Biden's Israel Policy Becomes Albatross Around Democrat Party Necks
With a majority of Americans opposing further US involvement in the Israel/Gaza conflict, President Biden is finding that within his own Democratic Party support for his approach is even softer. Younger voters are solidly opposed to further US support for Israel's continued assault on Gaza. That is why while Biden's initial reaction tracked more closely with his neocon views, he is furiously backpedaling under pressure from his own party. Also today: Rep. Massie is the lone "no" vote on another anti-free speech House Resolution.
Hello, everybody, and thank you for tuning in to the Ron Paul Liberty Report.
With us today, once again, our friend Daniel McAdams.
He is our co-host.
Daniel, good to see you today, and you're inching back to work, and I'm glad to see you.
Good morning, Dr. Paul.
It's good to be back in a way with you.
Wonderful.
Want to start off with all the activity, the political activity.
You know, what's going on right now reminds me a lot about 1968.
And I think it was in Chicago.
And the Democrats were fighting.
And it was over, you know, demonstrations over war.
It was a division.
It's similar to a lot what's going on now because you have the progressives who hate the war and would like to end it, more so in the 68 than they are now.
But there is a progressive element that says, look, we should at least have peace talks and pause things and work toward peace.
And yet the vicious language going around about each side has to wipe out the other side.
It's very bad as far as I'm concerned.
But, you know, because of the political chaos in 1968, it wasn't good for them at the next polls.
And the Republicans didn't have the greatest candidate anyway to begin with.
Of course, that's when Nixon was coming into the fold and he wins that election.
But I think this is really, very tough, you know, for the Democrats.
And it's lining up.
You have to go back and forth.
Well, who's on whose side?
And it's not easily done.
I think in 1968, it was more precise.
Most of the Democrats were sick of the war.
And the Republicans were more hawkish.
And that's generally the case right now, that is true.
But I tell you, they have a long way to go because right now, the animosity is building, which if you're thinking about partisanship and parties, yes, this probably puts the Republicans in a little bit better position.
But Daniel, what concerns me is, you know, the big picture and the philosophy.
And are we really arguing the case for a non-interventionist foreign policy, constitutionally driven?
Or are we talking about more of the same, regardless of who wins the election?
But right now, there's a lot of arguing to be done.
And I'm sure a lot of Republicans are just delighted that the Democrats are doing this fighting.
Yeah, you know, Dr. Paul, and excuse my voice, please.
I've been out ill for a while.
I think Fauci may have sent a virus my way, a special virus my way.
But, you know, we both noticed this article in Politico called Activists Wanted a Middle East Ceasefire.
They got something else from Democrats.
And it's all about basically the civil war within the Democratic Party over President Biden's response to the Israeli invasion of Gaza after the terror attacks of October 7th on the part of Hamas.
And it kind of goes along with this article that we also read in Munim, Alabama about the trajectory of President Biden's reactions to the October 7th attacks.
And they were originally very hawkish.
That's his political orientation.
He's always been very hawkish, very neocon foreign policy, especially in the Middle East.
But his initial reaction, of course, was to be in favor of basically ethnic cleansing.
He's talking about they needed to have safe passage for Palestinians to leave the Gaza and all of this sort of thing.
And then that transferred over when the pressure got up within his own party about this.
And he didn't see it coming.
He didn't see this huge backlash in his own party to his extremely one-sided, extremely pro-Israel reaction to it.
And that's what we're seeing now.
And it's cascading now down into the House and Senate where Democrats are feeling the heat increasingly over the Middle East policy of President Biden.
And we could talk about it a little bit later, Dr. Paul.
But a couple of recent polls have really underscored how frustrated not only all Americans, but particularly Democrat voters are with this one-sided policy.
We're very good.
You know, the one difference now compared to what was happening in the 60s, it took the American people to really get disgusted and get into demonstrations and make it a political event and have an election like we had in 1968.
Because the crowds getting out there, they're huge.
I've been very impressed with the number of people for various reasons are saying, you know, what's going on over there now is pretty unfair to the Palestinians.
But the others say, well, they shouldn't even exist.
I remember in one of our debates, it was in the debates that we decided, do the Palestinians, are they a people?
Like, do they exist?
And the talk now is, no, they don't exist.
And if they do, we have to deal with this.
So I think that back then, it took a lot of 10 years and a lot of killing.
And before the demonstration started, but the demonstrations are starting right now.
And my guess is that a lot of people are suffering.
