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March 14, 2024 - Ron Paul Liberty Report
24:13
US House Goes Full 'Gangster' With Tik Tok Ban

Yesterday's House vote to either force the sale of Tik Tok or ban it entirely from the US is the most dangerous and anti-American act since the passage of the PATRIOT Act. The law will give the US president SOLE AUTHORITY to determine which businesses can and cannot operate in the United States. It is a full government takeover of our basic liberties.

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Rapid Emergency Discussion 00:03:32
Hello, everybody, and thank you for tuning in to the Liberty Report.
With us today, we have Daniel McAdams as our co-host.
Daniel, good to see you.
Good morning, Dr. Paul.
How are you this morning?
Very well, thank you.
You know, what did we talk about yesterday?
TikTok?
Yeah, we were on right when the House voted.
And, you know, it came on late and exploded.
And now it's continued to explode.
But I look at it as these people who want to pass this rule where we can kick tick taco out, they're excited like, we just stopped World War III.
You know, it would be so dangerous.
It's national security.
So anyway, but on more digestion of this, there's more and more people speaking out.
And there's not many people changing their mind to being, you know, against this bill.
The amount of votes on there was tremendous to support this.
But, you know, once again, the speed of how some of the big things happen, we visit so often, you know, what happened on 9-11.
Within days, they had the Patriot Act.
Well, when did they write it up?
When did they have hearings?
When did they have any votes?
None of that.
And it was prepared, so the time came, and they used it.
This is a little bit like that.
There was this discussion going on, but all of a sudden it was an absolute emergency.
And then the votes were there.
So, you know, this pretense at the strong division between liberty-loving people and the authoritarians, it doesn't exist because some who claim that they don't want the government interference were all too eager for this.
So to me, we have to say, what did they do?
But why did they do it?
And how are they able to control this?
How were they able to change that attitude so quickly?
Whether when there's an event, it is.
You have bombs hit New York and all, and people can't respond.
But then you say, oh, what a coincidence.
And sometimes it looks like a coincidence.
Sometimes you wonder, could any of this be done, you know, in a conspiratorial way?
But we can't say that, not on our program.
We'll have to just look at the facts.
And the facts, to me, are adding up that there's a lot of confusion there, but there's a lot of support for this takeover.
But I think that's part of the bigger picture of China bashing.
I think that's the big thing that's going on, which means that we don't live in a more peaceful world by this.
But the people who like this bill say that's wrong.
No, we will be because they were spying on us.
So, well, I'm okay as long as if we're doing anything similar in any way with trade and threat, then we have to give it up.
But you know, it's not going to be that way.
It'll be one-sided.
We may stay very much involved in ownership and control of corporations and activities overseas.
And like, we don't spy on anybody.
We spy them to the hilt.
And then if we don't like somebody, just say, oh, let's get together and have a little cold coup this weekend and change the government.
And that will bring more peace to the world.
There's enough here to be cynical about, somewhat discouraging.
Government Spying and Coups 00:15:14
But the rapidity of this, in a way, it almost is reflected on the fact that we're bringing it up again, you know, because it's not going to go away.
Yeah, you know, we have a government that cannot pass the basic spending bills that it's supposed to pass.
It's putting me in a package because we're in danger of another shutdown.
They can't do their actual job, but then when the shiny object comes through, they can move, you know, on the on a they can turn on a dime.
We've got to pass this immediately.
The whole argument is absurd that the Chinese are using TikTok to spy on Americans.
I would say, to what end?
I mean, what are they going to do?
Little Johnny's making a TikTok video, and the Chinese are watching it.
What are they going to do with it?
It's absolutely absurd.
The whole thing is absurd.
Now, I was coming into the studio this morning.
I was listening to Alex Christophora, who I listened to a lot and I appreciate it.
And he makes a very good point.
This bill is a mafia bill.
It's a mafia tactic.
The government told a private company, you will sell or else.
And just by doing that, of course, it reduces the value of the company.
But imagine the government has the power to put a gun to your head and says, sell your business.
If that's the case, then there really is no free market in America.
We live in a country that's every bit as bad as they claim China is if they could take your business away.
You know, this is a reflection of a modification of what went on, you know, with the FBI and social media.
You know, they come in and it's back and forth.
Social media helps FBI.
FBI does what they want.
And FBI said, we don't interfere in private contracts.
And then they let the social media do their dirty work.
And people don't quite catch on to that.
And it's this collusion and this sinister collusion of corporations and big government wheeling and dealing.
And it's a far cry what it would be like if you had a free market system and a government that respected the principles of a republic.
That they don't have.
And throw in for ad-on would be maybe a sound currency.
Yeah, that wouldn't hurt.
Well, as is to be expected, there's one senator who has been following this.
And we've talked about Amasse yesterday who's great.
