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Feb. 8, 2024 - Ron Paul Liberty Report
28:14
Will The Supremes Ban Trump?

Today the US Supreme Court takes up the case of Colorado banning former President Trump from the ballot. Is this a legal case? Political case? Both? What to expect? Also today, surprise: no charges expected in Biden's classified documents case. Finally: "We have troops in Syria? Really?

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Time Text
Supreme Court Trump Ballot Case 00:10:04
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.
Good morning, Dr. Paul.
How are you this morning?
I'm doing fine.
Listening to and watching for a historic day.
Yeah, for sure.
This could turn out to be a big day, but I think it has to, you know, on the regard of whether Trump's allowed to be on the ballot or not.
So either way it goes, it's going to be historic.
And I think if the courts, which nobody is really predicting, that all of a sudden they go along with Colorado and Maine and say, yeah, you can keep them off.
You don't like them.
You hate them.
Yeah, you can do that.
There would be some repercussions.
So I think it is a big, big thing.
And maybe they'll come up clarifying things and they don't ever have to go through this again.
But, you know, the one thing that interested me about this whole case is the fact that a lot of Democrats have been silent on it.
They're not yelling and shouting.
And, you know, even the Republicans, when the case would come up, they followed Trump and they argued their cases in the public, which to me is sending a signal that I don't think the Democrats have the political stomach for getting out on a branch right now and saying,
yeah, let's prohibit him from being on the ballot because there might be some other state laws that will get by on this ruling and they might be able to do something at the state level and it may come back to harm, which some of this stuff has already.
Why don't we impeach the president?
He'll be finished.
Oh, didn't work.
Let's impeach him again.
They didn't know what they were doing.
We had a stooge in there, or Trump had a stooge in there, you know, promoting all these impeachments.
So anyway, we're going to hear from the courts soon, not today, but the hearings are interesting.
And the big argument is, you know, because Trump committed, you know, treason, you know, by insurrection, even though he's never been charged and never found guilty of anything, they're trying to say that he should be kept off the ballots.
I think most people do not buy into that.
And I think some who would like to do it to Trump are starting to figure, you know, it's over at the top.
And if this other stuff helped Trump, maybe we better be careful.
Maybe this is one that is too much that we have to bear, too much we have to explain.
Oh, yeah, we don't like him.
And everybody knows how much hate drives the opposition.
So we'll just keep him off the ballot.
All of a sudden, you know, people have pointed this out.
This sort of contradicts their obsession with democracy.
Yeah, exactly.
It really challenges it.
So it'll be interesting.
I've been watching a little bit of it.
I'm impressed with, you know, the knowledge, the technical knowledge of the people involved.
But thinking about this, I've narrowed it down to thinking that this whole case has very little to do with the Constitution and the technical things.
And the debates are very, you know, it sounds like they know a lot and they want it to sound like that.
But I think there's one thing that drives it is the hate.
What can we do to Trump and hate?
And The Constitution is in a way an excuse at times to make a point, but I think it's pretty irrelevant to this debate.
This is a debate driven by hate, trying to keep Trump out, and what do they want?
Political power.
This has to do with political power.
And it's really, it is a sign.
There should be an opening for a really independent to thinking person to approach the citizensry now because there's a lot of people very frustrated with it, with both sides.
And if one side, all they use is hate and political power, I mean, this would be the perfect time that I wish the libertarian message was more visible.
Yeah.
Well, let's put that first clip on.
This is from Politico, but it's, of course, being covered all over the place.
Supreme Court weighs Trump's eligibility to hold office.
They're meeting now.
They're listening to the oral arguments now.
I've been reading our good friend Jonathan Turley, who's live tweeting it.
If anyone is interested in following his live tweets, I would go to Jonathan Turley's Twitter feed and read it because he's making a lot of good points.
Now here is from his page.
This will give you kind of a rundown of what it's all about if you do that next one.
Go back one if you can.
No, there we go.
Okay.
So this is Jonathan Turley.
He has an article on his page.
He says, I've been a vocal critic of the theory under Section 3, which is the 14th Amendment, as textually and historically flawed.
