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Nov. 30, 2023 - Ron Paul Liberty Report
28:03
'But who are the biggest liars?' Congress Moves to Expel George Santos

As the US House is scheduled for a third - and likely successful - vote to expel Rep. George Santos (R-NY), the Congressman held an extraordinary press conference where he took no prisoners calling out the liars den on Capitol Hill. There are little lies...and there are the big lies. Also today: Man or monster? Kissinger dead at 100. Finally: Sen. Paul to force vote on Syria withdrawal.

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Time Text
People Want War Told Differently 00:03:50
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.
Good morning, Dr. Paul.
Very good.
Okay.
We're going to start off with talking about Santos.
We talked about that yesterday or so, and we've talked about him several times.
I find his story fascinating because he tells lies and he says, sure, I tell lies all the time.
And I thought he, you know, his fitting into Washington is to me very interesting.
We also have a couple other things in the news that we will mention after we talk about Santos.
And that one will be Kissinger, 100 years.
He did pretty well in life and controversial at times.
And I have a personal story to tell about him.
As well as Rand has introduced an important piece of legislation and sure wish we could get it passed and try to head off the next war.
So anyway, we will start off with Santos.
And the whole issue here is lying.
And I think there's a famous quote.
Probably everybody in this audience has heard it maybe more than once.
And I'm going to put it up because it tells you a lot about how people think about lying.
And it's the Goring quote.
I want to put that up and I'm going to read that.
And because this tells you, you know, a person that was seen as the epitome of evil actually spouting something off that was pretty well the honest truth as he faced death at Nuremberg.
So I'm going to go ahead and read this because it's a whole lot of information here.
He said, of course, and he was interviewed as he was a prisoner and it was within days that he was convicted and then he killed himself trying to avoid the killing by the government.
He says, this is Goring.
Why, of course the people don't want war.
Why should some poor slob on a farm want to risk his life in a war when the best he can get out of it is to come back to his farm in one peace?
Naturally, the common people don't want war neither in Russia nor in England nor for that matter in Germany.
That is understood.
But after all, it is the leaders of the country who determine the policy and is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it's a democracy or a fascist dictatorship or a parliament or a communist dictatorship.
Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders.
That's easy.
All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked and denounce the peacemakers for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger.
It works the same in any country.
Well, I'll tell you what, that is some quote considering where it's coming from.
Somebody was going to commit suicide or be killed within days and was being tried for what was going on during the Hitler warmongering and World War II.
But it's obvious that they live lies and yet you get a mouthful of truth.
And I see that in comparison to most of what we hear from our politician, where they're not the total blatant lies.
Sometimes it's just fibbing and demagoguing and politicking and everything.
But they don't live with a bundle of truth like we have here.
Big Lies and Consequences 00:15:35
But right now, even today, I think there's a hearing going on in Washington on George Santos, who lied his way into Congress.
He was even quoted as saying and had written about, he says, well, I was really just curious about whether a con artist could be elected to Congress.
And he says, I never thought it could be.
So his expression was, and this all might be a gimmick for him, who knows?
He says, I never believed that a con artist could win.
And then I kept thinking, what is the combination of a con artist and an average politician?
It isn't the blurting out an absolute truth like Goring did in his last moments of life.
But we hear this, and I think so often that people can recognize it.
But right now, Santos had this press conference this morning, and I watched it, and I had to laugh a bit about it.
It seemed like he had all the spectators, the listeners, the press, and the politicians in his hands because he does all kinds of threatening and what he's going to do.
He said, sure, I know they're going to throw me out.
It's just so ironic, but the issue is telling the truth.
They said he lied.
But if he's kicked out and expelled, he will be the sixth member of Congress in our history to have been expelled from the Congress.
But he will be the first one to be expelled.
It was never convicted of a crime.
So they've gotten this out of order.
They tried to do this twice, and it failed.
And for various reasons, he wasn't expelled.
And it's a difficult thing for the Republicans.
Oh, we might lose the majority vote and that sort of thing.
So there's a lot of ambivalence about that.
And I think the politics of it is very interesting.
But Daniel, I just, I think this is sort of fascinating.
And I know you have observed closely this Goring quote.
So I don't know whether there's any association or points we can make between the two.
Daniel?
Yeah, I did watch the press conference as well today.
And I have to confess, I don't know George Santos' voting record very well.
I suspect it's not stellar, but there's no denying that he is an extremely talented orator.
He's a gifted speaker.
He's entertaining.
He doesn't, he has a really sharp intelligence, and he's witty.
And so that's why probably he's hated on the Hill, because he's everything the average member is not.
And I think the other reason that he's hated so much is that he exposes them for what they really are, which are bigger liars than him.