And there's a lot of appeal to the argument.
Why are we sending more money to Ukraine or to the Middle East?
All these things.
But it started with Ukraine.
While we're having so many problems here, we have these huge deficits.
We have this inflation.
So maybe the sentiments are such that the stage may have been set by the resistance that finally built against COVID.
And I thought that was very positive.
But the other side of this is, yes, but this can lead to problems.
There's some violence going on already.
There, certainly a lot of violence going on in the Middle East.
So anybody should, you know, with a bit of decency, should say, well, what is so evil about taking a positive in this killing and shooting?
And why don't we just stop for a moment and take a breath?
Maybe something good would come of it.
Yeah, well, they've done it for a day, day, for four days, and they're thinking about more.
But why should it be so hard to just think, well, maybe there's a benefit to this?
I certainly think so because people are anxious.
So in a way, in a subtle way, I sort of think that the expression of this is early compared to the 10 years of the loss of life of Americans during the Vietnam War.
That was terrible.
And even after the 68 election, a lot of Americans were killed.
So it was the warmongering of the deep state was very, very powerful.
And the Republicans far outclassed the Democrats as far as warmongering.
Right now, there's a lot of Democrats that have become neocons, and they don't have that progressive element.
And even when there's a chance to vote and express themselves from a progressive view, the progressives there are ducking the vote.
So I keep looking for positive things.
I would hope what's going on now in this pause and the frustration is a pause where maybe there's a better way.
And if they come and ask us, Daniel, I think we'd have a suggestion for them.
Yeah, I mean, I think you're right.
I think most Americans, most people would say that obviously after the attacks of October 7th, you would expect the response.
Now, the initial claims were that 1,400 Israelis were killed.
That's been revised downward since then.
And there's also a lot of things in the Israeli media, not so much in the U.S. media, about friendly fire attacks, which may have meant that even less people were killed by Hamas.
But nevertheless, it was an attack.
Innocent people were killed, and that would you'd expect the response.
But the problem is you've had 20,000 civilians killed thus far in Gaza.
And that includes 10,000 kids, babies, infants in these hospitals that are getting raided.
So I think that's what happened: the tide of world opinion has begun to change significantly over the unbelievable scale of the killing of civilians, Israeli killing of Palestinian civilians.
So I think that's what's part of some of the revolt within the Democratic Party.
Excuse me.
In the political article, it talks about a kind of a staffer revolt, and it's actually like a former staffer revolt.
It started out with former campaign staffers to Bernie Sanders.
Now, they sent him a letter saying, please back a ceasefire.
He hasn't done it.
You talk about progressives.
He staked out that territory, but he's not following it.
And the same was true with Elizabeth Warren.
Her former aides penned a letter pressing her to support a ceasefire.
She hasn't done it either.
They tried to do the same with Senator Fetterman.
He told him to get lost.
And so you're seeing all of these people who are Democrat Party supporters, activists, aides, analysts, telling these senators you have to get behind this ceasefire.
The grassroots is definitely behind it.
So you are seeing this kind of revolt, and the numbers are terrible.
One number that's quite interesting, in fact, Dr. Paul, is this poll.
I was looking at it.
It was earlier this month put on by NPR in Nerist Poll, and it talks about U.S. support for funding for Ukraine and Israel.
Now, the support for authorizing both Ukraine and Israel money so that that big package of U.S. or of U.S. aid to Israel and Ukraine, that only has 35% support among Americans.
So less than half of Americans support that huge aid package.
But when you split them up, it's even worse because when you take out, do you support only sending the Israel funding?
That goes down to 14%.
You support only the Ukraine funding.
That goes down to 12%.
So in this poll, the biggest response, the most popular, was, do not support authorizing additional funding for either war.
That's 36.
So the numbers are there.
Americans are very much opposed to this.
And if you look at just Democrats and take Republicans out of the mix, Dr. Paul, it's even worse for Biden and even worse for the Democratic Party.
You know, in the Politico article, there's a paragraph I want to read because it's sort of frustrating.
It doesn't really help our position.
It says that the notion of placing any conditions on this aid has so far gained little traction outside the progressive left, though some Democratic appropriators have tried to attach restrictions to the Biden administration original massive security spending.
You know, there's a little bit to talk about.
But when you think of this, first we give money years and years in advance.
I mean, just think how long the UN has been making sure there's peace in the Middle East forever and how the United Nations sort of is a monkey wrench as far as I'm concerned for setting up conditions like this.