It's also, in my view, a dangerously anti-democratic theory that would introduce an instability in our system, which has been the most stable and successful constitutional system in the world.
And he goes on to say, we can expect the justices to focus on three main questions before the court.
One, is the president an officer of the United States for the purposes of Section 3?
Two, is Section 3 self-executing?
Two, and three, was January 6th an insurrection under Section 3 of the 14th Amendment?
So that's the main thing that's going to be decided today.
And you know, the one that strikes me as being very important, was there an insurrection?
Yeah, yeah.
And they avoided now.
The Democrats are very quiet.
I don't think they want to be so noisy and strongly attached to all this.
But they assume this would mean that a court does the law enforcement.
They arrest somebody, they take him to court, and then they try him, and you have a jury, and then he's guilty of something.
But this way, oh, just go to the court.
Oh, yeah.
And one person gets up and says, oh, he's guilty of murder, or he's guilty, he stole money, or something like that.
They're more likely to get up and say, oh, he stole money, but it doesn't count because they're special people and let them get off.
So there's a lot of mischief that goes on in our courts.
But in a way, I think this is going to work out okay, because I see our problems as being much bigger and diverse, and that is the whole system of financial and moral bankruptcy of this country and the debt and all this.
But this is still pretty darn important because this would be, if they came out and they were blatant and said, absolutely the states can do this.
Anybody, you can take your name off there.
I think there'd be a lot of violence and unnecessary because people would not tolerate it because it doesn't make any sense.
Just go to Jonathan Turley.
Yeah, yeah.
It would also be like saying, you know, you committed a murder.
Well, the guy's still alive.
Well, it doesn't matter.
That's it.
But, you know, I mean, to me, it does increasingly, it smacks of desperation.
Everything they've tried to throw at Trump, as you mentioned earlier, the two impeachments, the media being 1,000% against him.
And this isn't a praise of Trump.
We've had plenty of criticism.
There's plenty to criticize.
But everything that they throw at him, they think we finally got him, it just makes him stronger.
And they get more and more desperate.
And people that are desperate do dumb things.
They don't have good judgment.
And I think hopefully the Supreme Court will realize what a dumb thing this is to do.
And I think you're right.
You know, we read the article about the Democrats being somewhat silent.
I think it's sinking into them.
And hang on, I mean, this could be a two-way street.
If we unleash this kind of chaos, where any state, any court, anywhere can decide who gets to run and who can't run for any office in the country, then we're going to have a system that is completely dysfunctional.
I think cooler heads in the Democratic Party have got to realize: hey, the street could be on the other foot after November.
Sure, they might be able to try to justify that sort of retaliation at a state level where the federal government isn't as involved and it's not going to be the federal courts.
And then it's at the state level, they'll test it.
And that might be the thing that's waking up a few of them.
That to me is fascinating, but I think it is, you used a right word, desperation.
They're desperated.
And I think that I don't know how many days this will take, but it's a shorter debate with the Supreme Court than most of their bills that they check on.
Yeah, and the thing is, anyone who just looks across the landscape and sees that a person or party in power or his or her supporters banned the top opposition candidate with an election just months away, they would say that's not a serious country.
That's a banana republic.
In fact, interestingly enough, just this week, the U.S. is applying new sanctions on Venezuela because their courts disqualified one of the presidential candidates.
It's a U.S.-backed candidate.
So we are sanctioning other countries for doing the stuff that our own country is trying desperately to do.
At the same time, we're breaking our Constitution by getting involved in the internal affairs elections of these foreign countries.
We have no authority to do that.
So, yes, there's a little few bits of shortcomings on that.
So, you know, the I don't know whether you want to go.
Do you have another question?
I have a couple of just little quotes just from Turley, just to kind of, I mean, I thank God I didn't go to law school because I would have been the worst lawyer in the world.
But Turley helps me understand it.
U.S. Hypocrisy in Foreign Elections 00:05:46
If he can put the next one up, it's complicated, and I'm not good at complicated things.
Turley says, These members and activists have latched upon a long dormant provision in Section 3 of the 14th Amendment, the disqualification clause, which was written after the 39th Congress convened in December 1865.
