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Jan. 11, 2024 - Ron Paul Liberty Report
28:49
Biden: High Gas Prices For 'As Long As It Takes' To Defeat Russia

In a rare press conference after the Madrid NATO Summit today, President Biden was asked how long Americans should expect to pay high gas prices over the Ukraine conflict. Biden's response was flippant: "for as long as it takes." He also blamed high food prices on "Russia, Russia, Russia." Are Americans buying it? Also today: They're turning West Point into "Woke Point" and some retired grads are steaming!

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No More Rain 00:09:52
Hello everybody and thank you for tuning in to the Liberty Report.
With us today is Daniel McAdams, our co-host.
Daniel, good to see you.
Happy Thursday, Dr. Paul.
Very good.
We hear rain in the studio.
We haven't heard that in a long time.
That's it.
I'll tell you.
We needed that for sure.
A little late for some of my stuff.
I know, I know, I know.
You know, I guess it is globe is warming up.
Yeah, that's right.
No more rain.
At least this spring it was a little warmer.
But they don't even brag about that anymore.
They want climate change and all that kind of stuff.
Anyway, we'll start off with talking about that major event going on, you know, the meeting on G7.
Yeah, the NATO, the NATO summit, NATO.
And there are winners and losers.
But guess what?
I would say that the American taxpayer is the biggest loser.
But we had a loser giving us the report.
Now, there was an interview by the president, and the New York Times person was pressing me.
He said, how long are we going to be there?
And the American consumer is suffering from some of this.
And at least the New York Times was implying all that activity and spending and his regulations are really the cause of all this.
And New York Times is supposed to be his buddy.
But, you know, Biden doesn't miss words.
He says he didn't say maybe, or I don't know, or we'll study it.
I'll get back with you.
Let me get you back with it.
He said that they are going to be there as long as it takes.
But he didn't tell it when is the end point.
What's going to take?
Would we totally destroy the country or just what it is?
But the policies are going to continue.
And the fact that it was implied that the American taxpayer should be considered on this didn't seem to ring a bell with him.
That part wasn't suggested.
So I suspect that he was being pretty much upfront with us.
He didn't say next week it's going to be over or next month or next year.
This can't go on forever.
He's saying, well, maybe it's forever.
You know, it's just going to continue.
So that to me is bad news, but it's nothing really new news.
It's what we would have expected.
Yeah, it was a pretty amazing thing.
And I think the reason, I mean, it sort of opens the door to talk about economic problems, you know, and I think a lot of people want to hear what you have to say about it.
But you're right, it was a press conference, and Biden doesn't do a lot of those.
And you could see the setup, he got his own special teleprompter.
The questions, of course, were all pre-prepared, pre-read.
He knew exactly what was going to be asked.
So it was kind of theater.
It was kind of a Potemkin press conference where you pretended, oh, hey, Joe Blow, I didn't see you here.
What do you want to ask me?
And you already know beforehand.
And here's the answer.
Ask Joe Blow.
So anyway, so what it was, it was a New York Times reporter.
And actually, why don't we play that clip?
Because he asked Biden, how long should we expect to be paying these high gas prices over Russia and Ukraine?
And the answer, to be honest, was surprisingly honest from Biden's perspective.
Let's hear what he has to say.
And how long is it fair to expect American drivers to continue to pit a premium because of this war?
The second part of the question was, would it bring down the price?
Will it bring down prices?
And the war has pushed prices up.
They could go as high as $200 a barrel, some analysts think.
How long is it fair to expect American drivers and drivers around the world to pay that premium for this war?
As long as it takes.
So Russia cannot, in fact, defeat Ukraine and move beyond Ukraine.
So how long are we going to pay?
As long as it takes, implicitly, he's saying, to defeat Russia, well, Russia is not being defeated.
In fact, the opposite is happening right now.
But I think, I don't know how you feel about that.
It just seems to show me how out of touch the political elite are.
I mean, I went to the gas station yesterday for the first time in a long time.
I didn't fill my tank.
I just put in $20, right?
I barely got home on that.
And so you can imagine it just seems to me they're so out of touch.
You know, there's another statistic that could have come out, you know, to answer a question like that.
It didn't come out, but I suspect the American people are starting to realize that there are some beneficiaries here.
Well, they don't know so much about the military-industrial complex and their requirements.
That's a big beneficiary.
But the other one is the amount of money Russia is making in profits, you know.
