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March 4, 2025 - Ron Paul Liberty Report
29:49
What's On Your Bingo Card For Trump's 'State Of The Union' Speech?

President Trump is set to address a joint session of Congress tonight. Where will he focus? Where should he focus? Economy? Tariffs? Inflation? DOGE?

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Time Text
Union's First Speech 00:03:34
Hello, everybody, and thank you for tuning in to the Liberty Report with us today with Daniel McAdams, our co-host.
Daniel, good to see you this morning.
Good morning, Dr. Paul.
How are you this morning?
Good.
Are you prepared to spend more of your money and send it to the administration?
Or are we going to get more money back?
Our taxes are going to go down.
I like money.
Well, we'll find out.
You know, there's going to be a major speech and the president's to talk about how the union's doing.
But, you know, I keep thinking the state of the union, it applies some good, you know, a good intention.
But sometimes what I want to hear is the state of the republic.
Do we have a republic or do we have an authoritarian government?
Most people have within the union, the idea of a union, a lot of authoritarian things, interventionism.
And but it's good to think about this, but I'm sure tomorrow morning and even late tonight, there'll be a lot of talk about this.
And the enemies of Trump will certainly point out, oh, he said this once before, and now he's changed this.
But there's going to be challenges because Trump, I think, has come out as a very optimistic person.
He's very positive.
And I think people like that.
But the whole thing is, is the pretense that we can solve all the problems of the last 10, 20, 30 years because they're built in.
Inflation is built in, the foreign policy is built in, the intervention, the attack on our civil liberties and free speech.
That has been there.
And you're not going to be able to get rid of it real fast.
So he's going to have to dance around that a little bit.
And I guess the bottom line will be, what did it do to the polls?
Polls are important, at least for an hour or two.
And the RSA, well, he got himself into trouble here.
But ultimately, it takes a little bit longer than that.
I guess the first speech when Biden gave his first speech, people, what's going on here?
But that was downhill from there.
But, you know, so I'm interested in listening to this because Trump is very positive and he's a problem solver and he's a confident person and people like that.
I happen to think our problems are very, very big.
And I've always tried to follow the principle of not fibbing.
You know, if you have a problem, but end up with a positive note.
Yes, it's horrible, but the problem is not that difficult solving it if the people are just willing to go along with it.
So there's a lot, lots of activity going on there.
And there'll be a lot of media promises promotions tonight.
And I imagine a lot of speculation for the afternoon on what he might say.
Yeah.
Well, one thing, thankfully, we will not see tonight.
I don't think I could be wrong.
We won't see Nancy Pelosi tearing up his speech like she did last time.
Remember, that was a low point in American history, I think, when she did that.
That was just awful.
So here's what Trump tweeted out.
I think this is on his truth social.
What he put out yesterday, his anticipation, tomorrow night will be big.
I will tell it like it is.
So there is the promise here.
But, you know, we wanted to kind of talk a little bit about what we think he might say, what we think he should say.
And so we narrowed it down to a few topics.
Tariffs And The Economy 00:15:16
And something that's in the news today is tariffs.
He announced new tariffs, and he probably will talk about those tonight.
So I found a fascinating video that we'll put up, and it shows Trump on Fox News announcing the tariffs.
And you can see the Dow ticker in real time and you can see what's happening in the stock market when he announces this.
So let's queue up that first video put on your, your uh earpiece, Dr Paul, if you will, and let's we'll screen that and have a look now.
Watch at that ticker over there on the right when he mentions tariffs.
But so we're going april 2nd but, very importantly, tomorrow tariffs, 25 on Canada and 25 on Mexico and that'll start.
So they're going to have to have a tariff.
So what they have to do is build their car plants frankly, and other things in the United States, in which case they have no tariff.
You saw that go down in real time as he said tariffs.
Right, you know uh, you brought up interesting subject Pelosi, and how she, she was giving a talk the other day and she had the nerve to lecture the people and her Democratic friends.
We should be dignified and orderly and uh and and not not stupid.
You know I got what you mentioned.
It was so bad that uh, that I, I think.
But but the amazing thing was she up there was lecturing people how to, how to be, how to have a proper decorum on the house floor.
So what do you think about that market reaction to the announcement of tariffs?
That's pretty dramatic, don't you think?
Well, that is for sure, and of course, that uh helps uh settle some of the dispute.
But tariffs uh, tariffs are hard to predict on the short run or all-inclusive.
Sometimes a tariff will help, and sometimes it's short-lived and sometimes it lasts a long time.
Basically though, I I like to make it simple, tariffs are taxes.
I don't like taxes and the consumer has to pay them.
