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Oct. 30, 2023 - Ron Paul Liberty Report
31:27
Hold Your Wallets! New Speaker's Ukraine Aid Views 'Evolving!'

Here they go again! New US Speaker of the House Mike Johnson was chosen to replace a Speaker McCarthy over McCarthy's determination to continue dumping billions into Ukraine. Not one week into his Speakership, however, Johnson's views have "evolved" and now he favors more money to Ukraine...and a war in the Middle East!

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Time Text
Evolving Ukraine Conflict 00:14:42
Hello, everybody, and thank you for tuning into the Liberty Report.
With us today, Daniel McAdams, our co-host.
Daniel, good to see you.
New week.
Happy Monday, Dr. Paul.
Yes, and I guess there's a lot of unhappy people in the Middle East and around the world, and we have to talk about what's happening because we don't see any rosy scenario in a short period of time.
But I would argue that it's not brand new.
You know, there's been a lot of fighting, killing, and even just in the last century was a pretty bloody century.
But anyway, we will deal with that.
But there's a lot of excitement now.
Didn't talk about the specifics of the Middle East in the last several weeks because we had to have a speaker.
We had to have a leader to tell us what to do and where to go.
And that has been resolved.
And it seems like there has to have been some pretty good work behind the scenes because there was no big fight.
And it looks like liberal Democrats went along with it.
And I guess some Republicans had a resistance, but they had to go along with it too.
I think they had the exhaustion and they had to do something.
But there was hopes.
We certainly wanted good things to happen.
And we realized that the new speaker, you know, at times didn't like the idea of wasting all that money in Ukraine.
And we thought, well, this is going to be a little different.
But now, how long has he been speaker?
About a week.
And he says in his interview, he said that, well, well, on this issue, I've evolved a little bit.
There's a little bit of evolving.
You know, I think the word evolving can be used either way because I think it's more likely to be used evolving into something wonderful and good.
But evolving really just is changing things.
So you can evolve going in the other direction.
But I think it was meant to be this, but others are saying, well, maybe it is evolving.
It is changing.
And the high hopes that we would definitely have a different foreign policy would make a difference.
Now, what we've heard this past week, we're starting to ask questions about exactly what we're going to get.
But it's a big deal trying to figure out my thoughts when I was listening to this, evolving it, and why is he changing?
Who sends out the directives?
Have you ever thought about it?
You know, we're going to be talking about several things going on, and Biden may or may not have expressed an opinion.
But I think more and more, and I don't think this is an astounding statement, more and more I get to thinking, I don't even know if he knows about it.
I think there are announcements and certain things happen.
And at least he doesn't give you the impression that he has control of the thing.
No, the speaker, we had high hopes, but right now we will have to watch carefully.
But I think to exist in that place up there called D.C., it's a good place to come and visit and say hello, have dinner and leave.
Yeah, and leave.
But anyway, he has signed, there are changes, and some of it hints that he's drifting away from a non-interventionist foreign policy.
Not that he ever claimed that he was a non-interventionist.
Yeah, but I think he followed with the more populist conservative wing in opposing we've already spent $150 billion in Ukraine.
Well, here's the article we're talking about.
This is from Politico.
And it's not just this article.
It's a couple of other things we have.
But they write, Speaker Johnson's Ukraine views have been, quote, evolving.
And this is a cautionary tale for what happens when you get power in D.C. Go to the next clip.
This is Johnson before being Speaker from the same article.
Johnson's voting record doesn't bode well for Ukraine.
He received an F on the Republican for Ukraine Advocacy Group's report card and has argued that there is insufficient oversize.
Last year, he voted against sending Kiev a $40 billion package saying it'd be better spent on priorities at home.
Pre-Speaker Johnson, no way, Jose, money for Ukraine.
Now that he's Speaker, go to the next one.
Asked whether he supports more assistance to Ukraine on Wednesday.
He was surprisingly clear.
We all do.
We're going to have conditions on that.
So we're working through, he said.
We want accountability and we want objectives that are clear from the White House.
So we all support it.
