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Sept. 11, 2024 - Ron Paul Liberty Report
34:27
Trump Got Hammered...Right?

The pundits claim that Trump was slaughtered at the debate last night by a Kamala Harris who greatly defied expectations. Is it true? Also today...the 23rd anniversary of 9/11 - is it still important?

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Time Text
Back To Liberty 00:15:04
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.
Are you rested?
You stayed up late.
Past my bedtime.
Yeah.
I didn't play the drinking game, so I'm feeling okay there.
Okay, you're doing okay.
But we'll look around and see if we can find something to cheer about.
Have we turned the corner in our movement now?
This country is back to more liberty, not less.
And that's all they did was argue about who could make this country freer the quickest.
Yeah, that's right.
Unfortunately, you know, since both sides endorse the principle of interventionism, and it's always just a token argument about who's going to interview in which way and who has the most power, who's the best liar.
And that's the person that you have to watch out and find out what they're going to do.
But it's hardly called a debate.
I said that Trump had two opponents.
Yeah, that's true.
And I think Kamala, I have to admit, she surprised me.
I thought she was a much slicker liar than I realized.
But she could tell lies pretty well.
But I think when you decide to sect it out, even if she's stating a truth, it doesn't reveal that's what she really believes.
They've been trained in that.
Most politicians have been trained to do this and mislead people.
There's never the contest that I'm looking for, the contest between good and evil.
You either are freedom or you're a totalitarian.
You want force to give them to a few people, or you want to have all the power and structure and decision-making by the individual in a free society rejecting all acts of violence.
But no, that isn't it.
It was an old-fashioned debate, but it was annoying that it started pretty early in the campaign where their interviewers started supporting Trump.
It was obvious, but that meant that he had his hands full.
But most people were claiming Trump wasn't up to speed and this sort of thing.
But even on the first go out, from our viewpoint, mine in particular, he wasn't up to speed because he was back to his old clichés about how we're going to take on China and put 100% tariffs and cure our economic problems.
That kind of stuff, when it starts with that as a big deal, and politically speaking, it probably doesn't hurt him.
He probably does gain a lot of votes by that because it looks like you're defending America against those bad guys and they're not looking at it on the principle of trade, which has been an argument all the way back to Adam Smith and others.
They talked about this.
And in our recent history, liberals and conservatives both thought tariffs weren't a good idea.
So it was, I watched it, and I understand you watched it.
Oh, boy, you're getting brave.
So you're well informed this morning.
So what was your opinion of those debates?
Yeah, I did watch it, and I don't usually do that, but our friend Jim Jatris, who was here, he came over, we had dinner together, and we watched it together.
So that was kind of made it a little easier to have someone to bounce off, you know.
But I mean, I think he and I both, I don't want to speak for him, but I think we kind of both agreed that Trump was a disappointment.
We were looking for more from him.
Instead of it was the usual bluster without any specifics, he seemed always on his back heels.
Someone, a mutual friend of ours who was once an insider, said, you know, Trump just refuses to prep for a debate.
He refuses to get the specifics.
He just wants to go with his gut.
And that works very well at rallies, I think.
That is his strength.
He talks directly to people.
But in this situation, at least to me, and I, again, don't want to speak for Jim, but it seemed like all the odds were stacked against him, yet he jumped in there anyway.
He jumped into this lion's den anyway.
And, you know, one of the things that I tweeted last night afterwards is if, on the one hand, he wants to convince us that he is the best deal maker ever, he will solve the crisis in Ukraine in 24 hours.
He will cut the best deal.
But then he cut the worst deal for his own debate.
You know, he put himself in a situation where, as you say, he was getting hammered from all sides.
And we'll go into some of the details.
But I think he was really at a disadvantageous situation.
Yeah, and after a while, a person like Trump loses credibility.
You know, I've never thought much about people saying, well, they peaked too early.
And I keep thinking maybe Trump was at a peak a month ago.
But anyway, I do think that he has lost some credibility.
But I think he doesn't have something that he can fall back on.
Because if you have a basic principle, which is a very positive principle, and the founders did have a basic principle that they were, you know, it wasn't 100% agreement, but they had a basic principle, and that was to get rid of the authoritarians that had monopolized control of the colony.
