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Jan. 9, 2025 - Ron Paul Liberty Report
20:47
Musk Vs. Soros: Who's The Real 'Meddler'?

Politico has published an article accusing the billionaire businessman Elon Musk of "meddling" in foreign politics by expressing his opinion on foreign leaders. Is "meddling" just the new "disinformation" - i.e. people saying or doing things the elite does not like?

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Politico's Meddling Accusation 00:13:02
Hello, everybody, and thank you for tuning in to the Liberty Report.
With us today, we have Daniel McAdams, our co-host.
Daniel, good morning.
Good morning, Dr. Paul.
How are you this morning?
Good, doing well.
Good, good.
So, it looks like we have to watch out about what they're trying to do.
They're picking people out and taking their free speech away from them.
But we want to talk a little bit about what Politico thinks they should do with Musk.
He spoke out and gave several opinion, and they disagreed with him.
So, he is being charged with meddling.
Sounds to me like that's a crime, meddling, because we have had a little bit of meddling in campaigns.
I think that guy, Soros, used to do a lot and still does it.
His kids are doing it, meddling in campaign.
But this whole thing about Trump with Musk, you know, meddling in politics, it looks to me like he had the audacity to give opinions.
You know, that's the way I see this.
He's just controlled.
But I think what this is indicating, this whole episode, is that Musk, you know, we've talked a lot about his effectiveness because he has access to the internet, and there's something called X, and it's very, very popular.
So they're going to have to deal with this.
So what they're trying to do is say, you know, defame Musk because he's an unreliable character.
And so they changed the words a little bit.
They just said, well, he's not giving his opinion.
I think most people said, well, he's a citizen.
He's allowed to give his opinion.
But he's not allowed to meddle into politics.
It's an accusation they're making.
So they're the ones that have to be watched by the market and by what we're trying to do is tell people what's really going on.
But Politico had an article 13 times Musk meddled in politics.
And what if they had said 13 times Musk gave his opinion about political activities everywhere?
You know, one thought that I came across was this whole idea about Argentina because he might have said something about Argentina.
My goodness, I said something about Argentina.
I sort of like, you know, getting in.
And even after that, I supported him.
Do you think, do you think I was meddling?
Meddling with the organization that would like to stamp out truth telling.
So this is an interesting subject because it deals with, the way I see it, it's dealing with the freedom of speech of an individual.
You know, they've tried to do this blanket stuff, and it looks like they're losing steam on controlling information and speech on the internet and different programs.
And of course, yesterday we made this point.
Yeah, we're for all that when the government becomes partners with the social media.
But this isn't the story.
This is like an individual gives his opinion and he's despised because he's successful and he's rich and therefore they say he's not giving his opinion.
But it wasn't just one time he didn't give his opinion on Argentina and say, you know, I think that's an improvement in Argentina.
Oh, no, it wasn't that.
Politico say he's done it 13 times, given his opinion.
So the question is, Whose opinion, whose rights are being violated here?
And what will the people think about this on whether or not this is meddling that has to be stopped?
Because meddling, that sounds very bad.
And they charge Trump with meddling.
And of course, they went to court, and it seems like he's lost.
He won all the cases, and the people that were accusing him of it.
So right now, this is an episode, but Politico wants to bring this up.
And this to me proves the most important thing that Musk is saying important things.
And they have to say he's breaking some law.
He's conspiring to bring down the Republic and this sort of thing.
So we'll see what happens, see if this is a one-day deal or whether they're going to keep hounding.
Don't you dare meddle in politics.
You know, we have a 501c3 and we're, by the law, you know, have to be careful about not meddling in politics.
We can give opinions and all that, but you can't meddle because they want to control what's out there.
You know, to me, it's the contest between the nihilists that don't believe there's truth and those people who want to get the truth out.
And I would have to say, under this circumstance, Musk is trying to get the truth out, and he's being charged with doing something dishonest.
Yeah, let's go ahead and put up the article we're talking about, as you point out, Dr. Paul, is from Politico: 13 Times Elon Musk Meddled in Politics.
Now, I saw this this morning, and we talked about it earlier as well.
And I got very annoyed with the use of that word meddling.
And you might say, well, that's being kind of petty.
It's just a word.
What's the big deal?
Well, words are important because that's how we convey ideas, you know.
And so when you use a word like that, it reminds me, and we talked about it, I mentioned it to you, it reminds me of when they started using the word disinformation.
And everything that the elites don't like is disinformation, right?
Everything that you say, oh, the shot doesn't work, disinformation, turns out it's true.
So every time now that you give your opinion on foreign politics, that's meddling.
Now, if you and I said it, as you point out, it wouldn't be meddling because we're not rich.
He's richer.
He has a bigger platform.
And so they'll call it meddling because they perceive his increased power by being wealthy.
But it does remind me that the left needs its own hate figure.
The right has done that a lot with Soros, too.
I think, and we'll talk about it later, to some accuracy.
However, the left needs and is trying to make Musk into this hate figure.
Whereas, as you say, in effect, what he's doing, and he is a private citizen.
Now, he's working with Trump.
We know that.
