US Secretary of State Marco Rubio, long-known for his attachment to Israel, was in the country over the weekend for a visit with Israeli PM Netanyahu. Perhaps buoyed by Trump's plan to ethnically cleanse Gaza, Bibi decided to push one step further, announcing that the US and Israel need to "finish the job" against Iran. Will Trump's pledge of "no new wars" be able to withstand Bibi's demands? Also today...how much gold is in Fort Knox? One Senator wants to know.
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 this morning.
Good morning, Dr. Paul.
How are you this morning?
Doing well.
Good.
Doing well.
Ready and rare in the go.
That's right.
And we'll start off with simple little problems.
The Middle East, Iran.
Easy to solve.
And a few things like that, and our foreign policy.
We're trying to figure it out.
We get little tidbits here and there.
We say, hey, that's right.
You know, a promise to work hard to stop wars and not start new ones.
That's a good policy.
I guess time will tell, you know, if we have stopped anything or we have actually started some.
But anyway, in the news, Rubio was talking to the leader of Israel, Netanyahu.
They said, and they agreed, let's finish, Netanyahu's given us advice.
Yeah, advice.
You Americans, let's finish the job against Iran.
You know, my watch reaction, I had a little bit of a relationship with Iran.
Whoa, I'm in trouble.
But it was little, but it was still an impression.
I had a junior resident when I was an OB resident in Pittsburgh that was an Iranian student who was visiting.
Got to know a little bit about Iran then.
Then also enough to know that I wanted to know more about their culture.
So after we spent a couple years as partners in learning, I wanted her to cook an Iranian dinner.
And she did that.
She came out to my house and we had that and I had to find the stuff to use.
But also, I traveled to Iran.
She came from Iran.
I didn't know her then.
But I traveled there as a flight surgeon landing in Tehran.
And the purpose there was to check up on our allies, you know, because the Shah was in charge.
And the Shah, you know, was obviously to our governments a friend because he was installed by us.
But evidently, the radicals didn't like it.
And I always figured afterwards that the fact that there was a major takeover by the radical Islamists had something to do with us interfering in their internal affairs.
I think there was resentment against that.
So for us to be lecturing and preaching, and we're over there, we've been in their country, and we've created then a coup, interestingly, in 1953, and Eisenhower was involved.
Dulles Brothers.
So that's been going on for a long time.
But this whole thing that they're the worst.
So they're the worst group of people ever.
Sometimes, you know, he said they're the worst terrorists.
They have more incident terrorism.
I'm sure who's probably said stuff like that.
So anyway, I think the more we've been over there since a long time ago, especially the Europeans in America dealing with Iran all the way back to the First World War and since then has been outsiders.
There wasn't this country called Iran that all of a sudden they want to expand their empire.
They did have an empire there a few hundred years ago, but they weren't in the business of that in recent history.
But right now, you know, just like we want a final conclusion, our government wants a final disclosure, a final conclusion in Gaza and in the Middle East.
They want a final conclusion with Iran, too.
And now, if they have their way, the whole world would change.
I predict it will not be smooth sailing.
Yeah.
Well, you know, last week was that we had Netanyahu and Trump together.
Netanyahu looked like he couldn't believe his luck when Trump was saying, hey, look, we're going to clear out Gaza and we're going to rebuild it and not let the Palestinians back in.
And Netanyahu was saying, is this my birthday or something?
Well, I think rather than just be thankful for that, he was emboldened to ask for more.
So in fact, when Rubio came to meet him over the weekend, he said, why don't I just go ahead and push it a little bit more?
And go ahead and do that first clip.
Here's what he said.
He had Rubio up on stage with him.
They were doing a conference.
He said, Netanyahu to Rubio, let's let's, I like the word let's, let's finish the job against Iran, meaning that they're going to be equal partners.
Well, as we know and as the world knows, the Israeli army was beaten, bloodied, and battered fighting against the ragtag Hamas and Hezbollah militias.
And there are tons of protests in Israel.
Bring our troops home.
They're getting beaten.
They lost a lot of troops and they don't have a lot to spare.
So they were getting their rear ends kicked in these.
Now, they did pretty well against bombing the civilians, but against the militants in Hamas.
And in fact, even the U.S. government said that they've actually been able to reconstruct their forces.
They're getting beaten and battered.
