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April 18, 2024 - Ron Paul Liberty Report
32:25
'War Time' Speaker Johnson's Ukraine Border Defense Bill Leaves US Borders Wide Open!

House Speaker Mike Johnson said this week he considers himself a "war time" Speaker - even though we are not at war. But he seems to be at war with the American people, bringing up a bill to send a hundred billion dollars overseas while America struggles. Also today: will the Senate stop the super-spy bill?

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Time Text
Tariffs and Price inflation 00:05:26
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 morning.
Good morning, Dr. Paul.
How are you?
Very good.
And you're keeping up with all the good news?
Oh, no, that's easy.
But we'll find some good news someplace.
We'll fudge a little bit and daydream a little bit.
So we'll give it as we see it, and there are some pretty stupid things.
Oh, I should do that.
That's a strong word.
No, no, you could use a stronger one, too.
A lot stronger.
A lot of dumb things going on in Congress and around the world and our foreign policy, all the way from the beginning of our university system and our government school system, all the way up.
It's been conditioned, and we're seeing the results.
And they're all around us, economically speaking, and our assumption that we are to rule the world.
You know, and one thing that came up during the presidential campaigns, they divided the debates up into economics and also to, they would divide it up from economics as well as foreign policy.
And they assumed that made sense, but I even complained at the time that you can't do that.
You know, there's a lot of economic policies involved in spending money on wars and foreign aid and all this thing.
So it's all one thing.
The size and scope of government and whether or not they live within their bounds, whether they follow the Constitution.
And right now we have a bit going on.
There's an election coming up and they're fussing and fuming.
And one of the issues that's popping up here more than ever, even though it's been around for a long time, 25 years ago, it wasn't much of an issue.
Both liberals and conservatives sort of made the assumption that you didn't have protectionism.
You didn't put a lot of tariffs on.
And it took literally hundreds of years for people to realize how bad protectionism was.
And this was finally on, but now we're going back.
Now it's an economic weapon to fight wars.
And we have factions in this government today that said that there's an evil monster out there.
They're about to attack.
The troops are on our border and they're ready to march.
And they're all Chinese and they're going to come in.
They have TikTok leading the charge.
So there's people who now want to outlaw that.
Don't allow it to be sorted out in the marketplace here.
And not realizing that they're doing this for political reasons.
The ones who want to get rid of, say, TikTok and put on tariffs.
But it's usually the one rule that we can follow is when they put on tariffs, that means that there will be a payment.
Prices will go up.
But it is almost always punishing the people who put on the tariff.
So right now, Biden, who wants to jump ahead of Trump on how many tariffs they can put on, he now is proposing a tripling of the tariffs on steel and aluminum.
Now, steel goes into a lot of different things.
There's a lot of different formations of steel, and aluminum is very important.
So tripling those prices, who's going to pay?
Are the Chinese going to suffer the consequences?
It seems like so far they've been doing pretty well, as has Russia, gone around sanctions, and they get around and they still sell their products.
But if we do this, it will raise the price of steel and aluminum in this country, and they are going to suffer.
And then they'll call that, oh, that's inflation, and the businessman is gouging us or come up with some other thing.
So people should be really aware of this real major movement toward sanctions.
That's been around.
But this time, Biden was very specific, triple the tariffs on China, and this will hasten today.
So it's a political stunt.
It has nothing to do with economics.
If they were looking at economics, they said, this is crazy.
This is raising the prices on goods and services.
And I'll bet you there's a lot.
And at the same time, everybody's against the inflation, but they don't want to understand it.
Now, when the prices go up due to tariffs, that literally is not inflation.
That pushes prices up.
But just prices going up isn't the inflation.
But the inflation comes from the devaluation of the dollar when the dollar becomes less.
But this is energy to that.
This is like throwing gasoline on it.
There's a motive to raise all prices, and that has a long way to go before that's ironed out.
So they come along and they put on the tariffs, and that's going to add to the problem.
And people will recognize this not as a tax.
It comes from the fact that there are deficits out there, and that's how they pay for this deficit.
