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Jan. 18, 2025 - Ron Paul Liberty Report
24:55
Trump Thoughts, Cali Aid, Tik-Tok Ban, Journalist Assault - Friday Media Roundup.

RPI's Daniel McAdams and Chris Rossini separate the news from the propaganda in this discussion of the REAL news of the week.

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Time Text
Covering News Stories 00:02:13
Hello everyone and thank you for tuning in to the Ron Paul Liberty Report.
I'm Chris Hersini, your usual Friday co-host.
Today Dr. Paul is traveling.
So we have the Monday through Thursday co-host who will be with me today.
That's Daniel McAdams.
Hi Daniel.
Hi Chris.
How are you?
I hope I'm getting overtime pay for this.
Yeah, great to be with you too.
I always enjoy these programs.
Daniel and I will be covering some news stories that we just picked up and we felt like talking about the two of us and we thought it would be great to have an audience to talk about it.
Before we get to that though, our Friday listeners and viewers will know that we have a partnership with Birch Gold for several years now.
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I'm going to let Daniel get started with the topics that we chose for today.
Daniel?
Thanks, Chris.
And one of the things we try to do when we do the show is take on a couple of topics that we think that the mainstream media or even the alternative media is not covering at all or not covering accurately or covering in a one-sided basis.
And so I picked a couple of big news this week I think deserves more attention.
Tony Blinken's Final Press Briefing Interruption 00:03:44
And the first of those two, Chris and our viewers, is the interruption of Tony Blinken's final press briefing.
Of course, he hasn't been down to the State Department press room in over a year.
He never comes down.
So he wanted to go down and make his statement at the very last, you know, among the very last days he'll be there.
And so everything was going fine.
He was talking about how great he is and how great his policy has been and how great the Biden policy has been when he was interrupted by two members of the media who were not trained SEALs, who actually spoke up.
And I'm happy to say that both of these gentlemen are friends of mine and friends of ours.
The first is Max Blumenthal, who's the founder of the Gray Zone.
And the other is Sam Husseini, who's an independent journalist.
He writes for anti-war.com, among many other.
He's a longtime veteran journalist, serious journalist.
Both of them, they've broken a lot of important stories.
But as they sat there and were forced to listen to Blinken tooting his own horn, they spoke up.
They spoke at a turn.
And in fact, I retweeted the picture, horrific picture.
I think we're using it, Chris, as our thumbnail of them ripping Sam Husseini, not a young fellow, by the way, out of his chair, three or four cops ripping him out of his chair, carrying him, dragging him out, hurting him as they do it, simply because he refused to sit down and show up.
He actually had some questions.
And so I posted that on X on my own account, last night, actually, and it's gone through the roof.
And I'm happy to say.
But of course, there are a lot of people that agree with you at first.
And then the naysayers come on and then they're so angry.
How dare they behave this way?
They should, you know, and you know, they should just be sitting there and acting like journalists.
And CNN picks up on it too, Chris.
They said they don't even say journalist Sam Husseini kicked out.
They say local man attending the briefing is kicked out.
They won't, you know, there's still, you know, three people watch CNN and they're still clinging to this idea that they're the journalists.
And people like Sam Husseini, who refused to sit through this song and dance from Blinken are the fakers.
But I do have a video of Max Blumenthal, who I think this, it's a minute, it's a little longer than we usually do.
But I think Max is sitting there.
He's waiting as well.
By the way, I should say, Sam Husseini, the reason why he did disrupt is that he was told beforehand, you will not be allowed to ask any questions.
Questions will come at the end, but not for you.
And so some people say he's misbehaving.
He was told that beforehand.
But anyway, here's Max Blumenthal.
He's sitting there waiting as Blinken is going on, and he's just not taking it.
And this is what I love about Max.
Let's watch this.
Let's watch this whole clip of Max.
300 reporters in Gaza were on the receiving end of your bombs.
Why did you keep the bombs flowing when we had a deal in May?
We all knew we had a deal.
Everyone in this room knows we had a deal, Tony, and you kept the bombs flowing.