And that's what they were sick and tired of.
And yet Trump, he will come up with things that will fit into our basic principle of more libertarian philosophy.
But he doesn't have that to say that.
That's why, but they need, neither one have, but it gives them flexibility, and it lends itself to the development and expansion of pure democracy.
You have to take 25 different groups and appeal to each one.
Well, how can you do that with one principle?
Well, you can.
You can.
If liberty's worth defending, it should defend everybody.
And you shouldn't have to flip-flop and say, okay, we're going to give you liberty, but we have to take it there.
Oh, you want some money?
Well, we have to steal it from somebody.
This whole thing.
They don't approach it that way.
And yet the people, the people fall into trap because they've been conditioned for a long time, especially in this past century plus.
The people have been taught that care is supposed to, their safety and their ability to survive is provided by the government.
And you say, well, that's the poor people.
They always need help.
But don't you think the rich people occasionally depend on the government for their larges too?
And that's maybe much bigger bucks than any other place.
Yeah, well, we heard at the time that some of your campaign people were frustrated that you refused to prep for your debates.
But the reality is, like you just explained, you have a set of principles.
You don't need to prep on each little individual issue because you have the guidelines.
And so whatever comes out, they fit in the guidelines, you know.
And so it actually probably put words in your mouth, probably made it a little bit easier for you to do the debate.
Now, what was my position on this again?
Yeah, but it also, I think we who believe this way have more credibility than those who believe a mishmash of picking and choosing and trying to satisfy every special interest.
But I don't know if they said much about running up the debt and the danger of the debt.
And, you know, you could run a whole debate just on that.
Like I recently wrote about the big thing is the Federal Reserve, and that involves debt and spending and manipulation and welfarism and wealth and wars, everything else.
There are some basic principles that exist that I don't think they're even thinking in those terms.
So that's why our efforts, as well as the efforts of many other libertarian groups, is trying to promote the ideas and the principles.
And we do have a lot of young people.
That's why I'm delighted when young people join us in our endeavors.
Yeah.
I mean, I think as far as Kamala Harris goes, I think a couple things happened.
I think, first of all, there was kind of a psyop being played because remember, she wouldn't do any interviews.
She wouldn't do any talks.
She wouldn't do any speeches.
And everyone was saying that's because she's afraid.
That's because she is so terrible.
All she can do is repeat clichés.
She's an awful candidate.
And I think that was actually intentional.
I think it's not that she didn't do those out of fear of being exposed as a cipher.
I think she wanted to lower expectations.
So when she came out, and this is one thing, Jim probably won't be mad at me for saying this, but he said she won the debate because she was the best liar, like you said earlier.
I mean, her lies were seamless, but she spoke very clearly.
She used it very well against Trump, and Trump always felt on the defensive.
So I think this whole thing was a psyop to lower expectations, which is what campaigns do.
They play dirty tricks.
And I almost think this was a dirty trick.
My term, when I was watching it, she's slick.
Yeah, she's slick.
A slick liar.
Slick woman.
But, you know, and many times people sort of expect that.
People who are on the receiving end need this because they need to know how to manipulate and manipulate elections.
That's why it invites this type of election because as the wealth of a country and an empire dwindles, there's less to steal or less to direct in the direction you want to get more.
So they become more aggressive, and that's what's happening.
But we talked about the value of the dollar and the savings accounts of people and what's happening.
But the big principle is, for me, is the loss of personal liberty and responsibilities.
And the person makes the decision.
And it's not up to the government.
Somebody said, well, you have to have the policemen protecting your homes.
I said, how many policemen would it take to defend everybody's home?
No, what you want is a free society, and it's not the governments to make us safe.
Because then, oh, you have to safe and take care of them.
Well, you're involved with medical care, education, everything else that there is.
And of course, they have to, all they can do is redistribute wealth, steal it from the people who may have worked for their wealth and are honest about it, to take it and give it to the people who are going to produce votes.
And I think that introduces the whole principle of this radical democracy and dictatorship of the majority, putting together that majority, and it's all magic without a principle other than political power.
Well, I think one of the most vile and prurient of all the mainstream media outlets, ironically these days, is the Drudge Report.
