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May 8, 2024 - Ron Paul Liberty Report
29:06
Showdown! Will MTG Take Down Speaker Johnson?

A group of Republican rebels, led by Rep. Marjorie Taylor-Greene, have laid down their list of demands to cease and desist from their efforts to unseat Speaker Johnson from his chair. Are they reasonable? Also today: Trump trials all falling apart. Finally: US contractors guarding Gaza's southern border? Good idea?

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Leverage in a Thin Majority 00:14:52
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 this morning.
Good morning, Dr. Paul.
How are you this morning?
Doing well.
This solves some problems.
Any problems out there, or have we taken care of our business and we're okay?
But I guess we'll never be out of business if we're seeking to probably discover the truth for some people and try to make it a better world.
Of course, that's one thing that we work very hard at is getting evidence that people can rely on right now.
You know, if you flip channels or read newspapers, if there are such things around, it's always who's saying it?
What are they doing?
You just can't trust.
If you see a person, you can't make the assumption, well, it's going to be authentic unless you personally know an individual.
And that's been going on.
And Washington has to be the messiest place for that.
But we want to talk a little bit today and start off with, you know, Marjorie Taylor Greene.
She's been in the news.
I don't know how many years she's been there.
She hasn't been there very long, but she's pretty well known.
And the one thing I think people could say about her, she stands for something.
You know, she has a principle.
Some people may disagree, and she's already made a mark.
And now she's working with Thomas Massey.
So that has to be a pretty good indication.
And she's threatened to close down the Congress.
No, she isn't.
She doesn't want to do that.
But she is bringing attention where she's not fearful.
So she has some qualifications that might be very necessary in this day and age.
And she's right now wanting to do the right thing.
And that's in conflict with our speaker, Mike Johnson.
And they're in conflict for her to do exactly the right thing.
She has to challenge the whole system and they might have to close down Congress, which isn't really the case.
You know, I think there's so much money in the pipeline and there's a Federal Reserve.
Closing on the government doesn't happen.
But anyway, it's a big political gimmick.
But she is threatening to put a monkey wrench into these plans.
And she has a lot of justifications, even though I think anybody who's realistic realizes there's a lot of problems in this system and to try to iron it out.
So if your goal is to restore order and promote the Republic, it's no easy task.
So that's why she's trying her best to do the most she can for moving in that direction.
At the same time, she has to contend with somebody that has already suggested strongly to us that he's not always going to follow what he used to believe.
And I'm talking, of course, about the speaker.
So right now they're in a mess because they were meeting yesterday.
You know, Marjorie Taylor Greene was meeting with the speaker and they're trying to work things out.
And we don't know the final answer to that, but it is pretty important activity on the short runs because we'll have day-to-day activities and it will have a lot.
And we were hoping that the speaker would be a lot more supportive of our position of why don't you use the militarism of our government and the spending to solve some of these problems.
So Daniel, are you optimistic that their coalition is going to restore governments quickly and we'll be back a top-notch republic?
Well, it's an interesting thing to watch because Marjorie Taylor Greene, as you say, she stands for something, and that's pretty rare these days.
We don't always agree with her, but I certainly admire her tenacity.
She's not going to be told to sit down and shut up.
In fact, she gets louder when she's told that.
And as you say, she has Thomas Massey on her side on this.
And what her complaint is very simple: that Speaker Johnson is essentially the speaker of the Democratic Party.
He's not the speaker of the Republican majority.
And now we don't play politics on our program here, but we do notice that we are interested because we spent a lot of time on Capitol Hill.
You know, Hakeem Jeffries, who is the minority leader, he was quoted this a couple of days ago saying, even though we're in the minority, we effectively have been governing as if we're in the majority.
Now, that would irritate a lot of Republicans, particularly people like Marjorie Taylor Greene, but it is a fact because Speaker Johnson only got this massive aid bill passed thanks to Democrat support.
Republicans voted against the Ukraine part of it, at least.
Likewise, the Section 702 reauthorization.
And in the biggest insult, and you've talked about this before, Dr. Paul, Speaker Johnson himself went down and voted the sole vote breaking the tie against requiring a warrant for the government to spy on Americans.
So people like Marjorie Taylor Greene have said, this is enough.
