Thomas Massie Vindicated On COVID 'Stimulus' Spending
Back in early 2020 when Congress rushed to pass trillions in "emergency" COVID spending, US Rep. Thomas Massie warned that it would be the biggest wealth transfer from the middle class to the elites in history. As DOGE is finding out, Massie was absolutely right. Trillions spent to the benefit of the political classes and crumbs dropping from the table to the middle and working classes. Also today...US voted against UN resolution condemning Russia for Ukraine. What's up?
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?
Good.
Looking for good news.
Can we find any today?
A little bit.
Is our government smaller?
Because there's been a revolution, you know.
It's ongoing.
And the people spoke here recently, and they it looks like the political position for the majority of American people is they're sick and tired of what they've had.
But you know what?
They always are agreeable that the government is too big unless you get around to cutting something they like.
Then all of a sudden there's some resistance.
But the evidence is coming out about some of the atrocious mistakes and waste of money.
And it's just hard to believe.
And there was a neat little revelation in Zero Heads today.
It says, Vegas hotel rooms, MLB stadium rentals, and more.
Those find schools misused.
Oh, I can't believe it.
Misused billions in COVID funds.
You mean they were doing it way back then?
But they did.
So they misuse it.
But you say, well, why do they do it?
Well, the money's there.
You know, the money's there.
What are you going to do with it?
You know, we have to spend it.
And, you know, in government, it's been said, and we've mentioned it on TV, you know, on our program, that if you don't finish your budget, you don't get it for the next year.
So there's no effort whatsoever to have any money left over.
And so there's a real benefit by keeping it going because that's how you get the next year's fundraising.
So that's what they end up doing.
And they put it in things that are totally wasteful.
And it's part of the economic phenomenon of monetary inflation because it disrupts wise choices.
And the money that flows to governments, even under those circumstances, will be excessive if you're living with monetary inflation.
There'll be a lot more cash and then more mistakes are made.
We know that happens in economics.
Oh, interest rates are low and a lot of cash there and conditions are good and they overinvest and contribute to bubbles.
In this case, it's the governments that participate in the double in the problems as well.
So they go out and spend money.
All they do is create another bubble.
And I think this is what we're seeing here is bubbles created by the government money and government judgment.
So in the market, once in a while, they take part of that bubble and somebody buys something decent, but too many mistakes made.
But you can just be assured.
I consider almost everything the government does as a mistake because they've taken the money illegally and they're involved in things they shouldn't even be involved in.
And of course, that would be the answer to our many problems.
But there were a few people even at the beginning that wondered about whether this was a good idea.
Yeah, absolutely.
Well, put up that first clip because this is the comes out.
Now, these are kind of sensational headlines, and that's fine because it gets people's attention.
Vegas hotel rooms, MLB stadium rentals, and more.
Doge finds schools misused billions in COVID funds.
And it goes into some of the details.
If you go to the next one, you'll see a little bit more detail about what it was.
Doge also found schools spent COVID relief funds on swimming pool passes and even an ice cream truck.
60 grand on swimming pool passes and ice cream truck.
Well, the thing is that they point out the absurdities of this and it gets people's attention.
But the real question should be, why do politicians never learn?
Why do they keep doing it?
As if this has never happened before?
Oh my gosh, it's like they're gambling in here from Casablanca.
You know, it's exactly that.
Why do they keep doing it over and over again?
And you say the one of them is that all the money's there.
That's why it happens.
And the second for the reason for the abuses is that they keep doing it over and over.
But as you alluded to, there's one person who did get it at the time.
And I wanted to play this.
This is a famous clip now.
This is from March of 2020 when everyone was flipping out over COVID.
When we had to, we don't even ask a question about it.
Pass the stimulus.
We're all going to die.
Kind of reminds you of 2008, right?
Just pass the money.
Stop bothering us.
Well, let's listen to Massey.
And this is the two minute and two second mark.
So you're going to have to cue that and listen to what he predicted right at that time.
Put your earphone in, Dr. Paul, before we start this up, your earpiece so you can hear what Massey is saying here.
This is Massey.
As Congress was passing a $6 million trillion dollar sorry stimulus, let's hear Massey.
Right.
Real quick, sir, you called this the biggest wealth transfer in the history of mankind to Wall Street and bankers.
What do you mean?
Well, I mean, there's $1,200 checks in this.
I think that's the cheese in the trap.
If you take $6 trillion and divide it by 100 million families, that's $60,000.
Where is all that money going?
It ain't going to all the families.
Now, you may say there's a good argument for propping up the banks of Wall Street, and there may be a good argument, but let's be honest, that's where most of the money's going.
That $1,200 stimulus check is cheese in the trap, is what Massey said.
You know, when you were doing your opening, a thought crossed my mind.
It's time we rounded up the usual suspects.
There are plenty of them.