And he went on Hannity to expound a little bit on his views on Ukraine and Russia.
And they're surprisingly mainstream neocon, Dr. Paul.
I'll go back one, actually.
We don't need that one right now.
We want to do the clip, the video clip of him on Hannity.
I think we want to do that.
You might want to grab your earpiece, Dr. Paul.
Do hang on just one second to get plugged in.
Do those first 50 seconds to hear a little bit about what Mike Johnson really thinks about foreign policy.
Now, we can't allow Vladimir Putin to prevail in Ukraine because I don't believe it would stop there.
And it would probably encourage and empower China to perhaps make a move on Taiwan.
We have these concerns.
We're not going to abandon them.
We want to be cooperative.
We need to work together on this.
But we owe it to the people to know what the plan is, where the money is going to be spent.
And we need some auditing for the dollars that we've already sent over there.
These are not tough questions, right?
The one thing that House Republicans are resolved on is that we must stand with our most important ally in the Middle East, and that's Israel.
We will.
We certainly hope that it doesn't come to boots on the ground.
If it comes to that, and we communicated this to the White House staff as well today, that we have the Article 1 power in the legislative branch of government, and they have Article 2 very limited authority on it.
Let's stay on with that.
Go back to the tweet itself.
There's a couple of interesting things.
Just go on to it without what they can do to respond without.
The person who posted it had some, that was Michael Tracy.
If we can just go back to it, he made some good points.
No, go back to the video one without playing the video, if we can do that.
Yeah.
The link.
Yeah.
Okay, here he is, Michael Tracy.
I think he's a very astute.
Yeah, just pause that.
He makes a good point.
So Mike Johnson, the new Speaker of the House, tells Sean Hannity, we can't allow Putin to prevail in Ukraine.
U.S. boots on the ground may be required to stand with Israel.
He supports Israel directly attacking Iran, and he calls Russia, China, and Iran the new axis of evil.
So he is literally, Dr. Paul, a carbon copy of the Bush-era neocons.
Mike Cernovich, who is a very well-known conservative Republican commentator, he tweeted this after watching this Hannity segment.
And it's kind of interesting because the reason why this is interesting, I think, is Dr. Paul, because we have to give credit to Thomas Massey, who says, you know what? McCarthy, for as bad as he is, getting rid of him may not be a good idea.
Here's what Cernovich said.
Republicans traded its greatest fundraiser in decades for an end-times-obsessed evangelical who believes a large Middle Eastern war is what will usher in the return of Christ.
Great stuff, guys.
There's Cernovich.
There are people on the right who don't like this stuff.
So, anyway, sorry for the long intro, but the point is that unfortunately, as Tom Woods says, no matter who you vote for, you always get John McCain.
And it looks like we get John McCain.
Yeah, you know, there's a dramatic change in attitude and tune about this boot stuff.
Good.
And we have some other information we'll talk about that we're always on the ground.
You know, we have CIA agents and special forces.
And, you know, our outposts are already pretty close here, you know, right up in Syria and Iraq.
You know, there was a time when we thought we left Iraq.
The war was lost and then we left.
No, no, we're still there.
So the boots are on the ground, but what they're really talking about is where the rifles are being carried and the people who are being killed are Americans.
And fortunately, you know, people still despise that, but it's still so hypocritical.
Yeah, remember when the war broke out and there were some that were making fun of, you know, this war is going to go, it's going to go badly until enough Ukrainians are killed, and then they'll have to stop.
But this is not a good sign when the new speaker seems to have blended in.
The American people want change.
This is not a change.
It's almost like, you know, I was trying to get the definition of evolving.
Maybe there's nothing evolving.
Maybe you imply there's no change.
Yeah, I think it was chilling when he said, hey, you know, I communicated with the White House.
If we need U.S. boots on the ground in Israel, we've got Article 1, Article 2 powers.
We can sort it out.
Rather than saying, listen, you better come to Congress, let us know what your plan is, what is your end game, what's the goal, what are the resources that we need you to make this declaration, we need the authorization.