We want to remove the speaker from the chair.
And so, as you say, Dr. Paul, they had talks yesterday, and she rolled out her four demands that she would like to see done in exchange for stopping for ceasing the attempts to unseat him.
And I'll just read them out really quickly: no further aid for Ukraine.
A return to the Hastert rule, meaning that no legislation can be brought to the floor without a majority Republican support.
The third is to defund the special counsel probes into former President Donald Trump, Jack Smith, especially, particularly.
And the enforcement, this is a politico characterizing it: enforcement of the Massey rule, whereby government funding is automatically cut across the board if no superseding agreement is reached before a set deadline.
Meaning, if they don't get their appropriate done on time, then there's going to be a continuing resolution, and that resolution must have a 1% cut.
So that's what she's asking for.
And they're going to meet today, Dr. Paul, to see if they can iron out an agreement.
Well, I think that there will be some type of an agreement.
We're not going to be excited and very happy about it.
I think that there will be some agreement and bring it together.
But the whole system up there is built on bipartisanship and finally coming together and don't close down the government.
And we've already had a little bit of information about our speaker.
So my guess is that the government's going to be marching on.
And when push comes to shove, especially if we get by, if they come up with something that is not too atrocious Atrocious, and there's a lot of good promises on there.
You know, by the time the election comes, even if there's a party change, you know, I'm not there to say, no more for the further egg for Ukraine.
See, I have trouble saying, yeah, that's good.
That'll help my arguments about why shouldn't we cut back?
And, you know, getting people to agree under less stressful conditions is different.
But once it's a if there's an emergency crisis, domestic, or a foreign policy crisis, or the threat of closing down the government, then a lot of people then wimp out and they can't stand, you know, for, you know, I was looking at some of the numbers the other day when we've had these emergencies, the COVID emergency and some of the foreign policy emergency.
The Congress authorizes, you know, a lot of money and they set aside it and they can spend it and they were told what they were supposed to spend it on.
And, you know, it just sits there for a long time, which is better than spending it because I always said that you get hurt twice when the government gets involved.
We get hurt when they take our money, but we get hurt again when they do good and to start spending it and they're supposed to help us.
So I guess I'm very reluctant to say, well, this is good.
And I certainly would pay a lot of attention and certainly encourage the green effort to get along with the speaker.
Yeah, and it's interesting because a lot of it hinges on Donald Trump.
And because Donald Trump is the presumptive nominee for president, the Republican Party that has a one-vote majority, a one-member majority in the House, is obviously, if they want to cap the presidency, they're going to have to please Trump.
Now, Trump, I think, has gone a little bit wobbly.
He hasn't put his support firmly behind Marjorie Taylor Greene, even though she has explicitly allied herself with President Trump.
You know, he famously went wobbly on aid to Ukraine a couple of weeks ago and broke his word that he wasn't in favor of it.
But certainly he sent, apparently, he sent a little note over to Marjorie Taylor Greene earlier today or late yesterday about the one part of the requirement to defunding the special counsel probes.
And he in handwriting wrote great underneath it.
So he's in favor of that, but he hasn't weighed in on all of this.
But I don't know how you feel, Dr. Paul.
I mean, this is hardly, you know, a contract with America, but at least to me, it looks like the beginning.
I mean, these four requirements, the beginning of some sort of focus for Republicans in the House.
They don't seem to have any focus whatsoever.
But it seems like this reestablishes some sort of a focus, some sort of a beginning to define, like, why should I go vote at all?
If you guys are just going to rule as the uniparty and rely on the Democrats to pass their agenda, what's the point of voting?
I think they're going to find out in November that if they don't change the ways, a lot of Americans are going to feel that way.
Matter of fact, the large majority of members of Congress never write down exactly what they believe in, what the principles they follow, and suggest what they can do.
But, you know, I find it interesting about the Hassard rule.
It means that no legislation is brought to a vote without support from a majority of a house majority.
Doesn't that seem pretty odd that you have to have a knockdown dry guy fight over talking to your constituents and your allies in your own party and saying, oh, at least half of us ought to agree with this.
You know, that to me, well, that's good, though.
And this is a worthwhile under the circumstances.
That's fine because that would help a little bit.