Why did you sacrifice the rules-based order on the mantle of your commitment to Zionism?
Why did you allow my friends to be massacred?
Why did you allow my friends' homes in Gaza to be destroyed when we had a deal in May?
You helped destroy our religion, Judaism, by associating it with fascism.
You waved the white flag before Luton.
You waved the white flag before Israeli fascists.
Don't have the time to take questions at the end.
Your father-in-law was an Israel lobbyist.
Your grandfather was an Israel lobbyist.
Are you compromised by Israel?
Why did you allow the Holocaust of our time to happen?
How does it feel to have your legacy be genocide?
How does it feel to have your legacy be genocide?
Trump's Blasphemy Against Zionism 00:12:09
You too, Matt.
You smirked through the whole thing every day.
He smirked through a genocide.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Very, very powerful.
And Max is terrific in here.
And you can see why people would say, well, he's disrupting.
That's not journalism.
That is journalism.
The whole purpose of journalism, Chris, is the fourth estate challenges power.
And you can see it in the looks of the face of the others who are sitting there.
They were irritated.
They were annoyed.
They wanted their little press briefing and maybe there's a cookie afterward.
Well, Max wasn't having that.
And anyway, I just wanted to bring that up in case people haven't seen it.
This is what journalism does.
It makes people in power uncomfortable.
That's what it should do.
Now, there should be more decorum, perhaps, but you also shouldn't tell journalists that you know are going to be contrary that no, you can't ask a question.
Forget it.
We're only going to ask people who throw softballs.
So hats off to these two gentlemen.
And let's hope that others may be emboldened to question a little bit more.
Over to you, Chris.
Exactly, Daniel.
And yeah, hats off to their courage.
And everything he said, people can look up on their own and see is what he's saying the truth.
And, you know, when you look at that room, it reminds you, this is really human nature.
It reminds you of COVID.
Everybody else will just sit there, put your mask on, sit down, lock down whatever you follow your orders.
Don't step out of line.
And there's always the few, the courageous, that stand up and will speak the truth.
That's how it is, you know, and that's why power needs to be checked because power leads to delusion.
It leads to a world that they create in their minds.
And then they try to shape the outside world based on their delusion.
They surround themselves with people that say, yes, sir.
Yes, sir.
Yes, ma'am.
All day long, every day.
And if you don't say yes, sir, yes, ma'am, you're out and somebody will be brought in to replace you that says, yes, sir.
Yes, ma'am.
And that's what power does to people.
And then they go and they have the media do the same exact thing.
The media, you change the channels, you change, they all have different names, different logos, but they all use the same exact words.
It's all to keep the same delusion out there for the people.
And they hate when it's challenged, when the truth is blurted out by one journalist.
If the truth appears on X, close down X, censor, censor.
This is what power does.
They want to keep their fake world alive.
And the only thing that can destroy it is the truth and enough people, not all people, of course, but enough people realizing what the truth is.
And then it all falls like a house of cards, like the COVID vaccines, like the COVID narrative.
It falls.
It collapses fast.
So they do whatever they can to prolong and to keep their scam going to avoid that collapse.
But of course, every building built on a house of sand falls.
And that's why they live in their lies, you know, and none of this has to happen.
It's just, again, we're dealing with human nature where people, they want to be safe and secure and don't want to stick their neck out.
And that's why we keep repeating this cycle over and over again.
So what do you got for us, Chris?
Yeah, the next thing that I wanted to talk about was the new Trump administration.
He's going to be inaugurated in three days.
So just wanted to share some thoughts.
Myself personally, I think it's going to be a mixed bag.
There's going to be good things, I believe.
I think we're going to be talking about some good, but there's also going to be not so good and perhaps horrible things.
And we just have to keep our minds open and stick to principles and truth because we live in a world that's rare.
There's both sides of the Trump issue, where there are people, lots of them, people call them conservative Inc., where Donald Trump, no matter what he says, it is glorious.
It has never been better.
This is true leadership.
We are so back.