No, it's, hey, don't worry.
It's just like in the Bush era.
Just ask us, Mr. President, wink, wink.
We'll get you whatever you want.
Never did he say that we have a constitutional obligation to defend ourselves in this country.
They think that.
They say, he killed an American over in Syria.
So therefore, what are we doing there?
And so few people ask that question.
But fortunately, more people are asking the question.
And we'll encourage people to keep asking the question because the popular attitude toward pumping more money into Ukraine has seems to prevail.
And most Americans now don't see any good of it, even though some in there are saying, yeah, we need it for Taiwan, something else.
Well, Speaker Johnson here shows his ignorance.
And it's dangerous to have someone so ignorant being so warmongerish.
He's encouraging Israel to attack Iran.
He literally says that in this interview with Hannity.
Well, in that case, I don't think you can put aside the very strong possibility that Russia would intervene to assist its ally, Iran, because if Israel successfully defeats Iran, it will take out Assad in Syria and it will take out a Russian military base in Syria.
So essentially what he is literally arguing for is World War III.
Rather than saying, guys, let's back down.
Let's find a peaceful way out of this.
There's still time for us to stop the killing.
He's saying, no, we need to ramp up the killing.
Come on, Israel.
Attack Iran.
That's what we want them to do.
He's literally cheering on for World War III.
It's not a joke.
And sometimes, you know, the plans they have or the strategy, it goes haywire, and you don't know what will happen.
How quickly did this whole invasion occur?
Not too many people were predicting that, even the Israelis, unless there was a strategy there, too.
Yeah, some words are.
Well, back down on planet Earth, we don't have a theocracy despite the efforts of some.
Thomas Massey, who we've already praised as being right on overturning the speaker, and I admit that I was wrong.
I thought it was kind of cool to overturn McCarthy because I don't like him.
Turns out Massey was right.
He put out a little Twitter X survey.
He got 50,000 votes, not bad.
But he asked the question, Biden's proposed foreign age package would send billions of dollars to Ukraine and Israel.
Congress would have to borrow or tax another $100 billion to send the money overseas.
Do you believe this money should go to, and first he says Ukraine and Israel, only 14%, only Israel, 17%, only Ukraine, 4%, or neither country, 63.2%?
Obviously, not a scientific survey, but I have to believe, Dr. Paul, this is where the majority of the American people are.
They do not want to have $100 billion sucked out of their pockets to be sent, not even sent overseas, but sent across town to Lockheed Barton and Raytheon to build more weapons.
Well, it looks like there's a new record from Gallup.
Democrats' rating of Biden slips to 37%.
Is that a record or not?
Close to having a record.
Oh, sorry, go ahead.
No, I was just suggesting that can it go lower?
Can it go lower?
Probably.
Well, here's the thing we were talking about a second ago: the idea that President Bush became a wartime president, his approval rate was 92%.
So I think Biden was hoping for some of that.
And Max Blumenthal commented on this new Gallup poll.
If we can put the next clip up, Max, you know, spoke at our conference over the summer.
He really is a great friend of civil liberties and peace.
He commented on the new poll.
Joe Biden's approval rating among Democrats has dropped by 11 points since he gave the green light on Israel's rampage against Gaza and blocked a successful ceasefire resolution, bringing him to his lowest point yet.
So this is important.
It's not among all Americans, Dr. Paul.
It's among Democrats.
Democrats' approval has dropped 11 points.
And I think a lot of what we're seeing here is that Biden has a huge block of voters who are liberal Democratic Jews.
And they, by and large, they're probably a lot more with us when it comes to civil liberties and civil rights.
A lot of them, well, they were arrested in the Capitol.
Remember last week we talked about it, protesting against this overwhelming destruction of Gaza.
So I think he is losing a lot of the liberal Jewish voters that are kind of that core of the Democratic Party.
U.S. Troop Engagements 00:12:27
And you say, well, where would they go?
They're not going to go to the Speaker of the House.
But they may stay home.
You know, they may stay home.
I wonder if this will turn into an election like 1972, I think McGovern was running, and it just snowballed, you know.