But Senator Rampaul had a great statement when it passed in the House.
Now it's going to the Senate where it's expected to pass and the president will sign it.
Well, here's what Senator Paul said yesterday.
I think it's a very good statement.
It's short and it's worth reading.
He says, my statement on the House TikTok ban.
The passage of the House TikTok ban is not just a misguided overreach.
It's a draconian measure that stifles free expression, tramples constitutional rights, and disrupts the economic pursuits of millions of Americans.
With an iron fist, Congress dictated an unrealistic and narrow path for divestment, effectively banning TikTok and ignoring its substantial investments in data security.
This act is not securing our nation.
It's a disturbing gift of unprecedented authority to President Biden and their surveillance state that threatens the very core of American digital innovation and free expression.
The question I have in my mind, are his friends, so-called friends in Washington and in the Senate, are they listening?
Yeah, probably not.
Probably not.
But it's an excellent point.
I mean, and the idea, this is the important point, I think, and we've emphasized it, but maybe not enough, is the idea that gives the president himself, and I don't care if it's Biden or Trump or anyone, the president himself the power to designate a company as being foreign controlled.
And I'm going to put a couple of tweets up.
Patrick Webb has a tweet where he noticed this.
He says the new TikTok ban bill gives the executive branch of government the power to define any platform or website as foreign-owned, even if domestic, giving them the ability to control and censor the content being published by the company.
Now, reading that again, that will give the president the authority, the ability to just define you as foreign influence.
Now, put the next one.
This is from the bill, and Patrick Webb included this.
So, we talked about this yesterday.
It's not just an app, it's any website.
And it says he can, the term that's covered if the website has more than a million monthly active users with respect to at least two of the three months preceding the date on which the relevant determination of the president is made pursuant to paragraph 3b.
President Biden.
In a way, all this activity is a cancellation of probably every positive thing as far as trade goes and international relations since Adam Smith.
Because Adam Smith had it together and was great, but he had not advanced some of this thinking.
You know, all at once, it's been moving.
The Austrian economists have to keep improving the benefits of free trade and activity and why it is beneficial to both sides.
But here it is totally undermining the whole principle of it, and they expect it to work.
But this is one of the side effects, I think.
You know, the marketplace and freedom is very, very beneficial when it's working.
And it can benefit and produce great wealth and great false enthusiasm for our country and false enthusiasm for a currency that doesn't go away overnight just because they changed their policy.
Yes, you can see all the signs and things fall apart and people are starting to suffer.
But that consumption of wealth is what is going on.
And when that wealth is destroyed, they can't get away with this.
They can pretend we have so much where we can cancel this out.
We don't believe in this free trade stuff.
And that unfortunately is getting to be bipartisan more than it used to be.
And of course, the foreign policy is too often bipartisan, too.
But there are leaks, there are benefits, and there are splits in here.
Even within the Democratic Party, there are splits on this big issue that you mentioned at the very beginning of the funding.
They're still interested in that.
They're still at least pretending, oh, there's two-party position on this.
And I was just mentioning to you, Daniel, well, maybe the solution will be everybody gets everything until there's nothing left.
But there's not much left already, so who knows what will happen.
Yeah.
Well, you know, David Sachs is someone who's on Twitter a lot.
He is a very successful entrepreneur.
He's been in the tech world.
He's in the tech world.
He's also, I think, a very astute observer.
My guess is he certainly has libertarian tendencies.
Well, he has some comments that I think would be really good to put up here in light of what we're talking about.
Now, he comments on Patrick Webb's tweet that I just mentioned.
And David Sachs says, this TikTok bill gives Biden the power to ban websites and apps run by, quote, a person subject to the direction or control of a foreign person or entity, end quote.
Given that Biden routinely smears political opponents as being under the control of Putin, the danger should be obvious.
So he makes the point.
The person or entity only has to be considered by the president as run by a person subject to the direction or control of a foreign person or entity.
That door is wide open for the suspension of civil liberties.
Yeah, but it doesn't interfere further with the cash flow that goes from one group of people to some specialized families that are beyond the law.
So his take will be there, but more of that is being exposed too, so we'll keep our fingers crossed on that and getting to the bottom of the truth.
Truth usually wins out in the end, but sometimes it's after many, many people suffer.
Think of how many wars are fought on distorting the truth.
They're on our doorstep.
They're going to bomb the world.
And then finally, you look back and you start reading the history of Pearl Harbor and the Kennedy assassinations.
The truth does come out, but so much harm is done in the meantime.
That, of course, is what our goal is, is to expose these people when they're doing it.
But I even get dumbfounded on this.
And, you know, why do they do these things?
And there has to be, sometimes the only answer I can find is they really don't care, and they plan to benefit from the breakdown of our system.