But he was one of the few that spoke out before it happened.
That's the big difference between people who have a different understanding of liberty as well as economic policy.
And there can be anticipation.
You've done a lot of work on foreign policy in the same way.
If they were listening only to you, we wouldn't be involved in anything.
But just think the military industrial complex wouldn't even like you less.
Yeah, well, he absolutely got that right.
Biggest transfer of wealth in history from Wall Street and the bankers to Wall Street and the bankers from the middle class.
But here's more on the on the article that we're talking about.
If you can put that next clip up.
And this is from the same article.
The Fox News report says that the Trump administration is tightening oversight on the remaining 4 billion in funds.
There's something known that there's still $4 billion left, but requiring receipts before release.
So just they now just started thinking about getting receipts.
A doge wrote in a post on X: all of this money was drawn without with zero documentation.
So there's no documentation of the spending.
So they basically just don't even show it.
Just take the money.
And your argument would be, well, all the money's there.
Yeah, if the money wasn't there, but that's the system we've been living with.
People say, well, we've lived it for a long time and there's been some good times and conditions.
A lot of people have gotten wealthy in this situation, but it's ups and downs and innocent people suffer the consequences.
Wars are started.
People die.
It's on and on.
But it is true when you look at the maximum amount of wealth in this country, it is pretty amazing.
In spite of our stupidities and misunderstanding of how we should operate in a government, there's still some wealth.
And that's the temptation.
Well, we got away with it before.
Oh, wait, it was bad, but we got over it.
And they go on and on.
And that's the only tool they have left is when conditions get bad and the conditions are created by them.
The only tool they have is more of the same.
It's like the alcoholic, the drug.
druggie.
The only thing that's going to make them feel better is more of the drug.
And the drug is, you know, the deceit that they get by endless size of government growth and pay for it through fiat money.
And eventually the people catch on.
And yet when they catch on, they're not Thomas Massey who understands it and warns about it.
They say, what's going on?
Oh, the gougers are out there.
The unions are doing this too.
And we have to have more controls.
And obviously, we're short money.
Send me more money.
Send more money.
Sounds like a leader that we know in Ukraine.
But let's do one more thing because I know this is, I clip this because I know that this is going to really resonate with you.
If you put that next JPEG up, Moms for Liberty wrote, recall those school board meetings when the ruling elites of COVID stand branded mothers as selfish disruptors simply for challenging their interpretation of the science and scrutinizing how they allocated those funds.
Never let them forget we were right about everything.
Good point.
But the point they missed is who is responsible for the children?
Yeah.
Yeah.
You know, and no, it's the government, you know, and it takes a community.
Yeah, it takes a village to raise our children.
And yes, and look at it.
Look at the schools right now.
But, you know, I'm still holding out that it's one thing that I hear a clear answer, you know, from the new administration is there's no even reason.
You don't do, you're not doing anything to destroy education.
You're improving education.
But there's no justification for the Department of Education other than, you know, the people who materially benefit from this.
Sprint more money, more jobs, and unions benefit and whole work.
So that is a shame.
I mean, the default from Congress should be the default should be that it's going to be wasted.
This money's going to be wasted.
So prove to me beyond a reasonable doubt that it's not going to be wasted.
And instead, they don't learn and they never learn.
And in fact, I dug this up and our old friend Clint Russell with Liberty Lockpod, great guy, by the way.
Now, he put this up.
We're going to play the video before I read what Clint said.
But this is just an example of how they never learn.
Put up this.
This is now our Speaker of the House, Mike Johnson.
Listen to what he said about all the stuff we're finding about USAID.
Because even though we requested the data and requested the insight, it was hidden.
How many of you know that bureaucracy was not forthcoming, right?
They're not transparent.
That's the whole point.
That's the problem.
That's the deep state we talk about.
So they were hiding from Congress.
We didn't know that USAID was funding drag shows in Peru or whatever, you know, transgender operas in Colombia or whatever.
You know, it's madness.
But Elon has cracked the code.
He is now inside the agencies.
He's created these algorithms that are constantly crawling through the data.
And as he told me in his office, the data doesn't lie.
We're going to be able to get the information.
We're going to be able to transform the way the federal government works.
At the end of this, that is a very exciting prospect.
Go to that clip because I want to read Clint Russell's reaction.
He says, he quoted Speaker Johnson, we didn't know.
And then Clinton Russell says, if you didn't know what you were funding, then why did you continue to vote trillions of dollars into the abyss?
Your job, basically your only job, is to control the government by its purse strings.
We should never have needed Doge.
This is on you.
That's a great point from Clinton.
And he's, here's, you know, Jones, we didn't know.
And they have no answer.
Yeah.
Yeah.
They have no answer.
And it's the fact that this appropriation occurs.
But, you know, where do you stop the blame?
In many ways, you have to go all the way back, especially in a true republic.