So Netanyahu's idea is, hey, let's get the Americans to fight this war for us.
And that's exactly what it sounds like with Rubio next.
And I've got a picture of Rubio later.
He looks like he's caught in the headlights.
But Iran is not Iraq of 2002.
It's a country of 100 million people.
It has a very diverse geographic landscape, very, very complex society, high-tech society.
They manufacture a lot of things, including weapons.
I really do think that if you took a poll of Americans and asked them, how many of you want to send American troops to fight in Iran for Israel's benefit, the number would be almost zero.
So I think if Trump listens to what Netanyahu was saying, hey, let's you and I go fight Iran, I think it's going to be the end of his presidency.
It's to me amazing how long the propaganda that our people are fed, they blindly go along.
Unless there's real pressure and they're feeling in the pocketbook or in their home themselves, they don't pay a whole lot of attention.
It just goes on and on.
I don't, you know, it'd be interesting.
Look at the history of 1953 or even 2014.
How much resistance?
We tried to voice a resistance even in 2014.
And of course, going before we went into Afghanistan wholesale.
But the American people, you know, they're complacent.
You know, we can blame our leaders and they should be.
And there's the military industrial complex, they should be blamed as well.
But the people, you know, in a true republic, the people should be alert.
And the government should be easier to handle because the government would be much smaller.
And maybe that's the goal of our current administration.
That certainly hopes so, because every once in a while we hear some pretty good statements.
And let's encourage that.
But then we hear these horrible statements.
Sometimes their staff are feeling it out.
And sometimes we have to listen to those who are arguing.
Oh, that's just the way the negotiations go.
Scare them a little.
We're going to put a 75% tariff on you.
Oh, no, it's only going to be 50%.
Oh, okay, that's good.
We just won this fight.
Reduced the tariffs.
So it's a mess.
Well, put on that next clip.
Now, here's what I was talking about, Rubio.
Now, you can't really judge from photos, but he looks like Netanyahu is gloating.
He looks like a Cheshire cat.
He's got him right where he wants him.
And Rubio is sitting here going, great.
Thanks a lot, guys.
This is where Netanyahu said, let's finish the job.
Let's finish the job on Iran.
Now, go to the next one.
Here is what Rubio did say.
He was not sitting there as a dove.
He said, Hamas cannot continue as a military or government force.
They must be eliminated.
Rubio additionally stated alongside Netanyahu warning that the gates of hell could once again be opened against Hamas.
Netanyahu affirmed, we discussed Trump's bold vision for Gaza's future.
I'm sure he loves that one, etc., etc.
Now, the problem with this, Dr. Paul, is essentially what Rubio is repeating here is the Biden foreign policy with regard to Israel and Gaza in the Middle East.
And that didn't work.
That's what we agreed on.
We can all agree on that.
That did not work.
That's why Americans rejected, if you remember, because Kamala Harris, they said, well, what would you do differently than Biden when it comes to Israel in Palestine?
She said, I wouldn't do anything differently.
Nobody voted for it.
So people don't want the same policy.
Yet this is what Rubio is promising right here.
So the thing in terms of polls, Dr. Paul, we talked about this.
It came out last month.
New York Times Ipsos poll showed that 53% of Americans don't even want to keep sending them weapons.
Ask them if they want to actually send their boys and girls out there to fight.
I bet you would have a massive 90% saying, no way, Jose, they don't want to do it.
No.
And, you know, they aren't just intellectual decisions making and policy statements.
They're pretty tough.
Like on a Hamas, Rubio, they must be eliminated.
That sounds pretty tough.
Good luck.
So it's not going to happen.
And like I believe, earnestly, the whole takeover of the radicals in Iran was a consequence of our foreign policy.
And if you take a look at, you know, the definition, and I know you know the conventional definition of what terrorism is.
I think terrorism is when somebody gets involved in foreign policy and tries to take over a country, and then they try to hide their involvement, and they just send money and bombs, and then they march in with trying to sell something.
Oh, Gaza's up for sale?
That'd be pretty neat.
But we could do some good with that.
Yeah.
Well, then now you have Trump sort of marching in after this.
And Trump has this kind of a different view of Rubio in a way.
And he seemed to be playing both sides.
If you put that next clip on, now this is what Trump said with regard to this.
He said, everybody thinks Israel, with our help or approval, will go in and blunk and bomb the blank out of them.