And many members were shocked to see Alexander Stevens, the Confederate vice president, waiting to take a seat with an array of other former Confederate senators and military officers.
They didn't think they should be able to hold power in Congress or hold seats in Congress after that.
Now, I think everyone, a lot of people would agree that the Trump situation is completely different than this and that there was an insurrection.
However, playing devil's advocate, Dr. Paul, I was reading something Turley said and I thought, you know what?
Maybe we're wrong.
Maybe this actually is a pretty good idea and it should be more broadly interpreted.
Put that next one up.
It just says Justice Edwin Reed of the North Carolina Supreme Court later explained: the idea was that one who had taken an oath to support the Constitution and violated it ought to be excluded from taking it again.
So, really, on second thought, maybe that's not such a bad idea.
You know, I had while in Congress, I voted for the impeachment.
And my argument was, well, look at these details, and it had to do with sexual activities and who knows what.
And I said, I think everybody, in a way, could, I think I'd have trouble not impeaching any one of them because they say, oh, you're not supposed to deal with the interpretation of the Constitution.
That's too difficult.
But I think that's a great quote.
I like that.
Well, let's move on now because this next story we're going to cover is a real shocker.
And actually, the picture of Merrick Garland is perfect for the photo.
This is politico again.
Dr. Paul, you would not believe it.
The Biden classification document probe ends without charges.
And here's even Merrick Garden saying, I didn't see that coming.
So Biden had documents in his car, in his barn, in his garage, in Hunter's house, wherever.
That's no problem.
Does that conform, confirm the fact that there is a double standard, or at least people challenge as a double standard?
Two ways of interpreting this.
My goodness.
But I think the way I read that, that they were doing their final reading of it before it was released, because I think they redact things and that's for national security reason.
But I think that's another plus for Trump.
It would be the best thing in the world for Trump if they just go ahead.
And, you know, they don't have a leg to stand on.
When Biden took the records, he wasn't even allowed to look at the records because he was a senator and he doesn't have that same authority that the president had.
And the president, you know, had authority to do that.
And not many people mention that, but that's a big deal.
So that should be, it's almost like, we're his advisors.
Why wouldn't they say, well, you know, I think we're going to be caught on this one.
We better be careful.
So, oh, okay, take it to the courts and we'll have another victory for Trump.
I wonder if Trump has a spy over there and gets him to do these kind of things.
It is.
It's a great point because the president has the right to declassify things at will as he wants to.
A vice president doesn't.
Senators don't.
You can't do that.
But if you do the next one, actually skip the next one and go to the opinions from Justice's office.
There we go.
Thanks.
So Biden is off the hook.
His dog was chewing up his classified stuff.
No problem.
But the opinions of the Justice's Office of Legal Counsel don't rule out charges against a former president, however.
Trump was hit with such an indictment last June, accusing him of willfully retaining classified information.
So Trump was charged with that and obstruction of justice, and further charges were added in July.
But Biden doing the same thing, maybe on a different scale.
We don't know the whole details.
No problem.
They will follow that up and we'll find how if he pulls that one off.
But, you know, I keep asking questions, but it wouldn't be appropriate for the current event or the current number of people in Washington.
I say, who cares?
Why don't they make it where there is no such thing as classification unless you have an act of war going on?
You know, a real declared war for strategic reasons.
But, you know, the records should be available, you know.
And I just think that why do they worry this so much about it?
And then if what are they going to do with it?
You know, we've seen boxes on both sides.
Look at the boxes of stuff there.
What are they going to do with it?
They're not going to sit and read it.
I was thinking, you know, if they're going to write their memoirs, maybe they'd have probably a right to look at it to do that.
But this whole thing is a bit crazy.
And I just think that the document deal just doesn't make any sense.
And yet Trump is being held to this.
You know, you're in trouble.
That's one case that's still ongoing, too.
Yeah, I remember when you were in office, you didn't want to go to the SCIF and see those documents because you said, I don't want to see them, not that helpful.
And I don't want to have to try to remember what I'm not supposed to say.
Americans Unaware Of Troops In Syria 00:12:08
The briefings from one person finally had an enlightenment for that, and that was Walter.
Because Walter was very much neocon-like.
