After innumerable US-backed coup attempts in Venezuela - including the almost comical Juan Guaido fiasco - one might think Americans would become skeptical when the old "stolen election" and "regime change" narrative is rolled out again. But as in Hollywood, when you have a successful story you keep rolling out sequels. Does it matter who runs Venezuela? Only if you are in oil or minerals...or the regime change business. Also today: Pentagon accountants find another two billion dollars for Ukraine...and US debt reaches $35 trillion.
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?
Doing well.
Doing well.
But we have to straighten some things out here.
Yeah, we do.
We're trying to figure out, you know, I've written a little bit about coups, you know, and I emphasize the coup that the far-leftist, Marxist type people took over our government in the 1960s, you know, with the CIA and all the assassinations.
And in a way, there's been a significant change.
They're still in more power than ever before.
And I called that sort of invisible.
You didn't see it.
Nobody considered that a coup.
And in a technical way, it isn't.
Most people think of a coup as some dissidents who don't like the king or they don't like the administration.
And they get together with guns and they go over and they take over the government.
And they said that's what Trump was doing on January 6th.
But I don't think that one came anywhere close to even the intent there of a coup.
But this week we're talking about a coup, you know, going on in Venezuela.
And, you know, we always talk about the trends in this country.
And so many, including myself, we think of were deteriorating.
And some of the worst governments have been in Central and South America over the years.
And so they were called banana republics because they'd come and go and there would be a coup and it was commonplace.
So this was something that goes on.
But now, I think it's interesting.
Now, although we've criticized the South Americans and Central Americans for having coups and just ancient type of governments, not very dignified like us.
But now, I think we're getting to know what a coup is all about.
But they still happen down in South America.
And the one that got the attention of the news media this week was the U.S., this is a headline, an article in anti-war.
U.S. accuses Venezuela of election manipulation after Maduro's victory, threatens sanctions.
Well, Maduro, unfair or what?
And do we have a perfect libertarian group that wants into the office?
This sort of thing.
So anyway, there's an argument over.
And I keep thinking that, you know, we always stood back and criticized that we knew what a coup was and we'd use it as a bad example.
But it's getting so that maybe our government is setting the example on how you manipulate counting the votes, you know, in a very professional, advanced technological way of miscounting votes and then change the results of the election.
So there's a little bit of that going on.
And now they'll try to figure out just who's cooing who.
Who's cooing who, yeah.
Who's cooing who?
Let's put on that first clip because this is similar to anti-war.
This is how Zero Hedge is writing it up.
Venezuela election protests spread as Maduro claims U.S.-backed color revolution is driving the mayhem.
And literally, both of these two headlines could be pooled straight out of 2019 because that's the last time there was a presidential election in Venezuela.
And that's the last time what happened.
Maduro won.
The U.S. said it's fake.
They sent out the thugs in the street.
The U.S. decided, no, we're going to go ahead and say Juan Guaido was president.
You know, so we're actually going to pick their president for them and put him in power.
So the fact of the matter is, and you mentioned, you actually, you hit the nail on the head a second ago when you said, well, is there a perfect libertarian candidate?
No, because the opposition candidate that, ironically, and someone pointed out that nothing has unified American politics like Venezuela because Trump's, the Trump people, the Kamala people, the left, the right, everyone is united in this.
But the fact is the opposition to Maduro is openly referred to as the U.S.-backed candidate.
And that means not the U.S.-backed, as in we voted for him, but the U.S. government picked the opposition and said, here's your opposition, vote for him.
And this is the problem with meddling in elections because they immediately lose any legitimacy they might have.
This kind of Gonzalez, he's sort of a front for this young female who was disqualified from running, who runs the opposition.
Nevertheless, handpicked by the U.S., this group was.
And so no wonder they have lost legitimacy in the eyes of the people.
So the problem is that we continue to meddle, and I am absolutely certain that there's plenty of U.S. meddling in this election, stirring up problems after the election.
Do we know that it was a perfect vote?
I have absolutely no idea.
But you know that the U.S. is deep into it.
You know, this is not exactly something new for us.
We've been in the business of participating in coups.
Of course, we were very much up on it when there was a government change in Ukraine.
You know, NATO's taken over and they chased out an elected leader because he happened to be wanting to have a conversation with the Russians.
So anyway, but we have been in the business of couping for a long time.
We're supposed to be the experts and set all the standards.
But that's what empires really do.
And we have had an empire that's dwindling away and will disappear as time goes on and as the reserve currency just self-destructs.
But in the meantime, we're going to see a lot of this.
And I think there have been periods of times in history where countries and governments lasted for longer period of time than from one election to the next.