He's involved in the campaign.
We know that.
But he is a private citizen, albeit one with more resources.
But look how Politico marks this.
Go to the next clip here.
This is how they characterize.
And you can see the contempt just dripping from the Noah Keat, is their journalist.
I use that word loosely.
This is a news article, supposedly.
He starts it out by saying, Elon Musk just can't help himself.
Oh, really?
Okay.
When he's not beefing with top Republicans, the ex-owner and Donald Trump ally likes to spend his time sticking his oar into the affairs of overseas governments to much annoyance.
Here's 13 times a tech billionaire picked a fight with politicians outside the U.S.
So it is not meddling to have a private citizen voice an opinion about a political party overseas, you know.
But the way that he's writing it, it is exactly the way that Hillary Clinton lied about the Russians meddling in Trump's campaign.
It was an absolute lie.
But using that word delegitimized everything about the election in 2016, that's what they're trying to do with Musk.
Now, we don't have to agree with his opinions, and frankly, some of them, I don't know where he's coming from.
He's an unusual person.
He can be a troll.
He can say things we disagree about and disagree with.
But nevertheless, this use of the word as if he's doing something nefarious by simply pointing out that Justin Trudeau is a dope, you know, and that Kier Starmer has a two-tiered policy, and we'll talk about that later.
That is something that anyone with their eyes open would notice.
I keep thinking, what if this would ever affect us or our program, or me in particular, dealing with the Federal Reserve?
They might decide that you shouldn't say things like that.
What happens if the markets get rocky?
Yeah.
Rockier.
And we have inflation.
And at the same time, we have depression and this sort of thing.
Oh, yeah, you guys brought that on.
You know, you were bad-mouthed in the system, and you wouldn't cooperate, and then go along with what the Fed's doing.
And right now, I guess they're satisfied by totally ignoring our position.
But there's more and more people now in the last 10, 20 years, I've noticed a change in attitude about the general public.
I mean, the Fed is in the news all the time.
So they could do this.
If somebody decided we have to, but in a way, indirectly, they do this.
They sort of blackball you.
They're not going to really consider these alternatives.
But on this, I think they are, in a way, trying to silence Musk.
That he's doing something illegal, they're claiming, and therefore they're going to pester all the people.
And it really brings up what we talked about yesterday, that how do you handle this?
If you have a privately owned platform on the internet, you can say what you want.
If you blast, if you slander somebody, you have recourses.
But if we, as libertarians, would protect that.
Say what you want and see what happens.
But saying that, the problem that we pointed out yesterday was it wasn't private individuals expressing himself like a Musk.
I mean, they were conspiring with government.
Now, I don't think there's anything suggesting that all of a sudden he's taking orders from the current government.
That's absurd.
That has nothing to do to be related to what we were talking about yesterday.
But I think that this is good to point this out.
And when individuals see things like that, the ones who are just maybe getting into this ideas and the problems that the government's having, that it would be tempting to do what you noticed right away, the use of words, you know, and distortion and call meddling.
Meddling is bad, you know.
So they have to say, oh, everything he says must be bad.
And that's why waking people up to this activity is important.
Yeah, I mean, I think this whole concept has its roots in the Marxist critical theory.
This is this phony egalitarianism that doesn't exist in the real world and should not exist because it's a dystopia.
Yes, Musk has a bigger voice because by virtue of his success in the business world, what have you?
Just like Ron Paul has a bigger voice than Joe Blow down the road because he spent a lot of time in Congress.
He ran for president several times.
People look to you as an authority on things.
That is just natural.
That's how the world works.
But somehow they're making this natural difference between relative strength of opinions into some sort of an evil thing, how terrible it is that some people have a bigger voice than others.
So I think the root thinking is this sort of Marxian thought that we should all be equal and the state should enforce it.
The one difference here is that up to now when they went after people on the internet, they were doing it in the large group that try to close down or lie through this.
But this is an individual.
They've directed this toward an individual.
And I don't know whether that's a strategy or an accident or they saw an opening and maybe they're frustrated because everything they did since 2016 is sort of backfired on them.
And all that criticism ended up causing a landslide for Trump.
So maybe they're thinking that we better go a little easier.
We'll just go after one single bad guy.
If we attack him, maybe we'll get further along with that effort.
Let's look a little bit at some of the bill of particulars that were offered up as evidence that Musk is an evil meddler.
Go to the next one.
Musk's UK Opinions 00:05:28
The first one is now in the UK.
He dared to have an opinion about Kier Starmer, who is inarguably probably one of the worst leaders in the UK in a long time, with the exception of maybe a couple more recent ones.
But nevertheless, what began as a top relationship between fellow tech bros, Elon Musk and Rishi Sunak.
Now right there, you see the dripping sarcasm of the journalist, and this is supposed to be a journalism piece.
But Musk claimed Britain was a tyrannical police state and branded Starmer two-tier cure over the policing of far-right protests.
He warned the UK was going fool Stalin by tweaking inheritance tax rule for farmers.
He called the prime minister to be imprisoned over the state's response to child sexual exploitation and branded Starmer's safeguarding minister a rape genocide apologist.