And the vote is scheduled for tomorrow.
Sorry.
The expulsion vote is scheduled for tomorrow.
And as you rightly point out, Dr. Paul, of the six who have been expelled, all of them thus far have been convicted of something.
No, I think several of them were Confederates and they were convicted of treason.
And a few others were convicted of crimes.
He'll be the first that wasn't convicted of a fine.
So it really is an extraordinary moment, particularly as you also point out, with the Republicans having a razor-thin majority in the House.
Would they really push to have someone like Santos kicked out?
We saw today, or at least I saw in political, you probably saw Dr. Paul, that Kevin McCarthy is thinking about quitting before the end of his term.
If that happens, most likely Newsom will not appoint a successor in this term.
So the Republican, I think, four-seat majority now will be whittled to virtually even.
So it's a dumb move if the House moves forward.
But as you say, Dr. Paul, he's an extraordinary person, that's for sure.
It's of concern.
You can't ignore and say, oh, lying's okay.
It's just a fine games thing.
But then when you think about the big lies, that's what calls my attention to this because I've already expressed my opinion.
You know, they lie all the time.
That's how they get into Congress.
Then I think when they're there, they all put up their hand.
I swear to uphold the Constitution word by word.
And they don't.
But they have an excuse and they say, oh, it's a living document.
We have permission to make it say whatever we want.
You know, all this nonsense.
But the big lies, they're huge and they don't get any attention.
But somebody that's doing this who's a little off but making a point, he might be just wanting to have a game and make fun of it.
He may continue to do this for a long time.
But it is still interesting to see what they do because they are really turned for political reasons whether they're going to expel him from the Congress.
And I don't even know whether I'd want to make a prediction on that.
But I would think that it's going to be a close vote.
That's what I think.
Go ahead.
I was just going to say, you started out your segment with talking about the big lies.
And if you compare anything that Santos has ever said, as you say, as a con man, compared to the really legendary lies, even during my time with you in Congress, there's just no comparing the two.
You know, Saddam Hussein has WMDs, so on and so on.
And in fact, just a couple of days ago, Vice President Kamala Harris was in an interview and she said Russia hacked the 2016 election and threw it in favor of Trump.
That is a massive disproven lie with serious consequences.
You talk about undermining our democratic system.
Forwarding a lie, continuing to repeat a lie like that undermines our system more than the Russians ever could.
Yet there's never any repercussions for, as you call them correctly, these big lies.
It's only the little lies as to whether his Ferragamo shoes are six years old or one year old.
Those are the ones they want to get him on, not the big lies of the others.
But they always promise good things.
If they're talking about foreign policy and the need to spend money and send kids off to war for peace, for prosperity, and always for democracy.
We have to protect democracy.
And democracy, but they never say, you know, we ought to reconsider the fact of restoring the republic that we were given, which was clearly given to us.
But no, does any school, you know, teach the difference of that?
Why should they?
Because they're government schools.
The schools are there, you know, to teach people how to have this distortion of the truth.
So it involves so many things.
Right now, I think there's a lot of lies told about the climate, and nobody knows what to believe.
And fortunately, people waking up, they're just getting sick and tired of it.
They're catching on.
The government lies to it.
And yet they're very gullible.
And like Goring says, you can't have patriotism, use patriotism and lie to them, and they will always go along.
You know, we hear lies about what's going on on our borders.
You know, they're involved in medicine.
Think of all the lies told and the people who are punished over COVID.
And that was, you talk about a conspiracy of lies.
You know, and that was so bad.
You know, the combination of big corporations, the pharmaceuticals, along with governments is still going on, where the true fascism or corporatism exists.
And then they can flip that around.
And the people who are fighting all this, they're called, you know, the fascists.
So it's all based on how we can lie, how they can lie their way out of the system.
But, you know, they always say, you know, when the other biggest lie that I've talked about for quite a few years is the lies about money.
They have convinced people that as long as the government gives us money, as long as they spend money, that we will have prosperity.
And so where are we now by living with this?
And that's been for 100 years.
It's being questioned now, which is great, because it doesn't work, and people are getting poorer.
But all they say is we have to have a flexible monetary system.
We have to have a government management of it.
You can't have the market determining this.
And it's all based on a fraudulent argument.
I mean, we have the counterfeiters in charge.
And nobody, hardly anybody stands up and say, enough is enough.
But more and more, we're going to keep plugging away there.
But I think, you know, some of the big ones, certainly the oath of office is a real big one.
The money issue is a real big one.
The justification for foreign policy, Daniel, I think is a horror.
That's why I used that quote, just to show how those who were perpetuating it knew how to do it.
And it was sort of a confession, I assume.
But it's just an interesting statement by Goring.
Daniel?