So some of the people, like we at times, will criticize pure democracy, count the votes.
Well, it looks like it's more easily corrupted.
And the system doesn't iron out these differences by saying democracy, democracy, we have to have a coup to put the Democrats in charge and make sure there's a democracy.
We have to have these votes.
But they failed to understand what human nature was like.
And of course, the motives of people who maintain power and the people who are emoted, their motive is to have empire.
Some of them want money and raw materials and all these things or other kinds of hatred.
But no, if it's just power and all, they will participate in this.
And then they falsely charge people.
And that's why I'm expecting you to answer the question for me.
So I'm trying to figure out who's cooing who.
But There's always a we can't say, well, the Americans pick so-and-so must be the good guys.
Oh, Biden, Biden and Kamala, they helped pick it.
Yeah, the thing, I was on TwitterX yesterday.
I did a few posts because I was skeptical because I remember the narrative from 2019 and previously, it goes all the way back to Chavez, the U.S. trying to overthrow the government in Venezuela.
So automatically, my default is I'm skeptical, even if the U.S. didn't have any fingerprints on it, which I highly doubt, I'm extremely skeptical.
So I was attacked by a lot of conservatives and libertarians for, oh, there you go again.
Finally, a capitalist candidate is rising up against this evil socialist Maduro, and you have to criticize it.
And my response was, do you really think a candidate handpicked by the CIA is going to represent libertarian free market capitalism?
Of course not.
That takes you back to my emphasis on the 1960s and Kennedy.
That's the same CIA.
And they've been in charge and a lot of things that have been going on.
And I think they're still, they haven't given up their power.
And we seem to be seeing some people waking up to this.
And they're trying to find who the good guys are in the FBI.
And yet they've all participated.
I guess it was a surprise to a lot of people that the Secret Service was involved.
But they were involved in these other ones as well.
I'm sure they were involved.
Yes, matter of fact, they were involved in the Kennedy assassination.
At least the many books that were written implied that.
And the people who would claim that the U.S. has no stake in this, no interest, there's no evidence of any fingerprints.
I would just simply remind them of what happened in 2019 and before.
2019, Trump said, if we had only taken over, we would have gotten all the oil.
Well, Venezuela has the largest oil reserves in the world.
That's the reason everyone cares who runs Venezuela.
And we know this from Ukraine.
Remember, BlackRock went in and bought half the country.
Now they've had to take a major haircut.
They and several other U.S. corporations have had to take major haircuts because the Ukrainians can't pay it back.
But Ukraine had $12 trillion in mineral deposits, all this fertile farmland.
So all of this sort of vulture, not capitalist, but pseudo-capitalist.
They swoop in and they buy all these things.
Well, you're going to tell me that's not the exact same case with Venezuela when they have the most oil in the world.
This is being driven not by adherence to the free market and libertarianism.
It's being driven by these crony capitalists.
And it's not always driven by need.
Because the reports now about the oil supplies in this country, and Trump has it right.
If you deregulate, you have all the oil you need.
And they said that we're flooded with oil, but we still know we don't hesitate to keep looking.
If we were self-sufficient, why wouldn't that be say, you know, folks, do we really have to maintain order in eastern Syria?
Yeah.
You know, because now we have to make sure we have our hand in the pot in Venezuela.
You know, it makes no sense because it's motivation, it's selfish motivation.
Sometimes it's just for the oil itself and financial security, but sometimes it's just for power.
And the whole thing is, I think people are getting sick and tired of it.
And I think what you've done today is try to show the analogy between what they're doing down there and the counting, oh, yeah, we're going to count all the votes.
And you've had a little bit of experience in trying to make sure people counted their votes.
And that is a problem, and it's going to continue because I can remember the first campaign I was in.
It was involved back then and there, the machines were, they were rigable.
They could go in and rig the rig the machine.
You pulled a handle, but it was all the information was in this machine.
And I don't think they used that type of machine.
They found out it was easy to rig it.
It's probably easier now.
Yeah, no.
Well, that's why they're not saying, you know, if we had paper ballots, we might have a little more security.
Yeah, yeah.
Well, you know, here's a someone posted this just made the rounds on Twitterx this morning.
It's a flashback from John Bolton in 2022.
He will say the U.S. is not involved in a coups in Venezuela.
Well, here's Bolton.
I'm not going to play it.
I'm just going to read you.
This is not his words exactly, but this is the synopsis of what he said.
It's pretty funny.
He said, January 6th wasn't a coup.
I should know.
I've planned many.
Just look what we tried in Venezuela.
So it's pretty funny.
