Escalation! After Crimea Bridge Blast, Russia Hits Back!
Just over a day after Kiev crossed Putin's "red line" and struck the bridge connecting Crimea with mainland Russia, Moscow launched an unprecedented level of airstrikes throughout Ukraine, aiming at the power grid and military command centers. The Biden Administration was convinced that Putin's talk of "red lines" was a bluff. How far will this escalate? Also today: a Washington Post survey of GOP Congressional candidates reveals that most do not believe the official story on the 2020 elections. What might this mean if control of the House and Senate shifts?
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Hello everybody and thank you for tuning into the Liberty Report.
With us today is Daniel McAdams, our co-host.
Daniel, good to see you.
Good morning.
How are you?
This morning, Dr. Paul.
Are you recovered?
We had a long trip last week, a couple days away from our office here.
No, no, no.
Out in the desert.
Went up and helped celebrate 40 years for the Mises Institute.
That's pretty neat.
That was great.
That turned out real nice, I thought, too.
It was a great event.
So anyway, the world still has a few problems here.
And we've been talking about it for a long time since 2014, even though a lot of other people haven't looked at it yet.
And even a lot of people don't understand what that meant.
But that one, of course, was when the coup occurred and the elected officials, the elected administration of Ukraine, favorable toward Russia, which was a sin and a crime and an automatic no.
So NATO had to get busy and they say we don't want anybody talking to the Russians.
Even though talking to the Russians since the breakdown of the Soviet system, you know, hadn't gone so bad.
You know, it didn't quite work out that everybody had a peace dividends, but the little bit of benefits seemed to be melting away.
People can't stand to break out of peace.
And so they've been fussing there, especially for the last year or two.
It's gotten much worse.
And here it's back and forth.
And the media is back and forth on it.
It's usually, you know, there's one side that blames this group and the other side this one.
But in American media, there's only one group to blame.
And you have to be very, very cautious because if you're not with that group, you could get canceled.
So we don't want to lose our privileges that we've earned and the government allows us to have every once in a while.
But anyway, it's been troubles.
Of course, a week ago, and we talked a lot about it when they blew up Nord Stream, two pipelines.
That was, to me, a big deal.
And that was sort of the crowning blow to the philosophy that you say you trade with people who depend on each other economically, you're less likely to fight with them.
But evidently that was overruled.
That was voted out of existence.
So therefore they didn't want that, the people for various reasons.
But it really split Europe.
Europe split on it.
Germany was supposed to have some benefits by getting oil.
Then they went with NATO and that the whole thing has gotten much worse.
But the violence has escalated.
Not only did they have the pipelines go, but the bridge, Kirchbridge was blown up, which is a really interesting bridge.
It's a beautiful bridge, you know.
It was the connection to Russia.
And that was blown up.
And now there's retaliation, and it's back and forth.
And the Russians said, we're not going to let you get away with this.
You're going to have to be punished.
So there was a lot of bombing in the last 24 hours.
20 cities were hit.
People were starting to die.
And it's not the all-ots, all-out war that could happen, which would really be a tragedy, but it certainly is setting the stage for that because of the tragedy of two factions like this.
I'm willing to sit down and talk a little bit.
But I think that this is just getting started.
Unfortunately, it's going to get much worse.
So you almost wake up one morning.
Who's retaliating against what today?
You know, it was Ukraine and then Russia.
And now I guess Ukraine will come up with something.
So we'll have to wait and see.
In the meantime, we'll do our best to dig these things out and find out what really is going on.
Yeah, you make a good point that, you know, you're only allowed to take one side, you know, whether it's the Monster Saddam, the Monster Gaddafi.
The American people are always conditioned to take a side, take a side, but take the American side.
But, you know, for us, we always take a side, but we always actually take the real American side, which is we should not be involved.
We shouldn't have been involved in the coup.
We shouldn't have been involved in the Orange Revolution 10 years prior to the coup.
We shouldn't have been involved in arming Ukraine.
It had nothing to do with us.
And then there wouldn't have been a problem.
Well, they blame us, but there wouldn't have been any of the conflict.
But it has been a pretty dizzying few days.
And remember, I woke up the morning after the speech and the big event in Phoenix with Mises.
Well, actually, I couldn't go to sleep that night because that's when the bridge was hit.
And that was massive because Putin said, this is one of our red lines.
Do not hit the bridge.
And as you point out, the whole history of this conflict has been the Biden administration pushing red lines.
How much equipment can we put in there?
How much money can we spend buying military equipment for Ukraine?