And then the promise of continued funding, but all of a sudden, you know, predictable fighting breaks out.
I don't think anybody's totally shocked.
You know, the Israelis and the Palestinians are fighting each other.
But right now, I think one of the frustrating things is mostly in the states now with all the television reporting is they say Israel has a right to defend itself.
Obviously they do.
Who would ever ever say, no, they don't have a right to defend themselves, just lay down their guns.
But no, they have a right to defend themselves.
But you never hear them say, and maybe, just maybe, the Palestinians have a right to defend themselves too.
And when you look at the blockade and other things, there could be a case made for some of the outlandish conditions that they've been living under to build the frustrations.
But so far, this is not accepting any restrictions on how this money is spent.
The money should, the best way to not argue about how it's going to be spent is the best way is just don't send it.
Because the truth is, is we don't have it.
For people to say, well, we're a rich country and we can do this.
It's no big deal.
We can handle it.
I think it was the Secretary of Treasury said, you could fight two wars at one time.
Yeah, with fiat money, but that's self-limiting.
And it isn't, we don't have the money.
And then we pretend we have money.
So we dilute the value of the dollar.
We go over there.
And since they won't accept non-intervention, they won't accept the fact that we shouldn't be sending money.
But if you do send the money, why in the world when you say, well, you're not allowed to pursue and be aggressors and create wars and do all this nonsense, which is impossible.
It is true.
They say, well, that can't happen.
You know, it'd be too hard to control how they spend it.
A gift is a gift and let them spend it the way they want.
That's why it's much easier, Daniel, I think, for us to argue the moral case of why should we steal money from the poor people in this country, give them inflation, lower their standard of living, at the same time, we send it off to somebody else that creates war.
It perpetuates our problem.
Awakening Generation's Half Voters00:06:24
And some might say, Daniel, and I know you understand this.
They say, yes, but we create jobs.
The military-industrial complex, they're doing well.
Their stock is up, and the people are working, and their wages are up.
So this is all wonderful.
And, you know, there's so much strong evidence that's blatantly that, because now they admit the money never goes over into some other country's pocket.
It goes directly over to the lobbyists and to the companies.
We'll build these airplanes and then we'll help you find a market and we'll sell them for you.
So we need an awakening, I'll tell you, just an awakening of some common sense in what really is going on.
And that's why I think it's reasonable to suggest that the conditions right now are so frustrating.
And that thing, the thing is, it took a lot longer in 1968 to get really bad where the American people said enough is enough.
I think right now the people are starting to say that, and we have not yet suffered anything like we were suffering in the 60s.
So I, of course, encourage people to seek the truth and seek peace.
And I know our Institute here have a few suggestions on how we could achieve that.
Daniel?
Maybe I wonder if we lost him.
I'm here, Dr. Paul.
Can you hear me?
Now I can hear you.
Okay.
Yeah, I was just going to say you mentioned money.
Here's another thing that people don't realize: the estimate of the cost to Israel of this war has been $53 billion for these seven weeks of war.
Now, Israel had a stable economy before this, not a great but stable economy.
It's a wealthy country, a very wealthy country.
But a $53 billion hit on a small country says they're losing, I think, $100 and something million dollars a day on this war.
War is expensive.
And with the numbers in the U.S. so much opposed, now I don't believe that a bill to send money over to Israel would not pass the House and Senate.
I think it would pass.
But I think it's going to be a lot more tricky when you look at the numbers.
So there's an additional pressure on Netanyahu's government to look for things.
And I think that's why we might have seen this temporary ceasefire, which everyone should pray will continue because no one wants to go back to these bombs being dropped on innocent people.
But the other thing I was going to mention, Dr. Paul, I just wanted to finish up on the polling data.
There's another poll that was taken earlier this month, which I think even is more foreboding for the Democrat Party.
And that is reactions over the different age groups in the U.S.
And the question was: should the United States support or oppose an Israeli invasion of Gaza in retaliation for October 7th?
So should we support it or oppose it?
In the age group of 18 to 24, the young generation, only 25%, only 25% said that Americans should support Israel in its response to the Hamas attacks.
Now, this, I think, represents, and I think we saw this a lot, Dr. Paul, with Cubans in Florida.
The younger generation that's a lot less interested in the embargoes and the pressures and all of this on the home country.
I think you're seeing a lot of this in the U.S. now.
The younger generation does not have the same baggage as the Gen X and the boomers have when it comes to the U.S. relationship with Israel.
