The Biden Administration's attacks on Syria and Iraq over the weekend was supposed to deter the various militias from continuing to attack US military outposts in the two countries. But it hasn't worked. And it won't work. As Doug Macgregor writes in the American Conservative, Biden's bombing is "pointless...virtue signaling." Also today: Senate border bill is DOA in the House. Speaker Johnson moves to fund Israel in a standalone bill.
Hello, everybody, and thank you for tuning in to the Liberty Report.
With us today, we have Daniel McAdams, our co-host.
Daniel, good to see you this time.
Good morning, Dr. Paul.
How are you this morning?
Doing well.
Radio and rare.
Just a few problems in the world, but we can deal with those before lunch.
Yes.
We don't have much time.
You know, the big problem is the people who could do something about it won't even talk about it or they don't even understand them.
They just have been able to get away with it, add government program, add the spending, monetize the debt.
And if anybody interferes with our finance, we threaten them with bombs or we lock them down and deny access to the marketplace or we'll put on tariffs.
That doesn't sound very constitutional to me.
It doesn't sound very smart.
But now there's a big question.
They've honed in on not all those problems I've talked about, but should we bomb Iran?
I thought that's what we've been doing.
They keep talking about Iranian troops all over the place.
And we more or less have declared war against them as far as I'm concerned.
But no, precisely what they're thinking about.
Can the United States now launch missiles and things and go into the territory of Iran?
You know, that is, you know, diplomatically and militarily, that's sort of a big deal, but morally it doesn't matter.
You know, you can kill people and you hide it, and then it's not a big deal.
But that is the big issue because, you know, it's bipartisan to have a hawkish group, but there's a growing number of people, not for libertarian reasons, in the Democratic Party.
It's not because they're honest progressives, but it has to do with the Palestinian-Israel fight.
It's not the same thing.
But yet, they are standing up against some of this.
But this is the thing, the thing that bothers me the most, and I know you read these and get disgusted with it, are the statements coming from when you talk to them on the street or have dinner with them or say hello.
They seem half decent.
But then they come up with these militant things.
We have to do more.
And, you know, the other thing that gets to me, not only the congressmen that, you know, seem to be nice, but they're really warmongers, are the people who say that we have to do this for national security.
And we don't do this.
We need to be tough.
I've decided a long time, sometimes it takes as much courage or more to try to say no to these pressure points, the political pressure.
And the one thing that I think people don't realize, and the few that we have there do realize, people like Thomas Massey finds out that when he stands alone, sometimes the roof doesn't come crashing down on you because he gains more respect.
That's what happened.
So it's a shame.
But now they're arguing, you know, what do we do?
Because they killed three American soldiers.
But it wasn't Iran.
It was somebody else.
We're not sure.
And I think there's a pretty good argument that they probably didn't do it.
But they're involved, obviously.
We've declared war on them.
We've been fighting them for a long time.
And we haven't.
But it is easy to bash Iran, Russia, China, on and on.
And they figure that as long as the people get riled up, they'll tolerate it.
But I think They're getting riled up.
It's getting more balanced now.
Maybe a little bit of that should be directed to Washington.
So that is the challenge we have because when we challenge our own government, they can say, oh, you guys just aren't patriotic.
And you don't care about American freedom.
And yet the exact opposite is occurring.
It's been going on a long time.
I mean, from just about all the wars we've gotten involved in, they had to make up the excuses for bombing somebody.
Act of War00:15:40
And that's what's going on now.
And it'll be interesting to see when it's concluded.
But as far as I'm concerned, it's already started.
I don't think that there's going to be a magic point.
Oh, now we can bomb them.
Just putting on punitive tariffs is an act of war, as far as I'm concerned.
And that's a bipartisan issue.
Both Democrats and Republicans would like to punish them one way or the other.
But today, the big issue is should they literally go and bomb Iran.
And our friend Douglas McGregor has written about that.
And I keep thinking, you know, I think you got to know him before I did, but he's been with us and been involved with us now for several years.
And so I think that's great.
I love it to see him getting credibility, but he's probably not going to be the military advisor on Fox or CNN anytime soon.
But he has an audience, and that's what we like.
Yeah, and let's put up this article because this is what we're talking about, and this is what we're going to talk about in our first segment.
He had a piece that came out this morning.