And each time they cross a red line, they push it even further.
And I think this is primarily Blinken and Sullivan, the National Security Advisor and the Secretary of State.
So at this point, the bluff was called and Putin did respond to the attack on the bridge.
Now the bridge was not taken down.
They resumed rail traffic a few hours later and they resumed limited traffic on the automobile section.
But I would say for sure that Ukraine achieved a kind of psychological victory by hitting the bridge because that is a symbol of Crimea returning to Russia.
And so hitting that, I think, was a real psychological victory for them.
Let's put up that first click because it was also recognized by Zelensky, the president of Ukraine, that it was a victory.
In fact, they celebrated it very, very strongly for about 24 hours in Ukraine.
And this is from information liberation quoting the New York Times.
Senior Ukrainian official confirms Ukraine orchestrated truck bomb attack on Crimean bridge.
And this is Zelensky in his own words making light and making a joke of the attack on the bridge.
He said, today was a good and mostly sunny day for our country.
Unfortunately, it was cloudy in Crimea, though it was still warm.
And behind me, of course, is a picture of the bridge on fire.
So making light of it.
And in fact, within hours of the bridge being hit, Ukraine released a stamp.
If we could put that next one up, a little bit weird.
They must have taken some time to prepare it.
They released a postage stamp of the Kerch Bridge on fire.
This is from the Telegraph.
And they put these stamps in large form throughout Kiev.
And people, if we'll look on the next one, people would go around and take selfies celebrating the blowing up of this bridge, which is a civilian bridge, obviously.
And that was on Putin's birthday, by the way, of course.
So that made it even more of a symbolic view.
and they did celebrate for a while, Dr. Paul.
But as you pointed out, if we can go to the next one, I think, oh no, let's go back.
Just take that down.
So as we found out, yes, over 100 strikes, probably about 150 strikes.
So far, 11 confirmed deaths from the strikes.
But apparently, the targets have been military, energy, and communication targets throughout Ukraine.
From what I've read so far, they're not permanently damaged, but significantly offline.
I think they hit, because the SBU, which is Ukraine's intelligence service, was identified as being behind the attack on the bridge.
Their headquarters got hit in Kiev, so that's a response.
And just one last thing is what President Putin said as they had completed this first round of response.
If attempts to carry out terrorist attacks continue, Russia's response will be severe and at the level of the threats facing it.
Nobody should be in any doubt.
I think it's something that should be taken seriously.
You know, I can daydream all I want because it doesn't hurt anybody.
I daydream when I look at this and I see that bridge, I think it's magnificent, and the geography is such.
What if there were factions on both sides of that bridge decided, well, why don't we do everything positive here?
We're going to have a free trade zone.
We're going to allow people to go back and forth here and trade energy or whatever.
Instead of it becoming the weapon to be used to extend the war and expand the war, it's exactly the opposite.
But that would, you know, that bridge is magnificent when you come to technology.
And I've always, you know, always disappointed with the fact that technology has two purposes.
One to advance civilization, one to destroy civilization.
And as an example of that, a bridge like that could have expanded civilization, but it's back to how people treat each other.
And even though we were on a better path, immediately somebody broke the rules.
And tragically, we have to take a position to explain which side really started breaking the rules the earliest.
And for me, the tragic of that is that it was, as far as I'm concerned, that it was NATO that did this.
And that's been escalated.
And then you have to judge, how are they going to retaliate?
That is the big thing.
Who's going to retaliate?
And how long will it be until it gets out of hand?
I was getting pretty close to that.
But Zelensky responded to this, and you'll never guess what he came out for.
Zelensky unleashes fury.
I mean, Russia unleashes its fury and all this bombing.
Zelensky implores the West for more help.
More money.
More money.
$67 billion is not quite enough, so we need more.
So in one hand, they brag about their ability and their military successes, and we blow up bridges and pipelines, and we're winning the war for the propaganda to convince, you know, their benefactors, which is the American taxpayer, that this is a war that is very serious.
It's a war against goodness and badness, and we need your help.
But they want to keep going as usual.
They're acting like there's no problem.
Their legislative body met, they drew up a budget.
They said, oh, yeah, do you have any money?
Oh, no, we don't have any money.
We're just drawing up the budget.
The Americans are going to pay.
Like, stick it to the American taxpayer.
Maybe they won't catch on for a little while.
Yeah, that's a great point.
And, you know, as we move to the election season, Americans who are dealing with inflation, it's pretty bad.