So I suggest that all people watch this closely, and if they see what their members of Congress are doing and whether they're voting for this stuff, it's something that's worth looking into.
It is a tax, an additional tax, and we don't need any of that.
We need the reduction of taxes.
The ultimate goal, of course, is get rid of the income tax, and we would all survive much better.
Pass The Bill? 00:14:41
Daniel, what do you have for us today specifically on issues?
Money, money, money.
We finally found out what Speaker Johnson wants to give away.
And it's a shorthand to say he's giving it away overseas, but he's actually not.
We talked about it yesterday.
Most of the money for the national security supplemental that goes to Ukraine will actually go to the Beltway bandits to the military-industrial complex.
Nevertheless, he unearthed, he revealed the text of the bill.
Let's look at anti-war.com covered it well, as usual.
Speaker Johnson unveils $95 billion foreign military aid bills.
Legislation includes $61 billion for Ukraine, $26 billion to support Israel, and $8 billion for Taiwan and other spending in the region.
There are going to be three bills that would be considered separately and I believe put together for the Senate to vote on.
Some of it will be structured as a loan, but guess what?
The president will have the ability to cancel the debt if Ukraine can't pay it back.
So there you have it.
Big, huge aid bill going over to the Ukrainians, going to the Israelis and to Taiwan.
You know, if I had a chance to talk to the Speaker, I'm not anxious for that chance.
But if I did, I might ask what's on my mind is, whose side are you on?
Because what he's doing isn't really helping us.
And besides, the flip-flopping has to be very annoying to the supporters.
And I think that's why there's so much division in the House, especially, because he's flip-flopping.
And they sort of expected him to be sympathetic to the Freedom Caucus, where he would be a conservative.
And now it turns out it's quite different.
So I'm sure he would be insulted if we thought he wasn't being loyal.
I think he probably believes and is loyal to the country.
But what he's doing is undermining The country as well and our economy and the economic system, I don't think he does much benefit for the Republican Party.
So this is serious, but you went over this yesterday.
You mentioned it already today.
This is a big deal.
And, you know, I've predicted and talked about the bankruptcy and why we're in the middle of it and things are going to get worse and worse.
And you can explain things, what happens when a country goes bankrupt and they resort to just borrowing and printing money.
So that is the case.
But this is something that becomes very political and with not a strong resistance to big government, not a good understanding on economic policy, and the procrastination as well as the willingness to chuck their beliefs in what they've told their constituents, what they even told their colleagues, is nothing but trouble.
And in terms of optics, this is a terrible look for Johnson.
We talked about it a little bit today.
In terms of the procedure, Johnson cannot rely on the Republicans on the Rules Committee to pass this.
He does not have a majority.
So he's going to have to, he's put together a bill that will appeal to Democrats on the Rules Committee so they can report out a rule to get this bill to the floor, these bills to the floor.
So a lot of members, and I don't have a clip, but several members I know that I've read on Twitter are furious.
They say, Speaker Johnson, is he working for the Republicans or the Democrats?
Now, we're non-partisan, but nevertheless, when you see this happening, when he reaches over the aisle, as you say, not to bring people together, but to give up all of your values, especially as a conservative, then you've got a real problem and a revolt is really brewing.
But put on the next one.
So the Israel bill, they were only supposed to get $14 billion, just a little bit of change.
But guess what?
If you put this up, they actually decided to bump it up even beyond what Biden wants to give Israel.
The Israel bill totals $26 billion, replenishing air defenses following Iran's reprisal attack.
This is 300% of our normal yearly tribute to Israel.
So they're going to get three years' worth of our money just in this bill to help them buy more bombs because Gaza is not flattened enough.
But a couple of other things in here, Dr. Paul.
If you go to the next one, and I wasn't familiar with this representative, but he put out some good tweets.
A representative Andy Oggles from Tennessee, he found something in the bill that's pretty nasty.
It isn't just a Ukraine supplemental that's America's last, that's America last.
The Taiwan supplemental literally includes a provision that allows Joe Biden to redirect its funds to Ukraine.
You can't make this up.
And then he highlighted that part of the bill that ostensibly goes to Taiwan.