Yeah, and there's one other extraordinary thing, Dr. Paul, that I immediately thought of you.
And that is when George Santos opened his press conference today.
One of the very first sentences that he uttered, and I'm interested in your reaction to this, he said, quote, Congress represents chaos.
And considering that you've written so much about chaos lately, I thought that was a fascinating quote.
I wonder if you paid attention to that part.
Well, no, that's very educational because I have to expand my understanding of chaos because there is chaos in Congress, and that is a problem.
I think of the chaos of their policy deliberately causing chaos in the streets and getting people to go into conflict with each other and cause civil strife.
But yes, there's chaos in Congress, and they get away with it when the country is very, very wealthy and a lot of room to get away with lying and cheating and stealing.
But eventually they get caught into it.
And that's why we're facing these problems today, is because it has become chaotic.
So we'll give him a plus for that one.
Yeah.
Well, I think the other really big news today, Dr. Paul, as you pointed out in your excellent opening, was the death of Henry Kissinger.
Now, obviously, 100 years old, it's inevitable that it would have happened at some point in the near future, but it looks like he's finally passed away.
There are probably fewer people, maybe George Kennan and a few others, that have been more consequential in the history of 20th century foreign policy than Henry Kissinger.
Now, a lot of people have developed very strong views of him one way or the other.
There's seldom a nuanced view of him.
I was just wondering what your thoughts and reflections are about Henry Kissinger.
You know, I was going to start with answering that question before you asked the question because I didn't know what you were going to ask me.
Because somebody said, even today, they said, did you like him?
I mean, because I knew him and had met him.
Now, I think I have a picture.
If our staff can get my picture, and I have to confess, I'm in a picture with Kissinger, and we were buddies.
But the reason this picture is interesting is he looks like a gentleman.
I look scared.
No, I was scared because that was my first or second day in Congress.
Because it was in the 70s.
I won a special election.
And it was after Nixon was kicked out and Ford was president.
So the Republicans still had control of the cabinet, but not the House or the Senate.
They had very little control of the House or the Senate.
But we had the Republicans had the presidency.
So we would have speakers.
There was a class, that class, the Republican class, usually they could have new members.
Like this year, there'll be a lot of new members, 60, 70, sometimes over 100 new members coming in around time.
There were 14, 14 Republicans in the 1974 class.
But I sort of got in at the tail end.
I was elected during that group and was included in that, but it was in 1976.
And we had a luncheon, and Kissinger came over because that was one of our deals because we had access to the cabinet.
And he, I keep kidding, I said, you know, somebody asked me, why are you looking away?
I said, well, I didn't want to look like I really like Kissinger.
And, you know, back then I would have said I disagree with his policies and I didn't approve, but I didn't have any emotional, oh, I really like the guy, or I think he's a bum or anything like that.
But I think Daniel's statement was really right, right on it because he was a diplomat.
And one reason why, if I slip or purposely talk about Kissinger and Nixon, I talk about opening the door to China.
I think that was great because I really personally suffered from the war going on in Korea because one of my teachers, who was a coach, you know, was redrafted after World War II and sent to Korea, and that's where he was killed.
And that was not a good event for me.
And I'll tell you, I think that opening up that door and a lot of good came from it.
But now we're hysterically, you know, bad-mouthing and condemning China for everything.
And maybe we're part of the problem.
They say, well, they're coming over here and buying our stuff.
Well, they have our money.
You know, we bought stuff from them, they gave them their money.
And under the general rules of international trade and all, they're allowed to do this.
But no, right now there's a lot of China bashing going on.
So I would think, Daniel, that listening to what you said on how Kissinger acted in a positive way, more people may consider that.
And they'll say, well, no, right now, the Russians are chiming in and talking about how they liked Kissinger.
But Kissinger will be liked by everybody now, so that'll be all right.
But we should look at the good things he did and the diplomacy.
Looking Beyond War 00:05:58
You know, it was beneficial.
But it's a real shame now that we're back looking for a war with China.
It's horrendous.
So I'm very disappointed with that.
Yeah, as someone mentioned on Twitter X, it seems that more people are angry with the guy who ended the wars in Southeast Asia than the guys who started it, i.e. LBJ and JFK.
So that's an interesting point.
But I think, you know, what's interesting about Kissinger, just in my mind in my unfortunate several years studying international relations in grad school, is that he really epitomizes the realist school of foreign policy, of international affairs, in my view, even though technically he's not necessarily considered a realist per se.
But, you know, I think realism as a political, as an international relations theory values power over principle and power over people.
And now that has positive and negative connotations.
Now, on the positive side of the ledger, with Kissinger, you would have détente with the USSR, you know, in situation much worse than we have right now, as we talk about on this show forever, Dr. Paul.
