Ron Paul Liberty Report - Time To Reverse Biden's Attack On The First Amendment! With Guest Ben Swann.

March 5, 2025 - Ron Paul Liberty Report

28:44

Time To Reverse Biden's Attack On The First Amendment! With Guest Ben Swann.

Toward the end of his presidency, Joe Biden (or whoever was running things) slapped draconian sanctions on the Russian-funded RT and related news outlets based on the false and widely disproved accusation that Russia interfered in US elections on Trump's behalf. Do American presidents have the authority to restrict what kind of news Americans can watch? Journalist Ben Swann joins today's Liberty Report to discuss.
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Dr. Ron Paul's Liberty Mindset 00:05:24
	Hello, everybody, and thank you for tuning in to the Liberty Report.
	With us today, we have Daniel McAdams, our co-host.
	Daniel, welcome to the program.
	Good morning, Dr. Paul.
	How are you this morning?
	Good.
	Good.
	Exciting.
	We have a special guest today.
	We do indeed.
	He's been around a bit.
	He's been a good friend.
	Yes.
	So we'll be introducing Ben Swan here in a minute, but we're delighted to have him with us today.
	But I have to ask you, Ben, I'm very pleased that you're here to this program, and I want to thank you for coming.
	Thank you guys for having me.
	Right.
	And but I want to know, because this is the most important question I want to ask you today.
	Did you listen to that speech last night?
	Sure did.
	Absolutely.
	The whole thing.
	Part of your business, right?
	It is.
	Part of your job.
	I did pretty well.
	Sometimes I get tired of those things, but I did listen to it.
	I wanted to make sure all the Texas delegation were, you know, behaving themselves.
	It turned out that didn't work out so well.
	And here I thought Texans were polite people.
	But anyway, Ben, we're glad to have you.
	But I was looking at your resume.
	I remember you when you were in Cincinnati out of the blues starting to talk about one of my campaigns.
	I know, boy, where's this guy coming from?
	I wonder.
	But, you know, and looking at your resume, I came across something I wasn't aware of.
	And maybe that's where you were coming from.
	That is, you're from a large family, and all your siblings and yourself were educated in homeschooling.
	Is that correct?
	That's right.
	That's right.
	10 kids, and we were all homeschooled by our mom.
	Wow.
	And, you know, I always ask people that I meet that I don't know too much about, how did you get started?
	Who was it that influenced you?
	What was it?
	And I got to this point.
	I said, I wonder if homeschooling had anything to do with your philosophic upbringing.
	Oh, it absolutely has a huge, huge impact on that upbringing.
	But I will say, you know, I was raised a conservative.
	I would say early in my life.
	I was a neocon.
	And so homeschooling didn't give me a liberty mindset.
	Dr. Ron Paul gave me a liberty mindset.
	That's really where my transformation took place because I was just covering you as a journalist and having to cover you required me, just like the speech last night, listening to you and then started to say, oh my gosh, this guy makes sense in the things he's saying.
	He's not just, you know, coming up with crazy stuff.
	This actually makes sense.
	And so what I would say is my homeschooling background taught me to challenge things.
	And so I was more open, I think, to actually listening to the ideas and challenging those ideas, as opposed to a lot of people who, once they're already set in the mindset, there's no getting out of it.
	So in a way, you being a good journalist, you know, taught you to be open-minded.
	You're not there to, oh, okay, what am I supposed to say to support this position?
	You actually looked at it and it dawned on you there might be a different way.
	No, that's delightful.
	I happen to have my own little homeschooling program, and we're very pleased with good stories, but it's small in numbers.
	And I think it's very important because it dawned on me that after I left government schools, that would be grade school, high school, college, and the whole works.
	It took me, I kept telling myself, you know what?
	I've discovered this new method, you know, called Austrian economics and libertarianism.
	I say, I'm spending as much time unlearning the things I had learned all those years in government schools.
	And that sometimes is not easy to do.
	It's not like turning off a switch.
	But anyway, I think that's what got me interested in trying to introduce people to the ideas of liberty at an early age.
	And I think it's so important.
	That's why we have that.
	Now, I'm also very much aware of your very consistent dedication to the First Amendment, which is pretty important to us and to anybody who cares about looking for the truth.
