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Feb. 12, 2025 - Ron Paul Liberty Report
29:52
USGOV Employees Freak Out When DOGE Comes Calling...

Welcome to the real world. Politico is reporting today that US government employees in the General Services Administration are experiencing "anxiety" when Trump Administration officials from the Department of Government Efficiency request an interview to assess the employee's skills and work performance. Also today: Trump fires USAID official critical of changes at that agency. Finally...SecDef Hegseth drops a bomb: "No NATO for Ukraine."

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Time Text
Mixing Up Paradigms 00:15:12
Hello, everybody, and thank you for tuning in to the Liberty Report.
With us today, we have Daniel McAdams, our co-host.
Daniel, good to see you.
Good morning, Dr. Paul.
How are you this morning?
Is there anything left to talk about?
A couple things, I think.
A couple problems.
Because they're mixing up things.
It's a struggle.
What are they doing?
Is it all good?
Is it all, you know, for show or what?
I sense that the majority of things I read in the regular media, it says, well, that sounds like a good idea.
At least that's getting the attention.
The other thing you read or hear about in the regular media are the crybabies, the people who didn't want Trump in there to cut back on anything.
And they're working real hard to badmouth everything that's being done to cut back on the size of government.
But what's to me is a little bit weird.
You know, for two or three or four years, some of the policies of the far left has been so bad and all this wokeism and things.
And the people got sick of it.
COVID woke up a bunch of them.
The school system has awakened a lot of people.
And yet, what are they doing?
The critics of what Trump is trying to do, the critics are saying the same thing louder and bolder.
And I don't think they've caught on.
But it used to be, you know, when we would hear all those horrible things coming up, it was bad news.
And I said, yeah, don't worry, that'll get a few more converts, even though it looks like they're doing bad things, a few more converts.
And right now, they're still feeding into this.
And we should take advantage of it.
We should present the cause of liberty and show how a society that's based on the constitutionally protected personal liberty and a free market, how we can answer a lot of these questions.
And that is one of my goals is to try to make sure they don't forget about the real cause of what's going on.
But there must be something that Trump is doing and Doge is doing because a lot of people are yelling and screaming.
And I guess the people, people are getting fired.
Can you imagine that?
And they are scared to death.
They're going to lose their job.
So I find this very exciting.
That means they're hitting where it has to be.
My big question is, will they stick to it?
How much opposition is there going to be?
How much will the courts interfere?
And how much propaganda will scare the people?
You know, like they're always pretty good at saying the plan is to take away social security from especially poor people.
And that's what's happening now.
So if they're successful, then that's bad news.
But I think the group now doing this are smart enough to realize they can counteract some of these lies that have been told to create the chaos that we've had.
So I'm, with my fingers crossed, I'm optimistic there will be some improvements.
I am a little bit reserved in saying we have solved our problems and we understand the basic problems and philosophy of government enough where we will reverse things.
And I think that is also very important.
You can tinker, cut back, solve a problem and say we cut this 20%, 30%, but you've got to find out what the source is of what principle they're violating.
Most of the time they're violating our personal liberties and violating the Constitution.
So I feel that one of my obligations is to try to point out when they are drifting away.
But right now, I'm keeping my fingers crossed.
I hope it continues.
Yeah, absolutely.
And what caught our attention this morning is this piece in Politico.
If you could put that first clip up, because and this is what political rights, quote unquote, anxiety-provoking government workers describe their Doge interviews.
And so what's happening here is that the workers in the General Services Administration part of the government are getting emails, are getting scheduling requests from representatives of the administration's Department of Government Efficiency.
and they are getting visits from these people from the DOGE, from the Doge, and they're being asked questions like, what are your skills?
What do you do here?
That's good.
This kinds of things.
And they are upset.
You leave that up, please, for a second.
They're upset because they're getting anxiety.
They're anxious having to explain themselves and what they do every day.
Probably most of them aren't even at work all day.
They're at home in their slippers.
So that would give you some anxiety if your boss came over, if someone came over.
So it's interesting in a way.
And one of the thoughts that I had, Dr. Paul, is that what we're seeing is a revolution.
Having the Doge people marching through the institutions like they're doing, we've used that phrase before, and asking federal workers simply, what do you do?
You know, Musk, who's famous for doing that at SpaceX and his other companies, of just going up to a random engineer and saying, what do you do?
And if the answer isn't satisfactory, that person is fired.
Now, there are good things and bad things about that practice, but government employees have never had to answer that question ever.