And we don't have a true republic.
We have worked our way into the distaste of a democracy that runs by dictatorship of the majority.
And that's different.
But a true republic would rebel against this sooner, you know, and stop that.
But that isn't the case.
And he gets away with a statement like that, no matter what.
And I just am amazed also that they never seem to learn from this.
And I think that is a big issue.
They don't learn from it.
But I think in their minds, you know, whatever they could, you guys talk neat talk.
But the truth is, is you guys never learned anything.
What kind of education did you have?
Who were your teachers in economics?
What do you know about our history?
What do you know about personal liberty?
You know, they say that we're the uneducated.
Yet it took probably a thousand years to arrive at the point where our founders tried to put it together.
And yet they'll say the same thing.
But I think this whole idea that the people who perpetuate things that are obviously dangerous and create chaos and misery and deaths and wars and all the things that go on, if they don't respond to it, they always have some patriotic reason escape for it.
And then the people who go out and carry out the orders of bombing people they don't even know and they weren't even threatened by them.
You know, they think that is the answer and they're the heroes.
Direction Shift?00:11:10
They have it mixed up.
Yeah.
Now, do you remember back in March of 2020 when they were passing this $6 trillion?
And remember, they said, oh, it's too dangerous for us to come in and vote.
We'll just vote from home.
And Massey said, no, I want a recorded vote.
I want people to be in here.
I'm going to call for a quorum if you're not down here voting.
And remember how they attacked him for that?
They attacked him for just requiring that they show up.
Show your face.
If you're going to spend $6 trillion, show your face.
Yeah, you know, and even those who were radically opposed to us, and even though the evidence that this comes out, you know, it supports our position, they still don't soften their position.
Maybe they do deep down.
They can't say it as loud as they did, but they still stick to it.
They don't come out.
There are some probably, I'm sure, well, I think I misjudged on this and maybe I was overboard, but they don't.
They stick to it.
And policies don't get changed because this has been the first time it's ever been threatened.
And I think it's the Trump administration that is leading the charge against these weird, ridiculous things.
Yeah, absolutely.
Well, the second thing he just wanted to bring up is pretty interesting, actually.
And I was surprised when I first heard it yesterday.
I had to go check because I wasn't sure it was true.
But go to that next clip now.
Yesterday was the third anniversary of the Russian special military operation in Ukraine.
And what happened?
Every year, every anniversary, they do a vote.
Ukraine drafts it.
They wrote on about how Russia completely unprovoked, full-fledged war against Ukraine.
This year, something different happened.
On the war's third anniversary, the U.S. voted against a U.N. resolution blaming Russia for starting it.
And now go to the next one.
This is the vote.
You can see it up here on the screen.
And I think it's the New York Times.
U.S. and European allies split sharply at the UN over Ukraine.
And you'll see over there on the far.
Right, the United States with that red.
That means they voted against this resolution condemning Russia for its unprovoked aggression.
Now people are spinning this Dr Paul saying oh uh, Trump has turned sides.
He's on Putin's Snow, but my interpretation.
I could be wrong.
I just think that Trump is thinking to himself.
This is a symbolic gesture.
It doesn't do anything to move us toward a settlement.
Insulting the other side is what they've been doing for long enough.
Let's stop name calling and get on with business.
You know, we've worked on this issue for a long time, even before 2014, because this was gearing up and it was well known on what the promises of NATO and the West and the United States was about, how Russia wanted to be treated.
I mean, they were giving certain things up, they were getting rid of the Cold War, and uh.
Yet they went ahead and uh anyway, defied all that and they were able to control.
The media say it has nothing to do with the West reneging on their promises and this.
This is one though, and I know you know the history of the evidence for this the people who conspired, and it was really.
I was trying to just look at it quickly and find out it was, but the one thing is, why did the Ukraine war start?
And they some summarize it, Russia soon annexed Crimea after a highly disputed referendum.
Now, that's true, you know the the, the treaty, or the the election was.
They were getting rid of it because the democracy was saying, no, we want we, we have a couple Russian type people in this country, we want to get along with them.
So they, they did that and uh, now that's still.
They said that it was all NATO and all U.s.
And well no, nobody says the?
U.s because or U.s.
It was always uh, you know yeah, Europeans and others that uh, that invaded uh, you know that to caused Russia to invade because they, they were being mistreated and uh, and they still work on that.
But this, that's why you uh expressed the.
You know, a real surprise.
This is the first time an official source has said you know, this might not be true folks, maybe maybe we had it wrong.
That, to me, is very encouraging that they that they're, you know, seeking the truth is what they're doing, because they just think how long this has been going on.
Well historically, it goes on forever, because you could go all the way back to World War One or World War ii and find out what kind of shenanigans and lying they did to uh prompt uh our governments to send kids over there, uh which, as far as I'm concerned, didn't amount to any positive, positive things about promoting liberty and peace, even though it was done in the name of doing that.