But I do have an audio clip that I want to play.
And it's related.
Now, it is Tony Blinken criticizing the vote in Venezuela.
And as you always say, Dr. Paul, it's always projectionism.
We always accuse, they always accuse others of doing what they're actually doing.
So listen to this clip with that in mind.
Everything he criticizes Venezuela for.
Well, let's just play that clip if we can.
We'll play the whole thing.
It's a little long.
It's a minute long, but let's play the whole thing because it's a little bit of humor.
If my colleagues will indulge me for just one minute, I want to speak quickly to the elections that just took place in Venezuela.
We applaud the Venezuelan people for their participation in the July 28th presidential election.
We commend their courage and commitment to democracy in the face of repression and in the face of adversity.
We've seen the announcement just a short while ago by the Venezuelan Electoral Commission.
We have serious concerns that the result announced does not reflect the will or the votes of the Venezuelan people.
It's critical that every vote be counted fairly and transparently, that election officials immediately share information with the opposition and independent observers without delay, and that the electoral authorities publish the detailed tabulation of votes.
The international community is watching this very closely and will respond accordingly.
Now.
So he says every vote must count, must be counted.
Well, his party is nominating someone for president who's not gotten a single vote.
So that's pretty funny.
And then the second one is the vote count has to be reported immediately.
Well, we kind of remember in 2020 when the election happened and we went to bed and Trump was winning.
We woke up 10 hours later and Biden won.
And then they said, well, some of the counting is going to take weeks.
I mean, they expect that we've forgotten that.
And I was thinking about what he was doing is 2020.
Did they apply any of the good advice that he was giving on watching it, making sure they did count it?
Money Empire Decline00:13:51
And it was always, it was never miscounting of votes or problems there.
It was always an insurrection and a takeover of the government, another coup, and the enemy of the people.
And yet, it very much is an abuse of a system that many people think it's the best in the world is our system.
But there have been some people who said, like our founders, like democracy can deteriorate into a very, very messy system.
Yeah.
Well, speaking of a messy system, if you're ready, I think we can move on, Dr. Paul, and put up that next clip because this is as messy as it gets.
Pentagon finds another $2 billion in Ukraine-aid accounting errors.
Pentagon discovered $2 billion, sorry, $2 billion in additional accounting errors regarding its valuation of missiles and ammo.
So that is added to the $6.2 billion they found according to accounting errors.
The latest report brings to the improperly valued military material to a total of $8.2 billion in accounting errors.
Now, Dr. Paul, I love our accountant here at RPI.
She's a wonderful person.
But I have to say, if there are any Pentagon accountants available, I will hire them immediately because I want someone to find $2 billion hidden somewhere in our account.
We need that.
Yeah, but the question I have is, I'm not a CPA, but I've worked with finances and I've looked at our national budget.
But when I look at this, and they mess it up, their accounting error of $2 billion, $8 billion, we need it all of a sudden.
Where has the money been?
If they had an heir and they really owe more money than they should have, and there were some accounts receivable in there, you would say, well, this is where it comes.
But they never say where the money is.
It's sort of like if it's an individual that hide their money, you know, for a rainy day, and they said, oh, I've listed all my assets, but I didn't remember putting $1,000 in my suitcase somewhere.
Oh, I found it.
But I don't think it works that way.
All of a sudden, it's a magic where they adjust the books and say that, oh, they just cut the deficit down.
No, matter of fact, what it does is gives them more money to pass out over there.
Oh, we were running out of monies to send to Ukraine.
We've agreed to quit doing that, and we're coming home, and we want to save a little of that because we're looking for another war in the South Sea and in Taiwan, and we have to be prepared for the Middle East.
We're using up a lot of money there, so they have to allocate this thing.
So this is their allocation.
But it looks like they probably just want to have an opportunity to send more money to Ukraine.
You're right, though.
It never works the other way.
They never say, oh, crud, we spent too much.
We got to pull back.
It's always, ooh, we got more money to spend.
I like that.
I wish we had that here.
So in addition to that, so they found that $2 billion extra, but in the same day, I think this was yesterday as well, they announced another weapons package for Ukraine.
This is the gift that keeps on giving, and it doesn't give to Ukraine, trust me, because they're talking about 700,000 Ukrainian soldiers killed already.
This is a gift that keeps on giving to the U.S. military industrial complex.
The Pentagon announced Friday it was providing Ukraine with a new weapons package worth $1.7 billion, munitions for air defense systems, ammunition for HIMARS, artillery shells, and other types of equipment.
It's, as you just said, Dr. Paul, the same old money laundering system.