So it's a revolution, and revolutions can also be scary and dangerous.
The principle they're dealing with is forcing people to make a self-assessment, which is generally done in the free market.
There's always somebody in charge, and they want their workers to self-assess.
Most of the time, so often in the marketplace, that is automatic almost.
But the principle is there.
You know, people have to look at what they're doing.
And I think the majority of workers are that way.
And so I think this is bigger than a lot of people think.
The one thing that I noticed is that it's not just the low-level bureaucrat that's losing their job rightfully, but it's also the billionaire CEOs.
They're worried too.
I wonder why they'd be worried.
Why wouldn't they say, well, this is going to help us?
You know, oh, I wonder if they're benefiting from some of this stuff, not just the workers.
And we've often would say, you know, when you're talking about inflation, you don't say, well, it's the workers' pay, which is not doesn't, it incite is inflation, but it doesn't cause it.
And what about the businessman?
They are gouging people.
Well, no, maybe there's a distortion of people who are benefiting from the monetary system.
But it's not the gouging or prices going up without understanding why.
But it's across the board.
But I think the workers have been protected and a special class.
And the business people who have been on the receiving end, that I just think is what the big difference is, is that this challenge by Musk is across the board.
And I think that's a more healthy way to look at it than to say, okay, well, what we have to do is deal with unions.
That's it.
The unions have done all this.
Or we have to deal with one small area of the business community.
Because I think in principle, then all of a sudden you say, well, how does the business community, well, just think of pharmaceutical industrial complex, the military-industrial complex, the medical industrial complex, and all of a sudden you can see why it's across the board where the problems are.
Well, we've had decades of government of propaganda saying that government workers are just selfless public servants.
They're just selfless public servants providing services to the public.
But what happens if the public decides they don't want these services anymore?
And I think that's what happened.
I think that's what we saw in the election.
The public said, we don't want your services anymore.
So that means you may get fired.
And it sort of undermines the whole paradigm that they've been able to establish.
Now, obviously, not everyone working in government is a terrible person and a layabout and a nobody and not doing anything useful.
No one would suggest that.
Most people wouldn't suggest that.
Nevertheless, layers and layers of bureaucracy of people pushing paper from one place to the other.
That's what's happening.
Now, go to the second clip because this is a little bit more from the Politico article.
Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency Agents have swarmed the government looking to size up worker productivity.
And federal staffers who have chatted with the tech billionaire lieutenants fear jobs that aren't compatible with a Silicon Valley work style are on the line, i.e., of actually having to work and produce something, I would add.
The article goes along.
Three GSA government services administration employees, all of whom spoke to Politico anonymously out of fears of retribution, described their and their subordinates' recent interviews with Musk's Doge agents as, and I highlight this, potentially career-ending, with federal employees feeling like every word they say they're saying could be grounds for future dismissal, to which I would say, welcome to the real world.
Can you imagine in any job?
And I've actually been in jobs, I'm sure you have too, Dr. Paul, where the boss calls you in and says, Okay, I want to know what you've achieved this last quarter.
What have you achieved this last year?
Have you met your goals?
You know, this is what happens in the normal world.
And they think that somehow it's terribly unfair that they have to answer to this.
See, I think what's happening, generally speaking, is that the evidence of the bankruptcy of this country is becoming very apparent.
And people know this is just not a downturn.
We only have a problem for another week.
We'll just have the Fed adjust the thing, change the Fed chairman or something.
But who knows?
Maybe this group will even look at what the Fed officials do, how they come up with the power to print money and defraud the people.
But I think the point of adjustment came, and that is the bankruptcy.
And all of a sudden, they started looking.
Where's this money going?
$36 trillion.
And they actually opened the door.
It reminds me of how they goof around with foreign policy.
You know, there's always an urgency.
They're going to attack us, and we have to build up the fear.
And the people get scared, and they're all for it.
And that happens shortly, and the people jump on board.
But they didn't ask the question, well, it didn't work.
You know, what do we do now?
And they have to wean themselves off, and it all ends like how it did in Vietnam.
You know, that conclusion.
How about in Afghanistan?
It's a conclusive end.
I think that's what we're warming up for.
But I think to start off with, though, I would say that it would be nice to say every person ever worked for the government, I think they should, about 99%.
But the thing is, there's a lot of people, even in the shortcomings of the program, are probably very dedicated.
I think they're well motivated.
And they can, truthfully, find some people who have benefited.
You say, well, look, I can go and show you 10 houses that because the Fed manipulated the interest rates and they got housing allowance from the government, they ended up with a house.
