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Oct. 26, 2023 - Ron Paul Liberty Report
26:52
Speaker Johnson And The DC Meltdown

After weeks of rancor and chaos, the US House finally has a new Speaker, Louisiana Republican Mike Johnson. Conservatives are cheering and Democrats are wailing. But will anything fundamentally change in DC? Also today: Why was Ron Paul in DC during the Speaker vote? We will reveal in today's Report.

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Capitol Hill Ceremony 00:03:07
Hello, everybody, and thank you for tuning in to the Liberty Report.
With us today is that fellow by the name of...
How are you doing, Dr. Paul?
Yeah, very good.
Very good.
And we were just on a long tour up to D.C.
We actually ended up nearly really on a hill.
We went up there for a little ceremony, which my family went with me and you and I and a few others made that trip, which was a fascinating trip with some good people.
One reason why when you brought this to my attention was the fact that it didn't mention the Committee for the Democracy.
It was a committee that's set up for the Republic.
They must be good people.
It turned out that they were.
They didn't declare themselves super libertarians, but they're very libertarian-oriented and they're very interested.
And they had me there mainly because they endorsed the non-interventionist foreign policy.
Yeah.
No, it was a great event.
It was a quick trip.
Tongues were wagging because you rolled into D.C. just as they were voting for a new speaker.
So there were some rumors flying around.
We'll get into that later.
But I'm sure a lot of our listeners and viewers know, especially if they're on social media, that you were given a Defender of Liberty Award from the Committee for the Republic.
And this is an organization we've both known for a long time.
John Henry's a good friend of ours.
He's been to our conferences.
He's helped sponsor our conferences.
And I just put together a few pictures just for fun.
These pictures were actually posted by Senator Paul, who was there at the ceremony and at the dinner.
Let's put that first one up because here you are actually getting your award from John Henry.
This was at the Capitol Hill Club.
The room was absolutely packed.
John Henry told me before the event that people kept calling him, please, can you get some more chairs?
No, it was completely full.
So here you are receiving your Defender of Liberty award.
Only the second politician, John says, who's ever gotten it.
The other was Walter Jones, also very deserving.
But here's a couple of other fun pictures.
This is the reception before the award was presented.
If we can go to the next picture, here's one for the record books.
You've got Senator Mike Lee, Congressman Thomas Massey, Senator Rand Paul, and Dr. Ron Paul hanging out.
Some people are having a drink, having a good time, but it's great to see the four of you guys together.
But they weren't the only ones who dropped in to watch things happen.
If you put on the next one, this is kind of an interesting Vivek Ramaswamy dropped in to say hi.
It looks like you're giving him a good grilling here, Dr. Paul.
You see Senator Paul in the background in case he has to break up the fight.
And Mrs. Paul is keeping a close eye.
So that was quite fun.
You want to let us know what you're talking to Vivek about or just saying a good hello?
Debt and New Administration Challenges 00:15:22
You know, when I saw him, he's been on our program.
And he's savvy to a little bit of kidding and all.
And, you know, he called to be on my program, which we pay attention to because everybody knows him.
But he started off our interview.
He says, well, I'm glad to be here.
But you know, I'm not a libertarian.
But he had identified more strongly a few years back as a libertarian.
He certainly has a lot of libertarian views.
And that's why the non-interventionists and the constitutionalists and all, they think he's doing a very good job.
So I pestered him about that a little bit.
And he just laughed about it all.
So we had a good time there, and it was a nice reception.
I enjoyed that part because I saw some people that I hadn't seen for a while.
Now, Thomas Massey, a good friend, we crossed paths for about, I think he said about 30 or 40 days.
He was coming in.
I think he won a special election.
So he came in, and I was leaving at the end of that year.
So we sort of changed seat.
But Thomas is known for being able to have a self-sufficient farm.
He's off the grid.
And he and his wife are both engineers, both very smart.
And evidently, I've not been to his farm.
Evidently, it's really something.
But he's a gadget guy, too, and he's an inventor.
And he wanted to give me a present.
And I should have brought that with me.
It's only about this big.
And it measures on a regular basis what the debt is.
