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Oct. 29, 2024 - Ron Paul Liberty Report
30:17
Elon: 'Let's Cut Two TRILLION From The Budget!'

At a recent Trump campaign rally, entrepreneur Elon Musk announced that the US budget should be cut by at least two trillion dollars over last year's budget. Ron Paul had some suggestions on where to start. Also today, WaPo owner Jeff Bezos reveals why the paper decided not to endorse anyone for president.

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Time Text
Hey Elon, $2 Trillion? 00:08:35
Hello, everybody, and thank you for tuning in to the Liberty Report.
With us today, Daniel McAdams, our co-host.
Daniel, good to see you this morning.
Good morning, Dr. Paul.
How are you this morning?
Good.
Are you ready and raring to go?
Kind of, yeah.
We've gained some support.
You know, we've been fighting this battle of the budget for a long time.
I remember back when it was a billion dollars in one year they were going to spend.
But now, now you can mention a couple trillion.
Nobody even blinks an eye.
Well, that's, you know, that doesn't blow anybody's mind.
But a few very important people started talking about this.
And I don't know, I don't think they'd watch our program.
I'd like a few people to watch and talk about it.
And every day we once walked some hints.
But there was this fella called Elon, Musk.
He thought that maybe we could cut somebody.
And he knows about a lot of money.
So maybe a trillion here, a trillion there isn't that much.
But is it true that he was giving a speech in public?
He said something about cutting?
$2 trillion?
Well, let's take a look at it.
Was he drinking?
I don't know.
I don't know.
I don't know what he was up to, but why don't we listen now?
He was at a Trump rally, and you might want to grab your earpiece and listen because he was at a Trump rally recently and he was talking about cutting the budget, something you don't hear very often.
Let's listen in.
How much do you think we can rip out of this wasted $6.5 trillion Harris-Biden budget?
Well, I think we can do at least $2 trillion.
Yeah!
Yes.
$2 trillion.
I mean, at the end of the day, you're being taxed.
You're being taxed.
All government spending is taxation.
So whether it's direct taxation or all government spending, it either becomes inflation or it's direct taxation.
Your money is being wasted, and the Department of Government Deficiency is going to fix that.
Okay, we can take that off.
I like that.
He basically said, you know, taxation is theft.
You know, I've mentioned that quite a few times.
And I think that's so important that when you spend, it's a tax.
Because one way or another, they're either going to have an income tax or some other type of tax, or they're going to print money.
And then it's a tax.
It's an inflation tax.
And the one other thing that you can depend on is it's not the rich that will end up paying those $2 trillion.
It's going to be the middle class.
But what impresses me is he said that in public.
You know, and he didn't get hauled off the stage.
I guess there were a few people who would like to do that.
But I think he's on Trump's side.
And if we do a little bit of that, maybe he'll be on the people side, too.
I hope Trump is on his side.
But, you know, the big problem, though, is your $2 trillion are the people going to go along with it.
They are always ready to cut somebody else's spending.
But you can't, you know, it's a fallacy.
Even though Republicans frequently will say, no, we don't have to cut spending, and they de-emphasize that.
All we have to do is lower the tax rate, which is good.
It does help, but you can't create wealth by just spending money and not worrying about where you're going to get the money.
Yeah, and also, you know, the trick that they do on the Hill is they reduce the level of increase and call it a cut.
Right.
Yeah, inflation as a tax.
That's great.
Well, you were impressed by what he said yesterday, and you went on to Twitter.
Let's show this tweet that you put out when you listened to Elon talk about cutting money.
You said cutting, Elon cutting $2 trillion from the budget.
Great idea.
Start with some of the biggest welfare recipients.
Military industrial complex, pharmaceutical industrial complex.
Oh, and end the Fed.
And to our surprise, Elon answered, do the next one.
And I liked his response.
He said, needs to be done.
You can see it right there under the photo.
That was a response to your suggestion.
But I have a question.
Did anybody read this?
Did anybody pay any attention?
Only about a million people saw it.
Oh, thank goodness for Trump and Muscat.
Yeah.
So the interest is out there.
Yeah.
Well, you invited him on the show to talk about it.
That would be kind of fun.
What I'm amazed about is I admit that I'm not a computer person.
I don't look at all this stuff.
But I'm amazed at how great of an asset this is.
And, you know, because we look at all the fallacies, and there are plenty.
And, you know, it's a tool where people who want to control all kinds of speech.
This is an opportunity.
Oh, he said something bad.
We have to control these people because they're telling the truth.
If we don't want to hear the truth, you know, all that nonsense going on.
So I think that it was sort of a lesson.