Well, that's deception.
But people will, the bleeding hearts will say, well, we need to help it.
But they never say, what would have been lucky if we didn't have the government program on all this money?
Would they have had it?
They may have had a better house, more stable, and less downturns, and less of a collision at the end.
So I think it's a false motivation they have.
The motivations might be good.
But if they're wrongly promised or wrongly understood, it's just nothing much.
It's going to do nothing more than make our problems worse.
Yeah.
You know, I remember a story about 20 years ago or so.
A friend of mine who had worked in government most of his career, by a strange set of circumstances, found himself in a position where he was a supervisor and he had people under him.
And I remember he would come, we would talk and he would tell me the stories that on the quarterly review or what have you, everyone had to get an exceptional ranking.
If he only did outstanding instead of exceptional, he actually had some charges filed against him from the workers.
And these are people who never showed up to work way before COVID.
They had second jobs that they were doing while they were at their government job.
And I was just blown away when he told me these stories because I thought this can't be true.
And you can imagine that's going on over and over.
Well, that probably cancels out my assumption or wish to try to modify this because there are decent people that would really like to help sick people and homeless people, even though even if they have already adopted the economics of the government schools.
And oh no, you can't do that.
Freedom doesn't work that way.
But once this gets established and moving along, there's always going to be the individuals who are very, very corrupt.
They see it as a free lunch and they have a system of values.
We're taking money from one person and giving it to another.
There's nothing wrong with that.
They don't understand what government force is, is when they're willing to point guns at us and come in and take money from one group and collect their taxes and whatnot.
But there'll be a lot of people there.
Hey, we have a scheme here.
You want to get a good contract.
We're inside with USAID.
We'll get you a good piece of action, but you have to do this, this, this, and you have to send some money to this congressman.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
So that's it.
So the personnel, there will always be the opposite of the people who were well-intended, but going in the wrong direction, that the personnel gravitate there and say, this is a road to riches.
And every once in a while, we hear stories where people have become very rich by being in there.
And one step removed, the companies that get to get the contracts from the government, they get very, very rich as well.
Yeah, absolutely.
Well, skip the next one and go to the one that the Doge Cruz questions, if we can, that clip really quick.
Well, we'll kind of finish this topic out with this part.
The Doge Cruz questions led GSA staffers to believe the group was looking to cold employees who lacked technical skills or added bureaucratic players to government operations, which some techies like Musk have sought to eliminate.
So they're worried that they're going to be discovered that they basically can't do anything.
All they do is sit around and suck up a paycheck.
Rigging The Currency System 00:03:08
I would be worried too if that were the case.
But I'm sure it's not a perfect situation, but it's quite fascinating to see this happen, I think.
You know, the other thing that I think about a lot is why do the people put up with the taxation and inflation and allow this type of a problem to grow?
Why do they allow our governments to fight undeclared immoral wars that kill a lot of people and contribute to so much trouble?
And I think what happens, they don't keep an eye on the Fed, obviously, because that's the source of it.
Become a great nation, have an empire, print the world currency, and you have endless wealth until you don't have endless wealth.
But the one thing they don't emphasize so much when they get a government with a Federal Reserve that responds to debt, you don't have to have a sorting it out by the marketplace, which is what is good and bad and moral and constitutional.
And when they do that, the one result that occurs that we have trouble teaching the people that prices go up because of this.
The money value is going down.
It isn't so much that gold prices go up.
It's the fact that the dollar goes down in value.
But the other part that very few people look at carefully is that when you mess up the interest rates and the amount of credit available, and they think that will solve all your problems.
Oh, downturn.
Print more money.
Lower interest rate.
And then the other half of other than pushing prices up, it causes people to do dumb things.
And I would say that what they've discovered about USAID is the fact that it might all be malinvestment.
It might be all a mistake.
No matter what their intentions were, it's all a mistake.
It's unconstitutional.
It's immoral because it's stolen money.
It's an inflated currency.
So that is, I think, the whole thing.
But that money does gravitate even in the marketplace.
You know, they might have various reasons for inflating.
But you have higher prices, but you also have a lot of business people and consumers and savers doing the wrong thing because they think they know what's going to happen to the interest rates.
And of course, that's just a mechanism for the Fed to rig the system.
Rig the system, absolutely.
Well, you mentioned USAID.
We just want to touch on this one.
This is also a political piece, if we can put the next one up.
And this is interesting, too.
Trump fires USAID Inspector General after a report critical of funding freeze.
So Trump announces his funding freeze.