Well, speaking of planning to benefit, we just noticed before the show started that Stephen Mnuchin, who was in government under Trump, now he's coming forward and saying, hey, I wouldn't mind buying TikTok.
Now that the House has made the value go into the gutter, he's going to waltz in there and make a little investment and make some money.
So, you know, there's a lot to be made.
That's hard to believe.
Yeah.
He seems so honest.
Such nice people.
But David Sachs does a great job in just demonstrating how it's not going to stop at TikTok.
It's going to keep going.
So I'm just going to do three tweets where he talks about this.
Because remember, it only has to be determined by the president that the entity is foreign adversary controlled, and then you can shut you down.
So go to the next one.
So he retweets an article by someone saying, make no mistake, Tucker Carlson's webcast is a foreign adversary controlled application.
And David Sachs says, Tucker Carlson's network is foreign adversary controlled.
And the next one, someone criticized Elon Musk for being too close to Russia.
Go to the next one quickly.
And David Sachs says, well, Twitter X is foreign adversary controlled.
And then go to the next one.
There's JD Vance on Rumble.
And Tim Ryan, member of our illustrious government, is mad because JD Vance is on Rumble.
And he says he's spreading Putin's propaganda, to which David Sachs says, well, Rumble is a foreign adversary controlled company.
And the last one, David Frum, mentions that Speaker Johnson does what Trump wants and Trump does what Putin wants.
David Sachs says, well, of course, Trump is foreign adversary controlled and through him the entire Republican Party.
And the point he's making here is that they're going to make this determination on everything.
It's not beyond them because they thrive on the exertion and the ability to control things and power, they want the money, but power is very addicting too.
And some concentrate more on that than the money.
But the worst kind of the people who want both.
There's control the money as well as the control of the political system.
Well, it's bad news.
It's worse than I even thought.
But we'll keep an eye on it.
But the Senate's going to pass it and it's going to become law and it's going to be very destructive.
I have a few more clips, but I guess we should probably move on to the next topic.
Why don't we move ahead to House Democrats?
It's a similar idea, which is what I think you said when we were talking about the show.
It's about priorities.
When there's a shiny object, they're going to rush and pass it.
When it's something that's important that needs to get done, well, they're going to drag their feet.
Well, it looks like now this is going to become a shiny object.
House Democrats will attempt to force a vote on the $95 billion war bill.
Now, maybe there's a component to this that we're missing out on, Dr. Paul, but I'm slightly disappointed in Representative Jim McGovern because you worked with him a lot.
He has been a good progressive.
You can leave that up.
But apparently he is working to do a discharge petition to get that aid bill on the floor, to get that $61 billion to Ukraine, $14 billion to Israel, a bunch of money to Taiwan for warmongering.
He's going to push, he's going to force Johnson's hand to get it to the floor.
So he's representing the position that we give more money for war and none to protect our borders?
Yeah, he wants to get that bill to the floor.
He wants to pass the aid bill.
Without the borders, without the border money.
And that's the really, that's the bigger issue if you just go out and poll a lot of people in this country and say, yeah, we should do it.
That's how some of this discussion started was, yeah, we keep sending more and more.
We're running out of money for Ukraine.
And what are you doing about the borders?
And, well, if somebody gets in there and does it, they'll say, oh, well, we need umpteen number of billions of dollars again.
But it's in motion right now.
And, you know, although I do not accept this idea because I heard at every election, I think I can remember, this is the most important election ever.
Well, it is important.
And it could turn out to be a little bit more important.
But the whole thing is the same old stuff.
You know, it's the bad guys that are dishonest, don't believe in truth.
They don't believe really.
They don't understand the Constitution.
Do you follow the Constitution?
Do you ever have, how often have you ever voted for something that was not explicitly authorized in the Constitution?
You know, there's hardly anything that they pass.
That's why I thought a moratorium ought to be on all new stuff.
And we had an elected group of people, throw them all out, and give them four years to improve things only by repealing.
Yeah, that's a good question.
Get rid of the bad stuff.
Boy, wouldn't they somebody have a grand day removing all the regulation?
See, oh, that's not legislation.
Yeah, it's legislation.
Illegal legislation should have never been passed.
That should put you in charge of that.
That would take care of a lot of people.
XX.
XX.
Oh, X you out.
So if people aren't familiar with the discharge petition, that means that if you get 218 members of the House to sign a discharge petition, because normally the Speaker controls what goes to the floor.
But if you have that supermajority of members saying we need to bring this bill to the floor, then they can override the authority of the House.
Speaker, and because this bill will have to be passed with Democratic support, because there's not enough Republican support, because Republicans only have two extra votes in the House, that means you're going to have no problem getting this 218 to sign it.
We're going to bring it to the floor.
And as you pointed out earlier, Johnson supports the spending.