You know, I make these comments, but seriously, it's just you, and you don't have an audience like that.
But anyway, I was amazed.
I was amazed.
But I think it's understandable because the people are serious about that.
This is one of the reasons why I think campaigning effort and the nonsense we've heard for months, if not years, on what's going on right now is the old saying, it's the economy is stupid.
And I think it really is.
And my argument also, it doesn't come from our hearts or our minds.
People vote from their bellies when they're afraid where they're going to get the next meal.
And even though they don't want to admit it, there's a few people in this country now having real problems.
Yeah, absolutely.
Well, you know, what was also interesting is the response when you said, hey, well, why don't you come on our show and discuss it?
So many people were, yes, it's happening.
This is great.
You know, so it would be a lot of fun to talk to him.
But, you know, a lot of people will see this and say, oh, Ron Paul, Elon Musk is so bad.
He's a government contractor.
He's this, he's that, the other.
Well, there may be some things that we don't like about him that you don't like about him.
But I hate this idea that because someone does other things that you don't agree with, when he does something you do agree with, you don't listen to it.
Well, if Elon wants to cut and he has obviously has Trump's ear and he wants to cut and he does other things we don't like, who cares?
Encourage him on the good things.
And my guess is that he knows what my position is, and it's a little bit different than what he has to say and what he says.
Because so for him not to be intimidated and say, hey, hey, look, I'm getting Trump elected.
I better be careful here at introducing Ron Paul.
He's too radical and this sort of thing.
But, you know, the one thing that I found out when I was campaigning nationally was the message that we have is not too radical for young people.
Yeah.
And I think that's what attracts people to Trump.
And that's the one thing that really came out in the Rogan interview.
And Rogan was great at explaining, because he's not really been a Trump supporter at all, but he was great in explaining the appeal of Trump.
Said, well, you know, Mr. President, you don't talk like politicians, and that's why they lied to you.
And I was in that car with my son when we were listening to it.
I said, well, that's the same with Ron Paul.
That's why they like him because he talks like a normal person, you know, and that's the appeal.
That's sort of sad that that's a news item.
Oh, he looks like he might be human.
Yeah.
Well, Kamala Harris.
But I was wondering, actually, we're talking about $2 trillion.
If Elon called you up and said, well, we're going to try to get rid of $2 trillion.
Where should we start?
What would you say?
Well, I'd start with understanding it and being realistic because they're not going to cut the current system.
It won't.
I voted all against it.
I did what I could do for 30 years talking about it and trying to warn people.
But the Congress that we worked with when we were up there, I have no confidence in that.
Why Trust Is Eroded 00:14:24
We don't have enough Thomas Massey there and we need a lot more.
So then why do this?
Why do this?
I say, where are you going to start?
That's your question.
Where do you start?
Well, you start by being consistent and trying to get people to understand it.
But to me, it's a philosophy that you have to exist because I think we're suffering from the ideas that have been passed out for over 100 years.
And that's the progressivism and the corporatism, the welfarism.
And it makes it very enticing to the defects in democracy.
Just put a bunch of gangs together, get 51%, and take it to reverse that.
So no matter what you put up here, even though some of the very conservative people who vote right most of the time, they just can't go along with it.
So I'm back to this whole issue: information and education, and that's why this is not a we talk about politics, but we talk about economics mostly.
And this is why we praise, or I personally praise institutions like the Mises Institute because I think they do so much good for getting people to understand.
People, you know, they come along and they want to get help for the inflation.
I can't afford my goods, you know, I can't afford to buy my food.
Well, so let me explain this to you.
No, I don't want to listen to your explanation.
I want some money.
Some money, yeah.
So it is to me is education.
So instead of looking at this tragedy in our face right now, I would say that we should use it for an educational moment for people to understand that, you know, prices don't go up out of the clear blue.
They go up because the value of a reserve currency, especially, is going down because people have lived beyond their means.
And that's the tough part.
So until people understand that, are willing to accept it, and we're the gang, the gang of lobbyists that come in there that run the democratic process, unless it bothers them a little bit, then they have coups.
I wonder if it would be easier to just do, okay, 2% across the board, every line item in the budget, cut 2% off or something like that.
Yeah, I think so.
Rand works on that a lot, too.
And a while back, I think he had one penny.
Yeah.
Cut 1%.
Yeah.
And nobody would do it.
But he's going up now and he's showing, you know, if you did 1% 10 years ago, you'd have a balanced budget without doing it.
But see, the whole thing is, is the lying about inflation.
They say, well, you mean you're just going to lower it?
Or even if you freeze it, that's going down because the dollar's going down.