Gas prices are back up, I noticed, on the way to work.
You're right, and we've mentioned this before.
It's something we saw on anti-war.com.
Ukraine's parliament approved a draft budget for 2023 in closed session.
The spending plan has a $30 billion deficit, which Kiev largely expects to be covered by Washington.
So here we go again.
And at the same time, the backdrop to all this is Biden coming out and saying, we're closer to Armageddon than we have been since the Cuban Missile Crisis.
And I don't know if he really wanted to bring it up in this context, because as we know, we were saved from Armageddon during the Cuban Missile Crisis because cooler heads prevailed and Kennedy decided to talk to Khrushchev and make a compromise, pull our missiles out of Turkey, they pull their missiles out of Cuba, and we lived another day.
That's not happening here.
In fact, the Biden administration keeps ramping it up, keeps turning it up, moving us closer to Armageddon.
You know, there's a saying about follow the money and seeing where it goes.
In this case, we want to trace the money backwards.
Where did this money come from?
And obviously we talk about it all the time.
The money's coming, you know, from NATO, allies in Europe, the American government, the international bodies, NATO and United Nations.
But then, where'd they get it?
Well, I'll go back one more step.
Well, taxpayers have to pay, and they contribute to this.
I think we had a most recent president, a Republican, pointed out that most of it's coming from us.
And he said that that shouldn't be.
So here it is.
You go all the way back.
Now, the American people will look at this because the propaganda is so incessant.
There's not many who will say objectively, you know, maybe the Liberty Report has a point.
Maybe we ought to just stay out of this.
And to tell you the truth, when we come back from a conference like we had, there are some friends out there who would go along with that.
So that's the whole thing.
People need to do it because when they hear this, they'd like to ignore it.
Oh, that's a long way off.
The Russians were, you know, we had to put up with those Russian communists for so long.
It has to be the Russians' fault.
So they do this and they rationalize, but they never come back and say, well, it's the American taxpayers that are paying the bill.
They say, yeah, but everybody wants to loan us money and the dollar seems to be holding up pretty good.
I say, yeah, except when you want to use it to buy groceries.
That's what you have to remember.
At the end of this week, there are going to be more statistics.
And you mentioned this morning, you know, I think the oil, the gasoline prices are going to go back up.
And that's it.
And they don't put it all together.
And it's superficial.
And there's still this illusion about you can trust your government.
And you have some Republicans here that can't, it's a certain amount.
Not all of them.
They are the pro-defense people, military spending.
And then there's another group that, you know, they'll take the money and they will promote their social welfare program.
And it's all for good purposes.
And they never, even over this weekend, they made an effort to bring up this subject, you know, because symbolically, you know, folks, this $31 trillion, pretty soon it's going to add up to a lot of money.
Where do you think it's coming from?
But they don't make the connection.
And that's what they're going to have the connection.
But then if they don't understand it, they're going to opt for somebody and something or some group of people that are going to be more false promises because people will panic and say, anything now, we just can't put up with the tragedy that's going on.
Denialism In Politics00:09:39
Look at the tragedy in Ukraine.
And look at the tragedy in our inner cities.
They have to be channeled and get the information to know which direction they ought to be going.
And it certainly isn't more government authoritarianism.
That's where the problem comes from.
Yeah.
And we are the actual pro-defense people, right?
We're pro-defense.
They're pro-military.
I mean, you can't, if you go and suck somebody in the nose and he hits you back, well, that wasn't defensive.
You brought it on.
So, yeah, we want a strong defense for our country, not for others.
Let's put on this next one.
Now, this is the idea.
You like to talk about this, Dr. Paul, how insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.
Well, here is the prime minister of Estonia next to von der Leyen, who's the European Commissioner.
And she says, the Estonian prime minister, she says, my message with von der Leyen at the Narva border crossing with Russia on the other side, the best way to be with Ukraine right now is to speed up our support.
So basically, send them more weapons because that'll get them to stop.
Well, how's that working?
And I want to put up another tweet because this is someone I have a lot of respect for.
He's a brilliant mind, brilliant entrepreneur, very, very quick thinker.
Kim.com has a great tweet, and I think he really covers it well.
He says, every image or video that you see of people suffering or dying in Ukraine is in the name of the U.S. dollar.
This war is the result of arrogant, selfish, and malicious U.S. foreign policy.
Ukraine is a tool for the U.S. government to achieve its objectives, and the EU is being sacrificed too.
That's a great, great observation on Kim.com, who, by the way, is on the death list.
for the Ukrainian government.
