukraine than the next highest supporter.
This is a U.S. neocon project.
And with it being more obvious that the bottom has fallen out of the neocon money train, it looks like the project is dying.
You know, is it overstating it to say this is stupid?
No.
Okay, I think it's stupid.
But then you say, well, why do they do stupid things?
They're gamblers.
Because, and I think one is there's people who are enamored by power and control and empires.
And the money is necessary, but the money is secondary to power.
That's what they feed on.
So there's people who seek empire and power.
And also then there are the people who are much more mercenary and say, well, we have to make a buck.
So there's a money involved.
And that's the motivation.
Freedom's New Dawn00:03:44
But the question we don't ask enough nor try to understand and explain.
Right now we explain why people are sick and tired of it and they're coming our way.
But I always keep asking, why do we have to wait so long?
And yet I've even pointed out that they woke up a little sooner over Ukraine than they did at Vietnam.
Vietnam was much more tragic what was happening, what's happening here.
But it's still, and that's why I think the founders understood the difficulty and the shortcomings of war and all these things.
I don't think they were naïve, but in a way, their efforts didn't solve the problem.
They ended up saying, well, you've got to live in the real world.
And there's times, but we were never really non-interventionists.
But we can afford to be non-interventionist.
If we're so powerful, we are powerful.
But the policies are destined to curtail us.
It's not going to be, you know, getting a few more people in Congress.
I think we should if we can because they have a voice, but that isn't going to do it.
It's going to be when the people say enough is enough.
The people in a way spoke out and allowed foreign policy to become an issue in getting rid of the speaker.
Yes.
And that's why they're so afraid of movements like the Tea Party movement.
They're afraid of these populist movements.
Well, I think we've probably covered it all.
I think maybe it's time to close out now, Dr. Paul, if you're ready.
And I would just do that by thanking our audience, thanking all of our viewers on whatever platform you watch this program.
Of course, we're live on Rumble at this point.
So if you can subscribe, if you can hit like, if you can make some comments, whatever platform you're on, it'll help us grow the show and we appreciate it.
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I have some details in the description about how to get Ron Paul's brand new book, but I'll leave it at that and turn it back over to you, Dr. Paul.
Very good.
And I want to express my deep appreciation to all our viewers for tuning into the Liberty Report.
And we're anxious to meet and hear from as many as possible when we do live streaming.
And at times we have a lot of viewers.
Unfortunately, yesterday our numbers were down a bit, but lightning struck.
It was an act of God that slowed us up.
But it didn't stop us because we got together.
Something is on the website from our program yesterday, but we really did have a bad store.
And, you know, every once in a while I make statements, not purposely thinking I could predict anything, but I said, you know, we've been a drive for eight months here.
I says, wait till it comes.
After about two days of hard rain, we're going to say, when are we going to see the sunshine?
So we're going to see the sunshine in our philosophy and what we believe in.
And we're going to see our sunshine when we realize that monetary reform is required and that there's a real important issue when you talk about devising a government that's motivated by intervention versus non-intervention.
Interventionism has been around for all of history.
Non-intervention is a rather new idea.
And it's something that doesn't mean that we can't have it.
I mean, the whole world is a new idea when you compare to how old the universe is.
So freedom is new in many ways.
And freedom is very popular.
But people get to know what it really is all about.
And that is why we here at the Liberty Report try our best to express what liberty really means and get people to join us.