There's a debt limit going up.
And the reason, the more I thought about that, the neater that is, because I think you can narrow down to if you only have one thing to watch and you were given the debt growth, it could give you a pretty good idea about the dangers we're facing.
And, you know, just like now, you know, they're after spending more money, but they had $600 billion this year.
So the debt tells us a whole lot, and it also tells us on what the new administration and the new speaker has to face because this whole idea, you know, it all of a sudden, I think there was a total fatigue over the people were fatigued with all this fussing and fuming.
And I was sort of fatigued with it, not so much that there was no interest, but the fact that what they were doing wasn't, you know, doesn't result in too much.
Sometimes, you know, when there's coalitions and coming together and sounds great, I think the problems we face are so overwhelming that coming together might well be that they're going to conspire to spend more money.
That's my big concern.
That's the moderate position.
Yeah.
But speaking of this gift, let's put this next tweet out.
This is a tweet from Thomas Massey from the event.
It's a picture of him giving you the gift.
I don't think you've seen this one before, if you can put that next.
Yeah, it's a great picture.
So here he is giving you this debt debt calculator.
It says, Ron Paul for Speaker, he's in Washington, D.C. tonight.
So I met up with him and gave him a debt badge.
I wish we had elected him president.
And what's funny now, he's kind of threatening here, Ron Paul for speaker.
Go to this next clip because he tweeted this right afterward.
This is pretty great.
This is on the way.
House Republican Conference ballot 170.
Name Ron Paul.
So he actually did nominate you for speaker, Dr. Paul.
You came close.
You came close.
It's getting pretty silly.
Then I got to thinking, boy, what if some real accident happened?
What would you do?
But I still see some of the problems insurmountable unless the people's attitudes change.
Until the people's desire to have an appetite for government.
This appetite for government, which is the special interest.
And that starts way down low and goes up real high.
And yet the real irony is there's no money there.
And yet it continues.
And I think even the new speaker, I'm optimistic and like the idea, but it turns out that his first move wasn't overly encouraging that they're going to tackle the debt.
Yeah.
Yeah, it's interesting.
I forget who said it the night, well, your presentation.
I think you talked for about an hour, you and John, back and forth, and it was a fascinating discussion.
Maybe it was John was talking about how traditionally the speaker didn't have the kind of power that he or she has now.
It was more devolved to committees and members, and you had regular order.
So hopefully it would be nice to have a return to that.
But we do have a new speaker, Mike Johnson from Louisiana, considered a very conservative member, very religious member of Congress.
And I think that's freaked a lot of people out.
A young guy.
I think he's something like 36, not a lot of experience, which could be a good thing.
Let's put this next clip up.
Here's just a couple of things about him, some of what his supporters are saying and some of his detractors.
Now, this is Benny Johnson.
I think he's a right-wing commentator.
He says, we have a speaker who is Mike Johnson in Louisiana.
He's America first in MAGA.
And I think as an aside, I think he was on the team defending Trump on impeachment.
So he's definitely a Trump ally.
And I think you've got something interesting to say about that, too.
An ally of the House Freedom Caucus.
His mentor is Jim Jordan.
He served as legal defense for Trump during both impeachment trials.
He voted against all Ukraine spending after the initial bill.
He has an F rating from Republicans for Ukraine.
That's a good F. He's a good F.
He objected to certifying the 2020 election fraud.
And he called to arrest Pelosi after she tore up the State of the Union.
And Benny Johnson continues by saying, it's time for we the people to take back our house.
So they're still going to be serious and they will deal with it.
But it is still better if during this period of transition, at least having a little bit more laughing and kidding about it.
But it is so serious.
That's a big problem we have.
But it didn't take long.
You know, right before this vote came up, I discovered that the day before, another congressman had been ahead of Johnson.
And it looked like he was up, but he backed out, but he was not supported by Trump.
And Trump, Trump was strongly supporting Johnson.
So I think it's one of the people who won on this thing.
Nobody's talked about it, especially on the major media.
But I'll bet the Trump people are feeling pretty good about this.
Because he was out in front with this and supported him.
