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April 7, 2025 - Ron Paul Liberty Report
23:07
Markets ROCKED While Trump Expands Futile Yemen War!

Americans voted for lower inflation and a peace president, yet just months into Trump 2.0 we are seeing a tariff plan that is rocking world markets and an expanding - but losing - war on Yemen with the Administration about an inch away from starting yet another war, this time with Iran. What happened?

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Crazy Weekend Developments 00:14:59
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 today.
Happy Monday, Dr. Paul.
How are you?
Crazy weekend this weekend.
Well, I tell you, we must have something to talk about today.
But you know, what's interesting, or at least staring us in the face, sometimes we talk about an economic policy going out of hand.
They do a dumb thing here and there.
And then the foreign policy, you know, we were a little war here, a little war there.
But boy, this week, it's been a big deal with some unnecessary warmongering by us.
And then also, you know, a lot of unnecessary meddling in our economy all at the same time.
And then people, wow, we never knew it would do this to the economy.
So it really has been a shock and so unnecessary.
But interventionism is the real evil because they get too much involved in intervening in the economy.
But how about our interventionism overseas?
But I really have to say, and we will talk a little bit more about Yemen and all this stuff because that to me has been very disappointing about the administration.
We kept saying better advisors, what we need here, and maybe we'll get them.
Well, we'll talk a little bit about that.
Where are the better advisors?
Yeah, but I'm sure everyone's wanting to know what you think about the markets, what happened over the weekend after the big announcement.
Well, you know, the markets, you know, were really rocking.
I mean, I keep wondering myself over the years, it's bad, it's bad, it's terrible.
And then you go and they get out of trouble, and they get out of trouble.
It sort of lulls you to sleep a little bit.
Well, maybe it'll be next month.
But when it comes, it's still, even though you expect it, and everything we've been doing, all that spending and the trillions and trillions of dollars worth of debt, it's not like you're astute at predictions.
It's just common sense that you can't get away from that.
There ain't no such thing as a free lunch.
And now we're paying.
But this time, like I mentioned, it's a payment both in the foreign policy field and the economic field.
But I can remember trying to straighten out a thing at the debates because they would have a debate, the presidential debates, and it would start off one week we'll do economics, next week we'll do foreign policy.
And when we brought up some of the policy, where do you get this idea that you can separate the two?
You know, deficits and deficits come, interventions come, you kill people in both.
So sometimes you have stupid medical problems that contribute to a chaos in the medical field.
Then you have fours that do this that, you know, they count wins by how many people we kill.
And they really, for the most part, ignore, you know, the innocent bystanders or the planners that, you know, get involved in making a couple of bucks here, a couple billions of dollars over.
So it's really tragic.
But I'm not surprised.
I thought it would take a little bit longer to mesh the two together and people could see it.
But this, you know, it's almost to me, and I hope it's not true that even Trump has had a tremendous setback.
And yet, yet he still has produced some things that we have to say.
We need a lot of that.
That to me was a surprise and disappointment because at least he was pointing out some of the wasteful spending.
And the promise not to start war is that he was going to, you know, he was going to stop some wars.
And that's not believable now.
That is not a policy.
And I don't even, I can't believe there's full agreement because we know some very good libertarian leaning people in that administration.
It doesn't look like they're at a point just like we are.
I mean, nobody enjoys going after the president now.
It hasn't been going very long, this sort of thing.
But it's changing the political scene.
And we have a big, and we have a clash of problem with foreign policy as well as the economic failures.
Yeah, and I don't remember who it was.
I think someone from the administration, maybe it was Trump himself who said over the weekend, you know, I could have just kept going like we were going, printing money and doing these things.
The crash was coming anyway, something to that effect, you know.
So I think the left wants to blame all of this uncertainty on the person of Trump, whereas in fact, it's a cancer that had been spreading for a long time, you know, and it finally happened.
Oh, yeah, the seeds have been planted for a long time.
And I was looking back at some of my notes and some of my comments.
And a lot of it goes back to 1987, 88, you know, and that QE stuff and zero interest rates.
And that was a big deal.
And they pulled it out by just QE.
And zero interest rates, like for five years, and even negative interest rates.
So the Americans can be very resilient.
There's one danger of a free market.
Sometimes the free market lasts longer than it deserves and it can make corrections.
I always thought that floating interest rates, floating exchange rates on a fiat currency system, the market adjusted it because they couldn't have done that by intervention and say, well, they tried it for a while.
This currency is worth this and this and pretend they were relating it to gold or silver and this.
And that never worked.
But the market, the markets, you know, set up futures markets and sort of tided things over.
But I think this is big things are happening.
And tragically, if they don't have the right ideas, the wrong ideas aren't going to solve the problem.
But we also have to understand that you can't go back to the starting point of growth without liquidating all the mistakes and changing your viewpoint.
And we're a long way off from that.
Yeah.
Well, you were on Kitco last week, I think it was.
Put up that first clip just before the you know what hit the fan and you were talking to Kitco.
And they actually just put this up on X today, probably because of what had happened over the weekend.
But we're witnessing the collapse of a fake financial system, says Ron Paul, fake system collapsing.
What were you guys talking about before the system actually did see?
Well, we were in the money issue.
Fake money.
I mean, we talk about sound currency.
That alone causes so much fake activity and malinvestment and price inflation.
But a currency is supposed to, you're supposed to have just a couple characteristic.
You're supposed to be able to define the unit of account.
How much gold do you get for a dollar?
This sort of thing.
But that's been forgotten a long time ago.
And then it should be a store of value.
So if you have to park it in your pocket, the people can't steal from it.
Paper money does the opposite.
And then money has to have an exchange.
You have to use it.