Remember Daria Dugino, who you wrote about this week.
She was on the death list and she was killed.
So is Kim.com, but so, by the way, is Rand Paul, by the way.
So, and Doug McGregor.
So, pretty serious stuff, but I think he nails it there with that.
You know, they have all these fancy things, these nice things defending the Constitution and peace and prosperity and on the side of goodness and greatness for us to keep involved.
But if it would narrow down to saying, well, why should we consider $16 billion for this war, and we want more, and Zelensky will get more.
You can't walk away.
That takes 15 or 20 years to walk away.
But what if they said, well, we need this appropriation, and I go down on the House floor and I say, well, you know, I had somebody come to my office today, and they said they'd like us to pass this bill because our profits have just dropped off.
There's a lot of people who depend on us.
They're employees.
So don't you think you can bend a little bit and vote for this militarism?
Because it's good for profits.
But you never hear that.
You hear a much, much more saintly, you know, saying all this goodness and wonderful thing that we're going to do and save the world.
And it looks like they brought the Germans and the Russians got back together and they're going to live in peace forever.
Well, let's move on a little bit because this is an interesting one because this is challenging a narrative that has been very strong since the 2020 election.
Let's put on this next one.
This is originally from the Washington Post.
A majority of GOP nominees, 299 in all, deny the 2020 election results.
This is a survey that the Washington Post did of Republican nominees for the House, Senate, and key statewide offices, and they discovered that the majority have denied or questioned the outcome of the last presidential election.
And of course, you're not allowed to do that.
You're not allowed to suggest that these weren't the cleanest, freest, fairest elections in history.
But there's going to be a problem if these guys get elected and guys and gals get elected because the narrative is going to take a real beating when people who don't believe it and don't buy into it start speaking up.
Yeah, and I think that's going to be interesting because once a movement starts like that, it's slow and tedious.
A lot of people remain silent.
You know, oh, it's a negative and I don't want to be canceled and I don't want to be challenged and I want my committee assignment.
But once it moves over, and this looks like a big deal, because if this actually happens, and like you say, if they get elected, people will know.
Then it's going to snowball.
They have already started talking about the leaders in the House of Representatives may be different in this go around.
Maybe the establishment Republicans won't be re-elected.
You know, this Congresswoman Green, they said she's going up into polls all of a sudden.
But of course, they had blackballed her and everything.
She's lucky she's still there.
She definitely shoots from the hip.
But here's from the Post article, put up that next clip.
Because as you suggest, this is exactly what they're saying.
The implications will be lasting, of course, of these people getting elected.
If Republicans take control of the House, as many political forecasters predict, election deniers would hold enormous sway over the choice of the next speaker, who in turn could preside over the House in a future contested presidential election.
So they clearly are worried.
They're clearly worried that the narrative that they put out is under threat.
Interestingly enough, in the article, an author of New York University historian and author of Strongman Moose Linton, the president said, election denialism is a form of corruption.
And the Zero Hedge article that we saw about it then links to, which I didn't have, I didn't put it up here, but links to a YouTube of Democrat after Democrat after Democrat denying elections, including Hillary.
She did it so many times with a woman in Georgia.
Yeah.
And then she said, I didn't, she denied denying.
But they're on tape.
They do it over and over and over.
So when they lose, it's rigged.
But when their opponents lose, don't you dare say it's rigged.
So they had to blast it.
Denialism.
Denialism.
Denialism, a form of corruption.
And you see the word terrorism even popping up.
So this is serious stuff.
But what if they say, well, does that mean that we're not allowed to have a fair count?
If people cheat, should we not say anything?
What kind of a system is that?
That makes democracy look pretty negative.
Of course, the founders would be, you know, I still, that still is an annoying thing when people highly praise, they'll say what we have to do, and they'll be right on a bunch of issues.
But the whole purpose of our existence is to make democracy, you know, a sacred honor, you know, and of course, the border was never used.
The founders couldn't stand that.
And the best thing is it becomes a dictatorship of a majority.
And the way it is today, especially with social media and all, the majority can be manipulated.
So they turn it around.
Somebody wants a fair count.
And then they're denialists.
They're corrupt.
They're terrorists and everything else.
And you can't even question it.
And generally that's been accepted.
I remember when Nixon lost a close race to Kennedy, and there was a lot of corruption up in Cook County in Chicago.
But even Nixon knew at the time, you don't want to rock the boat.
And I guess under the short term, his strategy worked because he did become president.