He sent it over to me this morning.
And I was, to be honest, Dr. Paul, I was jealous because this is the article that I wanted to write, but I didn't write it as well as he did.
So we'll talk about his to bomb or not to bomb Iran.
That is the question, is what he wrote in the American Conservative Today.
And if you go to the next clip, here's how he starts the article.
The world, Blinken said, has not seen such a situation as dangerous as the one we're facing now across the region since at least 1973 and arguably even before that, is what Blinken said.
McGregor says, in response to Blinken's astute evaluation, President Biden is virtue signaling to Washington's war party that he too is willing to pointlessly bomb targets in the Middle East.
And here's this: here's the line that really struck me, Dr. Paul.
In Washington, to do otherwise is to appear weak.
And this is something I wrote about to Mara Paul's subscribers last night in my weekly column that I send out exclusively to our subscribers.
But there's this whole idea, if you don't bomb immediately when someone says boo, then you're weak.
You're projecting weakness.
And I found a clip that perfectly encapsulates that mentality inside the beltway.
And let's put on that clip of this is Speaker Mike Johnson, who in 45 seconds has basically that exact thing and everything wrong.
It's the audio clip, so you might want to grab your earpiece.
Let's listen to Speaker Johnson 49 seconds about appearing weak.
We need to make absolutely clear to Iran that nothing is off the table.
You know, we maintain peace through strength.
That was the Reagan doctrine.
That's what President Trump continued, and that's what we have to do right now.
We should not be appeasing Iran.
That's what the Biden administration has been doing for the last three years.
We are projecting weakness on the world stage.
And frankly, Kristen, that is why our adversaries are acting so provocatively.
What we need to be doing right now is turning up the heat on Iran.
We need to act to decimate the Iran central bank, the assets that they've held there.
We need to lean on international banks to seize the assets of Iranian proxies.
We need to put big-time pressure, maximum pressure, on their oil exports.
There's a lot that we could do to Iran to send a message instead of disappeasing the so much for his credibility as a constitutionalist.
Yeah, yeah.
I mean, he's declaring war on Iran.
But the thing that really gets me is this notion, well, Biden is projecting weakness.
We need peace through strength.
The thing is, it actually it makes America look weak when you do bomb.
Like we've bombed Yemen, little Yemen.
We bombed them 10 times now.
The Houthis, far from being discouraged, they're actually even more encouraged.
So actually, it doesn't project toughness to bomb if the bombing has no deterrent value.
And that's the whole point of what Doug's writing about here.
You know, it's sort of the question about dealing with a bully.
Is a bully weak?
Oh, sometimes they're big and tough and mean and nasty.
But they could be weak.
And I think the question is, is weakness something that resents and repels against wisdom?
Maybe a little bit more wisdom is what we need.
And that might take a little bit of courage.
So I think the insecure are the ones who are the bullies.
And we have a reason to be insecure because although we are tough, we're big, we're rich still.
But it's temporary.
It's all based on debt and certain conditions since World War II.
But we don't have that.
So the weaker we get, the weaker our dollar gets, and the more ridiculous we look on the international scene, the more aggressive our leaders will become to show toughness because toughness is the answer, and it just might be doing exactly the opposite of what they ought to be doing.
Yeah.
I mean, the whole idea of bombing for de-escalation, first of all, it just sounds irrational.
But, you know, Doug, this is, I'm going to read this short paragraph, but I want to read it because he captures everything in these couple of sentences.
It's perfect.
And this comes from a decorated military combat veteran.
Bombing is not diplomacy, but politicians like it because it conveys the impression of substantive action.
Bombing is neither a strategy nor a simple exercise in virtue signaling.
Bombing is an act of war.
Bombing does not contain conflict, nor does bombing deter an opponent from future action.
If anything, bombing escalates tension and leads to all-out war.
So he's saying what Biden and the neocons are doing, and that includes his Republican critics who are saying he's not doing more and faster, what they're missing is that this is not a deterrent, it's an act of war.
And one of the things when I was reading this, Dr. Paul, it reminded me of what you always say about sanctions.
There's a sense of, well, I've got to do something.
I've got to do something.
Well, I don't want to go to war, so I'll do sanctions.
In this case, it's Biden saying, well, I don't want to take us completely to war, so I'll just send some missiles and some drones and make everyone look like I'm tough in doing something.