No matter what he says, Trump can say, I'm bringing Obama into the administration.
Oh, my goodness, this is the greatest thing ever.
So you have to watch out for these people, and there's tons of them.
And they have a lot of influence.
But you also have to watch for the other people that they are complete doom.
Donald Trump is one of them.
The establishment, this is all a scam.
There is nothing good.
There is nothing good that Donald Trump can do.
You have to watch for that side.
Here on the Ron Paul Liberty Report, Ron Paul Institute, we don't play either of those sides.
We take it issue by issue.
He is not, you know, the Messiah, but he's also not a serpent.
You know, we're going to take each issue and analyze it.
And if it's good, we'll praise it.
If it's terrible, we have to criticize it.
We're not going to close our eyes and don't criticize it.
Donald Trump is not an extension of this show.
So we're not going to treat him like that.
But we hope at the same time that there's a lot of good stuff that we can praise.
Well said, Chris, absolutely.
And you're right.
We're going to be angry.
We're going to be ticked off.
We're going to be disappointed.
But there is going to be some things.
I mean, I think the greatest strength that Trump may have for us is that he'll be a disruptor.
And that may be not what we want.
I don't want a disruptor necessarily, but it's not a bad thing.
We've had four years of being led by a comatose person.
And actually, the people really doing things are people like Blinken, who are very damaging.
So I think a disruptor is good.
But, you know, there are some good signs at first.
And you're right.
He's not going to be the Messiah.
But you have, and it's going to be interesting to honestly, Chris, to see him and the people he hired to advise him because they're going to be at loggerheads.
It's going to be very evident very soon.
Because first of all, they're very big China hawks.
And so is Trump to a degree as well.
But here's Chinahawk Trump saying, hey, Xi, you want to come out and hang out at the inauguration?
You know, he invited him to the inauguration while Waltz, his national security advisor, coming in, is talking about we've got to take down those ChiComs.
And I was just reading this morning, Chris, that he actually made a phone call to Xi Jinping and they had a talk.
They talked about TikTok.
They talked about terrorists.
They talked about a few other things.
Now, ultimately, it may not be successful, but for God's sake, he's picking up the phone and talking to these people.
That's what we need to have happen.
I think we can look forward to Trump talking to Putin in very short order as well.
And when they start talking, you know, the old saying, Chris, jaw-jaw is better than war-war.
So I think just the fact that he's willing to talk to these people is a good first indication.
Very good, Daniel.
Yeah, you can go to the next topic.
Sure.
Okay.
Well, the other thing I want to talk about is a little bit of a black pill, and that's the Supreme Court this morning.
Unfortunately, it looks like they will uphold the TikTok ban that our absurd U.S. Congress passed in the last Congress.
They finally released their findings this morning, and it looks like they will uphold the divest or ban law, otherwise known as the mafiosi law, which is where you hold a gun to someone's head and say, that's a nice business you got there.
I hate to see anyone steal it from you.
And in fact, it's the U.S. government stealing, forcing this company to sell to an American company or to be unavailable in America, meaning American citizens, it's not a punishment on TikTok.
American citizens who use this social media app will be forbidden from doing it.
And all because those ChiComs are somehow listening into us.
Well, if China is as bad as they say, then why the hell are you acting just like the Chinese and telling their people what they can and can't watch?
But that's exactly what they're doing, Chris.
And here's what Kavanaugh, one of the Supreme Court justices said.
I'm going to have to put on my glasses here, but he says, this seems like a huge concern for the future of our country.
What is that, Justice Kavanaugh, that people are allowed to access the media that they want?
And I would say in the hall of shame, and anything that he says is an indication, anything that he hates is an indication that it's good.
And that's Tom Cotton, who is an absolute terrible senator.
I need to find what Tom Cotton says here.
I have it.
I mean, this sounds like something out of Dr. Strangelove, Chris.
Listen to Tom Cotton.
TikTok is a Chinese communist spy app that addicts our kids, harvests their data, targets them with harmful and manipulative content, and spreads communist propaganda.