But the whole thing, if you're looking for a fair count, and I keep thinking about my meager experience in Texas with my own race, I know how they'll operate.
And even I, I was a neophyte.
I had no cloud.
But they were, the evidence is there.
Just take my word for it.
It was there about what they did to keep me from winning a particular race.
And the other one in Texas, which is notorious, and that is LBJ.
Just look at that.
But, you know, the final end of LBJ, he resigned in disgrace.
You know, and that was a big issue.
I remember that moment when LBJ says, I'm dropping out of this race.
And it had to do, you know, with the people waking up and they were in the streets and they were saying, we're sick and tired of this war in Vietnam.
But the whole thing is, this is the craziness of politics.
So this gave Nixon an opening.
So Nixon gets in and 34,000 more Americans were killed after he was elected.
So that's why I believe in preventative medicine.
You know, take care of our health.
Why don't we take good care of the health of our freedoms here in our hometowns?
And the answer to all these election problems is not one centralized U.S. election, you know.
I mean, I remember the cleanest election I ever monitored was so simple.
It was in a small precinct.
There were representatives from every party.
The ballots were paper, and they were put out for everyone to see.
They voted for X, everyone agrees.
Next one, you know, put it in the pile.
After they all agreed, all parties signed the process revolved.
We all agree with the results.
They packed them up, sealed it, and sent it to the district.
Big Difference in Elections00:03:22
And that's clean.
Why can't they do it that way?
You could do that when you mentioned smaller units.
And that's what a representative government should be.
It shouldn't be these massive numbers.
And then this whole thing is, oh, you don't have to register.
Are you a citizen?
Don't you bother me with that question.
What makes you think I have to be a citizen to vote here?
I don't know how they do it now, but I know when I move from one state to another, I'd have to go to the courthouse and re-register.
At least they kept little tabs on people.
Well, I'm going to close it out today, Dr. Paul, with a surprise for our viewers.
And this is a picture that I snapped while we were in Phoenix, and I think it's a great picture.
I cropped it a little bit.
But here's you and Lou Rockwell sitting up there on the stage before the main event.
It was just such a great time.
It's just a great picture of you and Lou, I have to say.
Lou was in such good spirits.
He got a very, very well-deserved Lifetime Achievement Award from the Mises Institute for his unbelievable work on freedom for decades.
So I just wanted to put that up for our viewers to see what a great picture that is.
And I will finally close by putting up the last one.
We have just a couple weeks left now to get your tickets.
We still have tickets available.
Come down to Lake Jackson if we can put that last one up.
Cancel culture and the war on speech is what we're talking about.
It's ugly.
I would say this banner is ugly.
I know you think it's ugly, Dr. Paul, but it's also ugly to yell people down, to shout people down, to punch people in the nose for what they have to say to cancel them.
So that's what we're going to talk about.
We had Del Bigtree on the show last week.
Great show, I think.
Del's going to be there.
He's a very, very magnetic personality and very dynamic speaker.
So he's going to have a lot of great stories to tell.
So I will put in the link a way to get your tickets and come down here to Texas, Lake Jackson, and visit with some like-minded people on cancel culture and what we can do to push back.
Very good.
I too had a good time at the Mises function celebrating 40 years.
Lou had been working with me in the Congress and was there when we had the Gold Commission.
So we had worked a long time and I endorsed the beginning of the Mises Institute.
But even with that, even though there were so many friends there and they were always so generous, giving me more credit than I really deserve, but I'll tell you what, I still think an institute like the Mises Institute, and in my mind I like to think that all people who work in promoting our cause and our liberties and understanding what freedom is all about, the model that the Mises had is not the model everybody will use,
but it was academic, it was ideas, ideas have consequences, the ideas of the people make a big difference, and they have been very, very successful.
It has made a big difference.
And yet, I even made the remark at the function that, you know, Lou, I said, I have to tell you the truth.
when you wanted to do this, I said, you know that there's only two people in Congress that ever heard of Mises, and yet that is not the case today.
Invisible Influence00:00:42
That is not the case.
So it is something that you can't really measure.
You don't know how many people an organization like Lou has influence, how many teachers there are, how many writers, and it's unknown what the influence is.
It's unknown.
I like the biblical story about the remnant because when you get to Spond and say, there's nobody out there.
And yet we find out that there are people out there more than that we know about and that you can't kill the spirit of liberty.
And I think that's the thing that we work here to make sure that people don't forget about the spirit of liberty.
I want to thank everybody for tuning in today to the Liberty Report.