Well, if bombing was of benefit to bring about the results that they claim they're for, we would have had peace rather quickly in Vietnam.
How many bombs?
Wasn't it by the time it was over, or maybe when we were halfway through, we dropped more bombs on Vietnam than we dropped in World War II?
I mean, it's just astounding.
But no, it's a fallacy.
But maybe the reason why it shocks us is we're not seeing it through their eyeglasses because maybe that is exactly what they want.
You know, perpetual war.
You know, there's been people who've talked about that.
And there are some who would love to have war and no Americans would ever die.
If we could keep the Americans from dying, but the Americans getting richer and this process, then it's okay.
But eventually it ends.
And I think this stalemate that's going on is so symbolic of a struggling nation to maintain an empire that is getting weaker every day.
And yet they don't want to recognize it.
They don't want to do what would have to happen.
They don't, because it would, to change things, you'd have to reject the notion of empire.
And that's not going to happen.
Yeah, and Doug McGregor tells a great story in this article, which is of a meeting that President Johnson had in June of 1964, where he gathered together, he got McNamara and he got Robert McNamara, the defense secretary at the time, Avril Harriman, who was an ambassador.
They were all together because a couple of U.S. ships had been, military aircraft were shot down over Laos.
And so they're saying, well, what should we do?
President was saying, what should we do?
Well, they agreed that to run a bombing campaign would signal the intentions, the Washington's tough intentions against Hanoi.
But as Doug rightly points out, they didn't de-escalate.
Hanoi did not de-escalate.
On the contrary, if we can put that next clip up, here's from the article.
So he says, at no time in Vietnam, Laos, or Cambodia were American bombings, sea-based operations, or ground incursions truly effective in deterring enemy moves or in preventing more and more destructive war from breaking out.
He said the North Vietnamese simply absorbed the losses and escalated their attacks wherever U.S. forces were weakest on the ground.
Which is exactly what we're seeing with the Houthis, Dr. Paul.
This has already been done in history.
Just like sanctions, they don't work.
They don't de-escalate, but they're doing more and more of it.
Yeah.
Yeah, I see that Johnson, I think it was Johnson that mentioned Reagan as an example of an ally.
And of course, I've used Reagan as an ally when he noticed easily a big mistake that he admitted was a big mistake.
And he at one time said, if I had not sent those troops over there, they all would be alive today.
Something like that.
It was so dramatic.
So yes, he was being influenced by the wrong people and overwhelmed and went ahead and put him in.
But then he finally just removed the troops from Lebanon after 242 of them were killed.
But not many presidents would do that.
None of them would do that today.
But did it destroy Reagan?
No, Reagan became, not because of it, but in spite of it, it didn't destroy him.
They say, oh, he is so weak.
He said he wouldn't turn tail and run.
And that's what he did because it didn't make any sense.
But no, sometimes we just stay in there until we kill enough people that finally we run out of bombs or something.
Yeah.
Well, the whole idea of bombing Iraq and Syria yet again on Friday was to signal strength.
We're going to signal strength and we're going to de-escalate.
Well, the proof is in the pudding.
Put up this next clip.
How did it work out?
Did they say, okay, you got us, we gave up.
We'll stop attacking you.
Well, no, that's not what happened.
Here's an AP story from today.
At least six Kurdish fighters are killed in a drone attack on a Syrian base housing U.S. troops.
So not only were they not deterred, they have continued the attacks on these bases because they don't want U.S. bases in Syria.
They don't want U.S. bases in Iraq.
They want to expel them from their territory.
They view them as an occupying power.
And a few American Bobs do not dissuade them.
In fact, I think they encourage them.
And here you see it.
You're going to continue to see these kind of attacks.
It's amazing to me how long they can do it.
You know, the cities are flattened, the houses are destroyed, people, you know, are wandering around looking for a bite to eat, and yet it's the homeland principle.
People, they say, oh no, they stole that land and it was never theirs.
Oh, they only had it for 2,000 years or something like that.
So it just goes on and on.
And yet, in spite of all the travesty they have, they still stick to wanting to stay there.
I mean, what do people in Yemen do?
They hang around hoping that better days will be ahead.
And then their greatest sin was, who's going to help us?
Oh, and they look for help, then we have to hate them more than we hated the Yemenis.