And that in a way as a result, people have difficulty separating the business cycle and the damage done by the Federal Reserve because those signs were already here even before COVID.
But COVID has added to it.
And Ukraine, I don't know, some days I've even suggested that maybe those things are deliberate to distract from the cause being totally due to the Federal Reserve.
But the business cycle is there.
It's a distortion.
There's a transfer of wealth.
One group gets benefits, the other one suffer.
And this was sorted a regulatory thing and dealing with the price controls.
But it really represents the same principle what happens in inflation, that some people benefit and some people have to pay the bill.
In this case, the beneficiary, the profits are going to the Russians.
And it's part of the malinvestment that occurs with inflation.
It's the unexpected consequences, unintended consequences.
That happens all the time.
And yet, they never admit that this whole idea of economic planning just doesn't work.
They can do this and they do ABC and this is going to happen.
It essentially never happens.
And yet they keep doing it.
Say, oh, you mean inflation is causing these problems.
Well, let's double it then.
You know, let's double the printing of money.
And they've been doing that.
And, of course, the consequence, I don't know of any reputable Austrian economist that was like all of a sudden aghast a couple years ago.
Say, oh, we never expected this.
This even reminds us of stagflation.
This even suggests the possibility of a deflationary depression, you know.
And yet, do they go to the Austrian economists and ask these questions?
No, they don't want to because that restrains one thing.
They might know it and understand it.
It restrains the growth and the control of big government.
Because this whole monetary system and the military system, our foreign policy is designed to protect a very, very wealthy class of people.
And, you know, he continued on this same vein in the press conference today because he actually doubled down on this idea that all the problems we're facing right now in the U.S. with prices and inflation are all due to Russia.
In fact, he repeated it three or four times.
And let's go to that next clip.
And before you play it, I'll just read, because this is a tweet.
If we can go to that second tweet clip, there we go.
Joe Biden, the reason why gas prices are up is because of Russia, Russia, Russia, Russia.
And the person who tweeted said, fact check, the reason why prices are up is because of Biden.
Biden, Biden, Biden.
Let's listen to what he has to say here.
Olma Mummy, the reason why gas prices are up is because of Russia.
Russia, Russia, Russia.
The reason why the food crisis exists is because of Russia.
Russia not allowing grain to get out of Ukraine.
So Russia, Russia, Russia.
But here's the problem, Dr. Paul.
And this was reported.
This is a, we can actually put on that first clip here if we can, the first just regular picture.
And this is from, this is a Forbes writer that published in the NASDAQ Journal.
Gas prices were already rising before Russia invaded Ukraine.
And this is from March.
So it's basically revisionist history, Dr. Paul, that all of a sudden everything is going hunky-dory.
We're having a wonderful time.
Prices are nice and low like they were under the previous president, to be honest.
And then Russia decided to invade and prices went to zero.
That's simply not the case.
Prices were in the upper $3 range before the invasion took place.
Now they have increased for a number of reasons, but it's just not factually accurate to say that this is because of Russia, Russia, Russia, Russia.
However many times you repeat the word Russia, it's not sinking in.
And we've covered this before because there was an NBC poll that was done in April and there have been some subsequent polls, but this is the first one that I pulled up.
Only 6% of Americans polled by NBC, not Fox, NBC, believe that it's Putin's fault that prices are rising.
So he's talking to an empty room essentially.
And I just wonder, he's not reading the room right at least.
NATO Borders Crisis 00:06:32
You know, that is pretty amazing because just think of the incidents where the propaganda was much more thorough and convincing to get the American people really riled up, you know, so quickly after World War II that we had to send the kids off and many of them being killed, you know, for Korea, which all they needed to do was say, well, is it a declared war?
And things would slow down.
But then there's also the Vietnam War, another war.
And I thought carelessly, no, it just marched on the propaganda, and we had to stop the domino effect.
But, you know, they finally lost confidence, and that's when the American people woke up.
But not until after a lot of tragedy.
But you'd think that would have been the last time they needed to learn a lesson.
But no, they keep coming back.
And the Bush years, what were they doing?
Yeah, I mean, how many different wars were we in?
One big war, and that was to remake the Middle East, and that wasn't very successful.
So they keep coming back and doing the same thing and think that they can do it.
Yet it is a total failure.
And it's brought us to this point where I think more and more Americans are going to realize that we live in very different times than any living soul in this country right now can remember.