	I happen to think the world's made up of two people, the nihilists and the people seeking truth.
	And right now, it's getting as confusing, as confusing as it is to me about who's seeking truth.
	It's not always easy who's lying about seeking for the truth.
	You hear statements made, and they sound wonderful, yet they're really, they're really not seeking the truth.
	So that's that, I think, is what we do here.
	And I think you've done that over the years, and you've been a real help to a lot of people.
	Daniel?
	Ben, welcome to the show.
	We're glad to have you.
	It's great to have you.
	You and I, our friendship goes back many years.
	We've been on each other's show, and it's great to have you.
	But the main reason, other than to have you on the show, of course, the main reason to think to talk about this week is an open letter that you wrote to President Trump earlier this week, which is very, very interesting.
	And it's close to our hearts in terms of the First Amendment.
	Why don't I just open the floor and let us know what the letter about?
	What brought you to write it?
Americans Speak Out 00:15:24
	What are the circumstances around it?
	So our viewers will understand.
	Yeah, absolutely.
	Well, again, I appreciate the opportunity to talk about this.
	Look, as your viewers, a lot of them will know who I am because obviously, you know, the Ron Paul Institute, Daniel McAdams, Ron Paul, Ben Swamp, we've all been in kind of the same streams for a long time.
	And so there's a lot of crossover.
	What your viewers will probably know is as a journalist for a long time, I've had iterations from working in broadcast media, working for Fox, working for CBS, and then being independent as well.
	And at times, I also worked as a contributor for RT, Russia Today.
	And that goes back, you know, almost 10 years now.
	Well, about two years ago, when this war in Ukraine started, RT in the United States, RT America, effectively shut down.
	But that wasn't by government order.
	It simply happened because the guy who was running it decided it was, I guess, too much heat, didn't want to do it anymore, and he shut it down.
	And so RT in Moscow had no idea this was happening.
	They were not made aware of it in advance.
	And they said, well, listen, you know, we still want to be able to create shows with American hosts and talking about news content.
	And so because I had a relationship with them, I stepped up and said, listen, I have a production company.
	We can begin creating shows for you and sending them to you.
	And so we did that.
	And so for the past three years, essentially, since 2022 until really late 2024, we were creating content for RT International.
	Now, none of that content aired in the United States.
	There's no broadcast forum in the United States for it.
	It wasn't shown on any television here.
	It wasn't even on social media here.
	But we were sending them over to RT International and it's running in places like India, Africa across the continent of Africa, South America, even China at times.
	And so this content was going out to about 800 million people around the world, just nobody in Western Europe or the United States.
	Well, that was until September of last year, because in September of last year, the Biden administration did something unprecedented, which is that they put forward a sanction through executive order to essentially sanction RT, TV Novosti, which is a pairing company, and then Sputnik, which is the radio version of RT, essentially saying that they had helped to interfere with elections in the past and they were not trustworthy and that they were helping to crowdsource weapons for the Russian army,
	which that accusation makes no sense at all to me.
	But they made these accusations.
	They simply shut it all down and then ordered the Treasury Department to institute through OFAC, essentially restrictions through sanctions that would prevent any American from working for RT.
	And so, as Americans, American journalists, we had about 50 people working for us.
	We weren't allowed to do any work for RT, even though none of it was in the United States.
	We couldn't create content for them and we couldn't send it to them, even though all that content was being shown across the global south.
	And so that's the situation we've been in since September of last year.
	When Trump was re-elected, we said, well, listen, I think there's an opportunity here.
	If Trump's not re-elected, there's no chance any of this will ever come back.
	But when he was re-elected, we thought maybe there's an opportunity.
	And then a few weeks ago, JD Vance, the vice president of the United States, went to Europe and he began speaking to European leaders about the importance of free speech.
	One of the things President Trump did on his very first day in office, he signed an executive order related to the free speech and upholding the free speech rights of Americans, especially on social media platforms.
	And so I wrote an open letter this week and we sent it to President Trump on the actual three-year anniversary of RT America shutting down here in the United States.
	We sent him the letter and the letter basically says that: look, Mr. President, I believe that this president is doing a very good job of upholding the rights of free speech in society and a free press in society.
	I think that JD Vance is making a good case for it.