Well, you're right.
That's why you better deal with the dollar.
It happens to be one of the reasons why the motivation I had back in the 70s once the thing lighting up for me to understand was you better deal with the money because they lie and cheat and steal.
They're stealing from the people.
And they do it with deception.
And you end up with a bankrupt country and we're bankrupt.
Yeah, yeah.
Well, at least start with a little bit of a good news story.
And maybe he'll come on and talk to us.
Yeah.
That'd be fun.
We'll see.
So let's move on to the second thing.
And this is, you know how I am, Dr. Paul.
I love media stories.
I'm fascinated by the media and disgusted by the media.
But you know, there was the big hullabaloo because for the first time in, I don't know, 40 years, the Washington Post failed to endorse a candidate.
And now all these people quit.
There was Victoria Newland's husband, editor-at-large, he quit.
A lot of people quit.
A lot of people canceled their subscriptions.
I think so far it's been about a quarter of a million people canceled their subscriptions over the fact that the Washington Post didn't endorse a candidate, by which they mean didn't endorse Kamala Harris.
And so Jeff Bezos, who was a very wealthy man who owns the Post, who started Amazon, who owns lots of other things, he's in space as well.
He finally came out and put out a letter.
Let's put up this next one.
He finally explained why he decided against endorsing anyone in this race.
And we saw it from Hedge.
You listened to it on the radio on the way in.
After colossal exodus of subscribers, Washington Post Bezos explains the hard truth about not endorsing Kamala Harris.
And it was a fascinating op-ed on so many levels, Dr. Paul, because I think it was a rare bit of introspection from people involved in the media.
He started out by saying the credibility gap can be bridged by independence.
The hard truth is Americans don't trust the news media.
In an annual public survey about news, trust, and reputation, journalists in the media have regularly fallen near or at the very bottom, often just above Congress.
But in this year's Gallup poll, we managed to fall below Congress.
Our profession is now the least trusted of all.
Something we're doing is clearly not working.
And one other thing, Bruce Paul, before I toss it back, is he does a good analogy.
He said, let me give you an analogy.
Voting machines must meet two requirements.
They must count the vote accurately, and people must believe they count the vote accurately.
The second requirement is distinct from and just as important as the first.
So that means we can't rely on polling.
Polling may be biased and rigged and all these things.
But people's sentiment.
I think that's what he's talking about.
The people's sentiment is still very, very important.
And that's what you have to really deal with because you can't ever get the majority in Congress and get 51% and start voting.
But the sentiment of the people, and I always refer to, I think, sort of a reversal on COVID.
All of a sudden, people are starting to realize that we're being bamboozled.
But Don on Bezos said that this whole thing has to do with images and elections and all these things.
So I think that the truth does win out in the end.
And you see these bursts.
And if you get at least a decent statement of trying to explain it, you know, and admitting what happened.
But it's the times we live in because there's always been lying and cheating and there's always been infractions.
But things have to be, you know, when it comes to living in a society, in a political system where truth is honored, now it is, you know, it just, I listened to many stations for a few minutes.
They're like, turn up because they're just reciting baloney, you know.
And that's what it has to be contended with.
And that's the reason why, you know, I think the movement and the benefits are coming outside the educational system.
That's why, yes, we try to improve that.
And there's a lot of good people in education.
But the whole thing is, is to really understand what's going on, people have to look for trying to find out how to understand this because you're not going to get it from the system, the government educational system from cradle to grave, really.
I mean, they pump in the propaganda, and it's pretty hard for people to reverse the track that the government put us on.
Yeah, and it's amazing what Bezos says.
I mean, he's basically speaking to his employees who are having conniption fits over the fact that they didn't endorse Kamla.
And he's saying, listen, guys, let me give you a wake-up call.
Nobody believes you anymore.
Everyone thinks what you're doing is garbage.
Everyone hates you.
You need to stop thinking that you're somehow these exalted journalists of the hollowed area of the 60s and 70s when they took down Nixon, what have you.
No, everyone hates you.
You do a terrible job, but we need to realize that, you know?
And I think it was a great tough love.
And in fact, put this next one on.
This is from the letter.
There's another little clip from the letter.
And he was talking about broadcast media.
And he says, likewise with newspapers, we must be accurate and we must be believed to be accurate.
It's a bitter pill to swallow, but we are failing on the second requirement.
Most, and I highlight this, most people believe the media is biased.
Anyone who doesn't see this is paying scant attention to reality.
And those who fight really lose.
It's a very important point that they have no credibility.
And let's revisit something that we actually talked about, I think, last week, which is the very Gallup poll that he's talking about.