They have a different outlook.
You're seeing the protests in the U.S. are much more widely attended than they ever have been in the past.
And so when you look at a Democratic Party that is losing, that is losing 75% of young people over this Israeli policy with an already very unpopular president.
In fact, I was just looking at one number, Dr. Paul, among independents.
There's a brand new poll that just came out.
Among independent voters, President Biden is at his lowest popularity ever, which is 27%.
That's a new Gallup poll, I think, that came out yesterday.
He only has 27% of the support of independent voters.
And the percentage of those who oppose his handling of the Gaza-Israel crisis is enormous.
I don't have that exact number, but I think it's 89%.
So you say, well, independence, there's not many independents.
Well, in fact, 49% of registered voters consider themselves politically independent.
So you're looking at half of all voters.
Among that half of all voters, only 27% support President Biden.
He's taking a huge dive in the polls, and his Middle East policy has a lot to do with it, I think.
But sometimes there are other factors involved.
And what you're reporting is very, very important.
And that is the case.
There is a sentiment.
And it's probably a legitimate polling system.
But once again, when you look for some information about what the public is thinking about, you know, during the last presidential election, there were several Democrats running against Biden.
And there was one that dropped out immediately because she was so unpopular.
So she was gone.
So who gets picked?
Oh, yes, but she has the qualifications.
She has the right background and all that kind of stuff.
So Harris gets picked.
And nobody remembered she was the worst vote getter ever.
But now she's an asset for the Republicans.
And that also adds to the quandary the Democrats are in.
Because if they fire Biden or he gets sick or he's incapable or something, they say, my gosh, we're going to have to answer a lot of questions about Kamala Harris.
So they're in a terrible position.
But that means the American people were in a terrible position, you know, to do this.
Why Did Paul Vote Against It?00:03:26
But, you know, this whole thing has come up, and they did have a vote this past week.
I wanted to bring up about our friend Thomas Massey.
You know, they had a resolution there that said you have to vote for this because we're sick and tired of anything said negatively about Israel.
But it's not quite so simple.
But they did that.
And most of the resolution was decent until they said that criticizing the government of Israel is anti-Semitism.
And anything that talks about the philosophy of it, the Zionism and the stuff goes on, if you say anything, that you're an anti-Semite.
You're not allowed to think and talk about it.
So there was a vote.
And you'll say, well, why even tell them about the vote?
It was one-sided.
The whole thing was 400 and something to one.
So that settled it, didn't it?
No, I don't think so.
I don't think it settled anything.
So Thomas Massey voted against it.
He said he can't understand why he has to vote something like this that says that he has a political opinion about foreign policy.
Oh, you're an anti-Semite.
And you know what?
It didn't work.
It hasn't worked for him.
And I have a suspicion on why that happened.
Yeah, they'll write things about it.
But you know what?
This is recalled.
I think, Daniel, you were around and remember about it.
I voted probably by myself, but had a vote to recognize Cardinal O'Connor.
And I had nothing against him.
I thought he was a great person, a great leader, and this sort of thing.
And I would say, praise them if you want to do that.
But there was a gold medal involved.
And well, you know, technically, you know, it sounds good.
How could anybody be against that?
I mean, to give the recognition to somebody like that.
So I voted against it.
And I remember very clearly, and this is what you might remember, Daniel, I came back to the office, and it was different than most of the time.
I walked in, and the staff said, the New York Times called you, the New York Times called you.
And I said, well, are they on the phone or something?
I said, no, no.
It looks like we took care of it.
I said, well, what they call by.
And they called by and said, why did Paul vote against the resolution to praise Cardinal O'Connor?
And they said, oh, he votes always against anything like that, these gold medals, because technically it's not authorized in the Constitution.
And the message they gave me said, oh, they were discussing, oh, heck.
And I got off the phone.
They said, oh, if that's the case, no story, no story whatsoever.
The story could have been, why would somebody make that point?
But people then generally left me alone and didn't pester me until they had an opportunity.
But that's the big thing.
I think the use of terms are terrible.
They use it in a terrible way because back when I was campaigning for the presidency, anything to suggest that you're favorable toward the terrorists, I mean, you lose your citizenship over that.
The Use of Terrible Terms00:03:43
But what if they distort it?
And even today, I mean, they use the word terrorist carelessly and frequently, no matter what you do.
You know, well, even like voting against some of that money to go to the Middle West, you mean you're going to let the terrorists rent.