But it's such a shame that we have to, we're at this point where we're begging and pleading for the so-called conservative, non-interventionist type party, the Republicans, that we have to sort of badger them and embarrass them into going along with maybe cutting spending.
Oh, but it's an election year.
We have to be careful because winning the election is the most thing ever.
So that's why we have to help the Democrats, too.
There are some of those, some of those Democrats we need because we might have to compromise a little bit.
Yeah, and you know what's further infuriated Marjorie Taylor Greener and a few others is that not only is Johnson doing the bidding of Pelosi and the Democrats, and again, we're not partisan, but he's threatening Republicans.
He's threatened to kick them off of committees if they vote against the rules and bills.
And I think that might that might actually affect Thomas Massey as well.
But, you know, Marjorie Taylor Greene had a good tweet about that.
She said, threatening members of Congress with punishment for voting as conservative is absurd.
If Mike Johnson stopped bringing Democrat bills to the floor, he wouldn't have a problem.
With threats like these, he'll lose more Republican member support.
So Republicans are not happy with him threatening to kick them off their committees if they oppose anything he does.
So the thing that's interesting about the Hasfort rule, Dr. Paul, as you well know, is because of the razor-thin majority that Republicans have, requiring a majority of the majority party to bring a bill to the floor gives an enormous amount of leverage to people like Marjorie Taylor Greene, to people like Thomas Massey and their allies in Congress.
Now, they're relatively a small part of the Republican Party.
I think you and I would, and many Americans would argue that it's a growing part of the Republican Party that seems more fiscally conservative and less enthusiastic about foreign interventionism.
It will give this group an enormous amount of leverage with the party.
And so from now until November, you could actually see some really bad bills killed and maybe some interesting things coming to the floor.
You know, our organization is the Ron Paul, Ron Paul for Peace and Prosperity.
And that's obvious.
But, you know, during campaigning and all my efforts, I still believe it, is foreign policy, of course, is very important to what we're doing now, but it's also very important practically because wars are pretty vicious.
Probably working out food stamp programs, not nearly as dangerous, you know, as it is to deal with what we do around the world and spending the money.
But there's the foreign operations, the entangling alliance, the endless wars, and the trillions of dollars being spent on that.
This go on and on.
I all argue that people will, you know, after I describe the general principles of a limited government and a constitutional government, most everybody realize, well, we're a long way from that.
Why you say something practical?
Well, if P, could we work our way out of this mess?
We could, but it's not likely to happen.
But what you could do is look at the spending that the American people should agree to.
And that is the militarism, the overseas spending, and this mess.
You don't have to say, well, the first thing we have to do is cut child health care, but because we have so much room to deal with the budget with all this overseas spending and the farce of saying, well, yeah, then you're giving up our national security.
Well, that has to be refuted because it's the threat to our national security that is our problem once we get involved.
Seeming Implosion of Trump Cases 00:06:07
It's also a threat financially because this is how we make enemies, and this is why we get attacked economically and why our currency is under attack as well.
Absolutely, Dr. Paul.
Well, maybe let's move on to the second thing we've been noticing today.
And it's kind of the first part of it is a follow-up on what we were talking about, I believe, on Monday, which is the seeming implosion of the cases against Donald Trump.
And we talked about the apparent tinkering with the evidence in the Jack Smith classified information trial that he's facing 40 charges for having classified documents.
Well, right after this news came out that they tampered with the evidence late early this morning, the Trump classified document trial postponed indefinitely days after mishandled evidence bombshell.
The judge Eileen Cannon has postponed the whole trial indefinitely, meaning it most likely will not come to trial before the elections.
Well, you know, they've also brought up the other one on the Fannie Mae thing that she has discredited herself and she has lost authority there, but she's maintaining some position.
They say, oh, yeah, we're going to move you out, but you're still going to hang around for the RICO trials under scrutiny of the appeals court.
So they keep their finger in there.
But this looks like the whole thing is falling apart.
And I would think that is good news that is happening.
And I always thought, keep the record because someday somebody will want to know the truth and they can read about it.
Right now, the truth is breaking out.
I would think that there's some people on the opposition to Trump must be getting a little bit nervous about this because it's just overwhelming.
They fudge them.