Yeah and uh, but protectionism is bred into the system.
That is why uh, you know the, the British finally went off.
Uh, you know, mercantilism is because of wage and price control and they repealed the corn laws and it ushered in the age of uh, of uh, of uh modern economics back then.
So it uh I, I just don't like them, it's authoritarian.
And they say well, we'll only do it to the people that are being unfair and that sort of thing.
But uh, I don't know I I, I think you know I don't like inflation because it interferes with price prices.
It tell you it, uh distorts the inflation rate and uh distorts all this activity.
So if they, if you have tariffs coming in there and uh, they don't know what the reactive tariff will be, what's going to be the reactive this by the country you put it on, and then it becomes war, and what will it lead to?
Or well, you know, Trump's capable of adjusting his speech without changes his tune tone, you know.
So you might see them.
Maybe uh, maybe even today's news might make him say, well, explain it a little bit better.
I think he was talking about 25 tariffs on China, Mexico and Canada, if i'm not mistaken.
That'll have a big effect.
And then, after a couple of weeks ago, he said, no, i'm not going to do that on Canada and Mexico, if you guys close your border.
They said okay, we'll close our border.
Now it looks like he's going to do it after all.
It's a little bit confusing.
Yeah, we'll find out.
I don't think it can be a positive.
It can't be a positive for uh, for the Republic and markets and uh our uh prosperity, but it'll be a hot political issue.
Now here's the thing that he did.
He explains though, when he's talking about it, and he puts this on Truth Social.
If you put that second clip on now, I want to see what you think about this doctor.
He did this last night.
If companies move to the United States, then there are no tariffs.
So does that make sense?
Do you think It makes sense on the short run to a couple people?
but uh, so what are they going to say when they do that, subsidize a newcomer?
And it's controversial.
And what if it hurts a company that's already been here working their company out for 20 years and finally build and they cut into that territory?
Yeah, this government, government decision-making, government planning is not good.
It's not that their heart isn't in the right place, but it's so narrow in the sense.
Well, if you give them this, everything will be okay.
Yeah, people need more money.
We'll print it.
Yeah, yeah, you know, this sort of thing.
Oh, yes, there's people fighting.
We don't like war.
Well, we better go there and end it.
We'll bomb them.
Yeah.
Or when people need more eggs, you can't just print them, right?
Yeah.
So the second one, we thought he'll obviously be talking about the economy quite a bit.
There are concerns and persistent inflation.
It's affecting his poll numbers.
Now, I just dug this up from the Hill, but there's plenty of stuff out here.
This is something based on new polls.
Put that first one up.
Trump economic approval ratings sag as inflation fears grow.
And this is at the beginning of this month, a couple of days ago.
Go to the next one.
It's a new Gallup poll.
According to February Gallup polling, 42% of Americans are giving a thumbs up to Trump's economic stewardship, while 54% are giving him a thumbs down.
Approval of Trump's handling of the economy also fell to 39% from 43% in polling released last week by Reuters Ipsos.
This is notably a lower mark compared to the start of Trump's first term in 2017 when his economic approval rating stood at 53%.
While this could reflect less enthusiasm about the economy more generally, it is also a notable thing to watch for the president's term.
He does, they do add that he now this Hill is obviously not a pro-Trump publication.
Keep that up, please.
Thank you.
Trump does still rank well above former President Biden on the economy.
They do add that.
Biden left with a 30%, 4%.
So clearly, it looks that persistent inflation is harming the president's approval rating.
Yes, and there's a lot of misunderstanding about inflation.
And sometimes people see if there is an emergency, a weather emergency or hurricanes, prices go up and they call that inflation.
It isn't.
Inflation is when the Federal Reserve is compelled to print money to satisfy the politicians in their collusion to maintain the deep state and make them all wealthy.
And that's harder, a little bit harder to explain.
And they get it getting together and get people to do it.
But the number I watch the most closely, because I think it's dependable, is what's the Congress doing?
Because they're reflecting the people.
The Congress, you know, right now, the Congress and the Trump administration, they're standing up and the people are going with them.
But what are we hearing now incessantly?
Now, are the, let's say, 60% or 70% know and understand what he's saying?
And we have to cut, but there's a lot of pressure going on, and and that's that.
That is what that makes a difference.
But the Republicans aren't exactly pure, even though they give a better argument for the uh, free market and sound money.
But uh here, here it's, uh they they, they do this, and what's the first bill?
They pass the budget bill they.
Well, we're in, we're in trouble.
It's we didn't spend all this money, but we have to spend some in order to get us out of trouble.
And if we lower taxes, we're going to have a boom in the economy and it's going to pay for it.