Cotton said, okay, boomer.
You know, I've seen this internet stuff.
There's a lot of bad stuff on it.
It's a terrible, terrible mafiosi play by the Congress.
It's shameful that a Supreme Court that is tasked with upholding the Constitution has agreed with it.
Although I would say the biggest burden is on Congress.
And Congress can fix this, by the way.
They can overturn this stupid law, and they should do it immediately.
It's an absolutely terrible thing.
I think we have a clip.
This is a great clip, actually, that Dave Benner, good friend of ours and a good friend of Liberty, he sent me this.
He texted me this earlier today.
And it's of Tulsi Gabbard.
I think when they first passed the law last year talking about how Ron Paul is right about it.
Let's cue that.
We can do about a minute and a half or so of this video and just listen, refresh ourselves on why it was a terrible idea to ban it in the first place.
Writing Ron Paul said it best when he said that this legislation is the most, and I'm paraphrasing, but he said it's the most egregious violation of civil liberty since the Patriot Act was passed in the wake of 9-11.
And when you look at the arguments that are being made around both of those pushes, they are very eerily similar in invoking national security concerns.
And the language and the way that's written is intentionally vague.
That puts far more power into the hands of the executive branch, just like the Patriot Act did, to single-handedly say, well, this is a good guy and this is a bad guy.
And that has a direct implication on Americans.
I oppose it on the grounds of free speech and civil liberties.
You know, this is speaking of fomenting fear.
This is one of those pieces of legislation that's, you know, if you just read the talking points for those who support it and it's supported by many people in Congress on both sides of the aisle, you think like, oh my gosh, we've got a national security risk and you've got concern for our kids and all of this other stuff.
But when you actually read the language and understand the implications of what this legislation does, it's not really about TikTok at all.
It's about government being able to choose what platforms are acceptable and what are not, and what we as Americans are able to either get information from or put information out.
I mean, I can't say it any better than that, Chris.
I have nothing else to add to what Tulsi said.
Yeah, that was excellently put.
My two cents, I don't want China to collect vast amounts of data.
I don't want any country to do that.
But you know what?
I think those days are gone.
And China is not my government.
My government does these things.
They collect vast amounts of data.
Everybody knows about the NSA.
What's China going to do?
A lot of data is useless.
Probably most of it, a vast majority of it.
What's China going to do?
Tax us?
They can't tax us.
Are they going to mandate vaccines for us to take that don't work?
No, China can't do that.
Our government does that.
Federal Aid With Conditions 00:06:48
Will they send us to war?
No, they can't do any of these things.
And then Tom Cotton, like you mentioned, said, well, they're going to spread communist propaganda.
Our government spreads communist propaganda.
That's who we have to worry about.
Why do you think Trump was elected?
One of the things.
Look what has been done to our society.
This is all commie stuff, you know?
But that's the thing.
It's always point over there.
Point to the boogeyman that's 6,000 miles away and not the one that's located in Washington.
So this is what it's all about.
And once they can have the power to censor one network, they can go after others, which I'm sure they're planning on doing.
Anybody that they can accuse of spreading whatever that they don't like.
So it's bad.
We have to worry about our own government.
We are U.S. citizens.
That is our primary priority and not let our government send us on wild goose chases around the world about the next boogeyman that's going to come get us.
All right, Chris.
You got one more.
You've got to tee it up and hit it out.
Yes, one more to go.
And that is our illustrious Speaker Johnson that has been re-elected.
So, yeah, it's very tragic.
We all know about it, what's happened in California.
So this week, we hear that the federal government wants to put conditions on federal aid to California.
Now, no fan of federal aid in any sense, because A, because it's just ripe for abuse, and B, because it creates a moral hazard.
That people will do things that they normally would not do, knowing that the federal government has their back and they'll come bail you out.
And we know that they could build in areas that they should not build.
But if they know the federal government will come to the rescue should something go wrong, then they'll build.
Banks are notorious for this.
You know, forever, they've been doing this.