But they say, Biden, if you want to send it to Ukraine, go ahead, because 60-some billion is not enough.
You know, we keep wondering why, you know, like the speaker switches around and changes his mind.
And I think we've talked about this, that he had a couple meetings with the big guys, you know, probably from some people who were representing the deep state and said you have to do it.
And he did.
He came back and he switched around.
But, you know, I've wondered, and since nobody else talks about it, and I know it wouldn't work very well, but this isn't working very well either.
Why don't they just have up and down votes?
Yeah.
Let the chips fall where they may.
Why switch around and sell out and then still lose?
Still lose.
Lose both.
And right now, there's almost a tradition that locks the politician in, and this happens on both sides.
The whole thing is to pass it.
Just pass it.
And it's an obsession with them.
And that's the only objective they have.
It's just to pass the bill.
What it does and what it doesn't do doesn't even seem to matter.
But if you have an up and down vote and you lose by 10% or if you lose by one vote, I would think that you shouldn't give up.
Oh, you know, we can't have that happen.
You know, it's passing the vote that is so critical.
And they say, well, what else are you going to do if it's important?
Don't you care if they pass a bill that cuts some spending?
Yes, but I would let the chips fall where they may, where it may, and let the people who they represent decide whether or not they should vote one way or the other.
Yeah, that would simplify it.
But, you know, Johnson's on this kick.
He said the other day, if we don't pass this money for Ukraine, Russia is not going to stop at Ukraine.
It's going to take over Europe.
And I'll say, what is your evidence for that?
You know, what would they do once they took over Europe?
What are they going to do?
Sit down and have a coffee?
I mean, it's just so absurd on its face.
And no journalist ever asks him, well, Speaker Johnson, what is your evidence for that?
That they're intent on taking over Europe.
And what would they do with Europe?
They're already the biggest country in the world with the most resources in the world.
What are they going to do?
So it's just so absurd.
But back to Representative Andy Oggles.
He also found something that we want to talk about for a second.
If you put that next one up, he was digging through the bill, and this is going to irritate a lot of Republicans and probably a few Democrats.
He says $300 million for the state border guard service of Ukraine, but nothing for the U.S. customs and border protection.
$300 million that can be used by the state border guard service of Ukraine.
So literally almost a half a billion dollars to protect Ukraine's borders and snake eyes for our borders.
You know, they have to be aware of this because, you know, the bad stuff might be one word or one phrase.
So the bad guys know that that is in there.
So this is sneaky.
This is dishonest.
This is unconstitutional.
The whole works.
But the system, the way it works, is just really evil.
And fortunately, we have more people watching closely.
But what about the whistleblowers that we have?
Watch these people.
You're an insider.
Tell us.
What happens to them?
You know, like Assange.
He's, in a way, a whistleblower, and he's not even our citizen.
But they have to punish people.
And so it is very difficult to get to the truth.
But eventually, that's the only thing that we can do because there's very few people who say, oh, well, we can't be solved until people take up their arms, which is a bunch of nonsense about it.
I would like to have people be protected with their Second Amendment, but no, this can't be changed unless you change people's attitude of what the purpose of government is.
So we have drifted a long way from the intent of the founders, and we're suffering from it.
And more and more people, I think our numbers are going up and say, enough is enough.
This is coming down on us.
What are we going to do?
And, you know, coming down on us means there's that social chaos and economic chaos and foreign policy and dollar chaos is going to demand changes.
The big question is, what are you going to replace it with?
And can you have enough people putting support behind that?
And I think that's where we are.
But I think it's a significant battle, an important one.
And that is why I think the most important part is ideological because all this other stuff is mischief.
How do we get around it?
How do we cheat?
And how do we, well, first you have to do is get control of the court systems so that anybody's doing the wrong thing, they'll become criminals.
And the court system is so corrupt.
The political system is corrupt.
But there's still a lot of people growing in numbers who care about living in a free country and they know what a republic is and they know how dangerous it is to have an absolute democracy where 51% can take away all the rights of the 49% who can't get represented.
All the people who are for democracy never realize all their rhetoric is there.
They want to provide protection for the minorities.