We'll worry about that later, but right now we have to have more money, and that is what they're saying is we have to have more inflation.
So they pass uh a four trillion, four trillion dollar increase in the debt limit in one year.
Oh boy.
So I would think that uh, people who are looking beyond the next week uh uh uh uh, you know business finances.
Uh, they might say well maybe maybe uh, it's impossible, they're well intended, but I think that four trillion dollars is uh admission that uh, with all these efforts and and many benefits coming from this attack on waste and fraud uh, and inefficiency is not that looks right now.
I don't think the American people believe it's going to stop inflation.
Matter of fact, there's it.
They look like there's going to be more inflation and uh, of course uh, many people in the population have have had a little experience with uh tariffs and tariffs are inflationary.
Yeah, it doesn't.
Doesn't lower prices.
Well, i'm glad you said what is Congress doing, because that's important and I I came across something literally as we were about to hit the show starting.
It's someone from someone that we watched closely.
This is a bonus clip exactly about what Congress is doing.
This is a post that was put up by senator Rampaul and this is a six part.
I'm just going to read the first two because I think it's interesting.
This is exactly what you're saying.
So, senator Paul starts by saying, you would think that the revelations concerning the State Department paying for Trans Operas, comic books and such would shame Congress into reducing foreign aid.
Then he continues, but watch your congressperson closely.
In a matter of days, Congress will vote to continue foreign aid at current levels for another year.
What an insult to the American taxpayer.
This is what people are paying attention to.
Everyone's looking at Doge.
That's great, but this is where the rubber hits the road and and that means the size of government will grow in spite of all these efforts.
But the efforts in the past have been made, but I kept my fingers crossed and was hopeful that uh, the determination this time to cut.
Remember, at the beginning of all this attack on waste and fraud, they even supported my position, do away with all foreign aid.
Yeah, you know, and they said that sounds like a good idea.
But here here we are.
You know, the real thing is what they're doing, those kind of votes there yeah, Yeah, well, we'll start with four.
If they're getting $4 trillion, there's nothing I say.
We haven't even had the major emergency yet.
There's going to be an emergency before the end of this year.
There always will be.
The emergency is always, there's not enough money.
What are we going to do?
Taxpayer.
We'll speculate a little bit on Ukraine.
It's been a dramatic week.
We talked about it yesterday.
Zelensky came to town.
It didn't go very well.
Then he went to the UK.
I guess it went well.
I don't know.
Trump is still floating this deal.
He signed the minerals deal, signed the minerals deal, which we've been skeptical about because it further entangles us in a relationship with Ukraine, which is the last thing we want to do.
We want to disentangle.
So we don't know what the president's going to say.
Zelensky, now, I read this before we started.
He's already backing down.
I'm eager to work under President Trump, what have you.
But now, here's something that President Trump said last night.
This is going to be an audio clip, and he's talking about Zelensky's seeming hesitancy in making a deal.
You want to put your might want to put your earpiece in, Dr. Paul.
This is a short clip of the president talking about the implications for Zelensky if he refuses to make a deal and to talk.
Let's go ahead and hear it.
Very fast.
Now, maybe somebody doesn't want to make a deal.
And if somebody doesn't want to make a deal, I think that person won't be around very long.
That person will not be listened to very long because I believe that Russia wants to make a deal.
I believe certainly the people of Ukraine want to make a deal.
They've suffered more than anybody else.
We talk about.
That's a pretty pointed threat.
If you don't want to make a deal, you're not going to be around for long.
That's for sure.
You know, that whole thing that going on and coming and signing up a deal on how to divvy up on the rare earth metals.
This to me is in the foreign policy.
It's always been there.
What are we going to benefit if we win this war, you know, in natural resources?
But it's been more open this time.
And Trump is not bashful about this.
You know, there's oil in Syria.
You know, we have to deal with it.
And now Ukraine evidently is one of those potential areas that could be a wonderful, wonderful country, you know, under natural resources.
But they got mixed up.
There was a competition for the type of government that they wanted.
And they certainly had to put up with the attack on communism.
And maybe that's the reason why some of them are still leery of Russia.
But they sometimes wanted to sit all with a sort of a fascist system instead of the communist system.
And here they have all these wonderful resources.
But the outsiders, you know, whether it's all the way back to World War I and World War II and what part of the world was divvied up afterwards, it had a lot to do with these resources.
And the planners sitting down, well, we'll draw new lines here and we'll make sure it's fair and everybody will be, they have the right of self-determination and all that nonsense.
And then they end up just setting the stage for the next big war.
And it looks like some people would just as soon start this next big war.
I hope enough brains are left where they realize that the policies aren't very good.