	But what we pointed out to him is there's a major oversight here because there is an executive order that remains in place and sanctions that remain in place against a news organization.
	And what is unprecedented about this move, guys, is it has never happened before.
	The United States government has never sanctioned a news entity and told a news entity that it cannot perform the function of news gathering or delivery.
	That has never happened in this country.
	And so we're watching this happen.
	And so what we've asked the president to do is to immediately remove the sanctions against RT, against TV Novosti, and against Sputnik.
	And then listen, going back to what the vice president said to European leaders, which is that we don't have to agree with what you're saying in order to support your right to say it.
	It is our constitutional, lawful right to say it.
	And I will say that in all the time that I've worked with RT, a lot of people will claim it's Russian propaganda.
	I think you both have had experience with RT in the past.
	I have not experienced it as a propaganda arm at all.
	What I have found is that of all the places I've worked, including Fox, NBC, and CBS, that I had more freedom working at RT than at any other place that I've ever worked.
	But even if that's not true, and it is, but even if it's not true, it doesn't change the fact that you have a right to free speech in this society and a free press in this society.
	And that was denied by the Biden administration.
	Yeah, I think a lot of Americans, sorry, a lot of Americans don't understand that you have the right to consume whatever media you want.
	The First Amendment limits the power of government to have any control over freedom of expression over what you watch, read, consume in any way.
	So Americans, I think, who don't understand this might say, well, you know, damn right, we shouldn't be able to have this.
	Well, of course we can.
	Jonathan Turley, who's a good friend of the Institute and a good friend of ours, constitutional lawyer, said, of course, you have the right to consume propaganda as much as you want.
	That's your right.
	And as an aside on RT, by Dr. Paul and I have been on a lot.
	We've been on RT America a lot.
	You know, Rick Sanchez, these are all American hosts with American backgrounds in journalism.
	What's interesting, just as a personal aside, is that, you know, I can't tell you how many, Ben, how many mainstream outlets I've been booked for a show and I've done a pre-interview.
	Okay, Mr. McAdams, what are you going to say?
	And after I tell them, they say, no, thanks.
	We don't want you.
	That's never happened at RTA.
	They have never asked me what I'm going to say.
	They've just allowed me to go on and say whatever.
	That's right.
	I have a question that I hope you can help me out on.
	You've talked about writing your letter.
	You send the letter to the proper authorities.
	It goes to the administration.
	And what is happening?
	Has anybody responded or indicated, oh, I received your note.
	We'll follow up on it.
	Have they, do you have an individual that's closer to the matter rather than the president of the United States?
	Do you have a contact now or has it been zero response?
	No, we've actually gotten some good response.
	I don't want to say the names of those people, but we've had a good response so far.
	We have some meetings that are now taking place with the White House about this particular issue and also with the Treasury Department.
	So I'm very excited about that.
	It's been a very good response so far.
	I truly believe that it is an issue of an oversight.
	I believe that President Trump doesn't even know this executive order is in place.
	I don't think that he knows that this has even taken place.
	Remember, you know, I told the story about the fact that RT America shut down two years ago.
	Well, one of the reasons I think it's easy for Americans to not even recognize that this has happened is because RT America disappeared.
	And so even though RT was still broadcasting American hosts overseas, Americans don't know that.
	They have no idea whether or not RT exists at all anymore.
	And so when this executive order was passed by or signed, excuse me, by President Biden in September of last year, there's no ripple effect because no one even knows it happened.
	So one of the things we wanted to do was immediately draw attention to this and get attention to it.
	I believe, I made this prediction yesterday on a show.
	I'll make it here as well.
	I believe within the next two weeks that this sanction will be removed.
	And I believe that RT will be allowed to begin news operations again in the United States.
	I believe there is a real commitment to free speech by this administration.
	And it's good to see.
	I am a free speech absolutist, as I know you all are as well.
	You know, everyone who says they believe in free speech doesn't believe in free speech.
	They believe in most of the speech that they like.
	But I am an absolutist.
	Exactly.
	And I think a lot of Americans don't understand the fact that these are American journalists that have been hurt.
	These are American journalists of many years who've been put out of work.
	I know several of them who've been put out of work, not allowed to practice journalism.
	Of course, they're not going to be hired in the mainstream for the most part because they have this taint, this, you know, this prejudice against their previous work.