And I think he captured in his headline when I got up this morning, I knew that I was going to be nauseous when I read it because he's so awful, but I felt like I had to take one for the team.
So I looked at it and put it up.
Now, this is his reaction.
I think it captures a lot of the mainstream reaction.
Rattle Dawn demands ABC shut down.
And it shows Trump surrounded by cats and ducks.
And it says the end, Judge Report.
So that captures sort of the initial, I think, reaction.
But now we both noticed an article on Zero Hedge that they reprinted from French Finance that said, hang on a minute.
Don't trust your first reaction.
Take a deep breath and put that next one up because it's not going to last.
This initial impression is not going to last.
And their headline is the debate will backfire horribly for both Kamala Harris and ABC.
And they said the initial reaction to last night's debate is that Kamala Harris held her own, albeit with the help of two ABC moderators, true, and that Trump was rattled and on the defense more than he needed to be.
Generally, the debate is being cast as anything but an overwhelming victory for Trump that many predicted.
And here's what he says.
But my guess is that both the dejection from the right and the perceived victory from the left will fade almost immediately as people have a chance to take in everything that took place.
And he goes on to debunk some of the things that were said about it.
And if you skip one and go to the next one, sorry, I'll just do this real quick.
Skip the next one, go to the one after it.
So he said, after last night, when the average critically thinking independent or moderate voter begins to emerge from the visceral reaction of who won the debate, the picture will start to come into focus.
And it'll be a picture of a news network that constantly tried to fact-check Donald Trump, despite Kamala Harris repeating multiple debunked conspiracy theories, like Trump's Charlottesville comments, which were already debunked by Snopes, and his bloodbath comment, which was used in the context of talking about the auto industry.
So essentially what he's saying here, Dr. Paul, is take a deep breath because this victory is only going to last a short time.
Yeah, I think that is very true.
It's sort of like, you know, when Kamala became the candidate, when their coup was successful, she became the candidate.
But all of a sudden, there probably was more interest, and the numbers changed some, but they really blew them out of proportion.
She's caught up to Trump already.
She's ahead of Trump over here.
And now they're admitting that it's fading.
This whole idea that they could take these numbers, which is the numbers are minuscule.
So I even questioned the principal.
I know the voters are fickle, but I just, it's sort of an emotional reaction.
And it is true.
The only one that's going to really count.
And that is in question is the final vote in the election.
Right now, more and more Americans aren't believing that either.
Yeah, rightly so.
A lot of corruption.
Well, I found a good clip on Twitter X, a video clip, that just does a side-by-side of every time Kamala said something untrue and then the attempted debunking of Trump.
So if you can cue up that first video, let's get our earpieces ready and have a look.
It's a little longer than I like to usually do, but I think it's worth it because I think it gives us the context.
If we can full screen this one and have a look at this, this is pretty good.
Abortion Debunked: Side-by-Side 00:06:11
What you're going to hear tonight is a detailed and dangerous plan called Project 2025 that the former president intends on implementing if he were elected to GAN.
There is no state in this country where it is legal to kill a baby after it's born.
Donald Trump left us the worst unemployment since the Great Depression.
Donald Trump left us the worst public health epidemic in a century.
Donald Trump left us the worst attack on our democracy since the Civil War.
I just want to clarify here.
You bring up Springfield, Ohio, and ABC News did reach out to the city manager there.
He told us there had been no credible reports of specific claims of pets being harmed, injured, or abused by individuals.
If Donald Trump were to be re-elected, he will sign a national abortion ban.
Understand, in his project 2025, there would be a national abortion, a monitor that would be monitoring your pregnancies, your miscarriages.
Migrant crime, and it's happening at levels that nobody thought possible.
President Trump, as you know, the FBI says overall violent crime is actually coming down in this country.
Excuse me, the FBI Detroit.
Honestly, I think it's a tragedy that we have someone who wants to be president who has consistently, over the course of his career, attempted to use race to divide the American people.
And we should just point out here as clarification, and you know this, you and your allies, 60 cases in front of many judges, many of them.
No judge looked at it and said, they said we didn't have standing.
That's the other thing.
There was a mob of people carrying tiki torches, spewing anti-Semitic hate.
And what did the president then at the time say?