Well, let's move on.
We'll keep an eye on that.
But anyone can go to the American Conservative and read Doug's article.
It's definitely worth reading, as is all his work.
But the next article came, I think this dropped yesterday, the Senate.
And I didn't have a clip of Senator Mike Lee, but he put out a good tweet saying, you guys have been working on this in secret for so long and you didn't tell us, you didn't bring it into us, and then you just dropped it down.
Go ahead and put this one, this is from Hedge.
Scandalous Senate deal allows 1.5 million illegals per year, slides up to 2.3 billion to NGOs trafficking them, and gives $60 billion to Ukraine.
The Senate dropped its long-awaited immigration bill, Dr. Paul, and it is considered DOA.
This is Lankford in Oklahoma and Mitch McConnell's doing.
And they claim that if you don't support them, that you're unpatriotic and not a good American, and you're doing something very, very foolish and wasteful, and you're supporting the enemy.
Well, I'll tell you what, I think the problem is not complex.
We ought to obey some basic moral principles.
We ought to look to the Constitution.
We shouldn't fight wars that are never declared.
And we should leave.
And they say, just pick up and leave.
You know, my answer is we just picked up and went in.
Why can't we just pick up and leave?
But oh, it's not that easy.
If we leave Syria, really leave Syria and not pretend, who's going to get the oil?
Well, I'm not sure who's going to get the oil, but I don't think it's worth our while to, we're in rural Nile, the greatest, the largest producer of oil in the whole world.
And here we are occupying Syria, you know, and threatening anybody that will attack us.
So it doesn't make any sense.
But that's part of history.
They have thought of it.
I think the only short-term answer is let the locals fight it out.
You know, let them sort it out.
But this whole idea that we have this obligation, it's a long trip over there.
You know, I don't know which is the furthest, probably Taiwan or Yemen.
It's thousands of miles away.
And we're determined to go.
You know, where is the front?
Well, the front is everywhere.
Any place we want to go, that's the front.
And in the meantime, this new bill that comes out, they're going to open the borders more.
They're going to, I mean, as it currently stands, it's illegal to cross the border illegally.
You know what this reminds me of, by the way, Dr. Paul, the Senate bill reminds me of when we had the issue with the Patriot Act.
And they found out that there were some things that they were illegally doing.
So remember, they introduced the Freedom Act.
And what it basically did is didn't tell them to stop spying on us.
It actually made that part legal to spy on us.
That was the fix.
Well, this is the fix.
People coming in legally, oh, well, let's have a new bill that says it's now legal.
You can come in legally here.
This reminds me of another subject, but it has to do with money.
I went into Congress in 1976, but they changed all the rules on international and the IMF in 1971 when we closed the gold window because we declared bankruptcy.
And the first bill that I had to work on was in 1976.
I had won a special election dealing with the IMF bill.
And I said, well, we've been doing that all along.
Oh, I know that.
But we have to legalize what we're doing.
They've been doing it for 71.
So they said, now we'll pass the bill.
International Aid Debate00:08:38
And it's not even like there's an embarrassment.
That's tricky, shrewd, shrewd politics.
Do it and then write a law.
And it's constitutional.
Obviously not.
Well, let's look at some highlights, or would you say lowlights of the Senate bill?
Go ahead and put that next one up.
Here's a bill of particulars.
Here's what this bill does.
$60.06 billion to support Ukraine.
So we've already pumped $100 and some billion dollars in.
We're going to pump another $60 billion.
$14.1 billion in security assistance for Israel, i.e. buying Israel more bombs to drop on Palestinian civilians.
$2.5 billion to support operations of the U.S. Central Command.
$10 billion in humanitarian assistance for Gaza.
Now this is the thing, Dr. Paul.
We're paying for the bullets and the bombs to drop on them, and we're paying for the food and shelter after that's dropped on them.
This is a classic, classic U.S. foreign policy.
And then there's some money for Taiwan.
There's $2 billion for Ukrainians displaced by the war.
Only $20 billion to address existing operational needs, expand capabilities at the border, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.
There's a bunch of other stuff in it.
But basically, it's a big foreign aid bill disguised as an immigration bill.
Well, the rebuilding starts early on because they're already talking about getting in on the bottom level to rebuild Ukraine.