Pardon me, the Inspector General puts out a report critical of that freeze, and President Trump fires the Inspector General.
Now, on one hand, the IGs are supposed to be independent.
Trump Fires Inspector General 00:09:06
They're supposed to have an independent voice.
So on one hand, you could sort of see this is kind of a slippery slope.
However, when the president who is elected announces a change in policy, it becomes a matter of insubordination if someone in government refuses to carry out that policy, if it's a legal policy.
You know, the Inspector General, under the conditions, you really ought to have them, but they're probably very, very important.
And we've known some in the military.
The Afghanistan one was great, yeah.
Yes, and they've been good, but what happens to them?
They end up a tremendous effort to destroy them because if they get inspected, they reveal this a lot sooner than it took to get some of this stuff that we're witnessing now exposed to the public.
So, but then no, they can get a bad rap, and they might have their future, and they can use the principle of canceling a person a long time before COVID.
Yeah, absolutely.
Well, I want to just touch on one other final thing, and this kind of flew in under the radar this morning.
And I was, I don't know if when you were coming in, if you heard some things about Pete Hegseth, the Secretary of Defense, he made a speech, very, very interesting speech.
But to those of us who are following these things, this is hardly shocking.
Nevertheless, to people who had thought that the Biden policy would continue, he dropped the equivalent of a megatron bomb.
And I'm going to just put on that first audio or video clip if we can.
You might want to get your earpiece, Dr. Paul.
And here, the bombshell dropped by our SecDef Pete Hegseth in the discussion of Ukraine policy.
The United States does not believe that NATO membership for Ukraine is a realistic outcome of a negotiated settlement.
Instead, any security guarantee must be backed by capable European and non-European troops.
If these troops are deployed as peacekeepers to Ukraine at any point, they should be deployed as part of a non-NATO mission, and they should not be covered under Article 5.
There also must be robust international oversight of the line of contact.
To be clear, as part of any security guarantee, there will not be U.S. troops deployed to Ukraine.
Incredible.
No, NATO.
If you want to send your troops in Europe to be peacekeepers, go for it.
But you won't have any NATO protection.
And number three, no U.S. troops.
That's the number two.
And no money.
That's the end.
Yeah, this is great.
And I think the events have created somebody like Heth, who could speak out and say this and the Trumps and the bus because the people are sick and tired of it.
But it's, I hope, enough, but it's late.
I want prevention.
So here it is.
You know, when I look at the Gaza, you know, they're horrible.
But it's the answer to repair and give it to somebody or make it something in charge.
But no, I would say most of that I could agree with, but I'd want to emphasize, why did we ever do it?
Because when you look at, whether you look at the Middle East or if you look at Ukraine, heck, if we could figure it out and come out pretty accurately way back, even a day before 2014, that this is what happens, this stuff could be prevented.
But look at the wall that we ran into when we said, you know, it's not wise to go into Iraq.
It's not wise to go into Afghanistan.
You know, it's hard to shake people up when they're complacent enough because the money's still valuable.
You could just, we're okay.
The economy is great.
And at the same time, we're using up the seed corn.
All the sources of the things that we have to have for future investment.
And then we buy stuff from overseas.
We send our money overseas and they become our competitors.
See, some of that stuff just is very bad economic.
But nevertheless, I'm glad to hear that.
Yeah, I mean, Project Ukraine is over if that's the case.
There are people inside Trump's inner circle who disagree with this.
You know, I would say that Waltz and Kellogg disagree with this.
So it'll be interesting to see.
But, you know, we can't, we blame Biden.
We blame Biden this whole time.
But he doesn't share all of the blame.
Every single Republican in Congress who voted for this money, they have the blood on their hands as well of this terrible, terrible policy.
But now, do you remember Alexander Vindman?
He's the guy who set off the impeachment of Trump because Trump wanted to cut the money back when he was president the first time.
He wanted to cut the money to Ukraine.
And Vindeman made up this big old story about Trump being Putin's puppet, saying that the interagency consensus does not agree with the president's view on this policy, and that was the basis of the impeachment.
Well, here's Vindeman now.
Flipping out because if you go to that, go to the Vindman post if you can.
He is now flipping out because Hegseth said no more.
So here's Vindman, quietly.
Hegseth announces a major policy change, ruling out Ukraine joining NATO.
This is a complete capitulation to Putin, justifying his wars of aggression, starting with Georgia in 2008.
This will embolden Putin and undermine the interests of peace in Ukraine and Europe a major blow to U.S. National security.