And you get the feeling that they're getting toward the end of their rope.
They know the war is lost, but they've got to just get that little bit more money, a little bit more payola before it's done.
And just think, especially when the war ends and the weapons are left and the assets are left.
It certainly was the case when the Cold War ended.
Who grabs all these assets?
And who grabs the assets after we've spent 20 years in our country building many structures and investing?
Somebody gets it.
And all of a sudden, war-torn countries, you know, if let's say the war would happen to stop for some magical reason in Ukraine, and they were starting to sort things out, there would be some very rich people.
And, you know, even in Russia, after living with all that communism under the Soviets, there were a lot of very wealthy Russians that gathered some funds during that time.
But this is especially important now because the money they want still are dollars.
And dollars go a long way, and that's how we buy our security in our empire.
But that's where the danger is.
That's where I see the danger, that the cracks are there, and the end stages can come rather rapidly.
You know, you can have a small leak in an automobile tower, but if you have a blowout, you know it.
And we might be working our way to a blowout on our financial system.
I remember not long after the Yugoslav war, Madeline Albright, remember, who was a big cheerleader for that war, as soon as the smoke cleared, she went in there with her consulting company and started cleaning up and making a bunch of money.
So that was kind of a wake-up call for me.
So this is kind of related because it's about money.
And I'm going to ask in the back if you skip that purple chart and go to the American Conservative.
I got them in the wrong order.
One loaded too quick.
Thanks very much.
So our good friend Norm Singleton sent us over this morning.
The American Conservatives writes about it, and it's elsewhere in the financial media.
U.S. debt hits $35 trillion.
I'm sure Thomas Massey remember has the little debt counter.
It's probably going through the roof now.
He's probably getting electric shock or something.
$35 billion.
$3 trillion.
Did they identify this as a technical correction?
A mistake?
Mistaken?
$35 trillion?
$35 trillion.
You know, it used to say $35 million, $35 billion.
Now it's $35 trillion.
What's next?
Quadrillion.
And that's actually the trillion.
I think the runaway will never get to the next stage.
Eventually people are going to say, your empire is done.
You've overextended yourself.
You've done what traditional empires always do, and that is extend their empire.
And they go searching for more oil and more weapons and more places to coup government.
And it goes on and on.
And we're reaching that limit.
But $35 trillion, that's a fair amount of money.
But it also brings up the subject, how do we get that way?
How do we get these deficits?
Why do they work?
Don't we have conservatives elected?
We do.
We have conservatives and we have a couple people, but not very many vote what they campaign on, you know, like Thomas Massey and a few others.
They vote actually by doing that.
But they talk that way.
But this was all appropriated by Congress.
They were all reflecting on their special interests and their constituents.
And they were reflecting the pressure of a society that has become dependent on it.
And some know better, but some, I had one constituent tell me, Ron, I agree with everything you say.
And it is we're leading into trouble.
We spent too much money.
But you won't get in there and fight for our share before it all comes down.
He believed it was going to happen.
But the goal of the congressman should be to get as much as you can before it comes down.
So this to me is a very, very big deal.
And without the Fed, without monetizing debt, you can't run up all this stuff.
I'll bet you, you know, what's the amount now?
Billions and billions of dollars gone to Ukraine.
In a way, that's all been monetized.
And That's why the value goes down.
And that's why, what's the number one?
I believe this personally, just from looking at things the way I have politically, I think the number one thing is people vote from their bellies.
And right now, their bellies for more and more people are getting empty.
There's insecurity.
I think the job market is a lot worse off than they will admit.
And this is all caused by groups of people being persuaded that you need members of Congress that can become a committee chairman and really protect our interests.
But if you didn't have a Fed, there'd be just a total diminishing of this special interest.
And they are doing this.
And yet the Fed was the basic principle that they argued at the Constitutional Convention, should we have a national bank that would work into this?
And it took a lot of years to come to this point.
And now we're the king of the world, so to speak.
It appears that way, but I think the foundation of that coup and that empire we have, foundation, very fragile.
And I think that's like, that's why back when you were doing audit the Fed legislation, you were able to attract several progressives onto that cause because they realized the Fed promotes war and the Fed rewards the rich, you know, by their assets.
They got it.
A lot of the honest ones got it.
But I wanted to put this up in chart form, if you could put that purple chart up, because it really is astonishing if you look at it.
It actually looks like an empire teetering on the edge of collapse.
Look at this, Dr. Paul.
The U.S. national debt just hit $35 trillion.
It took the United States 200 years to accumulate the first trillion of federal debt.
Now we're adding that every 100 days.