There were fine people on each side.
Would you call that over the top?
And lying.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So who was he debating?
Was it, I mean, you said before the show, he should have said, hang on a minute.
I'm debating Kamala Harris, not you guys.
Oh, yeah.
I think that the people, if they get to see this, who say it will add on to the skepticism of listening to this stuff.
I think most people do listen to it.
We're listening to it because we want to know what's being said so we can comment on it and understand it.
But I think a lot of Americans are doing exactly the same thing.
What's really happening?
And I think they've become more and more skeptical of what they're hearing.
But still, a lot is at stake.
From their viewpoint, a lot of state is who is going to be controlling the money and who controls the power and who controls the wars and who controls the military-industrial complex.
It goes on and on.
And that's their real issue.
And it's always put, the payment is always basically put more on the middle class and the poor than any other one, even though they have been brainwashed into thinking, you guys can't, you can't survive.
If you had a free society, they'd make you go out and work before you could eat.
You know, this sort of thing.
And they would demagogue it to issue.
So that's to me.
But when the moderator was, you know, going after Trump, I don't know.
Was there a rule against saying anything?
Why couldn't he do a 10-second comment on that?
Well, there you go, sticking it out for Kamala again.
Is this a plan of yours?
I'd really go after him.
Well, the worst part about these quote-unquote fact checks is that they were untrue.
They were lies.
And here's a couple of examples.
Go to the next clip then, the regular clip.
This is from Right Wingside, Libs of Tech Hop.
Nevertheless, if you go to that next one.
So the whole thing about eating the ducks and eating the cats.
There is a police report, a police call recording and testimony from residents about Haitians stealing and eating animals in Ohio.
ABC fact-checked Trump on this and let Kamala get away with the bloodbath hoax, find people hoax and lying about police dying on January 6th.
So here it is.
Now, if you go to the next one, here is a police report from that city, and it's in small print here, but about these ducks, these geese being stolen and eaten.
Go to the next page.
There's a detail of it.
This is from that report.
So you can see that.
And in the next one, when they fact-checked Trump on abortion, go to this next one.
This is important because he says, no states have legal late-term abortion.
He said this is from ABC News itself in June.
And you can see those states in blue that have no restrictions at all based on abortion.
So it's bad enough that they felt the need to insert themselves into a debate that they had no business being involved in.
But what they inserted was wrong.
But, you know, Trump said it clearly about the position he held because he was forgetting rid of Roe versus Wade because he wanted to put it back to the states.
I think he was speaking correctly because it's a terribly tough subject to deal with.
But to solve these problems, the founders, there are many problems, but in principle, it's a whole idea of violence.
I mean, just think of how many different degrees of murder that can be committed or manslaughter committed.
It's each done in each state, and they work it out, and they have juries and all.
Why is this so unique that you can't even question it?
And I think it has a social element to it that people don't want to be questioned why they're having abortions.
That's all.
So it is having been exposed to some of the people who are involved in a very difficult position of having an unwanted pregnancy, it is not easy.
But I'll tell you what, it is not good to say that life is worthless.
Attitudes Change: Iraq and Beyond 00:10:04
And he is right.
And I told you the story about my top professor when I was a resident argued with me that you could have abortion up to the last minute.
And if you aren't sure, he was doing it always to check the health of the baby.
So he would, he says, I said, well, what if it's born?
Can you do it then?
He says, yeah, yeah, you can.
You'd have more information.
So I pressed him on this.
And he finally, in a very academic way, he says, well, under those circumstances, you have a point.
I think that we would have to watch the newborn for a year and make the decision whether a baby should live or not.
And this was from the top professor.
Sounds like a eugenicist or something, you know?
Terrible.
Well, we should probably move on because we're getting close on time because we wanted to do another topic, which is that today is the anniversary, again, the 23rd, I believe, of 9-11.
And everyone knows where they were, who was alive and old enough back then to be conscious.
And I'll be honest, it's an anniversary I don't think of very often.
But this morning, I got it.
Maybe I was a little cranky over the debate, but I started thinking about it a little bit as well.
And think about how that was the beginning of the end in many ways.
That enabled so many things that happened afterward.