The situation in the 70s was much worse.
We had nuclear missiles pointed at each other.
We had a hair trigger.
We were fighting international communism.
So in those conditions, he was responsible for detente with the USSR.
As you pointed out, the opening to China, where most everyone on the left and right in the U.S. is just chomping it to bid for war with China.
And the third is the Middle East shuttle diplomacy.
He was able to do what people like Blinken, who are not fit to tie his shoes, would never be able to do.
And this is not to endorse the interventionism of the U.S. foreign policy, but nevertheless, he used the offices of the U.S. State Department to facilitate a peace agreement, for example, between Israel and Egypt, etc., etc.
He would talk to people.
Our diplomacy nowadays is, I don't like you.
I don't like your country's philosophy.
So I won't talk to you.
And Kissinger wasn't like that.
But I, again, will just reiterate, that is only if you were a powerful country that he thought was consequential.
Right.
And there's a piece of legislation introduced and it's going to be coming to a vote from Rand in the Senate.
And in a way, it's related to that, is diplomacy and policy.
So it has to follow up with some action.
But it brought back a few memories to us, Daniel and I, because we worked on resolutions like this.
Now, the resolution has to do with bringing the troops and getting out of Syria because we don't need to be occupying and controlling oil in Syria for the benefit of our safety.
Matter of fact, it expands the danger to us here.
Matt Gates gets the Republican from Florida, everybody knows about this, but he earlier this year had a similar resolution in the House and trying to send the message, but unfortunately it got clobbered.
He got 103 people to vote with him to 321 against it, which not so good.
But Daniel, you'll recall, I had a few votes.
I guess I hadn't learned how the system worked because getting 103 on some of those occasions when they're hot and heavy for more and more war, it's hard to get anybody to stand up.
But eventually they will, because look how long it took them to wake up and say, you know, and Kissinger was involved in this.
Let's finish this thing in Vietnam.
A messy, messy ending, but he was a participant in that.
But Daniel, I think you've taken a look at this.
This would be, I think, a yes vote for me, don't you think?
Yeah, you know, it's, you know, Senator Paul is working within the system, and this is something that you did many times when you were in the House with Dennis Kucinich and Walter Jones and John Duncan and others, which is using, although you did not agree with the War Powers Act, using a provision in the War Powers Act to force the vote on the floor to withdraw troops from certain areas.
And that's what Senator Paul is doing.
He's using the War Powers Act to force a vote sometime, I think, within the next couple of weeks, to force a vote to remove the approximately 900 troops from Syria.
Now, this should be a no-brainer.
They are doing nothing there.
They are increasingly at risk.
It's a pro-American move to get American troops that have no mission in Syria and, in fact, are illegally occupying sovereign Syrian territory.
It makes no sense to leave them there.
The only reason they're there is as a tripwire.
If there's a big explosion and enough of them get killed at once, that's going to give the power to Biden to invade Iran or something like this.
They're using, they're being used as basically human shields as a tripwire for more U.S. attacks in the Middle East.
That is not the way to use American service members, in my view.
Yeah, and Daniel, pointing out the thing that in the past, things have been a lot worse before, and it could get a lot worse here.
Good Can Come From Complexity 00:02:25
And we work to try to prevent it and patch things up.
But I think the point that you make, or at least you were encouraging, we need not to be totally despondent and not assuming that some good can come from this activity.
And we never know what the good will come.
It might take a while.
But the ideas are important.
Planning ideas is key to it all.
And, you know, we talk about this.
This sounds a lot of complication today about legislation that be introduced and what is telling the truth and all of this.
It gets a bit complex and the world is complex.
But the world that has a country like the United States that believes in a Republican form of government, this is not that difficult to understand what the correction is.
And that is to restore some of the principles that served us well over the years.
And that could be started very easily by people taken seriously and don't lie or cross their fingers when they take the oath of office because there's a guide there.
And it's not overly rigid.
It can be changed, but it's not so rigid that people have to defy it.
That's where the problem is.
Just think of the executive orders and all the things that Congress lists of presidents do.
I mean, who writes the legislation?
The executive branch and the courts.
So it's so far removed.
But I think the answer is not complex.
And, you know, the whole issue of sound money.
Maybe the Constitution would give us a hint.
I think not only would give us a hint about the money, we could actually do better than what we have in the Constitution and have a better monetary system today because I think there's an advanced understanding of what sound money is all about.
So there's a lot of things that we have that we can do.
So we should not become despondent and just give up because ideas have consequences and good ideas have good consequences.
And if they're good enough, they can never be destroyed.
An army can't stop a good idea because it will spread and have a life of its own.
I want to thank everybody for tuning in today to the Liberty Report.
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