	But these are Americans who are hurting and suffering, not only by losing their job, but of course, the rest of us who watch RT, who watched RT America and enjoyed it and profited from it intellectually, they're being deprived of their rights as well.
	Well, and I was going to say, to me, that's the bigger issue, right?
	Yeah, it's sad that people lose their jobs and go out of work, but that's not even the real problem, right?
	The real problem is depriving the public of a counter point of view.
	You know, when every single mainstream media outlet lines up the exact same way, and we see this happen with certain issues, and war, as you guys know, is one of those issues.
	It doesn't matter if it's a U.S.-led war or it's a proxy war.
	All of the media lines up the same way.
	There has not been one mainstream media outlet in this country that has challenged Lovino Zelensky even once.
	They don't challenge him.
	They talk about this guy like he's the next George Washington.
	We did a series through my other company, Truth and Media, last year about Zielinski.
	I think you were both in that series as well.
	We interviewed you both for it.
	But it's about, it's called Zelensky Unmasked.
	And what's amazing is this man has been running a scam on this country for years, and no one in media will call him out, even to the point where after his blow up with President Trump on Friday, which was absolutely delightful to watch, in my opinion, so many media outlets ran to his defense, including a lot of anchors at Fox who ran to his defense and said, well, he's a good man.
	He's a good man.
	I don't know what happened there with the president.
	I know what happened is he was finally revealed for a moment.
	And so one thing that RT brings is that's very important.
	Again, whether you like them or not doesn't matter.
	Whether you agree with their point of view or not doesn't matter.
	They bring a different point of view.
	And whenever you deprive the public of that, you've done a disservice.
	You know, this happened more than once, sitting in Congress and voting next to somebody, either a friendly Democrat or a Republican, and they were in opposition to what I was saying.
	And they say, I said, well, why do we even need this program?
	There's no authority in the Constitution.
	I'd go on that line.
	And it wasn't just once in a while.
	It was frequently.
	And an attitude was pervasive.
	They said, well, they're too dumb.
	They can't interpret it.
	We will take care of it.
	So they think they're well-intentioned.
	I think they've been brainwashing enough to, I don't even think I claim they don't seek truth and they don't.
	And a lot of them do it for their purpose.
	But I don't think they're capable sometimes of doing it.
	They actually believe that the people won't take care of themselves.
	Love them to read anything they want.
	Get on RT because there's, boy, the Russians are coming.
	They're going to invade us.
	And the people can't figure it out.
	And I would think that there's nothing perfect in our elections, but I would say there was some enlightenment during this last election.
	The people spoke, I consider the Department of Justice as being a wreck.
	And yet, I thought the real jury was speaking last November.
	Yes, I think you're absolutely right about that.
	Look, one thing that has happened is because the American public has moved away from mainstream media and moved away from establishment media.
	They don't listen to them anymore.
	That's the reason that Trump was able to pull off what I would call the, and most people do, the greatest political comeback in history, right?
	Not even modern history, in the history period, to have been as vilified, as attacked, and as persecuted as this man was to the point where they were ready to throw him in prison for the rest of his life, was able to come back and to win a landslide election with all of the media lined up against him, with all of Hollywood lined up against him, with all of the corporate class lined up against him, with all of big tech lined up against him.
	It demonstrates that something broke through.
	And I, you know, one thing I think is so incredible, and I have to give, again, a ton of credit to you guys, but especially to you, Dr. Paul, we are living in a moment that was seeded many, many decades ago by yourself in many ways.
	I would say the moment we're living in, while so many people will say it's a Trump moment, yeah, you can't take away the fact that it required a certain messenger, brash and in the way that Donald Trump carries himself, ready to tear the whole thing down.
	But the seeds of all of this were planted by you.
	The idea that challenged so many of the narratives that were out there, challenged so many ideas, the Ron Paul Revolution grew up and became what we just saw in this last election.
	They were people who had already learned to give up on what the media was saying, give up on this mainstream idea, give up on this two-party paradigm.
	And so that's where Democrats are struggling right now.
	A lot of those establishment neocon Republicans, I mean, where are they?
	I guess they all went to the Democratic Party because they don't even know where to be right now.
	But there is this kind of middle group of people that grew up out of that.