The endless U.S. wars in the Middle East, the endless spending in the war on terror, all of the things that they had been wanting to do, that gave them the excuse, the reason to do it.
Everything we're still facing today in the Middle East, that gave them the excuse to do it.
You know, I remember it well, like everybody else does.
I remember the buildings were, it was in the middle of it, one building, but, and I was on the phone with Lou.
Oh, really?
We were talking about it.
And my comments to Lou was, our job has become much more difficult.
And you know what?
Now that I look back, it's not as bad as I thought it would be.
I thought everything would be, and everything is that way, but because they attacked us on our soil, that there would be no comments.
But there's a group of Americans now questioning everything, you know, whether it's 9-11 investigations or assassination investigations.
And I think that is very healthy.
But I think this is something that it was a big, big deal for this to happen.
And I think there's been a significant change in attitude about foreign intervention.
And when you think about who are these people that are coming to the, are we being invaded back then?
I thought, you know, is this an invasion of people coming in?
Is this the beginning of it?
And when you look at what's happened internally to our country, yeah, Trump was, you know, on January 6th, he was going to have a takeover of the federal government, which was based on a bunch of lies.
But the taking over our country, you know, the wokeism has taken over our country.
And I think that is an obvious fact that we no longer have a country with national sovereignty.
And in a way, it did start.
It became readily apparent to me way back.
But I think 9-11 was part of that.
And then when you look at how they use COVID to magnify all these problems, I think that it's very evident that there is no Department of Justice.
When you think about it, the people who tear up the stores become the hoodlums.
You can't enforce the law.
You're not allowed to enforce the law.
And you have to, anybody who tries to stop them from robbing and stealing, they may be arrested for interfering with the police hands-off attitude.
Yeah.
Well, you know, even after 9-11 just happened, we started getting a lot of DVDs sent to the office with all kinds of conspiracies.
And we all watched them because we thought they were interesting and funny, some of them very funny, you know.
But I think we all agreed, even you mentioned, I don't know what happened, but I know I don't believe the official version of what happened.
And I think as the years pass, it's getting more obvious that what we were told was absolutely not true.
And I just wanted to do a couple remembrances.
First of all, I remember it well because I was literally almost next door to the Pentagon when whatever it was hit the Pentagon and we saw it fly over our house.
Nevertheless, we felt the percussion, and I think I mentioned that on the show.
But just to remind people, just a few, a couple of years before 9-11, the Project for the New American Century, which is Wolfowitz, Bill Crystal, all of the Warhawk neocons, Rumsfeld and what have you, they put forth their vision for a new American dominance of the globe.
And just to remind people, or people that may not have heard it, they were worried about we won't be able to get this thing done, this American dominance.
And they said, further, this is in their report, Rebuilding America's Defenses, said, further, the process of transformation, even if it brings revolutionary change, is likely to be a long one.
Absent some catastrophic and catalyzing event like a new Pearl Harbor, which is what 9-11 exactly was.
That was.
You know, the term that I thought about when this was happening, and it actually is a more vivid image that I have now, and that is the barbarians are invading.
You know, they're coming in.
When you think about those mobs going into these stores, it still is so bewildering that they tear it up and drag people, kill people, and they do it with the government on their side.
They get more protection.
And now, you know, there is a return to a little bit of common sense, but still a long way.
I think there's a lot of barbarians still in charge.
And that might be exactly what the campaigns and the elections should be about, but it generally isn't.
Unfortunately, they do not have it narrowed down to good and the evil and whether or not people are interventionists or authoritarian.
And I think natural law says that we should be non-interventionists.
We should be working in that direction of personal liberty to solve our problem.
But right now, when you look at what's happening, you can get a little bit discouraged.
But I keep looking for the positives.
And we're still on the air, and others are.
And our numbers are growing.
But that's the only tool I think most of us have because we're not going to raise a military army.
Well, I think the one thing that is pretty obvious is that the event of 9-11 enabled the entire 20-some years of really a wild U.S. global empire.
And if you remember, this was shocking.
Something that happened, and obviously won't say the names because it was off the record, but on one of your Thursday lunches, we had a two-star general come in, and he described what it was like at the Pentagon, because all the neocons were there.
Doug Fife, they were all in this office, Project for New Plans, what have you.