Even those who remember the Depression and other things.
I think what we're facing is major.
Yeah.
And not getting any better, regardless of what they claim.
Well, the second is a related piece, and it's also about the press conference.
It's also about the end, the result of the NATO summit.
And that was number two that we had.
The first one, here's another big, the other big event that happened, is that Turkey, as predicted, withdrew its objections conditionally to Finland and Sweden joining NATO.
And we talked about it before.
We suspected Erdogan being no dummy, unlike most leaders.
He saw an opportunity.
Hmm, we have a veto power over this.
They want in what's in it for us.
And you've got to kind of tip your hat to him.
But here's what he got out of it.
He got those F-16s that he wanted.
Remember, all along, the U.S. said, no, F-16s, because you bought Russia's S-400.
Those are not mutually operable.
You can't have Russian defense systems and American F-16 planes.
Well, they said, we'll see what happens.
And they got their F-16s, number one.
And number two, according to Turkey, Finland and Sweden are harboring people from the region, from Turkey and the region that Turkey considers to be terrorists.
PKK, the Workers' Party, they consider to be terrorists.
They said, we need you to extradite these people down to us.
We're going to have to do a little bit of justice with them.
They said, okay.
So Turkey said, all right, you got some coming NATO.
We're going to make sure you do it.
Trust, but verify.
And trust me, he will verify.
But it's just kind of interesting that Turkey got everything that it wanted, as could be expected.
And we have from Stoltenberg, the Secretary General, here's his kind of summary of everything.
We can put that next clip up.
And I think you had that from a Bureau Hedge article.
But here's a very simple.
Here's what Stoltenberg said about Putin.
He wanted less NATO.
Now President Putin is getting more NATO on his borders.
That sounds very smart to me.
You know, hardly.
But, you know, you mentioned that the Turks were the ones that said, what's in it for us?
Well, you know, they get a couple plus points for that.
But what's sad is, why has the Swedes rolled over?
And they're not asking that question.
What really is in it for us?
I mean, they're not going to be ever able to have enough weapons, you know, to confront a real invasion with Russia.
And if they believe that's on the horizon, I think they're being misled.
But if they want to, you know, follow the course that they've had in the past and look for peace, they're much less likely to be a key, you know, attack by Russia.
If we don't go, if we didn't get to go in in the West and NATO and everybody pile up on us right there close to that, that once again will be the same incentive for what's going on in Ukraine.
It's because we ended up doing things that we more or less promised that we wouldn't do, and then the Russians have reacted to it.
So that's a sad story.
I don't know exactly what has happened there, but they should have asked that same question.
Well, we always seem to get the loser Nordic politicians as heads of NATO, unfortunately.
And here's another.
This just shows what a dim bulb he is, because anyone with any kind of sentience would look at this quote and say, there's something wrong with this.
Because basically, so the first part is right.
He wanted less NATO.
Putin did not want NATO on its doorstep as we would not want an aggressive al-Qaeda government in Mexico, right?
Doesn't want it.
And so what do they get?
They invade.
They attack Ukraine because the U.S. keeps saying, and NATO keeps saying, we're going to let Ukraine in NATO.
And so they said, okay, we're going to attack.
And so Stoltenberg, not having learned the lesson from this, says, oh, yeah, but we're going to put even more NATO on your borders.
Talk about opening the door to completely pointless attacks.
I don't think we're setting a very good example.
You used the example, which theoretically should be a good example about we wouldn't tolerate it if that was occurring in Mexico.
But I keep thinking a lot of people believe they're really not in Mexico.
They're in Texas.
And they're coming across.
There's no way to know how many are good guys and bad guys because, in spite of how messy this is, I can't help but think, you know, what it must be like when governments have screwed things up so badly and there's a lot of natural incentive if a person has a decent job and they're protected by a system of liberty that they don't go off looking for more trouble.
But the conditions were such that they are and they're marching in and the more we have this type of policy, the more chance there is to have the enemy forces right on our border.
Force Used During COVID 00:10:56
Or right now a lot of people would agree with this statement.
Yes, they're here.
Yeah, there's been an invasion.
No, you're right.
We can't almost can't even use that as an analogy anymore.
The next element we want to talk about a little bit just caught our attention and we'll call this West Point or Woke Point because there were three pretty distinguished retired senior officers, Lieutenant General Thomas McInerney, Major General Paul Valley.
People are probably familiar with him more than the others, and Colonel Andrew O'Meara.