So that's a very interesting thing, I believe.
And McCarthy's been very wishy-washy on Trump, sometimes supporting, sometimes opposing.
So, I mean, I think that's an interesting point that you make.
And I wonder if it signifies the Republican caucus coming together and kind of rallying around who's going to be the obvious, the obvious candidate is Trump.
Yeah, and there'll be all kinds.
People will really believe exactly what they're saying about it and the support.
And then there's also a little bit of pragmatism in politics.
Oh, what does my district say?
Which is okay.
This is a good thing to analyze.
Well, what if they go back and they challenge and some of those members of the Republican caucus who really went ahead of Trump didn't stay in Congress either.
So I think that they're going to weigh that.
And he has a lot of momentum.
And yet if we wanted to spend time just picking at the details that Trump supports, we could find a few.
And it would be frustrating.
But when you look at where the contest is between Biden and Trump, you know, it's a heavy burden to try to say, this guy is really the good guy, and he's right on everything.
It's impossible.
We'd rather have Thomas Massey in that argument.
That would be a good idea.
Well, let's look at a couple more reactions with this next one on.
Now, I don't know this person who tweeted.
It's just interesting.
I think it's a journalist, a conservative journalist.
Breaking Mike Johnson has officially been elected.
Speaker, Mike has pledged to release the January 6th footage promptly, kill the omnibus spending bills, and his hated by leftist rep Adam Schiff.
And then he goes on by saying, thank you, Representative Matt Gates, for making this happen.
And I think that's also interesting because this really, I think Matt Gates' capital has risen significantly.
Now, he was really kind of the donkey for a while because you got rid of McCarthy without a plan.
And I think Massey made that point, and it was a legitimate point.
But I think now he has recovered bringing in Johnson, who Massey has supported as well.
But, you know, we look at this.
He said, we should, especially under the circumstances of getting a new speaker, and we don't want it too hard.
But I can't help but thinking, well, what was the first thing?
They had a bill already, and they passed it overwhelmingly.
And they didn't even read it.
They didn't have it printed out.
So that's still, that problem is still existing.
And it had to do.
And that reminded me about Trump, his supporter.
And we're back and forth on him.
But Trump made a trip shortly after he was elected president.
He traveled to quite a few countries.
But the big deal was there were two very important countries that he visited the first trip out of the country.
And the first resolution is related directly or maybe directly.
Yeah.
Well, we're going to put that up.
But I just want to show one other reaction.
I'm not sure about Johnson.
I'm sure, like you say, he's going to be a mixed bag.
However, Bill Crystal, whenever he's upset, I get happy.
Let's put up Bill.
So he quotes Mike Johnson.
Mike Johnson says, and to ensure that our Republic remains standing as a great beacon of hope and light and freedom in a world that desperately needs it.
And Crystal says, says the guy who refused aid to Ukraine three months after Putin's invasion and every vote thereafter.
So Crystal is very upset.
Well, let's go to what you're talking about, Dr. Paul, because there was some business on the House floor yesterday.
Let's go to this next one.
This is from Johnson's initial speech as the Speaker of the House.
He says, we've got to bring relief to the American people by reining in federal spending and bringing down inflation, which sounds good until you look at the next quote.
If you want to put the next one up, then he says, so you've got to, it gives relief to the American people.
Then he says, the first bill I'm going to bring to the floor will be in support of our dear friend Israel.
So the very first thing he does, before anything else, to give any relief to Americans from spending and anything else, is to put out a bill on Israel that, as you point out, no one had a chance to read really.
We weren't able to see it until this morning.
And, you know, in the bill that Biden has proposed, there's $14 billion already.
And, you know, with this resolution and the consensus, there will be more money.
I mean, even without any of this activity, but the law of the land is laid out there.
So the money will be spent.
And that's why my pessimism creeps in.
And I think justifiably, are they really going to cut anything?
And that is the big problem.
And They never want to accept the fact that, well, we should take this opportunity.
You know, there's too many people that want money, and we're supplying money to both sides.
We've sent money to the Palestinians and to Israel.
Well, if we're running out of money, oh, we have to cut this.