And he says, I recall being in an elevator with, I think it was Fife.
And he said, how are the plans going, sir?
Very good.
We are ready to invade Afghanistan very soon.
And I think it was Fife.
He said, Afghanistan, we're going into Iraq.
And the general told the members at your luncheon, I said, what are you talking about?
He said, no, the plan is Iraq.
And, you know, there's an oft-replayed clip from Wesley Clark where he describes what he heard at the Pentagon.
And I think maybe on this date, it's worth rehearing.
It's only about a half a minute long, but he recounts what the generals were saying to him right after 9-11.
If we can queue up that second clip, just to keep this in mind, if we have that one, I know it's tough back there with all the levers and everything, but let's listen to Wesley Clark.
10 days after 9-11.
About 10 days after 9-11, I went through the Pentagon and I saw Secretary Rumsfeld.
And one of the generals called me and he said, sir, you got to come in and talk to me a second.
I said, well, you're too busy.
He said, no, no, he says, we've made the decision.
We're going to war with Iraq.
I said, we're going to war with Iraq.
Why?
He said, I don't know.
He said, I guess they don't know what else to do.
I said, well, did they find some information connecting Saddam to al-Qaeda?
He said, no, no.
He says, there's nothing new that way.
They just made the decision to go to war with Iraq.
He said, I guess it's like we don't know what to do about terrorists, but we've got a good military and we can take down governments.
So I came back to see him a few weeks later, and by that time we were bombing in Afghanistan.
I said, are we still going to war with Iraq?
And he said, oh, it's worse than that.
He said, I just got this down from upstairs, meaning the Secretary of Defense office today.
And he said, this is a memo that describes how we're going to take out seven countries in five years, starting with Iraq and then Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, and finishing off Iran.
I said, is it classified?
He said, yes, sir.
I said, well, don't show it to him.
Isn't that sad?
They're laughing about it, but that's exactly what happened.
So maybe it's just a coincidence that it happened.
You know, one thing that we can look back is I don't think President Bush, who orchestrated all this or allowed it to happen, he is not a hero for the American people.
Even though they'd like to resurrect him.
But he was just sort of, you know, he was a target man to carry things out.
He wasn't the one making these decisions.
There was more people than that.
He's a figurehead.
But, you know, attitudes change.
Think about the Kennedy JFK's investigation and commissions.
There was a time probably 99% of the people said it's all over.
We know who did it.
Oswald did it, and that was it.
Kennedy Investigation Revisited 00:02:42
Now, what is it?
Like about 88% of the people don't believe that it was all Oswald all by himself.
So I think in 9-11, I'm surprised that people are really seriously asking for more investigation.
When I was running for president back a few years ago, I would have a lot of people come up and ask me, would you support a commission to find out the truth about 9-11?
I was surprised that they were asking me this question.
And I said, well, I'm always looking for the truth.
But the only thing that bothers me is if you ask the same people to investigate it, like they investigated Kennedy's assassination and all, are you going to find out the truth?
I think a lot of that has to be, the best investigation will be done privately, and it'll be for history.
But no, anytime we could do it and work in that direction, because right now, you know, there's an effort to try to find out about January 6th, you know, and find out the truth there.
And we should support that with the recognition that be careful.
Yeah, yeah, absolutely.
Well, I'm going to close out by thanking our viewers.
Thanks for your indulgence.
For our going a little long on a kind of a busy news day.
I would ask just one little favor that won't cost you a penny, which is to hit that thumbs up button or the like button, depending on where you're viewing this from.
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Dr. Paulo.
Very good.
And I too want to thank our viewers for tuning in.
It's so important for we have your support and spreading the message, of course, is our goal.
And we have days when we're optimistic and then we have days that we question it.
And certainly what's going on in the elections this year is very questionable, but they're secondary to what the people think and what are prevailing attitudes.
And the real argument is, do people want to live in a free society with minimal, minimal government?
Or do they want to keep saying all we have to do is change the managers, change the bureaucrats, and change the management of this country and they can run our lives and they can run the economy and they can police the world.
And there's a lot who's winning right now.
And there's no reason why we should not be able to present the cause that is in the opposite direction.
Present liberty and peace and prosperity.
Those should be our goals.
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