Yeah, I'm still confused about this whole minerals deal because the economists even came out with a report earlier this week saying there's really not a lot of minerals and they're really not worth that much in Ukraine.
So I don't know what the big hoopla is if it's some sort of, I mean, the whole thing seems like a shimmer.
It doesn't seem like the reality.
So I don't know what the whole thing's about.
Maybe it's to get him to visually capitulate to Trump's will, but it just seems, it seems strange to me.
Now, the next one, this is the wild card.
This is the wild card of what Trump may say.
This is the outside, outside edge of the possibility, but one I think that we would welcome.
Now, this is an account on X.
This is not a government account, but they call themselves U.S. Homeland Security News.
Go back to the previous one, please.
So here is the, here's speculation.
Alert, unconfirmed reports that President Trump will announce that the U.S. is leaving NATO in his joint address to the U.S. Congress tomorrow.
This would be the greatest news in modern history, says U.S. Homeland Security News on X. What do you think the chances of him saying that are going to be?
Less than 50-50.
That's still pretty good.
Yeah.
You know, that would be pretty neat.
Trump's Potential NATO Announcement 00:02:14
But then you think about how can they, where's this pressure come from?
Yeah.
You know, prevent this from happening.
But, you know, the Europeans are pretending that, oh, the Americans are leaving us.
We better start our own NATO.
You know, who knows, something like that.
In currencies, that can happen.
You know, one country like the British and now America, they throw their weight along with a strong currency and then eventually they have to change.
In a foreign policy, that's the case too.
There's a limit on the foreign policy.
Most of the time, it's a limit on spending and the ability to do it and having the people put up with it.
Once they discover that when you spend a lot of money in Ukraine, you might push up the price of bread here in this country, and maybe we shouldn't be there.
And now I think it's just great that they're tying in a NATO, you know, because that just sort of makes everybody, you know, responsible.
They have to go together.
You're in a group.
And, you know, they always overplay this.
There's an absolute thing if they ever decide that there's to be a war, that there's nothing that you can do about it.
But if NATO, but we've gone along with it, we've usually led the charge.
But the truth is, is if the European countries, members of NATO start something, if the Congress of American people said, no, we're not going to do it, there's no way they could make people do it.
But there's a group of people, the people who like globalism and like this guy, you know, type of management of all the countries come together and they feel very powerful and they do.
They wield a lot of power.
But I think why it's exciting, but very dangerous.
We're going through the early transition of how do you adjust to a total bankruptcy of a very, very wealthy country.
And the adjustment period is going to be difficult.
But because who's going to admit, who's going to admit and say, you know, we're bankrupt.
And we just can't do this.
We have to change.
Illegal Protests and Federal Intervention 00:07:07
And then there would be have to say to have a have Rand stand up like it's astounding.
They're going to vote for more foreign aid after all that talk.
That should be the easy one.
Yeah, exactly.
Exactly.
So we'll just do one more here.
Now, this is something that Trump, I think he said this morning, and it raises a few issues.
I don't know if he's going to talk about, we don't know.
We're speculating, but this is something that he put out that's gotten a lot of attention.
So he said, all federal funding will stop for any college, school, or university that allows illegal protests.
Agitators will be imprisoned or permanently sent back to the country from which they came.
American students will be permanently expelled or, depending on the crime, arrested.
No masks.
Thank you for your attention to this matter.
What do you make of this, Dr. Paul?
is typical of what happened.
We get involved in doing something we shouldn't be doing, interventioning some overseas and us throwing our weight around and giving people money and they have to do what we tell them and everything seems to be okay.
But then when it comes along and they do things that we don't like and then we have to punish them so we have to take that away.
But why do they take it away?
Why did we give it to them?
If you're going to give them the money, you're losing control of it.
It's morally and constitutionally and everything else.
We give away our authority.
It's our money.
So what do they do?
They say, well, we'll do this.
And even they said illegal protests.
American students will be permanently expelled.
I mean, it's the whole thing.
So it's like my first comment is I would say, Mr. President, I agree with you.
We should stop that immediately.
I'm delighted you're doing that.
But we should concentrate always on the origin.
The origin was a long time ago, but it was really put into the legal code when we had, and I was part of the vote that voted, the smaller part of the vote that voted against it under Carter voting for the Department of Education when it was unified.
But this, I've heard people in the current administration say this should be an easy one.
You know, we're not going to cut a thing.
We're just going to say, here, the state, you take care of it, and that's it.
You know, and the federal government be out of it.
Then you wouldn't have this kind of stuff because it's impossible because it's a sort of a trap.
Because the first thing is, would I want to vote against that?
