Bizarre Mitch McConnell: 'It's All Tucker Carlson's Fault!'
In a bizarre rant after Senate passage of the huge $95 billion foreign aid bill, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell blamed journalist Tucker Carlson for Republican opposition to the overseas giveaway. The top Senate Republican implied that Carlson's reporting on rampant corruption in Ukraine makes him a "Russian asset" rather than a journalist. Also today: The McConnell/Schumer uniparty bulldozes America. Finally: merit makes a comeback at US universities.
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?
Good.
Do we have the budget balanced yet?
Oh, yeah, absolutely.
Everybody's happy now, though.
They got that little bill passed and brought all the factions together.
There was one thing, and we'll come to it when we go through this, but one thing is this is a dramatic example of how bipartisanship works.
And I look at it, and I say, this is the evil of this contrived bipartisanship.
When you see people coming together and passing these horrible, horrible bills, people selling out their soul.
They contradict everything they've said.
And, you know, we've worked the speaker over enough already, but his switcheroo and switcheroo was just a little bit too much.
But again, what's so different?
And people, there'll be, people say, well, at least we have bipartisanship.
We don't have lockdown.
The government's still open, which is sad because nobody has any money to pay for it.
So they'll print it up and all.
But anyway, we want to talk on the first go-around here about Mitch McConnell.
He doesn't like Tucker.
No.
McConnell has an unusual philosophy.
He's not against journalists, but he just doesn't think journalists should be journalists.
As long as they only report what McConnell wants them to report in a bipartisan manner, if he can get together with Schumer, and then the journalists can do what they tell them.
But Tucker, he has this terrible habit of having an independent thought.
He actually investigates these people, quizzes them, and puts them on the spot.
And he must be one of four or five people we know like that, that we like because they'll do that.
But anyway, McConnell blames Tucker on this demonization of Ukraine.
If he couldn't have done that, nobody would have ever had this problem would have never come up.
And yet, where's the problem?
They're getting the money, you know.
And they feel very proud of putting the coalition together and undermining the system.
And Democrats and Republicans come together.
And we were hoping that McConnell would just sort of relax.
But it looks like he's going to be a Nancy Pelosi hanging there to the last minute.
So anyway, I think it's rather annoying for McConnell to be this active because he certainly doesn't represent anything that we believe in.
He generally dealt with strategy and the evil of his positions probably was known, but we didn't hear as much about it.
But now it's sort of switching at the last minute and sticking it to your allies.
And so he's not less annoying now that he's semi-retired.
Yeah.
Well, I mean, there's something deeply, deeply un-American about Mitch McConnell, saying that an American journalist whose reporting goes against the wishes of people like Mitch McConnell and the government are a problem.
It's all their fault.
It's all the journalists' fault.
You know, they should be backstopping the regime.
They should be mouthpieces of the state.
You know, this is essentially what he's saying.
Now, put up that clip.
He had, I would call it a bizarre rant.
Mitch McConnell blames Tucker Carlson for the GOP's demonization of Ukraine.
And let's actually listen to McConnell say it because I think it's probably worth, I think it's the first 47 seconds of Mitch McConnell blasting Tucker Carlson for doing journalism.
You've been probably one of the most ardent backers of Ukraine in the Senate here.
But what took so long to get some of these other eight Republicans persuaded to your position here?
Was it the overall nature of this bill and what was lost in that time period for Ukraine?
Well, that's a good question.
You already know the answer.
I think the demonization of Ukraine began by Tucker Carlson, who, in my opinion, ended up where he should have been all along, which is interviewing Vladimir Putin.
And so he had an enormous audience, which convinced a lot of rank-and-file Republicans that maybe this was a mistake.
So his crime is that he convinced Republicans that it was a mistake to send $100 billion overseas.
Yeah, he always had a sense of jealousy.
Yeah, yeah, he has a big audience.
Oh, yeah.
And he wasn't being listened to like he'd like to be.
But, you know, when he attacks Tucker and his whole system, it's not journalism.
It's journalists that tell the truth.
Once again, it's truth is on trial here.
And that is what these authoritarians, Republicans and Democrats and the rest of them, can't stand if you get the truth out because the truth is so powerful.
And you don't have to have guns for truth.
All you have to do is have a right to speak out.
And that's what, and that's, and they understand this, and that's why they have to, you know, do damage to them and discredit anybody who's being a journalist.
They can't be allowed to just say what they believe and interview people, you know, and find out what they're thinking.