	And I think a lot of them, honestly, don't even know where all of this was born.
	But those of us who know, we know.
	What does it they say?
	If you know, you know, we know.
	Well, I got a little bit of encouragement because I felt like the people were waking up with COVID.
	You know, as bad as that was, I mean, there was a lot of outcry.
	And even though the problem still exists, it's so much changed after what the Fauci's of the world got away with, you know, a couple years ago.
	It is a real tragedy, Daniel.
	And hopefully, it won't get away with.
	If your son has anything to do with it, it won't get away with it.
	I think that the phenomenon you're describing, Ben, is worldwide.
	The people are turning away from the mainstream media.
	Now, we've seen it in Romania to the extent where the person who won the first round of the elections was simply declared to not be the winner because he happened to have a few TikTok supporters.
	And the same is true with the AFDIA in Germany, banned from the social media, banned from the mainstream media, and they were somehow able to capture basically all of the former eastern part of Germany.
	But there is this disturbing trend, recognizing the power of these alternative voices, the trying to suppress them.
	Now, we've seen that from TikTok trying to ban it in the U.S. People were going to TikTok and learning things that they weren't supposed to be learning about different countries.
	We learned from the Twitter files how deeply embedded the U.S. government was in the social media to the point where they were calling up people.
	Okay, I want you to ban him, ban this, this, this, what happens, right?
	It's insane that we've learned this.
	So now that we've seen the dark side of it, that's why I think it was actually so refreshing to see Vice President Vance in Munich.
	I mean, I've seen a lot of vice presidents in my day.
Elon Musk's Trolling Response 00:07:46
	I think even in the early part of this presidency, JD Vance is the most consequential vice president of my lifetime.
	Now, do I agree with everything that he says or everything he stands for?
	No, but I have never seen a more powerful defense of free expression than he went and stood up in front of the Europeans and said, We're not sharing the same values anymore, guys.
	We're going a different way, and you're going this way, and we don't like it.
	It was amazing.
	It was amazing.
	And it's also a very, just piggyback off that, a very different role for the vice president than we've seen, maybe ever, because this administration is not being run in a typical fashion.
	And, you know, typically the vice president is relegated to very, you know, non-important tasks and duties, or they get named as some kind of a czar over some pet project that the president doesn't want to deal with.
	That's not happening here.
	I mean, really, Vance is being allowed to govern alongside President Trump in a pretty remarkable way.
	And obviously, going back to what we talked about last Friday, right, with Zelensky in the Oval Office, I think it was on full display, right?
	It began with JD Vance.
	And by the way, I just want to say, you know, for anybody who, and there's a lot of people out there who do, claim that a lot of this was about a suit, had nothing to do with a suit.
	I love how the media has turned this into poor Zelensky.
	First of all, the words poor and Zelensky in the same sentence is kind of ridiculous, right?
	The guy's stolen billions of dollars.
	He's got a $37 million house here in Miami.
	But, you know, this idea that they were picking on him because of his clothing had nothing to do with that.
	It had to do with the fact that Zelensky went into that meeting saying, I don't want peace.
	There will be no ceasefire.
	And by the way, you know, we're looking at what just happened yesterday.
	We were getting all these reports that Zelensky had come back with hat in hand and said, I'm ready.
	I'm ready to do a deal.
	Let's go ahead and get a ceasefire.
	And then comes out today and says, there will be no ceasefire.
	Again, like only once, right?
	We're starting to see this.
	So it's amazing to watch this guy who believes his own hype.
	He's been drinking his own Kool-Aid.
	He thinks he really is the next George Washington and no one can stand against him.
	And what we're seeing now, I think, again, remarkable, beautiful things that never happen.
	Like we're going to stop weapon shipments.
	Yeah.
	Like now.
	And Intel.
	They stopped.
	Yeah.
	Intel as of today.
	There will be no more.
	The CIA director saying, we're not sharing anything else with you.
	If you, you know, the FAFO, we'll just call it that on full display right now and it's pretty glorious.
	Ben, I want to ask you a little bit about where we can go from here.
	We have not a huge audience, but we have a very dedicated audience.
	And they like to know what should we do about this.
	And this is not as typical.
	But it isn't like go after the guy that put the block in there.
	You gave me some, you know, a little bit of hope there that it might be just a technical error and you know, missing the point and to get attention to it.