And he won one state.
You know, similar, there was a questionable person that was running as a Republican, too.
So he was running against Nixon.
And then he ends up with that.
So that remains to be seen, but we're going to find out soon within the year, but you're going to have this whole thing because there's going to be a lot of anger and I worry about what happened.
What if the insane people up there were able to keep Trump off a ballot?
Yeah.
You know, and you know, with the judicial system not owned by justice, you know, influenced by justice, something crazy like that could happen.
That could elicit a, that would be a big thing.
So, you know, the economic calamities that happen usually end up to class struggles, immigration problems, and then war.
You know, they have this still this belief that goes around that war gets you out of depressions.
Yeah.
You know, which is crazy because there's so much evidence that makes a depression worse, not getting out of it.
And it takes a long time to recover from depression and war.
And if the policies don't change, that's what we'll end up with.
And it's clear that that's what both parties are gunning for in D.C. You know, the people don't want it.
This is like the, remember the Hermann Goering quote, people don't want war.
All we have to do is bombard them with propaganda and they'll, you know, have that famous quote, but the people don't want it.
But you've got two carrier groups in the eastern Mediterranean who are ready to strike.
You've got untold thousands of U.S. troops there.
Now, according to Colonel McGregor, our good friend, who has a lot of great sources still in the military, he said that U.S. Special Forces were involved with Israeli troops when they first made that incursion into Gaza a few days ago, and he used the word chewed up.
They tried to go in there and were chewed up.
So we don't know how many Americans may have died, but we know that there are some participants.
You said it earlier when you said about CIA being there and Special Office being there.
So we know that we've got all these assets, unprecedented number of assets, two carrier groups there.
So we know that we're going to get involved unless someone puts the brakes on.
And let's put this next clip up because not only that, but thanks to anti-war.com, who linked to a piece in the intercept, the U.S. is quietly expanding a secret military base in Israel.
I didn't know this, Dr. Paul.
I didn't know it.
You know, the information is out there.
We can't find every single bit.
But there's so much that's out there.
It's available, but it doesn't register with the people that has any significance.
You know, a secret base.
He said, in some parts, well, we have them all over the place, but we don't pay any attention to them, so it doesn't register.
This one happens to be in a place where with a change, and I don't know whether ambivalent is the proper word for our leadership right now, changing their minds on that and becoming more aggressive and alluding to the fact that it was time to back off on some of this militarism.
But I think this is a serious thing, this move, because quietly usually means that somebody will hear about it and may, see, they probably figured the people won't find out.
But maybe the enemies will and think differently about this.
But I don't think they're going to scare off the Iranians very easily, you know, by us building a base there.
It might stir them up more.
Yeah.
Well, here's a little bit from that intercept article, if we can put that next clip on.
Two months before Hamas attacked Israel, the Pentagon awarded a multi-billion dollar, multi-million, sorry, not billions yet, a multi-million dollar contract to build U.S. troop facilities for a secret base it maintains deep within Israel's desert, just 20 miles from Gaza.
Code named Site 512, the long-standing U.S. base is a radar facility that monitors the skies for missile attacks on Israel.
Well, they didn't do too well that day, but anyway, go to the next one.
So they were there.
They've been there.
It's a secret thing.
Not so secret now.
And it says, though President Joe Biden said in the White House, it says there are no plans to send U.S. troops to Israel amid its war on Hamas.
A secret U.S. military presence in Israel already exists, and the government contracts and budget documents show it's evidently growing.
So we're talking about $35.8 million more dollars for the troop facility.
They're going to, I think they're going to build more barracks there.
Though the DOD has taken pains to obscure the site's true nature, describing it as a classified worldwide project, budget documents reviewed by the Intercept reveal that it is part of Site 512.
Expanding the base there in Israel.
Pretty soon that 35.8 million will turn into billions.
You were predicting the future when you said billions.
It'll be there.
Keep the thoughts and just take them out again.
I'll say, yeah, billions of dollars.
What a waste, except real wealth will be destroyed.