Oh, no, we have to cut this because these are the bad people, these are the good people.
And what's the matter with not going along with the Constitution?
Where is the authority to have foreign aid?
Yeah, you know, cut them both.
But that's not quite there.
But that's where it has to happen, though, eventually, because we are bankrupt, and the bankruptcy will probably come where they won't quit printing, but the elimination of the debt will occur through the inflation.
So, unfortunately, but we do want to talk more about the positive things of this.
And I think the country feels better.
I think the country, as I said, the Congress and everybody else, they were fatigued.
And I think a lot of the people finally threw in the tile because people are sick and tired of it.
It's sort of like, how do some of these wars finally end?
They go on 10, 15 years, and it might be just between two countries.
And they fight and fight and fight.
And then they quit because they just get totally fatigued.
Let's take a rest.
They take a rest for 10 or 15 years and then they're back at it again.
Yeah.
Well, it's like you said when we were up in D.C. to the audience, you know, we haven't had a speaker for a couple weeks and nobody's even noticed.
So it's only the Washington class that says that.
But so on this Israel bill, I bet Thomas Massey wishes that he had you back and Walter and Jimmy Duncan back up there, Virgil Good and a few others to be around him because he was the only no vote on this bill on the Republican side, which can be very dangerous.
There's a lot of strong support for Israel in Congress, not so much among the American people as we talked about last or earlier this week, but nevertheless, it really puts a target on his back.
But wisely, he came out with a good statement on this.
If you can put on this next clip, this is a tweet that Massey put out when he voted no.
And I'm going to read some of it, a good deal of it, because it's good.
He starts out by saying, I condemn the barbaric attack on Israel, and I affirm Israel's right to defend itself.
However, I will not be voting for the resolution because, and this is true, this is the last three resolved clauses, by the way.
And he talks about: one, it calls for sanctions on a sovereign country.
Sanctions are a prelude to war and hurt the citizens of the country more than the government of the country that's being sanctioned.
Ultimately, sanctions create laws that will be used to prosecute American citizens who engage in trade, not citizens of the sanctioned entity.
In short, sanctions do not achieve their stated purpose but breed resentment of our country abroad.
Great point.
Number two, he says it asserts the necessity of foreign aid commitments, which I have voted against.
Our country is going bankrupt, and we can't afford to borrow money to send overseas.
Yet this resolution states that we should.
And go to the next one.
If you'll just bear with me, Dr. Paul, because it's worth reading what he says.
Politicians and Separate Votes 00:06:08
Number three, it contains an open-ended promise of military support that is so broad that it could be interpreted to commit U.S. soldiers to the conflict.
U.S. troops should not be engaged in this conflict.
And four, it tends to broaden the conflict to other countries when it would be better to keep the war contained geographically.
Here's a link, et cetera, et cetera.
And he captures a lot of things that you recognized when you were there.
When you have this expression of support, which is fine, oh, we support Israel, da-da-da-da-da.
But then you sneak in at the end, all of this stuff about, hey, you know, maybe we'll send some troops.
Be careful with the title and look to the last line, the bottom line.
Exactly.
The bottom line.
Yeah, there it is.
You know, this idea, the way the people who want to send a lot more money to Israel, they defend it by grabbing, and they've been able to, grabbing the moral high ground.
And it's sort of like, you know, in Ukraine, it's all Russia.
Russia did the invasion.
They're all falling Ukrainians and NATO had nothing to do or they didn't contribute to the problem.
But they start off by saying Israel has a right to defend itself.
You know, Thomas pointed that out.
Yes, they have a right to defend itself.
But what they imply without saying it, but that statement is the Palestinians do not have a right to defend themselves.
That's what it said.
It's sort of like Black Lives Ladder.
Black Lives Latter means white people don't have a right to defend themselves.
White Lives Matter too.
And then you say that and you're some type of a criminal.
You have to go to speech therapy about politicians in some prison, someplace.
Yeah.
Well, that's a problem when you can't separate the civilian population from the fighters.
That's propaganda has a lot to do with that.
Anyway, I think, you know, Massey had a great statement.