And they used it constantly, but now they're using this and extremely distorting the view of anti-Semitism and people who are defending liberty and want everybody treated equally and making sure that we live up to the Constitution.
All of a sudden, they want to paint them as very bad people.
Daniel?
Yeah, I mean, it's, you know, you can always count on Congress to grovel to pass some bill praising the flavor of the day.
It's pretty depressing to see them groveling to squelch the First Amendment.
I think that's a very unfortunate thing.
But as to the bill itself, I mean, the idea that criticizing a foreign government or a philosophy adopted by that government equals hatred of the people, I think is insane if you think about it.
How many Americans throughout the Cold War criticized the Soviet government and criticized the philosophy of communism?
That didn't mean they hated Russians.
They were russophobic.
They wanted to genocide Russians.
They simply did not approve of the government in power and of the philosophy that it operates under.
Now, there are millions of Jews worldwide who are anti-Zionist or non-Zionist.
There's more of a debate in Israel about the government's own policy toward Gaza than there is allowed to be in the United States.
In fact, the last several nights, actually for months and months, there have been demonstrations outside of Netanyahu's house demanding that he leave office.
He's extremely unpopular.
He looks possibly, if this war winds down, his next stop may be the pokey.
He may end up in prison.
So there's a lot happening there.
But as usual, Congress goes off half-baked and passes an anti-American, certainly anti-libertarian bill.
You know, Dr. Paul, the idea that you are, you as an individual are your government, is such an anti-libertarian philosophy.
You can love your country and hate your government.
That certainly is possible.
But as usual, the members of Congress look at the title and say, oh my gosh, I don't dare vote against it.
The only person who does dare is Thomas Massey.
And here's what he said, Dr. Paul.
He said, I agree with the title, Reaffirming the State of Israel's Right to Exist and much of the language, but I'm voting no on the resolution because it equates anti-Zionism with anti-Semitism.
He says anti-Semitism is deplorable, but expanding it to include criticism of Israel is not helpful.
And that's perfectly right.
He's consistent on this matter.
It has nothing to do with how he feels about Israeli people or Jews in general.
It's the idea of standing up for free speech, especially when it's a tough vote.
And we have to praise him, I think, for taking another very tough vote.
Very good.
And I'm going to go ahead and close, Daniel.
And I want to say that you did quite well.
The more you talk, the clearer your voice got.
So thank you for coming back on, even if we got your voice alone, that you are doing better.
Too Much Government Intervention00:03:02
But, you know, I'm going to finish by talking about an event coming up this week.
It's an event because it's different.
It's a little bit bizarre.
I don't think the world is going to be saved by it, but there'll probably be a lot of people watching.
And that's a debate between the governor of California and the governor of Florida.
Now, that's a big one deal.
And then we have somebody interviewing it, but he's very supportive of the military-industrial complex.
So it could be interesting to see what happens, but it's not related.
Well, indirectly, it's related to the president's race, you know, because DeSantis is, he's the villain.
He's going to take the cake because somebody's going to get rid of Trump, and so somebody else is going to come in.
And of course, Newsom is angling for that as well.
But they're going to have this little debate on Thursday.
And somebody suggested all they're going to talk about is who did the best job to stop the COVID epidemic.
And I imagine there'll be some comments made about that, bragging rights.
But anyway, I don't think that's going to solve our problem of foreign affairs, of us too much intervention.
So if this is too much intervention, past and present, for us getting involved overseas, and we end up in these wars, like in Ukraine and the Middle East and around.
That was the same way as I think more and more people are agreeing with us now.
There was way too much intervention in trying to solve the problem of COVID, which now there's a big question.
What is COVID?
Where is it?
I want to see it.
Where's the documentation of it?
A lot of people are questioning all that happened during that time.
And that's to say, should we not care about liberty around the world?
Should we not care about people who claim they're sick and have problems?
No, you can have more concern realizing that government's inefficient.
They're not good at it.
They're lousy at it, and they don't have the authority to take over the medical care or the whole health care system.
And they don't have the right to take over the whole educational system and on and on.
So it's the allowance of big government to get involved.
And of course, today we talked about how big government is messing up the Middle East, and they haven't even cleaned up Ukraine yet.
So it's going to continue until people change their attitudes and their understanding what liberty is all about.
And we should be doing a better job in convincing people of that because if you're looking for more peace and prosperity, this is the only road to peace and prosperity by accepting the fact that personal liberty is vital.