He supports this.
He just wanted to add some extra stuff so they could get some brownie points on the border stuff.
So they don't oppose in principle.
Yeah, and the process continues the same way.
They do this and they put it up under suspension.
You know, the House, that's what Johnson's been a real Expert in, put them up there because, yeah, we can get two-thirds of the vote, but if we had it up on the floor and had an honest debate, we don't want to expose it too much.
So rush it through.
And I think a rule ought to be, and more every year it becomes my rule, is the quicker they want something passed because of an emergency, the more it needs to be watched and slowed down just to study it.
Loan Suspension Debate 00:02:41
Because even when it's going a little slower and proper, I remember in the early 80s we had some monetary bills going through.
And being on the banking committee, we'd have a lot of discussion, a lot of votes, back and forth, and we pass it out of the committee, and then it would go to the rules committee, and it would go up, and then it would go to the floor, and it would pass overwhelmingly, but wouldn't agree with the Senate.
So then it would go to a conference.
And we had a staff then found on some of the things after all that, they come back, and the key things on the power of the Fed to inflate on whatever they wanted was tested.
It was not in any of that discussion.
And that's the way government works.
That's a good reason to reduce the size and scope of government because you can't trust them.
Yeah, exactly.
Well, the last thing I saw just before we went online here is that apparently Speaker Johnson met with some members of the Senate to talk about this bill.
And here's the way it looks like it might be moving on.
We're not sure it's not confirmed, but it looks like what he's going to do to get around this is he's going to say, well, this isn't aid.
This is a loan.
They're going to pay us back.
Ukraine is going to pay us back.
The country is decimated.
They lost half their population, but they're going to, you know, it's like those student loans.
They're going to pay us back.
Don't worry about that.
Good example.
And they pay their interest and everything else.
And who really gets filed up there are the people who were talked into taking these loans or were forced to take the loan.
And they're very sincere and honest within a system that's really messy.
They go and they do this, and they cannot pay, they don't pay the bills back.
So the people who either stayed out of the system and worked hard, you know, you could have two 18-year-olds and one borrows all the money and gets a job and finally gets that degree that didn't do them any good.
And then you take somebody else that's worked all that time.
The person that maybe worked without the education, but he worked hard, their penalty is great.
You know, it's not a very good system.
No, it's not.
But apparently, so from this meeting, talking about making it a loan, which is just trying to put lipstick on the pig, but also he did not mention, according to someone who was in the meeting, did not mention the border with Mexico when he met with the senators.
And the article also quoted Senator John Cornyn, who is from the deep state, masquerading as a Texan, and he said that he heard Speaker Johnson say, we will not leave Ukraine empty-handed or something like that.
So clearly now it looks to me at least like this is going to move as well.
What We Want to Use Are Ideas 00:02:30
Bad news, bad news for the American taxpayer and for the concept of liberty, I'll tell you that.
But we're not giving up.
We're not giving up.
Because there's all those tools and technology being used against us.
But we shouldn't fear that technology that China has and they can use.
We should fear the authoritarianism of a government.
And I think the founders were pretty astute to say all enemies, foreign and domestic, and they knew about that.
But right now, the domestic concerns are just flipped down as a little political chicaneries and fighting over, and it's pure politics that doesn't amount to real issues.
I think they, on purpose, pass things quickly because they don't want to hear that discussion.
Yeah.
Well, I'm just looking at our comments here, and Joshua Clements said, First TikTok, then the Ron Paul Liberty Report.
And it sounds funny, but it's not that far from the truth.
You know, they just designate you a bad guy, and then you're gone.
So, see, there are some people concerned about what's going on, and they're all our friends.
There are very smart people that are there, and I appreciate all of them commenting.
And I appreciate everyone watching the show.
If you're not watching it live, I would ask if you please just hit like, it only takes a second, and it helps us move the show no matter what platform we're on, and to subscribe or follow, depending on the platform.
And thanks again for at least for me, a great week of allowing me to come in your house or your car or whatever and do the show.
So, I hope that you'll be back soon.
Over to you, Dr. Good.
You know, we mentioned the fact that we talked about TikTok yesterday, but we mentioned it even before that.
But it looks like we may be back on this subject.
It hasn't gone away, and we will keep up with it.
But it's such a tragedy because we don't seem to learn anything from our heirs.
But there are some people in the Congress and in the Senate that know what's going on.
It's just that the others, I just said to Daniel, why doesn't the other side listen to this?
You know, how can they listen to this logic and the principles of it?
But anyway, they don't, and that's our job is to try to spread this message because I think the message is all powerful and that we don't have the tools of guns and we don't want to use the guns.
What we want to use are the ideas and the spreading of this information.
That's why I think it's very, very important to have the First Amendment secure.
And right now, they're attacking it right and left.
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