I think it reminded me of some statements from you in those days where you had to sift through kind of a minefield and really come out on top.
And I think he did.
I think he did an absolutely terrific job on that.
So I think the final thing we're talking about is the question of now with a House Speaker, everyone is happy because that means they can move these two aid bills or the one aid bill, the $106 billion that the president has asked for.
And there's a lot of action now in Congress about separating those two bills.
And in fact, a group of Senate Republicans have said, have sent a letter saying we need to separate the funding for these two bills.
You know, I think that is good because that's going to sort of deal with the problem that I see, and we'll have to wait and see what will happen.
Because when they separate it, they're going to vote for money for this country or this country.
They can't say, well, the people in the country are divided.
You know, different political functions.
So we put it together and we compromise by sacrificing half of what we believe in.
They sacrifice a principle.
So that's that's but when you separate it, you get to vote for it.
But too often what happens is they bring people together.
The basic compromise, and there will always have to be because they're broke and they have to come up with some gimmick to bring votes over.
And even if technically they're separated, that maybe they'll get together at the conference.
They were doing that back when I was there 30 years ago.
They say, Ron, don't worry about that.
We know how to take care of that in a conference.
Yeah, exactly.
Or in a rules committee.
They always had ways of pretending that they support it.
So that's just what they have done.
It's just too bad that they continue to spend it.
But the pressure is on them to spend.
And I think that the separation would be very good.
You know, the people understand that issue.
And I think, you know, voters like that idea because they want an up and down vote.
But it's the politicians that don't want to do it.
But so many of them don't start from a basic principle.
Because I think generally what has happened and maybe still happen because I don't think they'll get rid of it right away is if somebody takes one position and it's completely different and I have another position and they say, well, you could see this and you concede that.
Think it's the worst thing to do because it's brought together by giving up your beliefs.
And I often thought about that when I worked with Dennis Kucinich.
We had different opinions on things, but if we both the things we came together on, whether it was on civil liberties or on a war issue, we didn't have to give up anything.
But if you said, all right, I'm working with a Democrat on foreign policy, what we have to do is work with them on tax policy.
Oh, you want to raise taxes $200 billion?
Oh, okay, if you erase them only $100 billion, then I'll vote for it.
That kind of stuff.
That's not good.
Well, I don't think we should have any illusions that both bills will not pass.
I think even if you separate them, there aren't enough Republicans opposed to Ukraine spending, and very few people are going to be opposed to Israel spending.
You're going to have a few on the Democrat side, the squad types and what have you.
But there's no illusion that we were going to win this vote.
But like you say, by separating, people are going to be on record.
You can't hide behind the Israel vote to vote for Ukraine.
So I think you're right.
I think it is a good move.
So, well, I think we're about ready to close out.
We need to get some sleep.
We were flying around and our wings are tired.
So I want to thank all of our viewers.
Thank you for being patient.
Well, we slipped in a couple of best of programs over the week while we weren't here in town.
We're glad that you're back with us and watching the show.
Convert People to Liberty 00:01:44
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Over to you, Dr. Paul.
Very good.
And I want to thank our viewers for tuning in today.
And we're glad to be back here on our usual seats here and doing our little program.
And as I mentioned earlier, I got more interested in going there when Daniel explained to me, this is the committee for the republic.
They want to, you know, preserve the republic.
And that is a big issue because the holy word that you use by politicians incessantly is, we're going to go to war to the world.
We have an empire.
We're going to spend whatever it is to spread democracy.
And if you really look at true democracy, it's one thing that the founders despised and they tried to write the Constitution to try to prevent the dictatorship of the majority.
It befuddles me why people who come from the left are so adamant on pure democracy and will never look to the Republic.
And I said to him, well, you know, under a democracy, all you have to do is get 51%.
You can do anything you want to the minority.
And right now, the people who want special benefits, they're in the majority.
And those of us who are in the minority and we believe in liberty in the Constitution, it's a rough job.
So we have to convert people once again to pay attention to our traditions and what it would be like if we did have a true republic and that we were voting to protect liberty.
Then I believe that we would be on the road to peace and prosperity, and that is our goal.
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