And the more I studied about how we went through the various wars over the many years, it was always somebody in both countries, it seems, that had an instinct for how do we avoid this?
Well, the first thing we do is we get the leaders to talk to each other.
And that, of course, they might reach a truth, but no, it's better that if their goal is war, then they don't want to hear the truth.
And that so often is the reason we march off to these wars that make no sense.
I mean, essentially what McConnell is saying is it's all Tucker's fault because Tucker Carlson reported on corruption in Ukraine, and that turned Republicans against giving them even more money.
As if somehow he was falsely reporting.
He was spreading false rumors of corruption in Ukraine, where in fact everybody knows, everyone who's not Mitch McConnell, I suppose, knows that Ukraine is notorious.
And in fact, even the U.S. administration put on this next clip.
I just, I did the second of research on this.
It's not a deep dive here.
This is from Politico, I think, earlier this year.
Leaked U.S. strategy on Ukraine sees corruption as the real threat.
And go to the next one.
This is the Biden administration itself.
Biden administration officials are far more worried about corruption in Ukraine than they publicly admit, a confidential U.S. strategy document obtained by Politico suggests.
The sensitive but unclassified version of the long-term U.S. plan lays out numerous steps Washington is taking to help Kiev root out Malfeasance and otherwise reform an array of Ukrainian sectors.
And I highlighted this.
It stresses, now keep it up, please.
This is the report itself.
It stresses that corruption could cause Western allies to abandon Ukraine's fight against Russia's invasion and that Kiev cannot pull off the anti-graft effort.
So the administration itself knew this all along.
Everybody knew this all along, but suddenly, all of a sudden, it's Tucker Carlson's fault for reporting on.
Doesn't he know you should just keep quiet about this stuff?
Yeah, that's what they want.
They do not want the truth out.
And unfortunately, you know, they seem to get more favorable reporting, you know, to the mass media because they're involved a little bit in the military-industrial complex.
I think there's some crossovers on the influence of these various special interest groups.
And of course, their sacred answer to all this is to have bipartisanship.
And that's what we'll talk about a little bit more.
But that's what's sacred.
And they got people to sell out their souls after pretending to be something.
It's no switch.
They don't believe in truth.
So it's variable.
They can pretend something.
And then they switch.
They don't lose any sleep either.
I just wish they lost a little sleep.
But can't do that.
They're not going to lose any sleep.
Mitch McConnell basically is what he's saying is everyone was in favor of sending more military aid to Ukraine.
Everybody in this country until that dirty Tucker Carlson started talking about not sending money to Ukraine.
Well, the fact of the matter is, and again, here is not a deep dive, an easy dive.
This is from April 15th, just a week ago.
Put this on.
Most Republicans oppose U.S. aid to Ukraine.
Most Republicans oppose it.
Go to the next one.
This is that same report.
Most self-identified Republicans oppose further U.S. aid for Ukraine.
And more than three-quarters trust former President Donald Trump, above all government and media sources to inform them.
A CBS News YouGov survey released Sunday, just this past Sunday, found that 61% of Republicans say the U.S. should not send more weapons and other military assistance to Vladimir Zelensky.
So he's reflecting the majority of the Republican Party's position on it.
Where does McConnell get off saying that that is somehow...
I don't know, but that's the question.
You know, they're saying it, but they're getting away with it, so there's something wrong with our ability to get that message out.
Of course, that's the control of the media.
But the one thing they wanted to do was keep certain appropriations together with a couple at one time.
At the same time, there had to be one exclusion because the American people really wouldn't go for it, and that is they had no money there for our borders.
No, not at all.
All of that mischief and fighting and killing and special interests and deficits.
But don't spend one nickel of this money.
And you say, well, they're out of money.
Baloney.
I could find a lot of money because about $97 billion what they just spent.
I bet you we could eliminate most of that because it's all going overseas for 4A after the military industrial complex gets their cut.
And 10% for the big guy.
Don't forget that.
I dug up a couple of good tweets, I think, to talk about this because I view this as an outrageous attack on the First Amendment.
Attacking a journalist for reporting the truth is despicable.
And here's the first one is from Nick Sortor.
Sorry, if we can get that first one up.
He is a journalist.
He's appeared on Tucker Carlson's show, and he makes some good points.
Just in, Mitch McConnell attacks Tucker Carlson over Ukraine.
And here's Nick Sortor, journalist.