He wants to stop all federal funding for these terrible, terrible people.
Of course, they should be stopped.
But what they're doing is that is a result of the mistake by giving them the money in the first place.
And then what if they start doing other things and they're regulating freedom of speech?
So I like to start at the beginning and say, don't give them the money in the first place.
And, you know, and then you don't have this contest between trying to clean up something you've actually created.
Foreign policy is a lot like that in a way.
Yeah, the federal government shouldn't have so much leverage over what universities do.
Some may be more generous in how they have protests and some may not, the others may not be.
It does raise some concerning issues, though, because this is sort of a the question is, what is an illegal protest?
Is it if you have a protest and you start whacking people upside the head?
Well, that's already illegal.
You already go to jail for doing that.
I suspect it's also an attempt to crack down on speech that people around Trump don't like, criticism of Israel, for example.
And so in that way, this is sort of a right-wing wokeism that everyone who happens to criticize the government of Israel is somehow anti-Semitic or what have you.
So I sense this, and I think you're right.
The solution is don't have any government money.
I mean, you were the Hillsdale and Grove City, I think.
I don't know if they're still that way, but they just don't take government money.
So they don't have anything to worry about if they want to let people go protest or whatever they want to do.
But the large majority of people who, then they say, well, the cost of education has gone up.
Subsidize something.
You get more of it.
And so they run out of money.
Well, the kids just don't have enough money.
So we'll loan them the money.
Oh, that's a good idea.
We won't just pay for everything.
We'll just loan, make them pay back until the bill gets to us.
They don't have any money.
Oh, okay.
We'll forget it.
We won't collect any money from.
We'll cancel that debt.
So it's the beginning of these things that has to be looked at no matter how clear-cut it seems that if you do this, take that money and stop it, it doesn't answer it.
How do we get ourselves into that mess?
And most of the time it's done with sometimes good intentions and sometimes with humanitarian instincts.
And sometimes it's done with pure confusion.
And sometimes it's done with maliciousness of promoting.
Uh a, a uh political philosophy.
That is detestable, and you put it all together and you end up with a mess.
That's why people should make their own decision.
Most of these decisions should be made by families and local community and, at the worst part, let the states deal with it.
You know, but uh, to have the federal government.
So when I heard the people in the administration talking about that, it sounded to me like this is one that they ought to be able to do, just cut it off, eliminate it, and not saying, no, i'm not closing down anything, we're just here, hand in all those programs.
If the states won't fund it and they don't want it good, do what they ever want, but um, it's a, it's a problem that's going to be around for a while, i'm sure.
Absolutely final question, are you going to watch the speech reluctantly?
Well no, let me do it.
What I do is I try to, but then sometimes, you know, I don't last the whole night.
I I, I will at times afterwards like to hear Uh, or I I, I feel compelled to try to listen to the pundits afterwards.
Yeah oh what, what do I?
What did I think about that?
Oh, i'll talk, i'll listen to this guy, he'll tell me what i'm supposed to think.
Well, i'll do a hat tip to Elon.
I'll probably watch clips on his ex and see which one are the juiciest clips and maybe we'll talk about it tomorrow.
But i'm going to close out and put on that last clip, reminding everyone, get those tickets, come out and see us.
As you can see from today's show the good, the bad and the ugly we're not partisan in any way.
We're going to look at all three good, bad and ugly at our conference on march 22nd down here in Lake Jackson.
So get those tickets.
I will put a link in there.
If I forget to put a link in there, just go to Ronpaulinstitute.org.
It's at the top of the page, so we'll hope to see you there.
Back to you, dr Paul.
Spread the Message 00:01:26
Oh wonderful, and I too want to encourage Uh, our viewers to consider very seriously coming to the conference, and that is where we have the most fun spreading ideas, and that's the most important thing is to do that, and we, if once an individual gets to this point where they say, you know, I think this freedom business is a pretty good idea and that if you're looking for peace and prosperity,
we ought to pursue it we ought to see what the founder says about peace and prosperity and and freedom, and that is, of course, not complex, but it's a very big issue.
And uh, I think everybody has a responsibility uh voluntarily, Of course, to spread this message, because it will make all the difference in the world.
It was a tremendous thing for our founders to establish and use it and write the Constitution, but it has a lot of holes in right now.
There were defects at the beginning, but those holes are very, very much in a defect, they're defective.
And it is up to us to spread the message.
It is not complex.
Just let people know that there's a natural law that says, naturally speaking, people know they're not supposed to lie, cheat, steal, or kill.
If everybody followed that rule, guess what we would have?
Peace and prosperity.
I want to thank everybody for tuning in today to the Liberty Report.
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