They just figure they could say anything or do anything.
And the reason why I like this is, you know, the lying becomes, you know, very evident and there's a limit to how long they can lie.
None of this, even though there was hints that people understood what Hillary was doing, she never lost any credibility.
She just marched on.
And that to me is just so weird.
So I think, well, if you can't get him stopped, and some of this is stopping him, there's postponement because if the strategy is to eliminate any significant trial or this idea, well, the opposition says we're going to put Trump in prison.
He can't win if he's in prison.
Yeah, they've been saying if we do this, we do this.
Evidently, I hope this is a reflection that there are still a lot of people in this country that want to hear the truth.
That doesn't mean that they have to be a super Trump supporter, but it might mean that they're calling the efforts by the opposition extreme.
So I think the and I think the big thing will be when you see more and more Democrats publicly say, you know, we're messing up.
And I think we're hearing a lot of that already.
You know, we're in a mess now and we ought to be prepared.
And they talk about allies.
So I think that something is crumbling.
I think there's going to be major shifts in attitudes, political attitudes during this campaign up until November.
Well, it's like you've said all along, every time they think they're going to harm Trump, they actually help him when they do this.
And as crazy as the Jack Smith stuff is on the classified documents, I think the Fanny Rilla stuff is even crazier.
The whole thing should never have been brought to, you know, should never have been prosecuted whatsoever.
This idea that Trump conspired to overturn the election is completely bogus.
And the more we learn about the elections, the more we learn that it wasn't as pristine as they say.
But, you know, this whole thing about Fannie Willis, the judge that had donated to her campaign, Scott McCaffey, he ruled after it came forward that Fannie Willis had an affair with someone on the case.
The judge ruled, well, she doesn't have to leave the case.
She's fine.
She just has to fire this guy, Nathan Wade, who she had an affair with.
Well, what happened yesterday is that the Georgia Court of Appeals agreed to hear an appeal from the defendants, i.e. Trump, over whether the judge erred when he ruled that Fanny Willis could remain on the case.
So at the very least, it casts a huge shadow on this case as well.
And it feels like it's beginning to crumble as well for the prosecution.
You know, and there was some money passed from one person to another who had charge of the payment system.
I think it was $600,000 that they colluded.
The two of them got together and went on vacations.
It wasn't like, you know, a couple hundred dollars, couple thousand dollars, a few things like that.
It was hundreds of thousands of dollars.
And they still, they, they still, the one thing they do not have is they are incapable of shame.
They can't be shamed no matter what comes out, you know, and that to me is a very, you know, sad story because it also means that for them to change their attitude and say maybe life is more than getting away with lying and politics that offers us this tremendous opportunity because so many people are doing it, but and they get away with it.
So that to me indicates that, you know, the big issue, the big overall issue is to find people in life, in politics, that tell the truth and are willing to.
Dangerous Military Interventions 00:06:36
But right now, I think we're in desperate need, but we're also seeing an outburst of people who are getting sick and tired of it.
And they know there is a higher law that says you're not supposed to lie, cheat, and steal and kill people.
And government shouldn't do it either.
If we could just get that message out, that's not complicated.
They should be able to figure it out.
Yeah.
Well, the last one we're looking at is something we saw on anti-war.com written up by our friend Dave DeCamp.
And he's writing up a report in the Israeli newspaper Horetz, which is saying that a private U.S. security firm is going to take control of the Rafah border crossing.
That's what he talked about the other day.
Israel has started bombarding Rafa, which is where the Palestinians were supposed to go to be safe.
They said, hey, go there.
You'll be safe.
They say, well, no, we're going to bomb you anyway.
But apparently, American military or American private security firm, ironically, is going to start guarding the southern border of Gaza rather than our borders.
But I don't know how you see it, Dr. Paul, but to me, there are a couple of things.
And I know you have some points you want to make as well on it.
But to me, it also seems like the United States, even though it's a private firm, getting sucked deeper and deeper into this war and closer and closer to U.S. boots on the ground in the Middle East.
Well, I think it is terrible.
You know, in the revolution at the time, there was less organized, but people were banding together to fight for their liberty.
And there was a coming together, but it wasn't big business getting the contracts from a very wealthy nation and getting and making all this money off it.