Trump then added, I would prefer that not happen.
I'd rather, much rather see a deal with Iran where we can do a deal, supervise it, check it, inspect it, the president continued.
And then the article goes on.
This is the same Hedge article.
That's when Trump made one of the more interesting provocative comments in the interview.
There's two ways of stopping them, with bombs or a written piece of paper.
So it sounds like he's, you know, the thing that struck me, Dr. Paul.
Tell me if you think I'm crazy here.
This reminds me of what he always said about John Bolton.
He said, I like, Bolton was a madman.
He was crazy.
He was a lunatic.
But I liked having him around because when I brought him in the room, everyone was terrified that I'm going to go to war with them and they would make a deal.
He almost seems to be slipping into a John Bolton role himself, where he's the one saying, I'm going to bomb the blank out of them.
Or we could make a deal.
I mean, he's almost sort of taking on that persona himself.
But that's sort of the way he handles trade policy.
Yeah, Like you just said.
100% tariff.
No, no, no tariff.
Yeah.
No, it's a real shame what goes on unnecessarily.
And it's always the use of force or the threat of use of force, or there's something that is designed to intimidate.
And, you know, I complain that the people aren't alert and they don't wake up.
But I think a certain amount of strength, you know, and being the top dog and taking over, people like it.
And yet they don't think it through that, well, how are you achieving this?
Well, we have to take over our country now and then, and that's how you become a powerful nation.
So thrown in this mess, I'm always aware of the principle of the empire and the empire.
But when that's empire building, you know, anything goes because people get sucked into it.
They say, well, we've got to take it.
It's America's interest.
And I think, you know, people say, well, you guys would walk off.
Rand Paul's Fort Knox Audit Push00:15:41
You just leave Iran there.
But wouldn't Russia take over?
Wouldn't the Soviet system been successful?
Well, that's where a little bit of common sense ought to come in.
Because if it would be able to do that, that means you're endorsing, you know, the power of communism to surpass everything else.
And the community we didn't have, and I marvel at the breakdown of the Cold War.
It was the fact that no bombs were dropped.
Russia, the Soviets just collapsed.
And no, that wouldn't be much fun.
Who's the winner?
Well, freedom is a winner, and pre-Marxism would be the winner.
The military industrial complex didn't like that.
Well, the other thing that Rubio said when he was there, Dr. Paul, is he said, Iran is the number one sponsor of terror in the world.
And that reminded me of an article that our friend Larry Johnson, former CIA analyst, wrote back just a few days ago on February 8th in his excellent blog, which I highly recommend, Sonar 21.
If you go to that next clip, he actually looked at statistics.
And he said, according to the U.S. government data, Iran is not the major sponsor of terrorism.
If you go to the next one, he said, the establishment media, lubricated with funds from the CIA and USCID, continue to push the lie that Iran is a massive sponsor of terrorism.
And this is a quote that he's using.
U.S. government considers Iran to be the foremost state sponsor of terrorism.
And then Larry Johnson comes back in and says, but according to the data presented in the statistical annex of the U.S. Department of State's annual report, Country Reports on Terrorism, the major perpetrators of terrorism are Sunni groups, not Iran or groups allegedly sponsored by Iran.
The Sunni groups receive financial support from the Gulf Arabs and, ironically, from the United States.
Now go to the next one.
Who are these groups that are the biggest sponsors?
Now he has a lot of tables in this article.
You can look it up at Sonar 21 and check them out for yourself.
I've copied the tables from the Annex of Statistical Information for the years 2016 to 2023.
The data in these tables tell the story.
ISIS has been the most active and prolific terrorist group for the eight years presented in the spreadsheets.
One group that is a subsidiary of ISIS, Tahrir al-Sham, has placed in the top 10 of the groups with the most attacks for five of the last six years.
And guess who the CIA helped come in power in Syria?
That would be Tahrir al-Sham, that same group.
And you can go to the next one and see the stats.
This is just for these are the top groups that are actually terrorists, which is using violence against civilians for political means.
Just click onto that next one just for a little tidbit to see these are the stats, and you will see that the top terrorists are actually not, as Marco Rubio says.
But I guess it makes a good bumper sticker, Dr. Paul, to repeat that over and over.
You know, and looking at Syria, I always want to who got the spoils?
Who ended up with the oil in Syria?