They're talking about who's going to get the Trump contract.
And so everything is an opportunity.
Lots of big money.
Well, Speaker Johnson got this one right.
Here's his comment on the Senate bill, if you can put this up.
He said, I've seen enough.
This bill is even worse than we expected and won't come close to ending the border catastrophe the president has created.
As the lead Democrat negotiator proclaimed, under this legislation, the border never closes.
Speaker Johnson concludes, if this bill reaches the House, it'll be dead on arrival.
So the Senate bill has no chance of passing.
And now former president and maybe future President Trump commented on it.
If you put that next one on, I'll just read a couple of typical Trump.
Only a fool or radical left Democrat would vote for this scandalous, horrendous border bill, which only gives shutdown authority after 5,000 encounters a day when we already have the right to close the border now, which must be done.
Now he goes on to say something else that's interesting.
We need a separate border bill and immigration bill.
It should not be tied to foreign aid in any way, shape, or form.
So he's calling for the decoupling of the Ukraine and Israel aid from the border bill, which they initially coupled them together because Republicans at the time thought there was so much strength in the idea of passing the Ukraine money that they could put that border bill on top of it and get that through because the Dems wouldn't oppose it.
Well, that's not the case anymore.
The enthusiasm for continuing to support Ukraine has dwindled significantly.
So now they're talking about decoupling them.
So what I see happening is a border bill coming and separately the bills to fund Ukraine and Israel.
Yes, and that's what they're offering the House to vote on the bill.
$17.6 billion in new military aid for Israel.
It's a pro-Israel bill because the other is too confusing.
They have to pick and choose.
Well, they're picking and choosing here.
But one pick is symbolic and very significant is I think it's on this bill that they erase the benefit of eliminating some funding to the IRS.
So, well, we need the IRS.
How are we going to pay for this?
We can't mess with the IRS to collect the money, and we can't mess with the Federal Reserve because they have to print the money, and then they wonder why we have financial problems.
Yeah.
So that's exactly what is happening because they see that this border bill is in danger, and that means the money for Israel is in danger.
And Mike Johnson, he's bragged about it.
The first thing I did when I was Speaker is I passed a bill for money for Israel.
So he's very, very open about it.
And so what he has done is he has put in a bill, and I think they're going to try to pass it under suspension of the rules this week.
He says it is going to the floor this week to separate the money and give it to Israel to continue their war on the Palestinians.
Thomas Massey, as usual, has a great comment about this.
Here's his post on Twitter X, if we can put that up.
He's got a picture of the letter that Johnson sent to members saying, I'm going to put a bill on the floor for Israel.
And here's what Thomas Massey says.
The Speaker just announced that next week the House will vote on a clean bill to send Israel $14.3 billion.
Israel has a lower debt to GDP ratio than the United States.
This spending package has no offsets.
So it will increase our debt by $14.3 billion plus interest.
I'm a no, he says.
So he's going to vote against this bill that's coming to the floor.
If you go to the next one, this is from Johnson's letter.
The one point I just wanted to make, he talks about, so given the Senate's failure to move appropriate legislation in a timely fashion and the perilous circumstances currently facing Israel, the House will continue to lead.
We're going to take up and pass a clean standalone Israel supplemental package is what he's doing.
Now a couple more comments from Massey, Dr. Paul.
If we can go to the next one.
Massey explains more.
And this is a good point that people should realize.
Most of this money will go directly to the U.S. military industrial complex, which, if you're keeping up, prefers to be referred to as the Defense Industrial Base now.
Watch for these stocks to go up on Monday.
That's true.
That's a good one.
So he is talking about now the bill is over $17 billion is his clarification.
So there's going to be a lot more.
But so Massey, who votes against all foreign aid bills, he says this one's a no.
Sorry, not going to do it.
To which John Potteritz, one of the arch neocons, he actually publishes this slur and slander against Massey.
If he can put that next one on, just to show.
So Massey says, no, I'm a no on this.
And Potteritz said, of course you're a no, you disingenuous piece of anti-Semitic filth, which is so disgraceful and disgusting.
Massey, now if Massey voted for all foreign aid and he only signaled out Israel said no, then you could say, well, what's your beef?
What's your problem?
But Massey consistently votes against all foreign aid.
He does it for a reason, not that he hates other countries, like you did.