So, this to me is just part of, you know, everybody knows about the military-industrial complex.
I mean, they're doing well and they continue to do that.
And there's other countries see that our military-industrial complex is doing well, and they want to start doing the same thing too.
And I think even now it's been a motivation for China to spend a lot more money in their military.
People wouldn't accept that as any type of a reflection of what we do.
And they would just say, Well, that means we have to spend even more.
But that's been around for a long time.
But this contracting out, I think it's been underrated.
You know, it's been there.
I think they've had contractors probably in many, many wars.
They've had it.
They had them in the Middle East.
I know they had them, you know, even in Vietnam, they would have it, but it wasn't so bold.
But right now, there's a lot of contracting out and the combination of big business and the military.
I think it's so dangerous because when push comes to shove and there are some people fighting and fuming against in a civil situation, that is the people who have the money and the control and the manufacturing and the government.
It is a, you know, we frequently call it corporatism to make it sound not quite so bad, but it really is a form of a major step toward fascism, especially if you have the money locked in, you have the weaponry locked in, and now you can boldly say, oh, well, we certainly don't want to send troops there.
We're going to hire some people to do this, and they play these games.
But I don't think that should reassure people.
I think the best thing is for us to just stay out of that mess and don't send our military or our contractors to most of these places where we are.
Yeah, that's a good point, Dr. Paul, because it's kind of the worst of both worlds.
They can avoid being criticized because there's no troops on, there's no boots on the ground.
There's no U.S. military boots on the ground, you know.
So they can say that, but at the same time, I think you would agree that as soon as one of these guys gets shot, and God forbid it happens, but as soon as one of them gets shot, then the cry among the warmongers is going to be, they're shooting Americans.
We've got to go in with our military.
So they serve as a tripwire, but they also provide some cover as well for the increased U.S. involvement in the area.
You know, the propagandists for this war that's going on in the Middle East, they will quote, you know, from one group and say, you know, they're heathens and we have to kill them all.
And it's rather very aggressive.
But the other side, I think if people looked at it and they were just extracted from the issue and no emotions involved, I imagine some of those accusations are made by both sides.
That's what usually happens in war, you know, is they say the same thing.
It's convincing the people.
So that to me is just an aggravation.
And also, I think what we're seeing now, though, when you see the takeover of the border crossing, I sometimes think that, and I try to be as objective as I can because, you know, I just don't want us involved in this mess because it doesn't go well.
But I keep thinking that if they close that border, is anybody going to gain on freedom?
To me, it sounds like unless you do what someone is eliminate the enemy totally and completely, what you're doing is just building, you know, reinforcing the prison where people can't come and go.
And the Roth of border crossing is at least allowing people to go back and forth.
And what they can do now is very limited.
So I still argue the case that the best treatment for this would have been prevention.
And the best prevention is for us to not get entangling alliances and then also have a better understanding what national security is all about.
And it's not achieved through empire.
That's been tried dozens, if not hundreds of times over the centuries.
And empires, yes, they do well for a while and they're bold and authoritarian.
They generally don't promote liberty.
And this is why I think that we were at a point where we have to realize that it should be the goal.
If we want to reach peace and prosperity, then what we have to do is make sure people know and understand what it's all about.
Understanding Economics 00:01:25
Amen, Dr. Paul.
Well, I'm going to close out and thank all of our viewers for watching us and their patience while we have an interesting situation with our studio.
We'll be back on a normal situation on Monday.
But thanks, everyone, for watching the show and look forward to seeing you tomorrow.
Dr. Paul, over to you, sir.
Very good.
And I too want to thank our viewers for tuning in today.
And we're delighted to have the support because we don't exist without support.
We can talk.
And we did a lot of talking to us ourselves and to others.
But I feel better now than I did the first time I ran for Congress in 1960 and one in 1976.
And there's a lot more.
Back in those years, you know, the members of Congress didn't have a very good understanding of economics.
And I would say, although they know the word free markets and sound money and Austrian economics, I would say that we still have a lot of ways to go to get the members of Congress to understand what they're doing because there's still too much of this support for funny money, inflationism, controls, regulations, sanctions, and all these things.
That's not freedom.
And I want to continue our efforts promoting this freedom and prosperity.
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