You know, they might not have even voted against it because they thought it's untrue.
Maybe they felt it's true, but I sense they're thinking, what's the point of continuing calling names and pointing fingers?
How does that promote diplomacy to getting this war ending?
Because as Trump himself said, you guys have been doing this for three years and you're no closer to peace.
So even if some of them may have felt that Russia is the aggressor, they thought, well, what is the benefit of pointing this out yet again?
So who knows?
Maybe Trump's experience in business sent a message because everything he did in business was not a magnificent success.
So what he was doing was looking at the bottom line.
If things weren't going well, they didn't work out the way he thought.
And then he would change his position.
And maybe he's applying that principle that he learned.
Look, if you've lost money for three years, why do we keep doing this?
So if we're losing lives and losing our money and the people are dissenting, the people are trying to send the message.
It'd be interesting to see a poll done now on where people are on supporting this whole position.
I doubt if Trump lost any support because he finally did this.
No, I don't think so.
And to that point, Dr. Paul, I did one final clip of Trump.
This is an audio clip that we'll listen to of Trump when McClun was there.
And he outlined his view of foreign policy.
And I have to say, I'm biased because I've done foreign policy for a long time.
It's music to my ears to hear him say this, even if he doesn't 100% follow through the way I think he should, just raising this as an issue.
Let's cue that last video and let's listen to the whole thing because he makes, hold on, one second.
He makes a great point about foreign policy here.
I've been elected by the American people to restore common sense to Washington and indeed to the world.
And I believe strongly that it's in the best interest of the United States, the best interest in Europe, the best interest of Ukraine, and indeed the best interest of Russia to stop the killing now and bring the world to peace.
My administration is making a decisive break with the foreign policy failures of the past administration and frankly, the past.
I ran against a very foolish foreign policy establishment, and their recklessness has led to the death of many, many people.
Under our administration, we're forging a new path that promotes peace around the world.
I've been he's running against a reckless, failed foreign policy establishment.
You know, that's great stuff.
That is great.
It is.
You know, we made criticism, a lot of others did.
They came from conservative libertarian viewpoint that Trump didn't have very good advice in his first tour.
And he was listening to the wrong people.
And this time, you know, it's different.
And I'm sure you have ideas about who actually is in there doing that.
I think you give a lot of credit to the president because he has to make the final decision.
Maybe he said, you know, you don't keep doing the same thing if it doesn't give you good results.
But there's probably a couple very good people on foreign policy giving them advice.
And once the momentum is in a direction, even those people that were appointed that weren't dedicated constitutionalists, anti-intervention people, and they, well, it sounds good.
I'll go along with it.
I can do that.
And all of a sudden, they fold, you know, they blend in and they can follow the message.
Maybe that works in the opposite way when the leadership is doing exactly the wrong thing.
Oh, I've got to get along with the president.
Well, now I think the momentum is in the right direction.
So I thought that was a great vote.
And now it's time we can get rid of the United Nations.
Yeah, yeah.
Vote it and get out of it.
So anyway, I'm going to close out, Dr. Paul, just with a reminder on that very last clip.
I'm going to skip a couple of clips.
Just go to the end.
Remind yourself of what we're going to be talking about here in just about a little over three weeks.
And that is the Ron Paul Institute Spring Conference down here in Lake Jackson, America in the age of Trump 2.0.
Aircraft are blazing.
Hot air balloons are going up.
The planets are spinning.
And we're going to talk about all of that when we get together.
So I'll put a link when we're done.
I forgot to do it beforehand, but I'll put a link in the bottom to get your tickets.
We just passed the halfway point, Dr. Paul, in terms of ticket sales.
We're going to have a full room there.
I sense it very much.
Well, I think we're on the right track.
There's more exposure now of the insanities of government, foreign policy, as well as stupidities in the way they spend the money.
So I say that that's a big step in the right direction.
But there's still a bigger step, and that is actually implementing it.
And that is cut the spending and get back to common sense for a government in a republic to protect our liberties, not to come in and say that we're going to take care of everybody, every social welfare program we're going to fund, printing money if we need it, and give up on the silliness and the ridiculousness of a Federal Reserve system that thinks fiat money can solve the problem as long as the right people are printing the money.
So I think the steps are going in the right direction, but I think there's another hurdle to get over, and that is implement it because there's a lot of people who are still, you know, benefiting from what has happened in the past, and they don't want to lose it.
We've heard it from them already.
So it will not be easy.
But I think you have to have the idea and somebody speaking out and saying enough is enough.
And in many ways, we pick up on when Trump does that and we say, that's a good statement.
And when he starts saying something, something about not joining in the gang at the United Nations, I would say that we're going in the right direction.
I want to thank everybody for tuning in today to the Liberty Report.