And they cannot maintain it.
And they cannot maintain peace with more war.
And this is what we're facing.
And wouldn't you say that those years of the attack on Iraq, wouldn't you say that was related a little bit to what happened in 2008, the financial collapse?
Oh, yeah.
Especially because the military-industrial complex are going to come and say, you know, even Kennedy used that.
I remember that election back in 1960, it was.
Missile gap, missile gap.
It was every time.
Well, he became more peace-oriented, but that is not.
But it's always used.
So I'm sure at this time, that's what they did.
They say, we need to, they say that's, you know, I think, you know, Trump did the same thing.
We need to rebuild the military.
Well, where'd it go?
You know, we need to, oh, you mean those little wars?
We're just testing the weapons.
And, you know, that is true, too.
Hillary was top dog when we got to ourselves.
How are we going to know how we're going to conquer the world if we don't test our weapons?
Yeah, well, Israel's testing some for us, too, and it's an ocean of blood over there.
Well, you know, this is the same theme, I guess, for our third story, and they're all very much related.
If you can put that next one on, Dave DeCamp wrote this up on anti-war.
And we've talked about this, but attacks on U.S. bases in Iraq and Syria continue after U.S. airstrikes.
So we have, as we said last week, we occupy a third of Syria.
We don't, but Washington does.
A third of Syria still have a lot of troops in Iraq.
People would say, why?
And they'd say, well, because they're shooting us.
We have to stay there.
So there's this pattern of the U.S. having a military strike on some of these bases and then strikes from different assets in the region against U.S. military bases, which leads to more strikes on the groups and over and over again.
So there you go.
But it is ramping up.
It's heating up.
You know, sometimes I watch a lot of the business news.
Sometimes you think the business people are more less partisan and less into the foreign policy.
But so often I hear the comments, the Americans were attacked and American was killed.
Here we are 7,000 miles away putting sanctions on countries and then all of a sudden they're attacking us.
Well how far did we have to go to make it available where they could attack it?
Oh 7,000 miles, that's all.
But the whole concept that we have to be there, you know, it's this fanaticism that goes along with empire.
It never stops.
Sometimes it's money, sometimes it's power.
But most of the time I think it's power because some of the people who run the show have a lot of money.
But eventually since it's all fake, there is a liquidation and a correction.
But it's so painful.
That is the problem.
And what gets me is it's all preventable.
You know, bad policy does this.
And most of the time, it's government behind the scenes and the people being careless and lackadaisical and not paying attention because as long as they get their food stamps, the big guys and the little guys, more the big guys, you know, oh, as long as we get to spend money, they don't lament these setbacks.
Oh, more weapons to build.
It's a tragedy.
You know, I remember very clearly, you know, the lead up to the Second Iraq War in 2003.
You know, and I mean, it was this sort of feeling of powerlessness, that something really terrible was about to happen.
And we had no allies.
There was no one there to stop it.
And there really is that same feeling, that same kind of sick feeling, you know, in your stomach.
But the reality is that as terrible as that war was, certainly for the Iraqis, a half a million, a million dead, but we lost how many thousands of Americans.
Well, Iran in 2023 is nowhere near Iraq in 2003.
It's a different world, different weapons.
We've seen Iranian weapons being used by the Russians.
This is going to be a different kind of war if that's what the U.S. does.
And if that's the case, we're going to see thousands of Americans dead.
And you almost feel like they're not going to wake up out of this spell.
Somehow they're in a trance.
And they won't wake up out of this spell until, whoa, how did that happen?
10,000, 20,000 Americans dead?
Maybe this won't happen.
Hopefully it doesn't happen.
But the fact that somebody's talking about Erdogan threatens to declare war and send military to Gaza, you know, that scares me.
Because if they decide to do that, but it might just be one of those strategies, try to head things off or who knows what.
But a lot of times that strategy and those threats can backfire on them, even if they do it.
Unintended consequences, who knows what will happen.
But this was something I think just came out recently.
Yeah, well, he spoke at a big pro-Palestinian rally in Turkey.