They sent a letter and they signed it concerned graduates of West Point and the Long Gray Line, which is the history of West Point grads.
And they brought up some things that they're pretty concerned about, Dr. Paul.
That basically West Point, kind of the last place you think of as a hub of wokeism, this is hardly Portland, right?
Has actually become infested with cultural Marxism.
That's at least what they claim.
Yes, and the people now coming out and expressing themselves in the retired leadership of West Point, they, you know, went to their early years, high school, college, and in a different period of time.
And they obviously have not been snowed with this whole thing about the wokeism.
But this is a big, big problem.
You know, the thing that ends up with wokeism getting a toehold in there is just corruption.
It really corrupts the system, the corruption of the concept of personal liberty and why we exist.
And that's why that's been eroded here in this country.
So what do they first start on?
The educational system.
And we touched on that yesterday with our interview.
And it's the educational system that becomes corrupt.
But what about the justice system?
How many people would think that the justice system really doesn't exist when you think of some of the investigations and trials and going on and the treatment of people like Assange and Snowden?
Do we really have a justice system?
And then when you look at, was there justice on the people that were caught on television of burning and stealing and robbing right out in the daylight with people with police sitting there in their cars?
And, you know, and it was happening.
So that again is more of the corruption.
But now it's in the military.
It shouldn't be a surprise to it.
It's an infiltration.
So it is an idea whose time should not have come.
But it has been infiltrating.
And the only thing that I can see that can counteract that is another idea that we can spread, and we are spreading it to counteract this.
And that's what this little letter, this significant letter written by the military academy, and pointing this out.
So, yes, I think it's ideological, but right now the infiltration and the corruption is pervasive.
And it starts already, really probably.
It was shocking when I first heard of what some of the radicalism that were taught to kindergarten.
You know, early on, you get into this radical environmentalism and the rest of it.
Well, you know, on one hand, you'd think that, oh, this is really unusual.
You wouldn't expect the military to be so infested with this.
But look back.
I mean, Trotsky, probably the revolutionary, you know, all the neocons in the U.S. on the left and right, that is their icon.
Trotsky at the Russian Revolution, the Soviet Revolution, he said, I want the Red Army.
And he was given the task of rebuilding the Red Army.
That was their number one goal, because if they could take that army and turn it into a political tool of the regime, which they did, that's how you win.
And that's what gave you, of course, Stalin and the purges and the death camps, etc.
So that's what we're seeing here.
That's a number one target.
And General Valali and the others, to their credit, are pointing this out and raising the issue.
I know our friend Colonel McGregor and others have also talked about who've been to West Point.
Let's put up this next.
This is from the article.
And this is from the letter.
This is Valali in an interview about the letter.
He said, we wanted to challenge the leadership of the Academy and the Defense Department on their woke actions.
Critical race theory, diversity training, and other discrepancies in the academy.
We found it pervasive at the Naval and Air Force Academies.
So we knew it was directed from the highest levels of our military leadership.
That says a lot, Dr. Paul.
This is coming from above.
They have something very clearly in mind, which is to remake the military into this woke image.
And they talk about forced vaccines and a number of other things, the teaching of critical race theory in these courses.
Forget about how to beat the Afghan army.
We've got to have plenty of critical race theory, maybe some gender discussions as well.
You know, force is used by the authoritarians to make people obedient.
There was a lot of force used, you know, during COVID to make people toe the line.
And Trotsky was on the right track, though.
Eventually, though, the people become more militant in opposition to it.
And therefore, the government has to respond by showing that they have the strength.
So they go to the military.
And up until now, they've been able to have enough pressure on the corporations, where the corporations were the police enforcers.
They would do it because there was so much that the Federal Reserve system and the financial system and the spending can force the corporations to do exactly what they want.
But now, with this, let's just hope this stops, this nonsense about woking the military.
Because that means in many ways, if the people rise up against them, and people eventually will, and they're starting to, that we might need more than just cooperation from some of the corporations.
Because when the bankruptcy is in full swing, the corporations won't have as much to lose.
They would have lost it by then.
And then it will shift from the financial controls to run the system over to, you know, the militant approach, everything from the Gestapo to the centurion is going to come in and control the people.
Yeah.
Well, we'll keep an eye on this for sure.
I guess our last little segment is a little bit of humor.
I mean, we need a little bit every now and again.