If you put this next one up, and we've had this up before, but you see that dotted line?
That is people who have zero trust at all in the mainstream media.
And it is now at 36%.
So the plurality of Americans have no trust at all.
And the far majority, over 70%, either have zero trust or not very much trust in the media.
Only 31% of Americans trust the media, the mainstream mass media.
And that is a massive, massive shift.
You know, my answer earlier is that it is a long-term project.
It's education.
It's understanding.
And people have to accept a change in attitudes and economic policy.
But there's something very simple that I would suggest if I could get people to do it by trying to persuade them to do it.
Anybody in politics or in the media and they're looking to reverse the trend that Bezos was just talking about, to get more respect and do the right thing.
I think all the issues that the members of Congress, the politicians, the people who are running for office, or to one's own self, they should always ask, so, well, okay, it's 2014, and we hear stirrings that we may be going into Ukraine.
So under those circumstances or the circumstances of a budget or whatever is going on, I want people to try to ask two questions.
Where do you get the authority or where do you want me to get this authority to do this?
There's always authority.
Sometimes it's evil authority, sometimes it's neglect, but there's always authority coming from it.
Of course, there are a few people left that think, well, except for the Constitution, they just rewrite the Constitution or reinterpret it.
I think they should always ask, where's the authority?
And they ought to say, this is going to cost $2 trillion.
Where are you going to get the money?
Oh.
And they'll give an answer.
Well, the government will take care of it.
We have the Federal Reserve and all this.
In other words, they don't have the money.
The country is broke and they have to steal the money.
Because when you tax, taxation is theft under most circumstances.
And also, one of the most sinister tax is the inflation tax.
And so if that question was asked every time, and if they even tried to answer it, but if they give you an answer and say, I get it from the Fed, you say, well, there's our problem.
Yeah.
Well, the media does lie all the time and people are seeing it, you know, and I think.
That's good.
Yeah.
Let's go to the next one, though.
This is still from his letter.
I just want to make one final point, though, Dr. Paul, in what Jeff Bezos wrote to the people to explain why he didn't endorse Kamala Harris.
I'll go to the next one.
Actually, we'll skip this one.
So here's Jeff Bezos again in his letter.
He says, lack of credibility isn't unique to the Post.
Our brethren newspapers have the same issue.
It's a problem not only for the media, but for the nation.
Now, this is the part that's interesting.
Many people are turning to off-the-cuff podcasts, inaccurate social media posts, and other unverified news sources, which can spread misinformation.
Now, this is the part where I think he is feeling resentful because in some ways he's humble.
He says, listen, guys, you've got to wake up.
No one trusts us.
And now he's saying, well, those darn people, they're going to podcast.
The fact of the matter is, people would rather watch Donald Trump on Joe Rogan or JD Vance on Theo Vaughan than watching either of them go on CNN.
Because when they go on CNN, all it's going to be is, you know, smacking in the face.
There's no conversation.
So there's a reason.
These are not off-the-cuff podcasts.
These are people who are beating the media at their own game.
And Bezos is resentful about that.
But the rest of us are tuning in because we want to hear genuine conversations rather than this gotcha, gotcha, gotcha.
And I think what you've just described is bipartisan.
Oh, yeah.
It isn't just CNN.
Oh, yeah.
The box is the same.
Yeah.
So it's interesting that they at least recognize the problem.
And we'll see what happens.
Yeah, I think inevitably something has to come about.
And this is not a cycle that is brand new.
The cycles like this have been known as long as history has been recorded.
They have the ups and downs, and there's abuse of monetary policy, abuse of too much government.
So this is not new.
But sometimes it's different.
But people then see this as an opportunity.
One group comes along and say, yeah, we just didn't have the right people in here.
We need to have a firm fist.
And then they go toward more totalitarianism.
And that, of course, is the wrong way.
And others would say, you know, I think when the colonists and the founders of this country didn't like what the British were doing, they had another answer.
North Korea's Escalation Risk 00:03:45
We want freedom.
And they were willing to struggle for it.
Yeah, absolutely.
Well, let's go really quickly on this last one.
Okay.
If we can go to that next clip, because let me see what I have in here.
NATO.
Yeah, this NATO.
If you can go to that next clip, this is the NATO chief.
And I cut the top off, but NATO chief says that North Korean troops are deployed to Russia's Kursk region.
NATO Secretary General Mark Ruta claimed on Monday that North Korean troops have been deployed to Russia's cursed Ogblast, where Ukrainian forces hold a small piece of territory and are being slowly pushed out by Russian troops.