Every 100 days, a new trillion dollars is added.
Doesn't that look like a wobbling empire?
Just that chart.
It's unbelievable that people aren't alerted to this, you know.
And I guess the first thought, why most of them respond by, oh, you know, you just want to cut my Social Security check.
But I believe there are ways if people really wanted to, that you could have a transition, but I also say it ain't going to happen.
Because you could.
And I said that you could probably vet enough people because we have worked with progressives and some of them will.
It's start by the expansion overseas and cut back.
And you don't have to say, well, you guys are going to cut food stamps, you know, food for little babies and that sort of thing.
And you could do that and don't start there.
But the whole thing is if you mention any cuts, they say getting rid of food for babies and getting rid of Social Security.
And then everybody gets panicky.
And then they don't want to listen to what they do not see the collection.
The most important thing they could learn is that demands on the politicians to print money or for war, and then they print the money, and then that is the reason the value of the dollar goes down, and that is the reason the costs of food goes up.
But I bet you if you did a poll on that, I'll bet you most Americans, oh, because I've had people tell me, you know, I've never thought of it that way.
I've been trying to get more people to think of it.
The mainstream media doesn't want to tell them that.
Well, I just wanted to do one more tweet about you, just to get a sense of what the debt means.
And this is from Wall Street Silver on Twitter X, if we can put that one up.
It's a second to last one.
Just so you can visualize what this really means.
So Wall Street Silver says, by mid to late 2026, we will have $40 trillion in national debt for the U.S. government.
At 5% rates, that will be about $2 trillion per year in interest payments.
The U.S. government collects about $5 trillion per year in revenue from all sources.
So about 40% of government revenue will go to interest.
How can you survive with those ratios, Dr. Paul?
Well, and the whole thing is very, very conservative and optimistic calculating this at 5%.
We're already there.
And on a lot of things, it's a lot more.
You know, if you go buy a car or a house, it's going to be over 5%.
And that is, that's going to go up.
Let's say that doubles.
I remember very clearly the year or so where interest rates went up to 21% in the 1970s.
And even CDs were like 13 and 14%.
So 5% is so conservative.
They ought to redo that and calculate it at 10%.
And when the end comes, the interest rates are even higher because that's the end stage.
But all of a sudden, nobody wants to borrow the money.
Nobody wants it, yeah.
Weird Republicans and the Liberty Platform00:03:04
Well, with that in mind, I'm going to close by reminding you all that we have a solution, and that solution is the Liberty platform.
Put on that last clip, if you will.
That will be August 31st in Dulles, Virginia, right near the Dulles Airport.
Beautiful hotel, the Hilton, very comfortable hotel.
If you can put on that last clip, just so you get a sense of what it's all about, we are that little flower.
Some people called it a weed.
Well, we'll be a weed.
We'll be a weed.
That's fine.
But that little yellow flower busting through the crack in this concrete, that concrete, I don't want to get too philosophical, but is the existing system right now.
This is what we're looking for, the Liberty platform across the board.
I already have links in the description to get your tickets to join us on August 31st, 2024.
We look forward to seeing you.
Dr. Paul, over to you.
Very good.
I want to mention something that's going on now.
Probably yesterday or the day before, but it's really rolling right now because all those who represents the far left and the Democratic Party have the strategy of saying, well, what we have to do is accuse Trump and his people of doing odd things as if they haven't tried everything in the world to paint him in terms.
Just think of what they did in the 2020 election and the thing that they did with the Russian hoax and that sort of thing.
But today, the effort is, if you listen to all the liberal stations, they say the Republicans and conservatives, the people who object to Kamala, boy, those people are weird.
Everybody says, they're weird people.
And that's supposed to, and they were just trying to ponder, why do the people respond to that?
And they agree.
The Republicans are weird, but they don't call them fascists.
Evidently, and they couldn't figure that out.
Well, maybe fascist was overkill.
But what about weird?
And I think I met, I think it was very bipartisan because I think they're missing the point.
Because guess what?
I got labeled weird, especially with libertarian views.
And I can remember the first month or two, I'd be voting in a small group, and the other ones were, you know, honest progressive.
And they'd come over, and the Republicans, all right, I know you're new here, but you know what you're doing.
Yeah, this is this is really weird.
So I think what we might need is more people, weird, but we should deal in issues.
Yes, to the current population we have, it's been indoctrination by progressive education.
And yes, weird may be strange.
You might say, it's strange, strangely weird that you're talking about the Federal Reserve.
Well, guess what?
It's not as weird as it used to be.
And more people are thinking about it and coming to the source of the engine of all this activity of spending and inflation.