	So I'm thinking, how can we get to do this?
	So, you know, one thing I didn't, I didn't know anything about this X and blogging and all this stuff, but I got introduced to this a couple couple months ago.
	But I know our program today is revealing a lot of truth.
	And I would think that one thing that we could be hopeful for, you know, I have had some of my stuff re-blogged and it makes a big difference.
	I have never talked to Musk personally, but just for instance, if that would happen, if Elon would come on the story, I agree with that.
	And I would suspect he probably does.
	I mean, can you imagine how beneficial that might be?
	But I think this is a little bit different than finding the culprit to blame.
	Who's the enemy at the State Department?
	And your explanation, it might not be that terrible.
	It might be just a little bit more publication, letting more people know what's going on.
	Well, and someone like yourself, who, you know, I know you have both kind of reshared it, but you know, Dr. Pope, we got to show you.
	You don't just reshare it.
	You got to also at Elon Musk, right, to make sure that he's seen that you're sending it to him.
	But yeah, that's the way we get it.
	We get there, right?
	Drawing attention to it in a very public space.
	One of the things I saw someone say about X, and, you know, for me, X has been extremely important.
	What Elon has done with it is extremely important.
	And I, you know, I will say this: I don't believe that Elon Musk is a free speech absolutist.
	I don't think he even calls himself one.
	So my, you know, he and I probably don't agree on a lot of issues in terms of that.
	However, what he has done with X has been absolutely tremendous in terms of opening up the conversation and especially on the tech side.
	But somebody said the other day, they said X is becoming a place where we are able to scrutinize what is happening in the federal government and actually have a voice in it like never before.
	And I think that is very, very accurate.
	The idea that Musk will put out, should Doge investigate the IRS, and people vote on it in polls and then they begin to do it.
	That is responsive government.
	And in some ways, some people kind of see it as trolling, right?
	He's trolling the government.
	He's trolling government workers.
	I don't think so.
	It's being responsive to the public.
	It's allowing the public to realize that they have a voice.
	And the more you're able to do that, I think certainly the better.
	So absolutely, you know, when you tweet it at him and just say, add Elon, take a look at this, my man, because again, I believe that the value of saying we're not going to allow media to be controlled in this way, we're not going to allow the precedent to continue to be set of our own government telling news organizations they cannot operate if you don't push our line.
	I got to tell you, one of the things that the State Department said when this order was issued, they claimed that the reason that people in Moldova did not support Zelensky was because of RT.
	Well, let's say that's true.
	Why is it that we now have to ban RT because people don't support Zelensky?
	It's almost as if because they've chosen to not do what we want them to do, this is an enemy.
	And so we have to break through that.
	And again, I'm very hopeful that this administration will do it and do it quickly.
	Yeah, thank God we got rid of USAID, which was doing that worldwide.
	I'm going to sign off here, Ben, but I want to give you the opportunity if people are watching this and they say we'd like to support these efforts.
	Is there anything people can do?
	What would you advise them to do?
	Well, absolutely.
	If you go to my X page, which is Ben Swan, S-W-A-N-N underscore, you'll see the letter.
	It's pinned to the top there.
	Please go there, like it, and retweet it, and share it out as much as you possibly can to people.
	Get attention on it so that the administration will see it.
	As I mentioned, there are people in the administration who have seen it.
	I know that.
	But again, this is about the public being responsive and saying, you know, I don't have to be a fan of RT to believe RT has a right.
	I'm not a fan of the BBC, but they have a right to broadcast.
	I'm not a fan of Al Jazeera, but they have a right to broadcast.
	And by the way, I'm not a fan of CNN.
	Right.
	No, that's and Ben.
	I too want to thank you very much for being on this program today because I think I have much better understanding exactly where you're coming from on this particular issue.
	It's not an old issue that's dead and gone and nobody interests it.
	All we need to do is perk up their interest.
	And I think you're great at perking up the interest in a subject like this.
	So once again, Ben, thank you very much for being with us today.
	Thank you both.
	Very good.
	And I want to thank our viewers for tuning in today.

Chapters

00:00:09 Dr. Ron Paul's Liberty Mindset
00:05:33 Americans Speak Out
00:20:57 Elon Musk's Trolling Response