And the minorities are the ones who have to pay all the bills.
And that's why the middle class and the poor now are suffering the most.
Yeah, and we're suffering from our borders being completely wide open.
I mean, it's crazy.
And remember, Speaker Johnson, the whole reason he took over as speaker is because McCarthy, Speaker McCarthy, wasn't willing to make border protection in the U.S.
A contingent, you know, the passage of the aid bill contingent on border protection here.
Republicans said, we've got to protect our own border first.
And Johnson said, that's me.
In fact, it's been going around on Twitter.
JD Vance retweeted, I think Massey retweeted it, a montage of Johnson saying that exact thing.
Let's cue up that first audio clip and let's put our earpieces in and listen.
This is actually kind of funny, but kind of sad.
You might want to listen in, Dr. Paul, to this one.
This is Johnson talking about the border before he was speaker.
I'm telling all of you, we told the American people: border, border, border.
We have to effect real policy change at the border, and that is a necessary condition to anything we do going forward.
We have to take care of our border first.
That's what the American people demand.
Every state in America is now a border state.
Border, border, border.
How can we be engaged in securing the border of foreign countries if we can't secure our own?
We know the urgency in Ukraine.
We're going to stand for freedom and make sure that Vladimir Putin doesn't march through Europe.
It's a pastime to secure the border.
Listen, this is a catastrophe down here.
The battle is for the border.
President Biden wants a supplemental spending bill.
It better begin by defending America's national security.
These are dangerous people who are coming to the country.
Over 300 known terrorists.
How can we be engaged?
Probably good.
I liked his old speech writer.
You know, this is border, border, border.
No supplemental until we take care of the border.
It's so hard to comprehend how they can do that.
And then they, in their mind, morally justify because I got more information now.
You know, national security.
I didn't realize that national security was at stake.
And then they shift gears.
So what a shame, but we still have to deal with it.
Well, here's what's really at stake.
This is what I think I know you would say it.
And they're actually even open about it.
Put on, skip one clip and go to the next one, the Washington Post clip.
Here's what it's really about.
It's not audio.
This is just a so the Washington Post literally came out with an op-ed today saying, here are the U.S. congressional districts benefiting from Ukraine aid.
So what?
Wait, hold on.
I thought that was aid for Ukraine.
No, it's all out in the open.
This is corporate welfare that will be benefited across many congressional districts.
That's what it's all about.
It's about spending to prop up the military-industrial complex here.
It's not for Ukraine.
Boy, that's for sure.
So a picture is worth a lot of value to see what's going on.
And of course, we've been making that statement, but when you see that map, we've said bragging about it.
You know, the way they build weaponry, they pass out the contract.
So these are contracts usually, but it's always this pretense.
And, okay, we're going to make the world safe for NATO.
And they talk people into it.
Because it's still rather sacred not to criticize NATO.
I mean, there's a little bit more tolerance of that.
But just think of the abuse of the principle of NATO.
Robert Taft knew what he was talking about from the beginning.
Watch out.
Abuse Of NATO Principle 00:03:08
Don't even get involved.
That'll involve us for a long time.
And we're deeply involved.
Well, you always talk about the people who vote for the war should have to go fight them.
I just do this in here because it's funny and it goes along with what you said.
Put on that next clip.
Marjorie Taylor Greene, again, sometimes she's good, sometimes she's not, but this is pretty funny.
She said, if you want to fund endless wars, you should have to go fight them.
That's why I'm introducing an amendment that would require any member of Congress who votes for the multi-billion dollar Ukraine supplemental to enlist in Ukraine's military.
So if you vote for this turkey, you go fight.
It's probably better than letting these poor Ukrainian kids go fight.
Gee, she's going to get into trouble.
She is going to get in trouble.
Well, speaking of trouble, this is something that we wanted to bring up.
How bad is Johnson doing in bringing this to the floor?
Put on that next clip.
He's doing so bad that his BFF is now Chuck Schumer.
This is Chuck Schumer reportedly bragged to colleagues, bragged to his colleagues that Speaker Johnson gave Democrats everything they wanted with this $95 billion Ukraine foreign aid bill.