And I'll kind of set this one up because, you know, they had the G-Summit meeting, the G7 meeting, sorry.
And they all got together at a roundtable, all the leaders, and they were going to have a photo op.
And they were making a joke about, I think it was Boris Johnson, we should take our coats off.
And then Trudeau said, we should take our clothes off.
And in fact, we do have that.
First of all, it shows the immaturity, I think, of some of these people.
We've got to show that we're tougher than Putin.
It just shows how petty and absurd they are.
It's a video clip, if we can put that last one up.
It's about 30 seconds long, I think.
And you can hear them joking.
There's a lot of chatter, but you can basically get the main point if you have.
Here we go.
We've got to show them our pecs.
It shows how puerile they are.
But, you know, Putin was asked about it.
What do you think about them saying that they want to be tougher than you, so they want to take their shirts off?
And, of course, he knows how to make a good joke, too.
And here's, put that next clip on because here's what he said.
Western leaders would look disgusting, topaless, which is pretty funny.
And the main reason I sent this to you this morning, Dr. Paul, because I know that you would like this quote.
Whatever you think about Putin, because I know you would agree.
Put this next one on.
This is from that article.
He said, speaking to reporters, Putin reported that unlike him, Western leaders abuse alcohol and don't do sports.
Quote, I don't know how they wanted to get undressed above or below the waist, he said, but I think it would be a disgusting sight in any case.
He noted that to look good, quote, it's necessary to stop abusing alcohol and other bad habits, do physical exercise, and take part in sports.
That's not bad advice.
You know, it seems like there may have been a shift because when the Soviet system was up and in much control, they were the ones that the Russians were seen as totally alcoholics.
That's all they lived with.
And now, just think of our society now.
It's alcohol, but it's all these other drugs, too.
And it looks like the Russians might be better off in that regard.
But, you know, the whole thing is, is that they wanted to do this.
And the Americans in Invitation, you know, they wanted to, you know, get us built up so that we could resist them.
But I was just wondering, I have a suggestion.
It's a lousy one.
I think it all should be settled with arm wrestling.
I think it should be Biden against our president.
Oh, that's not fair.
So maybe Trump could fill in.
Trump could fill in and they could have arm wrestling.
But should, you know, boy, boy, that much at stake over an arm wrestling.
Well, it might be a lot less risk than the risk we have now.
You know, there's too many arm wrestlers against liberty in this country.
We wouldn't know who the real arm wrestlers are.
You know, the woke people in this country or the Russians are coming.
The Russians are coming.
Well, obviously Putin is pretty astute.
He knows that Boris Johnson himself, who was suggesting they take their clothes off, has been in trouble because, remember, during the COVID lockdown, he was having all these wine-fueled parties in his office where people were drinking and passing out.
So it's probably pretty good advice.
And obviously, I'm not going to be on the cover of the swimsuit model myself, but if you look at Boris Johnson, here's that next picture.
You can see that he's not that far off in his assessment of the, I mean, the pot calling the kettle black.
This is Boris Johnson, hardly someone to show off his pecs.
And I don't like making fun of people's physical appearance.
However, he did open the door to that.
And I'm going to open the door in my closing, Dr. Paul, to something even more fun, and that's our last picture, our last clip, Anatomy of a Police State.
Liberty Report Conference Highlights 00:01:26
Tickets are selling.
Next week we'll start announcing some of our speakers, and we'll have them.
We're going to get a couple of them on the show to talk and keep people interested.
But we've had a lot of interest.
A lot of people want to join the host committee and take part in the VIP events that are around it.
And those are always such fun.
And I'll put a link in here for how you can get more info on that.
Almost fool, actually, the host committee, but we appreciate it.
But you can still get your tickets.
You can still get your early bird special through the month, the coming month of July.
A great bargain, a great time.
And I can't tell you how much I'm looking forward to it, Dr. Paul.
Well, I would think this would be a key time to come to a conference like this because things are moving so quickly, you know, in the news, in the economics, what our governments are doing, wars going on.
And have a few experts give us analysis I think would be very, very important.
And our conferences have been very successful in the past, and there's something that there should be a lot of enjoyment, but it's going to be very serious too, because we're going to be dealing with serious matters.
But we're also wise enough to know, realize that ideas are the important issues.
And if we're on the right track on what we're working for, and that is protection of individual liberty, because we believe that is the road to peace and prosperity.
I want to thank everybody for tuning in today to the Liberty Report.
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