According to Mitch, the demonization of Ukraine began with Tucker Carlson.
He ended up right where he should have been, which was interviewing Putin.
And here's the part I underlined.
Tucker Carlson exposed the rampant corruption and endless lies about what's going on in Ukraine and showed the world that we're dumping money into an unwinnable war.
Tucker Carlson is a hero for that.
And I would say yes, because that's what journalists are supposed to do.
Now, this next one, Susan Shelley is interesting.
She's a columnist, and she's a member of the editorial board of the Southern California News Group, which represents 11 newspapers, including the Orange County Register, which is a good newspaper, or has been in the past.
She makes a great point, too.
The irritated voice of government, censorship, and smear, mask off, listen to Mitch McConnell blame journalist Tucker Carlson for telling his enormous audience his opinions on Ukraine aid, which influenced some Republican lawmakers.
And I highlighted this.
He implies that Carlson acted as a Russian asset.
And that literally is what he said.
He ends up where he should be, which is with Vladimir Putin.
He's saying here that Tucker Carlson is an agent of Vladimir Putin.
That is despicable to say that.
And this is what the Democrats did to President Trump for four years as a president.
And he's doing the exact same thing to a journalist.
You know, when they go to war under these conditions of finding out how they can make the most money and all this intervention that we've gone on for 100 some years, there was a story just recently that we, did you know that we still have troops in Iraq?
You know, how hard we work to try to stop that whole thing and just get out of that area.
But today, or yesterday, the statement was that the United States is asking Iraq to protect our troops.
You know, and that probably is true.
It's unsafe for us to follow these policies.
It's just another war that they enjoy.
Well, just to show how clueless they are.
I mean, not just this administration, but D.C. in general.
So just a day after the Senate passes this bill with money for Taiwan, i.e. for war with China, Blinken landed in Beijing today, and he's going to ask the Chinese to stop helping the Russians in this war.
So he's going to ask China for a favor day after we're sending money for Taiwan to have a war.
Yeah, and you close down that TikTok.
We are sick and tired of that.
China's Dilemma in the War00:04:01
Yeah, that's right.
It's unbelievable.
Then maybe Russia and China will want to respond by putting a sanction on us.
They're both annoyed by us, Russia more so recently.
But they say this, and it doesn't even seem to phase them that if they did it to us, you know, we would be pretty annoyed.
But I think they're starting to do that.
And I think the weaker we get, the more we're going to hear of that, where they're punishing us as we have punished them because they wouldn't join our empire and be obedient members.
Yeah.
Well, the next one is a related story.
And we chose it for a couple of reasons.
One is because it's what you always talk about correctly is bipartisanship and how evil that is.
Put this next one.
This is from Politico.
And it's really disgusting.
How McCarnell and Schumer beat hardline conservatives on Ukraine.
Of course, Politico loves this because they love this war.
They love the Biden administration.
But go to the next one.
It's really, it's so saccharine.
I don't want to take a bit away from Chuck.
He didn't have any Ukraine problems.
I had all of them.
But we agreed on the overall goal, McConnell said in an interview on Tuesday.
Wasn't possible for him to help me with my members, nor was it possible for the president to help me with my members.
It was a Republican family argument.
Politico goes on to say the argument has been settled for now as a majority of GOP senators took McConnell's side in the long-running fight over the money.
They caved is what it means actually.
So they use the word goal.
Yeah.
And that's true.
But what they're really saying is we agree on philosophy.
And if you know, there's just a few Americans left that think that we have a great philosophy, we have a great history, and still people are able to benefit.
And people want to come to our country to use the remaining amount of freedom that we have.
But what they say is that the philosophy is what we can't stand.
And that's why they want to squelch them, not let them get the information out.
That's why the attack on all the information, they just can't stand the idea of truth.
And for that reason, believe me, the small number of truth tellers in the Congress plus the small number of journalists that we have, they're going to be the enemy.
How often are people like that crucified?
What about Assange?
Why is that obsession going on?
Because he revealed something about the United States that was not flattering.
He was telling the truth.
Nobody's ever said that he's a liar or anything like that, but they just have this goal that we have to silence him.
And unfortunately, they're doing a pretty good job of that.
Yeah, they are.
Well, let's do one more from the Politico article.
This tells you a little bit more about it.
And they use that word.
That's why I wanted to put this one up and I highlighted it.
So this is from the same article about the collusion, which is what it really is.