Well, it just happened that, you know, could we have been partners with ISIS or something like that?
At least the policies, either that were really stupid.
But maybe there's an international conspiracy against freedom.
It's been that way for a long time.
Yeah.
Well, the second article that's come up that I noticed, and everyone is noticing, actually, really, a lot of people are talking about it, to be honest with you, Dr. Paul.
And this relates to someone you may or may not know.
You probably do know him.
Go to the next one.
This is up on Hedge.
This is pretty fun, actually.
It's pretty interesting.
If we could put that next one up, go ahead, one.
We'll skip this one.
Let's do it.
Rand Paul supports Fort Knox physical audit after Zero Head's suggestion goes viral.
Now go ahead.
Now, this is on X.
It's pretty fun here, Dr. Paul.
I really want to get your take on this and see what you think.
So Zero Hedge put out a post on X saying, it would be great if Elon Musk could take a look inside Fort Knox just to make sure that 4,580 tons of gold is there.
Last time anyone looked 50 years ago in 1974, Elon responded, surely it's reviewed at least every year.
And go to the next one, to which Senator Paul said, nope, let's do it.
And then just those four words just exploded everywhere on X and elsewhere.
Can you imagine that I wasn't surprised about Rand's position?
No.
You know, the whole thing is that people wondered why I ever got involved in emphasizing the monetary issue.
That is not complex because I see that as the energy that happens, the lifeblood of all the stuff that goes on.
Everything in welfare, everything in intervention, economic mischief, wars, because the money wouldn't be there.
You'd have to take it from savings and the people wouldn't put up with it.
But they keep doing it.
And yet, I always believe that if you had the audit, Rand looks like he's on to something right now.
And they're paying more attention.
Conditions have changed.
It took a while for us to introduce that idea to a lot of people.
And one of the ways we got it started was at the end of the 70s.
You know, gold had shown its strength, going from $35 up to $800.
And Jesse Helms and I got together and we introduced a bill for the Gold Commission to study gold in the international monetary system.
And that didn't make the bankers or the establishment very happy.
I remember Reagan was in office and he was a quiet supporter.
But Reagan, he was really annoyed by all this.
I think he was made chairman of the committee.
There were 17 members in the committee.
Lou Lehrman and I were the pro-gold people.
And there was another gentleman that was sympathetic.
But I introduced one amendment at the end of the commission to try to get support for an issue.
So I picked audit of gold.
And I think that would wake people up.
So the 17 members voted.
15 said, no way.
No way.
Don't tell them.
But there was this audit.
You know, there's this token audit that they do every year, which, you know, the management of the personnel, it has no bearing to it.
To find out if the gold is there, I don't think anybody outside of the ones who own the gold, and maybe they don't know either, because maybe two or three people are doing this changes.
But the audit of 1974 and Phil Crane, friend at the time, was very interesting.
He actually went.
But the evidence there was facade.
It was a fake.
It was just a joke.
And Phil confirmed that.
So he didn't see any gold when he went there?
No, there were like 14 units of gold.
They only opened one.
They did no assays.
They didn't open up the boxes.
Wow.
It was a PR demonstration, and they showed pictures.
Wow, a lot of gold in there.
That's crazy.
But right now, the atmosphere is good.
So I wish Brandy well for the country's sake because, you know, somebody asked me, well, what do you think?
Well, I think about it, but I don't know.
But the other thing is they lend gold out and create it as a reserve, so to speak.
And I think not only if they go in and find out that they have, they can put up gold there and say, see, it's all there.
But sometimes you don't know who owns what.
And they go, this is the British gold.
It is French gold.
But I don't think it's a forest.
But the best effort I think could be made is, since it's such a fake, I think the people ought to own the gold.
But that's not the way it is.
And although the founders recognized gold and silver as legal tender, they did not recognize a central bank.
And that's where the line should have been drawn.
Well, Senator Rand Paul, as you know, is the chairman of Homeland Security and Government Oversight.
But there was another chairman a while ago who was also interested in this.
And in fact, thanks to Natalie Danielson, who dug up this old clip of another chairman in the chairman's seat.
Let's put on our earphones and listen to a minute of a really nice blast from the past about this Fort Knox gold.
We recognize this guy.
Let's listen to a minute of this.
For far too long, the United States government has been less than transparent in releasing information relating to its gold holdings.