Now, there's a lot to unpack here, but the claim is now, if you remember, we talked about this last week.
First Secretary of Defense Austin said, no, we don't see any.
And then someone must have sent him the memo because a couple of days later, oh, yes, we noticed there are some.
And now Mark Ruta, who's a super neocon, and hates Russia with a passion, now he's saying it too.
So the idea is the narrative is now that North Korea being part of this is a massive escalation, and it just shows that Russia is losing, you know, and that sort of thing.
Yeah, I think it's, in a way, a propaganda stunt.
Yeah, they're not going to all of a sudden see thousands of Koreans in Ukraine marching into Russia.
But it looks like Russia's not as strong as they claim, and they're going to get some help.
And the Ukrainians are in Russia, or they cross the border, and Russia hasn't thrown them all out so quickly.
But that just means that the success of this, and a few people that we listen to militarily say that the time is coming that when Russia wants to define that property line there, they probably will.
But they want it to be, oh my gosh, North Koreans are in Russia fighting.
Well, and I'm not going to show it, I'm not going to show it on here today, but this, I think it was today or yesterday, two Americans were killed fighting for the Ukrainian army.
And you see the pictures, they had a Ranger tattoo.
Well, we're not going to show them on here.
So there are Americans also fighting on Ukraine's side.
But that's okay.
But if Russia, and the thing is, actually, put on the Straits Times article, skip one and go to the Straits Times.
The fact of the matter is, I'm not defending it, I'm just recognizing reality.
Kremlin says its mutual defense agreement with North Korea is unambiguous.
So they signed a mutual defense treaty, North Korea and Russia.
And if you go to the next one, this is from that article.
President Putin signed the treaty with North Korea leader Kim Jong-un when he visited Pyongyang in June and included a mutual assistance clause under which each side agreed to help each other repel external aggression.
So the fact is, Dr. Paul, if those Ukrainians, like you mentioned earlier, are in Kursk, are in Russia proper, the agreement that they signed with North Korea would cover that, just like we have Article 5.
And in fact, I heard it's Article 4 in their treaty.
So not justifying it, just saying that the media is trying to manipulate people into having a panic attack over it, whereas in fact, it's exactly what we do in the situation.
Well, I think that the people don't realize exactly it isn't so much a couple Americans or a lot of Americans all of a sudden being seen in Ukraine.
And you point out the inconsistency we're doing, we're using our troops and all this.
But I like to go back to 2014 and not talk about the war Russia started invading Ukraine.
And that's the simple answer.
Why We Should Question Government Spending 00:03:17
I bet 80% of the people have bought into that scenario.
They never ask, well, how'd they get NATO to join in on that?
No, NATO started the darn thing.
We own NATO.
So then all of a sudden it gets mixed up with how far can they go without expanding the war.
But probably it'll come to an end.
You know, the slowness and the insidiousness is the only advantage there is they're going to bankrupt a lot of people and they've already run out of bombs.
Yeah, and lives.
That's it.
Yeah, yeah.
So We have to start drafting people at 18 years of age.
Everybody has to go.
Yeah, terrible.
Just so it doesn't come, well.
They should draft the neocons first.
Well, they're probably not that good at fighting.
I don't think Victoria would be too long to fox.
So I'm going to close out.
If you put on that very last clip, I was doing my morning check of Bitcoin, and it's doing very well this morning.
Very happy to see it.
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Over to you, Dr. Very good.
And I want to thank our viewers for tuning in once again.
I want to reiterate a statement I made earlier in the program as a reminder because I think it would be worthwhile if we only did it with ourselves to ask these questions.
And that is, is when the government's getting ready to spend any money, because it's all debt, really, that they should ask two questions to themselves or to the leaders, to the politicians, to the candidates or whatever.
Where do you get the authority to do what you want to do?
For the most part, when you think about it, what the Constitution gives us, very, very limited.
But we should at least make them think about it and say, oh, from the Constitution, and that'll be a lie because they distort the Constitution or ignore the Constitution and fight the wars without Declaration, have a monetary system which is unconstitutional.
And then if the other question we should always ask, where are you going to get the money?
Where are the dollars coming from?
And they'll go blind-eyed and they'll say, oh, well, you know, we'll borrow it.
The Federal Reserve will back us up.
And which is, you know, based on a lie because they're not supposed to do that.
They're not allowed to.
It's unconstitutional.
It's going to lead to inflation.
It's going to lead to recessions and business cycles and all these things.
So we ought to always press them.
Where do you get the authority and where are you going to get the money?
And they don't have an answer because we've been living with a lie.
I want to thank everybody for tuning in today to the Liberty Report.
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