The collusion between Schumer and McConnell against America.
This is the article.
Forgetting past fights over Senate control.
Former President Donald Trump in the Supreme Court, Schumer and McConnell made two consequential agreements that aided the Biden administration's foreign aid request.
That is interesting because that's what McConnell did.
He gave a huge boost to Biden.
So here's what they say.
Keeping Ukraine assistance bound to Israel aid and eventually moving forward together on a package without a border security component, i.e. basically selling everything out to Schumer.
And remember we talked about how Schumer was dragging, was bragging about it.
So the synchronicity effectively, quote, pulled the rug out from under the right-wing guys, as Schumer put it, right-wing guys.
So here's Schumer.
We never deviated, Schumer said on Tuesday of his partnership with McConnell.
Coalition Build: Fear and Synchronization00:02:47
We talked to each other every day, every other day, about strategy or what to do or what could happen.
And it shows you when you have a bipartisan force, there's the word, it can get things done.
But it's a true statement.
They do get things done, but they're all bad.
They're all bad, yeah, exactly.
That's the way you get them together because if each side has some elements of telling the truth and doing the right thing, that's what they eliminate in order for them to come together.
And it's that coalition that that's why I just makes me cringe when they keep talking about, I heard it today, a person trying to be objective, they say, nobody likes either candidates, what we have to do.
We have to have this coalition.
They say, well, bring this guy over over over this guy.
And it would be by Coming together and endorse things that aren't that don't have anything to do with the Constitution or going to war or dealing with a monetary issue, dealing with the finances, none of that, but just the fact that you have bipartisanship because people have been conditioned to believe that if the government shuts down next day, you know, you're not going to be able to get your Social Security check.
And they can build up, they have to have the fear, and they're capable of doing that.
And then the other fear is military.
You know, what are they talking about?
If we don't stop, if we don't stop those Russians now, you know, Russia is going to take over all Europe.
So they know how to build the whole case for fear, scare the people.
And then people say, well, you're not going to worry about a couple dollars.
Do we have to really worry about our borders?
Because, well, we have to worry about it.
But of course, if you put the borders together, you realize that's how they invade you.
That's how sometimes the country surrenders and the invasion is welcome.
Oh, we'll take care of you.
Come in.
Are you with us or against us?
Oh, we're not with you.
We're against you.
But so we need some help.
Can you put up some get us some room?
Can we have a hotel or something?
And it seems like it's too many people going along with that.
But there's noise out there.
People are getting sick and tired of it.
The sooner the better.
Yeah.
And every one of these senators who voted for this, especially Republicans, they should be punished at the polls.
They deserve to lose because this is a sellout of America.
And by the way, it's going to get more dangerous because part of the initial tranche of military aid is going to include attack ones with 300 kilometer range.
And that's going to enable Ukraine to attack deep inside of Russia.
And anyone who thinks that Russia won't respond, I think, has another thing coming.
How would we feel if the Chinese gave the Mexicans missiles to hit deep inside of Texas?
You know, hit us over here in Brazoria County, we would be slightly irritated.
People Deserve Better00:04:11
Anyway, let's move on to something that I know you pay very close attention to, and it's with very good reason.
And put up this next clip.
We both noticed this yesterday.
Merit makes a comeback.
More universities reinstate testing requirements for admissions.
And this comes to us from by way of the EPIC Times through Zero Hedge.
Very interesting.
Harvard is following the footsteps of its Ivy League peers, Dartmouth and Yale, reinstating standardized testing in its undergraduate admissions.
What is amazing is that there is somebody waking up.
You know, in a couple universities, they're changing their rules.
But it seems so obvious.
Why would they ever do this?
And the whole question, it will pop up.
They say, is that the way you want your neurosurgeon to be trained?
How about your pilots?
Do you think the pilots should be trained this way?
Not by merit?
And merit combined with energy to do something makes up the thing what happens in a free society.
But, you know, the whole thing is if you cancel out by merit and do it arbitrarily and turn it into a racial thing, believe me, society is going downhill, and that is what's been happening.
But this principle of ESG, which means that they're putting it into law.
And a lot of companies, you know, so many countries, companies went along with this because they thought it was good business.
And then a lot of them say, well, we'll just do this because it's going to help our investments, that sort of thing.
But they're even now starting to wake up about that.
But I think they want to cancel out the American tradition and they want to reestablish it.
And unfortunately, it is an authoritarian society.
It's a fascist type of society.