He doesn't hate or love any other country.
He's just against it.
And so Potteritz would say something like this.
It's very sad to see that.
That's all they have left.
Because if you deal in principle and they have no principles and they don't want it to be known that it's a basic principle, I had a call one time from Ronald Reagan to vote for a B-1 bomber or something.
And I explained to him, well, I've been campaigning against it, Mr. President.
I really don't think I could do that.
He says, I understand.
And we didn't talk.
I mean, he didn't badger me.
I want me to take this away from you.
No, if it's a principle, it's something that's got Thomas deals in principle.
And foreign aid should be a principle to easily defend.
And this is what the bad guy, Podorich, wants to avoid.
Because what do you mean in the principle you don't have any foreign aid?
Well, where does it tell you you have the authority in the Constitution to take money from poor people in this country and give it to rich people elsewhere?
Where does it say that?
I said, well, you're misinterpreting the Constitution.
There's no prohibition in the Constitution for us to do this.
So if there's no prohibition, we're allowed to do it.
See, they've taken the Constitution and turned it on its head.
And the principal, they don't want to hear the principal argument because they might have to talk about what do you think about the Constitution.
Well, what they think about it is it's worthless and we disobey it because people have been misusing it all these years.
Ever since the establishment of this country, they've been misusing the Constitution.
Charged Up, Convicted Down00:03:28
Maybe doing more than they should.
Well, that's why we're bankrupt.
Yeah, that's why we're bankrupt.
Well, I'm going to close out, Dr. Paul, if you think we're done by thanking our viewers.
I see we've got a really good live audience right now, 1,200 people watching us live.
As I often ask you to do, it'll cost you nothing.
It'll only take a second.
Just go over there and hit the thumbs up sign and give us a thumbs up.
You guys have been doing a great job so far.
Our thumbs ups are way higher than they've been in the past, and it helps us make sure that, you know, Rumble just boosts us up a little bit and we get to be seen by more people.
We appreciate you doing that.
And the other thing is I made a reference earlier on to a column that I write exclusively for the subscribers of the Ron Paul Institute.
It's a free to subscribe.
I'll put a link in.
I wrote a little bit more last night.
I put it out on the idea of weakness versus strength.
And so I'm happy to share that with you.
Sign up today, and I'll resend it tonight to the people who signed up anew.
And I will put again a link in here.
So, Dr. Paul, over to you.
Very good.
I want to thank all our viewers for tuning in today.
I'm going to finish with a little tidbit, which is a serious be, but we're hoping it's just sort of like a rumor or thinking about it, but because it's so outlandish, we should worry about it.
And that has to do with we, everybody knows how many people were arrested on January 6th and committing insurrection.
Oh, they've been on trial and they've been charged with it and they're convicted.
Oh, no, they're not convicted.
Were they charged?
Oh, no, they weren't charged.
But we say they are.
We say that, so we have to punish them.
And we'll punish the leader, too, that Trump guy.
He's the one that's called off this insurrection.
Well, this is a report that says, and this is one that's probably could be true.
I don't know if it's true, but I believe it's a possibility.
The U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia stood behind the podium and announced the Department of Justice plan to charge thousands of more people who were present.
What they do is they look at anybody that was on the streets and participating and walking along that, and they could find thousands more of people that they can go out and arrest.
And they'd be capable of doing that.
I mean, that's how insane the judicial system is.
And that is, as far as I'm concerned, one of the biggest problems we face today because we can't resort to making sure that, well, if it ends up in the courts, we'll get a fair trial.
I don't think many Americans now really feel comfortable that, oh, if I get into court, I'll get a fair deal.
And that to me is a shame because there's not much you can do.
But that doesn't mean that we should give up on this because how did this happen?
Well, special interests and a lot of money put people in the Department of Justice and elsewhere as a philosophic principle.
They taught it in the universities and they were prepared for this, and that's why we have lost.
The people, the freedom lovers, have lost a lot, of course.
But it doesn't mean that that same tactic should be used, that we put constitutionalists and a moralist in a court system that would work for and have somewhat of an understanding about natural law.
And there are certain things that should be entertained rather than the nonsense that comes out of Washington and every other government agency.
And government is too big.
The people are losing their liberties, and it's up to us to do something about it.
I want to thank everybody for tuning in today to the Liberty Report.