Not surprisingly, this secrecy has been given, has given rise to a number of theories about the gold at Fort Knox and other depositories.
Some people speculate that the gold has been involved in gold swaps with foreign governments or bullion banks.
Others believe that the gold has secretly been shipped out of Fort Knox and sold.
And still others believe that the bars at Fort Knox are actually gold-plated tungsten.
Historically, the Treasury and the Mint have dismissed these theories rather than addressing these concerns with substantive rebuttals.
No one from Congress has been allowed to view the gold at Fort Knox in nearly 40 years.
Recent photographs of gold holdings seem to be hard to come by, and the mint and the inspector general's audit statements contain only the bare minimum of information.
Because the government has for so long refused to provide substantive information on okay, we can cut that out now.
That sounds like some kind of a Hollywood movie, you know.
That was suspicious.
We were conspiracy theorists.
Well, it's to me a big issue, like I've always said, that everything can be traced back to that because if you people who want power and control politically or financial, they want to know about the monetary system.
And in the old days, it was always related to gold.
Now it's indirectly related to gold because ultimately gold wins out.
See, we were spending all this money for years before 1971 that they, and that was when I was just getting started reading Austrian economics.
They said it can't be done.
This facade, American people weren't allowed to own gold.
And the foreign governments could.
They could put, we passed out all this money, bought up all this influence.
And so I think this guy in France, de Gaulle or somebody, he called our bluff.
He says, I want my gold back.
And that brought, they had to admit, and they called it bankruptcy in a way.
It is a bankruptcy.
But the stage was set where we in the United States were able to continue the process and defraud and use counterfeit money.
And the people were lulled into believing that the gold all those years was worth $35 an ounce.
Well, that quickly disappeared.
Within a couple of years, gold became legal again in this country.
It was illegal for American citizens for 42 years to own gold.
So I consider the re-legalization of gold, and I believe that was 1975, is a token effort to move in the direction of restoring a gold standard.
Because if people are sick of the Federal Reserve notes and don't trade them, they can always go out and buy a gold coin and be on their own gold standard.
And I don't think it's necessary to have an authoritarian type gold standard, even though when gold was used, then the Byzantine Empire used it for a thousand years, you know, and gold lasted that long, but it was honored as an honest weight.
So anyway, all this conversation I think is great because I'm against big government.
I'm against the wars that all the industrial complexes.
A good way to stop it all would be to have sound currency.
Absolutely.
Well, we'll see what gets structured.
That'll be neat.
It'll be fun to see.
I'm going to close out, Dr. Paul, by thanking our viewers on this Monday morning.
And let's go ahead and put on that very last clip, the very last one, which is to remind everyone.
We had a good weekend, Dr. Paul.
We sold a lot of tickets for our March 22nd Lake Jackson Conference.
Believe it or not, we have a nice venue down here, and that's the Dow Brazosport College Academic Center.
It's a nice venue.
If you've been down here, you'll know it's a nice place.
America in the Age of Trump 2.0.
Everyone's talking about this.
We've got some of the best experts out there that are going to come down and talk about this.
We've got our great friend Tom Woods, RPI board member David Stockwin, Jeff Dice, an old friend of ours, and board member John Duncan Jr. to come down and talk about, and Ron Paul to talk about what's going on, the good, the bad, and the ugly.
I do have a link at the bottom in the description to get your tickets.
We're getting close to half available tickets sold, and we're still more than a month out.
So I was pretty nervous a couple weeks ago because, you know, I'm always nervous about tickets.
Things are looking good.
Very good.
I too.
I'm looking forward to the events.
It's something I enjoy.
And the promise is that we always work to having a good time when we discuss these serious matters.
And we will be discussing them, but it'll be among friends.
There will be some difference of agreements and difference of opinion, but they will be minor compared to the disagreements that have existed in the prior four-year presidential efforts.
No, it will be serious.
I think it's very important for people to understand the principles of liberty.
And basically, that is it.
If you go back one step from the monetary issue and why that's so important, you go to the point where let the people decide how they spend their money.
It's their money, and they shouldn't have to ask the government.
Which means, if you follow that, if it's your money, there shouldn't be even an income tax.
There wouldn't ever be a military draft.
There would be a different world, and it would be more prosperous and more peaceful.
I want to thank everybody for tuning in today to the Liberty Report.