And now it's starting to be rejected.
It's a little slow, but a couple universities have done it.
But I think it's going to speed up.
I think eventually people will just throw in the towel and just quit doing that.
It's wrong.
It's immoral.
It's unconstitutional.
It doesn't work.
It causes more friction.
All this thing is, it makes things worse.
And I don't know of anything.
And I say, well, there's some minorities and some people might benefit from this, but the minority status is something that should not.
As long as people have, you have to have some ability.
There was one, I think in this article, they pointed out that they care more about the rules and regulations at the local level.
You know, you can't have some plumber come in your house that doesn't know something about the plumber.
Yeah, exactly.
But no, they'll have people come and study and spend time in the medical school, and it has to be, you know, done by just arbitrary, not by merit.
So I like the word meritocracy because even on an early age, I recognize that, you know, a lot of people are smart and they can do this and all.
But then I said, you know, the other thing about it, and this was before we had all this stuff, that I recognized that the people who could be very smart, but they weren't doing well, but it had to do with a personal quality.
They wouldn't study, they wouldn't do things, they'd get into trouble, and yet they had tremendous opportunities.
So it is a combination, not only having ability, but the other thing I came to the conclusion, I know I was less than a teenager, I thought, you know, even if you don't have the qualities that you think you have to have, if you are determined and you put out an extra effort, you can do better than the people who automatically think they should be good at this.
And now that's why it isn't hard to really compete with somebody that follows all the rules of this ESG stuff because they're picking them for the wrong reasons.
Regulators and Voluntary Systems00:03:50
And this has been going on.
I noticed that when I started medical school in the late 50s.
It was starting, you know.
Yeah, I mean, when we have a society that picks people, I mean, planes start falling out of the skies, and we're starting to see that.
So it really, it resembles a kind of a cult film called Idiocracy, where everyone is just really, really stupid in the future.
And that's where we're going to get if we, you know, so anyway, it's nice to end with a good news story.
But one of the solutions would be the one that we use is it should all be done by voluntarism.
You know, if two individuals, you know, if you're running an airline, if the airline's responsible, it might be a lot better than the regulators.
Now we've had umpteen regulators that are still not working that well.
And if you want to see the worst type of regulation, of course, is the ineptness of our military.
And that's going downhill.
There used to be a time where, well, I guess we do need this and they do a pretty good job.
But now it got to the point where there's little respect even for our security forces.
There used to be a time when there was tremendous respect for FBI and CIA agents.
And fortunately, people are waking up on that and realizing that sometimes they can turn on you too.
Yeah, absolutely.
Well, I'll just close by thanking the audience for watching the show.
I'll remind you again to go to ronpaulinstitute.org.
While you're over there, you might consider making a tax-deductible donation to the Ron Paul Institute.
This particular program is a project of the Ron Paul Institute.
So any support that you can give us is very, very much appreciated.
And over to you, Dr. Paul.
Very good.
And I too want to thank our viewers for tuning in each day.
And the program doesn't exist without you, so we appreciate that very much.
If you can guide a few people to our station here in our programming, that would be very nice too.
But I do want to re-emphasize something I was just talking about, and that is the voluntary approach to society.
And it's very simple, it's non-violent.
Both sides have to agree to do what they're doing.
Everything.
You know, you don't go into somebody's house without being invited in.
Yet now we're having millions of people march into our country, and our country should be a private property protected by the government, but the government doesn't do a very good job.
Just everybody comes in and it's abused, and because of the standards that we're following, they're immoral and they're wrong, and they don't follow the Constitution, they don't respect private rights, and therefore we're in a mess.
And we don't apply these voluntary rules.
In a way, that's what a sound monetary system is.
The people who usher a currency and say it's a certain value, it should be redeemable.
But no, if there's cheating, that's called counterfeiting.
And counterfeiting has been around for a long time, and it can cause a great deal of harm.
And the founders issued a death penalty for the people who were counterfeiting the money.
But they can't do that now.
There are too many government agents involved in counterfeiting our money.
So that is the reason why voluntarism is so much better.
I think it solves the problems of all things, not perfectly, obviously.
But if it's voluntarism, you know, the different religions should be able to get along together.
If one group doesn't force it on somebody else.
So, same way with education.
So that I think is a very important principle.
And of course, under volunteerism, the principle of private property ownership is honored as well as contracts.
It's not difficult, and we promote that system.
And we want to thank all of you for tuning in today.