These are all personal opinions and from what I can see, most of them are probably right.
There was a disproportionate crackdown on conservatives who were protesting in the UK.
But go to the next one now, the Germans.
He really got the Germans upset.
With Germans due to vote next month, the tech billionaire caused a major stir by throwing his weight behind the far right.
You've got to always use that far right, Dr. Paul.
The far-right alternative for Germany party, claiming that only the AFD can save Germany.
That drew a short shrift from embattled incumbent Chancellor Olaf Schultz, by the way, another failed leader.
So he basically had his opinion that Germany is being ruled by idiots and Dolts, and that actually is pretty much played out by what you've seen happen to the German economy.
So he had an opinion about Germany's politics.
That means he's meddling.
And now the next one is a pretty easy one, too, Romania.
We haven't talked about this, but this is insane.
The canceled Romanian presidential election, shelved as authorities cited aggressive hybrid attacks from Russia, I would add with zero evidence presented, drew Musk's ire.
And here's Musk.
How can a judge cancel an election and not be considered a dictator, he fumed.
To which I think the rest of us would say, well, he can't, because if you cancel an election because the wrong guy won, you are a dictator and you're not living in a democracy.
And that's what happened.
So he's basically criticizing things that are very, very obvious.
Is he opening up a huge center in Germany to finance the AFD's campaign?
No.
Is he founding a ton of NGOs in Germany to undermine the ruling party?
No.
Is he doing the same in Romania?
No.
Someone else we know has done that, though, for the past 30-some years, and that is George Soros, who does very, very different things.
He doesn't express his opinion about these places.
He puts billions of dollars into changing governments.
There's a little bit of a difference there.
That is a big difference.
And you used the word opinion a minute ago, and I think that is important.
We're dealing with opinions.
And this is, in a way, a switch or a change that ordinarily when they have this disinformation, they're implying that they are either stupid or lying, you know, about it.
And all we need is a board to check out the facts, and that would be it.
But here, this is a step, I think it's a bold step, because they're not even pretending there are facts involved, and we can check it out.
They know these are his opinions.
They're just discussed with that he has the right to exert his opinion.
But you know, that annoyance has been something that's been around for a long time.
As long as you have politics and human beings living with each other, there are opinions that people resent.
How to handle them is a big issue.
But we happen to endorse the way to handle that is through a more libertarian society as long as making your opinion as long as you're not lie-cheating and stealing.
And there's a couple people who still do that in the government.
So I think this is a step in the wrong direction.
I'm going to close.
I'm just going to offer a little bit more evidence on the part of Soros, the difference between manipulating and expressing your position.
Now, this is from the national interest.
Quite a few, a few years ago, I think around 2020, put this one up.
$708 million.
That is how much George Soros spent on politics in one year alone.
Politics, i.e. elections.
Now go to the next one.
This is from the same article, and you just look at what he does overseas.
The man is making good on his vision thanks to his vast open society network, a nexus of numerous foundations and advocacy groups.
All told, between 2000 and 2018, Soros' foundation spent nearly $8.9 billion.
And this year, he's already announced he'll push $220 million toward racial justice.
Now, $8.9 billion setting up NGOs, buying newspapers overseas that favor one political party over another.
He's basically doing the bidding of the State Department and the CIA overseas as a private person.
That's meddling.
It's a lot different.
You know, there was one position in this article that indicated that maybe they want to put a feeler out and soften their stand with the Conservatives.
This is on the Australia issue.
And Musk hit out plans to ban children from social media platforms.
Conservatives would like that.
Founders Understood Liberty 00:02:10
The answer is government, you know, and it's happening.
But if they're banning the government from doing that, that's fine.
But this idea, so in a way, Musk has taken a good position there in a controversial position, but they really aren't looking for that debate to be out because he has a, under these circumstances, a correct libertarian position.
Yeah, absolutely.
Well, anyway, I think we'll close out today and thank our viewers for watching the show.
If you are watching it, please hit a thumbs up or a like, whatever platform you're watching it on.
We hope to see you again soon.
Over to you, Dr. Paul.
Very good.
And I, too, want to thank our viewers for tuning in today.
We are very pleased with the receptions that we've been getting these last several weeks in particular.
And we're going to continue to improve our methods and efforts to get as much message out as possible.
Because actually, I have to tell you, I enjoy doing this because it gets down to the nitty-gritty.
And sometimes if they go off on a tangent and are working on a technical thing, I want people to look at the strategic thing, the philosophic principle.
And it's so much easier when you do that.
You know, the libertarian position is not difficult to defend.
And if you decide you want to live in a free society and be responsible for all that you do, and you don't have to ask the government what to do, and you don't have this dependency on government, which is also implies that you are going to do exactly as the government tells us.
So I think it's an exciting idea, the whole principle of libertarianism and freedom.
The founders understood it, and there were many prior to even the founders that understood it because the debate has been going on a long time.
But I think we live in interesting times.
We should enjoy discussing these issues and stating clearly why liberty is and should be preferred to the authoritarian approach to a society that wants to live free and prosperous.
I want to thank everybody for tuning in today to the Liberty Report.
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