He was a supporter of the wars, and he started shifting his views because of the reading that he was doing.
And his simple answer was, I switched when I realized that the briefings were nothing more than lies.
And he was smart enough and principled enough to say, why am I doing this if they're recognized?
So, you know, I think that's where we are now.
I mean, just think of how many good journalists we have.
I think we know all six of them.
Yeah, exactly.
They're our friends.
Exactly.
Well, speaking of journalism, let's move on because one of the arguments that we often make is that the mainstream media does not inform American people.
It actually, its job is to maintain the narratives, the state narratives.
It doesn't tell us the facts, and so most Americans don't know what's going on.
And here's a classic example.
Put this next one up if you can.
This is from Kyle Anselm at the Libertarian Institute.
Only three in ten Americans were aware of U.S. troops in Syria prior to the deadly attack.
And go to the next one.
They did a poll.
Defense Priorities commissioned a YouGov poll of Americans from January 8th to 15th about the deployment of 900 troops in Syria.
Only three in ten Americans responded that they were aware of U.S. troops even being in Syria.
So they did a poll, and most Americans had no clue.
Seven out of ten had no clue we even had troops there.
I wish we could do a polling of the people who watch our program and ask them, I mean, what percentage of you knew about our troops in Syria?
What percent of you had a good understanding of how the coup occurred in Ukraine?
Because we did our best with the help of others to get that information out.
And more and more people are listening, even the establishment, because they're backing off on Ukraine.
They don't want to be so tied into the Ukrainian mess.
But, you know, if you have a principle of non-intervention versus this run-in-the-mill bombing and killing and sanctions, you know, it's like you don't have to be a genius to predict that the trouble's ahead.
If nothing else, it's going to be very costly.
It's going to be very costly for our national defense and very costly, you know, on our personal liberties.
But it all happened.
How did you know that?
Yeah.
All you have to do is have a good understanding what generally governments do to us.
You know, we kind of live in a bubble.
You and I and people that we associate with.
And this is not to raise us up, but we really, our job is to dig and to find things and to look on social media, look on Twitter, and look at alternative sites like Zero Hedge and others.
You kind of tend to forget, I tend to forget at least, that there's a vast majority of Americans out there that solely still get their information from the mainstream media.
And then if you do get a big platform, sometimes they clarify to close you down.
Close you down.
It was people who reach a lot of people.
Yeah.
And so you wonder, well, how could they not have known?
Well, if they only watch, I'm sure they know the latest pop star, Taylor Swift, and all this and that, all this nonsense.
They're very well versed in all this.
But what, you mean we have troops over there?
Why is that?
Why are we in Syria?
Yeah.
Don't ask.
They have oil.
Oh, okay, now I understand.
It's all about oil.
Well, here are a couple of questions from the poll because I think they're also very interesting.
If you can put the next one up.
Now, once they find out about it, now here we go.
56% of respondents are very worried or somewhat worried the presence of U.S. troops in Syria could escalate into a broader conflict in the region.
So almost 60%, almost 6 in 10, are worried.
Only 18%.
Only 18% are not very worried or not at all worried that our troops there could escalate.
That is a fascinating question, I think.
And go to the next one if you can, just to get through a couple of these because it's interesting.
Okay, so among those who do not support the U.S. troop presence in Syria, nearly 66% indicated it was a waste of resources.
And nearly 40% indicated it lacked legal justification and left U.S. troops vulnerable.
And I think what that should do, Dr. Paul, is kind of reinforce to us, people are not dumb.
When they finally do get the information, they make the right conclusion.
This is a dumb idea.
We're spending all that money to have troops out in the middle of the desert.
That doesn't make any sense.
You know, just looking at the three military people that were killed.
They were the death of three members of the Georgia National Guard in Georgia.
You know, I think a proper law would be that the federal government doesn't have a right to go in and just order, you know, state militia up there.
Because it was enmeshed together.
It's all one thing.
Everybody thinks the National Guard is part of the federal government.
It shouldn't be.
And the real militia was a little bit different than that, too.
I mean, it was meant to defend the state.
And we've lost that notion a long time ago.
And I think that there is one state just recently announced.