Banks will take risks that they normally would not take, knowing that if things go sour, the federal government will come in with tarp and bail them out.
And they'll do all types of stuff.
Now, that's the downside.
The upside, the banks will make all the profits.
They'll make all their billions when they're right.
When they're wrong, their losses go to the taxpayer.
So that's why federal aid, in and of itself, not a fan, but it is here to stay.
And if it's here to stay, then at least keep the money in the country.
Is that too much to ask?
Because the very same Speaker Johnson that wants to put conditions on aid to California, I don't remember conditions on the 200 billion that went to Ukraine.
I don't remember conditions to Israel that got 30 billion.
In fact, one congressman after another, they're tripping over themselves on X telling us we must support Israel unconditionally.
Absolutely no conditions.
They can take all our money and do whatever they want, and we don't even need to know about it.
So that's how they treat Israel.
Ukraine, I remember Senator Rand Paul wanted just simple accounting, and immediately he was lambasted as Putin's puppet.
That's something Putin would say.
That's right out of Putin's playbook.
So no accounting.
We were robbed of $200 billion.
So if you're going to have federal aid, put conditions on the aid.
In fact, there should be no aid going out of the country, but put conditions on them rather than looking to hurt Californians.
That's a great point, Chris.
And it really encapsulates how Speaker Johnson is definitely not America first.
And again, you're absolutely spot on.
I mean, we shouldn't, there shouldn't be aid to California.
There shouldn't be aid to Texas.
And we have a hurricane down here.
It's not fun to have them.
But there's risk that happens when you live in a place where there's fires and hurricanes.
And if you elect a dopey governor and a dopey mayor like they did in California and LA, it's going to get even worse.
We've got kind of a dopey governor here.
And that made things worse during COVID, as you know.
But it's how astonishing it is.
And you pointed out so perfectly that when it comes to throwing money down a toilet overseas, hey, man, you know, knock yourselves out.
I was just looking at a picture yesterday of Zelensky's wife arriving in San Moritz in Switzerland, having a little ski trip in a Rolls-Royce.
You guys paid for that, America.
You know, when Rand Paul was right, we should have known where it's going.
You know, and you know what's going to happen when you find out a couple years later that was all wasted, Chris are going to say, we had no way of knowing.
You know, just like the WMDs, well, gosh, we had no way of knowing.
You know, they always do that.
They shouldn't get away with it.
So anyway, that's a great one.
If I can do a quick bonus round, if you don't mind, Chris, and this just came up.
Now, I don't know very much about this person.
It's a politician, so we may see some bad signs, but let's take the W when we can.
Ashley Moody was just named yesterday by the Florida Governor DeSantis to replace Lil Marco Rubio, who's now going to be our Secretary of State.
Her first tweet, I think it may have been, I may be wrong, but I think this is her first tweet after he named her as the replacement for Lil Marco.
She said, here's a priority of mine in the Senate.
Inflation has been fueled by the Federal Reserve.
We must audit the Fed.
That sounds pretty good.
So, and I saw that Dr. Paul retweeted it this morning saying something like, I know a couple of others in the Senate who agree with you on that.
So that's my bonus round.
A little bit of good news to end the Friday, Chris.
Yes, very good, Daniel.
Good luck to her.
Good luck to Representative Massey, Senator Paul.
This is, you know, a lot of the problems that we suffer, that we suffer because of the Federal Reserve.
They make it so that the government can grow.
They don't have to come and send us a tax bill and we pay taxes as it is, but they just print money on top of that, which debases the money that we have in our accounts.
That's why eggs, I'm paying $7 for eggs these days.
That's how they tax us.
And it's because they can counterfeit money.
It's totally unconstitutional, totally immoral, but that is the lifeblood.
That's the bloodstream of the empire.
And they will hold on to that as hard as they hold on to the public schools.
Those two things are, you know, they need those above anything.
So that's why this is a long battle.
It's good that there's new soldiers entering the battle as this new senator.
And we wish them the best of luck.
I guess that'll be it for today.
I'd like to thank everybody for tuning in to the Liberty Report.
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