Of course, the Georgia 2008 war was started by Georgia.
Even the European Union put out a study showing that basically everything that he has said here is wrong.
But I have to say, Dr. Paul, it is nice to see Vindman get a smackdown.
Yeah that, hopefully he's a bad guy.
You know this, this whole thing about the NATO.
We're in an entangling alliance, but I always want to look.
You know, prevention and medicine is a very good idea.
No, we're in about a thousand drugs to try to solve our problem.
But it was very clear that the intent was and the advice that we got from the individuals who were smart enough to give us an outline on what kind of a republic we should have.
There was strong advice and it's been off and on staying out of entangling alliances.
Just think of the, The America, the Original American First movement trying to keep us out of World War One.
You know that was that was designed to try to keep that, but it was always built.
But the, it's an entangling alliance.
We shouldn't be in there.
They say, well, you know what?
What is the word?
They say he is an isolationist.
You guys don't care.
And just think of the isolationism that's marching on right now, with tariff wars and other things going on.
Uh, so it's it.
Uh, I think our position is very interventionist in a voluntary sense.
You should trade and be friends with people and get along with them and this sort of thing, and you shouldn't uh you, you know, be be using the weapons of the economy or you know accusations and threats.
So if that, I think uh, but the basic thing is, is I think uh, I think it was uh Taft, Robert Taft.
He says, don't, you know, we don't need NATO, it'll lead to problems.
Yeah, and uh now, right now, the unwinding is going to take a while, but this hope we're seeing the beginning of the unwinding.
Yes well, I actually have some breaking news, dr Paul.
In fact, thanks to our viewers, Gypsy Magic and Brewster Mcbrewster, and I did check it up and follow up.
And it is true to Gabbard has just been confirmed as d and I.
So that's great friend of ours and we're very happy to see that, with the, this happen.
So that's, that's great stuff.
We know her pretty well and I know that we attended a conference once not too long ago at the Lincoln Monument, talking about why we shouldn't go to all these wars.
So that's, uh no, she's a good person good's, good sign.
Well, i'm going to close out.
If you can put up that bonus clip, uh and uh.
I am going to remind everyone that next month, America in the age of Trump 2.0, Tom Woods, Jimmy Duncan, David Stockman, Jeff Dice, Ron Paul.
It's going to be an amazing day.
And you're going to hear a lot of great speeches and meet a lot of great people.
I will add a link in the description.
Get those tickets.
They're moving pretty well, Dr. Paul.
I'm pretty happy about the way ticket sales are going.
We're about an hour south of Houston.
You fly into Hobby.
You get down here quick.
You can even take a side trip to the Gulf of America.
Check it out because we're really close to the Gulf of America.
But seriously, we're looking forward to seeing all of you guys out there next month down here in Lake Jackson.
Sales Moving Well 00:02:18
You know, we started the program by talking about the people who are getting anxious, nervous tension.
Am I going to lose my job?
People want to know what we're doing.
This is terrible.
And I think I saw the other day that the increase in the sales on volume has skyrocketed.
They're looking for something to tie them up.
They'll probably think up some new ones to help.
But it won't answer the question.
Only the right principles, only the right principles of protecting our liberties and letting the people make their decision won't be perfect.
But if you let the government decide and a few individuals decide and a few individuals who sneak in the government and defy what they're supposed to be doing, when they make those decisions, we are all in effect.
So those people that say, oh, you guys want the people to decide what to do with them, make them safe.
How are they going to take care of their medical care?
How are they going to do this and that?
And how are they going to have sound money?
All those problems are solved, you know, in a voluntary way.
But when government does it, it really hits everybody.
If an individual does it, yes, you could suffer the consequences.
But most of the time, this is a learning experience.
But I don't know.
I hope that this learning experience that they're experiencing now and trying to get rid of all the people who don't work at their jobs at USAID, I hope that's the beginning.
And we'll see what happens.
The reason why, they say, oh, you mean, Ron, you could stop this and reverse it?
No, no, I can't.
But there's a difference.
If you keep doing what we're doing, it will take care of it.
It's all going to stop.
It'll fall apart.
And that's when the cultural Marxists may be celebrating because that's what they're looking for.
So we don't have to wait until we see the final conclusion of $36 trillion, which is, by the way, it's going up this year already very, very fast.
And we can still blame Biden for that.
But anyway, I think the answers are available to us.
And I encourage everybody to, you know, make a commitment to promoting the cause of liberty.
There we will find our answers.
Thank you very much for tuning in today to the Liberty Report.
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