He's out there bragging about it.
You know, and you mentioned the word loan earlier on, but that is where the real scandal is on how they do this.
You know, the money goes to the states and people outside, and they do the wheeling and dealing.
So, and Trump got involved in this too.
He said, why don't we just make a loan to him?
And you know that.
The best word I could describe that is, it's a joke.
That's a big joke.
Who's going to believe that?
And you mentioned that they can renegon their payment of that.
By November, the president can cancel half of it.
And it's canceling.
And then the rest in 2026 can get rid of it.
They're lining up.
They're doing it early, a lot earlier than the student loans.
They're still figuring out how to stop all those payments.
So the other thing is, I wonder what interest they're paying.
Yeah, really.
That becomes just nonsensical because there's not going to be repayments.
There's not going to be any interest paid.
And that to me is just unbelievable for people to put up with that.
And that's why the people who are now being more firm in the House, we ought to wish them well.
And like I say, they ought to vote it up or down and find out where the chips will fall because that's the whole thing about the speakership.
So, you know, because the one thing that they haven't realized that, you know, we weren't as broke as we are now and that people can be converted and too many people aren't voting on principle.
But right now there are more and more people.
There are a lot more hardcore constitutionals in Congress than when I was there.
Acting on Privacy Hope 00:08:55
You know, there were some good people there.
But unfortunately, there was no real victories when it came to this.
This could turn into a victory and some of the responsibilities now are falling on that hardcore group.
Yeah, yeah.
And, you know, we hope they can prevail.
But we want to do a follow-up of what we talked about yesterday.
And this is a good op-ed.
It appeared in Real Clear Wire.
And it's by, I don't know if you remember the member, Bob Gutlatt from Virginia.
He seemed like a decent fellow, as I remember.
Quiet, not a loudmouth.
But he wrote a great op-ed.
And if we can put it up here, Senate Can Stop Expansion of Government Surveillance is the name of the op-ed.
And he wrote it with Mark Udall.
Udall was, he was also in the House, wasn't he?
Yes, yeah.
So it's a good article.
Go to the next one now.
Here's what he talks about.
He says, when the U.S. House passed the Reforming Intelligence and Securing America Act, which reauthorizes FISA Section 702 surveillance, it overlooked something.
An amendment that would drive the greatest expansion of government surveillance authority in recent history.
And we warned about this yesterday.
And he called it, turn it to the next one, everyone's a spy provision, which, as we mentioned yesterday, Dr. Paul, basically it means the government can press into service any American.
If you're in a hotel and you're using their Wi-Fi, they can go to the hotel and say, we need all the information from Dr. Paul's telephone, everything he did while he was here.
And it's not just that.
Everywhere you go, we're using Wi-Fi.
We talked about yesterday, your plumber, your gardener, they could go and say, we need you to spy for us against Dr. Paul, and you don't dare say a word about it to anyone or you'll go to jail.
And so what they're saying, Goodlot and Udall, is we can still stop this.
That's good news if we can help them along and encourage them.
But you know, the privacy issue is fascinating because sometimes they throw that out like it's separate from everything else.
But you can't separate it.
That's what liberty is all about.
You know, I think I was there the first week, and a bill came up in the Committee on Banking, and it was to have banking regulations and control, you know, Bank Secrecy Act, Secrecy Act, Bank Exposure Act.
And I remember one person getting up, very, very polite and condescending a bit, and said, well, Dr. Bob, we know you've only been here a week, but if you're not doing anything bad, you don't have to worry.
The privacy issue was irrelevant.
And I wonder if they'd accept that if they were thinking that every household is suspected of committing crimes of passion.
We better have a camera on every bedroom.
Yeah, exactly.
But no, the privacy issue is so key.
It's being undermined.
And the FISA issue is on the table right now because we are, like I mentioned yesterday, on the verge of the police state breaking out.
And, you know, if they can do this, but they know that they had to be a little bit cautious.
That's why it's wonderful that somebody caught this.
Yeah.
And there's still a chance.
So let's hope the Senate wakes up on this thing and does something and puts some resistance to this.