It was at Arizona or somebody said, we're not sending troops if they're called up.
Yeah, yeah.
Well, that's another good competition that we like to hear about.
Yeah, well, a lot of our friends are supporting the Defend the Guard Act, which says that unless there's a declared war, the president does not have the ability to move those troops around.
I have not read all the details, every aspect of that act, but it sounds good on the surface.
And I wanted to just do one more kind of bonus question.
This is kind of interesting.
This is from that SEM Defense Priorities poll that they commissioned.
If you put that next one on, slightly unrelated, but also very interesting.
Only 10% of respondents believe Israel should conduct military operations in Gaza regardless of how many civilians are killed or injured.
So 9 out of 10 Americans polled in this say they should not have a blank check.
The blank check is exactly what President Biden gave them.
Nine out of 10 Americans disagree with giving them this blank check.
And so that really underscores, I think, the stuff that we've been talking about a lot here on the show, which is this huge divide now between how Americans feel about what's going on in the Middle East and what Biden and his neocons, backed up by the neocon Republicans, feel about it.
So I'll just close out by thanking everyone for watching the program.
I'm just going to take a quick look.
There are quite a few of you over there watching us live right now.
Again, just please hit like.
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And thanks again for watching.
Over to you, Dr. Paul.
Very good.
You know, there's a lot of talk about constitutionality when it comes to war and the things going on with Trump now and the insurrection and who's to blame and who should be punished.
And yet, understanding this is not that difficult if you accept the principle, you know, that the Constitution is very special and we should do our best to live up to the spirit of the Constitution.
And, of course, we have several that do that.
But most of the time, when you hear the nonsense on TV coming from, you know, the militant people, they always cite national security, national defense, the Constitution, on and on.
And that's why the separation and the distinction of what that means versus what they're really avoiding.
Because if you look at the Constitution carefully, I read that it is very supportive of the principles that we talk about here, non-interventionism overseas, that we don't have a military to devise and create an empire, that we should go in and make sure our national resources are available to us, that we know where our oil is coming from, and we know where all the supplies are coming from.
So, yes, that is an intervention that is not authorized by the Constitution.
We're not supposed to be doing that.
We're supposed to, the principles they were on is being friends and trade with people, and they recognize if you don't, you're going to have more wars.
Now, we ignore the Constitution, we go to war, and it really started after the United Nations because what was the first thing that happened?
You know, we had a police action designed by Truman to go in there, and that was started off another, you know, a continuation of World War II.
And it leads on and on and on, and hundreds of thousands of people have been killed.
The civilians and military people, American citizens.
And it's not complicated.
It wouldn't have happened if they had really believed and understood what the Constitution says.
And it doesn't mean that you just lie down and they can come in and invade us like we're doing right now on our southern borders.
If you want to talk about an insurrection, that's what happened, but that's an invasion.
No, we would be in big trouble if we didn't have a national defense.
But I'll tell you what, national security is not benign.
I'll tell you, my personal belief, if you want to have national security and prosperity, you follow the precepts of the Constitution, non-interventionism, that you promote liberty and personal liberty and make it a moral issue and strive for getting along with people.
These days today, if you happen to say, well, I might want to talk to the leader of ABC countries because there's no reason for us to argue behind the scenes and threaten them with bombs and sanctions.
Why do that?
We do it constantly.
And, you know, I argue the case that the liberals just are stringing and holding on to their power.
But that's what people do that want to run the empire.
That doesn't mean that everybody that disagrees with the liberals who want more bigger government and more taxes, that they want to be able to take the people and resort to providing protection for the people.
And it's there for us.
It's not complicated.
So, we're going to continue to do our very best to promote peace and prosperity, tie it into the Constitution, tie it into the basic morality of a natural law that is universal.
If people know about it and they like to avoid it because that holds them to their feet to the fire because they cannot do what they're doing.
And if they didn't do what the founders suggested, what will happen?
The country is going to get big and bloated, expand themselves, and have an empire that finally bankrupts the country and also gets us involved in more fighting and killing.
So, I'm, of course, deeply involved in trying to promote something that is simple and clear, and that is the principles of liberty based on moral principles of which the founders fully understood.
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