And he's playing, he's got to be careful because he's been playing footsie with Israel for a long time on the one hand, but he has this massive population.
I mean, Turkey is the Sunni capital of the region.
You think of Saudi and what have you, no, it's Turkey.
And they're strongly, you know, they have a huge military and they have a huge, and Erdogan himself is a populist.
His appeal is among populist, among Muslims, religious Muslims.
So he's got to go in front of this big rally and play the tough guy, which is what he did.
So the question is, I think if he really does mean it, it will be a very, very different situation if he brings the force of Turkey.
Well, that would mean he's, I mean, what's that going to do to his relationship with NATO?
Someone else said, we have nuclear weapons in Turkey.
What would happen if Turkey turned against us on the Gaza War?
That would be weird.
And so there's a lot of things, but I think a lot of people who watch Erdogan closely think he's bluffing and he's playing to his base.
But it's a heck of a gamble.
And Turkey just happens to have been the place where we had missiles that precipitated the Cuban crisis because we were putting our nukes on the border of Russia and they said, well, why can't we put them on the borders of the United States?
And of course, things, both sides backed away.
Yeah, well, it's a terrifying time.
Signed Copies for Support 00:02:45
But there is some good news.
If we can put on that last clip, Monday morning, let's remind you that Dr. Paul is signing books for you.
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We've been around for 10 years.
Nobody thought we'd last a year.
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We do the Ron Paul Liberty Report every day, of course, and we sustain a studio here in Lake Jackson.
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We can do all of this and more.
We can raise a new generation of pro-peace Americans, but we can't do it without your help and your support.
So our thank you to you for this support in our fall fundraiser is a signed copy of Dr. Paul's new book as a gift for your donation.
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We were on a plane going to DC last week, and I noticed your son who was with us was reading your book.
He and his wife were reading it and commenting on it.
Couldn't wait to get to the end.
And then toward the end, Peggy said, I got it.
I finished it.
I know.
So they were enjoying it too, and that made me happy for having a little bit of a part in it.
I'm sure it made you happy as well.
And what pleased me a lot was the pilot wanted a copy.
He wanted a copy too.
That's right.
And I talked with him because I identified with pilots and having been in the Air Force and that sort of thing.
But I think that is true about pilots.
They're very independent, libertarian-minded.
And I've got into conversation with some of them on that because a pilot is somebody that's responsible and it's on their own.
And that's why many of them are very conservative or libertarian.
So I'm always pleased to check out the pilots.
Good job.
And also check up on their landings.
I'm all done doing that.
Okay, very good.
And I want to thank all our viewers today for tuning in.
I know the message is not all up, everything positive and exciting, and everything's going to be all right.
But I always find that when I spoke at the college campuses, I would, you know, lay it out as I saw it.
And it was never, it's rosy, tomorrow is perfect.
And you don't have to worry.
We're going to pay for your school and we're going to send your food stamp and all this.
But I told them the truth and I thought it was rather depressing to talk about that.
But I always finished at the last 10, 15 minutes, it would be that it's not necessary.
Optimism Amidst Reality 00:01:18
It could have been avoided and it can be corrected.
It's corrected by ideas, not by more wars and more guns and more killing.
And I was always impressed that so many of the young people, which were open-minded, the views of freedom, and they would come up and say, I like it because you're so optimistic.
And I thought, hmm, that's good.
I was delighted to know that you can tell them the truth.
And I decided maybe it's the truth that made them more optimistic, that they heard what they considered to be the truth.
And then you can go from this.
I, you know, compare that somewhat to medicine.
If the person is sick and you tell them this is what you have, and that's not good news, but it's curable.
You can have this surgery and get better.
So, yes, we are.
But I'll tell you what, I guess I was more optimistic with some of my patients than I am with our society.
It's going to get better.
It can get better.
But that's the way it's been for a long time.
And that is our challenge, identifying our problems, where are the ideas gone wrong, and for us to get people to endorse them and realize that good ideas cannot be stopped by armies.
Good ideas will be spread.
And that encourages me to keep plugging along.
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