You know, I was looking at this amendment.
Mike Turner, the chairman of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence Hip C, he's the one that put in this amendment that had this spy on your neighbor bill, the Stasi bill, really, provision.
But he slipped it in there.
And from what members say, the language, and you remember this well, was very opaque.
And the way that, you know, strike Section 1, all this kind of stuff that they do.
And so people didn't really realize.
It's not an excuse, but they didn't realize what happened.
I looked at the vote.
It was actually really interesting because Republicans were almost split in half, and Democrats were almost split in half on this vote.
It wasn't a party thing.
So it almost looks like half of Congress, regardless of party, is for us, is for America, and half of it is for the deep state and for the permanent state and the UNA party.
Many times on most of this, you know, whether it's the Patriot Act or whatever, it's this whole effort of national security and scare them to death because if you don't do it, you know, we are going to have problems.
Like we don't have problems now.
We're going to have problems if we don't have any decent understanding of laws and courts.
And now we're a lawless society and a lot of people are suffering from that.
And that puts a damper on the freedom of speech.
You know, we have to even admit on occasion, you know, Welsh, you know, especially during COVID, we just didn't want to go looking for trouble.
But I think we tried to get the balance out and get the truth out regardless.
But it is.
It's so intimidating.
And I still marvel at how valuable it is for a leader to stand up and say what everybody has been thinking, but they were a little bit intimidated.
It's that some of those meetings that were occurring when they finally got sick and tired of all those regulations for COVID, that's one person in a meeting could make all the difference in the world.
And I think that sort of supports the whole issue.
If it's an idea and a principle whose time has come, they can't stop it.
And I always think, well, you know, we have tools and we still have access to the computers, but just think the founders did it with pamphlets.
Yeah, yeah, and quill pens.
Yeah, boy.
So magnificent.
But you know, one of the things they're going to do to try to get this through, and you know this very well, they have to convey the sense of urgency.
We must act before the 19th of April or Hezbollah is going to take over America.
Well, this is from the same article from Goodlot and Udall.
Put up that last clip if you can, because they shine the light on this nonsense.
They say the intelligence community is pressing the Senate to act before this authority lapses on April 19th.
But the agencies have already secured permission from the FISA court to continue conducting Section 702 surveillance in its current form until April of 2025.
So the Senate has plenty of time to act with deliberation.
It can boldly strike this toxic everyone's a spy amendment.
And considering the popularity of adding a warrant requirement for searching and for accessing Americans' communications caught up in Section 702 databases, it should do this as well.
So this is important.
Look, they're going to say, we've got to do this tomorrow.
But as they point out, no, they've got a whole year to deal with this.
Take your time, Senate.
Strike out this bad stuff, put in a warrant, and at the very least we'll have a little bit of protection.
I just wonder about somebody coming along and say, oh, no, that's not authentic enough.
They can't do it because they can't change it.
That has to have legislation changed.
But anyway, it's out on the table, and that at least is helpful for people to deal with it.
Yeah, well, I'm going to close out by thanking everyone.
I'm just looking at the chat a little bit.
It's nice to see you very active as usual.
Thanks for listening to the Liberty Report.
I see over here only 76 thumbs up.
Come on, guys.
We're working hard over here.
Sweat is dripping on the table.
Please give us a thumbs up if you're watching the show.
And thanks.
And for me, I'll see you next week.
Very good.
Very good.
And I, too, want to thank all our viewers for tuning in today because we depend on you.
We need encouragement too, you know, because some of this stuff can be depressing.
But we also talk about the good things that are happening.
And I think that it's out there.
And I still look at the total numbers of people who are still interested and have a growing interest.
I was certainly encouraged at our meeting, our conferences past weekend with our supporters because there's a lot of enthusiasm there.
So I want to encourage everybody to keep it up, find some friends, but that message has to be spread because it won't spread on its own.
And people need a little encouragement because it sometimes takes a little bit of a boost for people to say, you're right, we need to speak out.
So I encourage you to do that because if we're interested in peace and prosperity, I believe one of the best things that we can do is promote peace and prosperity through the Liberty Report.
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