You and I have to look at it and agree on the agreement.
And those are the three big principles of money.
And I look back, I wonder who started that.
Aristotle.
Aristotle knew and understand the basic.
And we've been trying, and we've been getting away with it because we have modern technology and we have modern calculations to make.
And maybe it does work for a week or two or a year or two, but eventually truth catches us up.
Well, you alluded to it earlier on with regard to fake money.
This is actually real money in a way.
Put up that next clip now.
We'll move on to foreign policy and we'll keep an eye on the economy for sure.
Now, this was in hedge, but it's all over the place.
And it's a CN CNN article originally.
Pentagon's Yemen operations nearing $1 billion price tag.
Fresh analysis in both the New York Times and CNN have estimated that America's Yemen operations will soon hit the $1 billion mark.
That's in only three weeks, Dr. Paul.
A billion dollars in three weeks.
Go to that next one.
Here's more about the operation from the article.
Operation Rough Rider.
That's a pretty appropriate name, actually, because it's pretty rough.
Has seen warplanes and warships in the Red Sea go through at least 200 million in launched munitions.
I would add increasingly scarce launched munitions since March 15th, the Times report says.
In total, CNN says the overall operation is nearing a billion dollars in three weeks, even as the attacks have limited impact on destroying the terror group's capabilities, according to several U.S. defense officials.
So a billion dollars.
And the assessment is we really haven't done that much to degrade their capabilities.
And guess what?
It has to be borrowed money because we don't have any money in the bank.
So we have to borrow that.
And that borrowing involves printing it.
You know, the whole thing is when the new administration came in and we had a lot of good announcements.
We still do.
I think people are more aware of how the government really operates and it's pretty harmful.
But it was sort of a euphoric feeling, which comes sometimes, you know, with new administration.
But Doge was all part of this.
And while this was going on, I said to myself and to others that, you know, this has happened before, not to the extent as it happened, but right at the beginning, I said, this isn't being paid for.
They're going to spend more than they say.
And there's going to be a supplemental.
You know, they don't even have the budget pass yet, but they're talking about, oh, they were predicting this Pentagon might need more money than they have.
Oh, yeah.
Well, we spent, just like you told, a billion dollars just out of the clear blue.
And then it didn't help.
Didn't help.
Didn't do anything.
Matter of fact, it did a lot of harm.
It did a lot of harm.
Death and destruction and the danger of escalation and expanding the war and the pretend war, the people who want war with Iran.
It's a mess.
But it's not like you have to be a genius to predict.
Most people, when they see the light, they say, you know what?
That's just common sense.
Why should people use just pieces of paper and call it money and talk people into it?
And people buy into it, you know.
Well, here's from the same article about this billion-dollar spend.
If you put that next one on, some analysts have pointed out that the major anti-Houthi operations actually mainly benefit Israel, while others have said that Europe should shoulder more of the burden in protecting Red Sea shipping lanes.
However, the consensus is that Europeans are relatively weak.
Now, we know that from the signal conversation, Dr. Paul, that I think it was Vance that said, wasn't Europe protect themselves.
Now, here's the go to the next one.
This is anti-war, Kyle Anzalone.
And on top, adding insult to misery, or to injury, Pentagon admits strikes have had a limited success, coming at a high cost.
DOD officials are telling Congress behind closed doors that it does not believe the new military campaign in Yemen has degraded the Houthis' military capabilities.
Within a month, they cost a billion.
We've already gone over that.
Limited success with them.
They're admitting it's done very, very little.
Now, Larry Johnson, I don't have a clip, but our friend Larry Johnson, the former CIA analyst, he put out a piece, I think, yesterday afternoon saying, This should be no surprise to anyone.
They're masters of shoot and scoot.
You know, they're extremely mobile and it's hard to find them.
You know, I mentioned Kyle Anzalone.
He put out something on the Libertarian Institute yesterday, I think it was, but he quoted Scott Horton's book on ending the war on terror.
And Scott reminded me of all that.
We talked about it a lot when we were doing the show about the wars against the Houthis, even before we started the show.
And it refreshed my memory that, first of all, Obama, they were allied with the Houthis.
The Houthis were anti-Al-Qaeda.
We gave them intelligence.
We told them who to kill all of this.
And then Obama turned on them and started bombing them a little bit.
And then Trump came into power and started bombing them a lot, helping the Saudis bomb them a lot.
And Biden came in and he was bombing them a little bit toward the end.
And now Trump's back and he's bombing them a lot.
So it's that same pattern over and over again.
And speaking of Trump bombing, though, Dr. Paul, this is something very, very, very concerning.
So you have this.
We spent a ton of money and we didn't get any results.
So what do they do?
They double down and start hitting civilian targets.
Over the weekend, President Trump put this out.
He thought it was a great success.
He said, these Houthis gathered for instructions on an attack.
Oops, there will be no attack by the Houthis.
They'll never sink our ships again.
And you can see several dozen people, it appears, gathering in what looks like kind of a rectangle or an oval shape.
He's saying that they're planning their attacks, which, Dr. Paul, seems odd to plan your attacks out in the open.
Go to the next one.
Well, it turns out that's not the case at all.
It appears that this is how the tribes gather in Yemen, Dr. Paul.
They were celebrating the end of Ramadan, and they get together and they have some food and they sing some music and they recite some poetry.
Khalise said the anti-war president who won a Nobel Peace Prize is bombing civilians on behalf of Israel and bragging about it online.
It wasn't a military gathering.
It was a civil gathering on the occasion of Ayid al-Fitr.
Also, this is the first admission.
Civil Gatherings Misunderstood 00:06:04
And I'll go to the next one.
And you just have to Google it.
Here's the thing, Dr. Paul.
Just Google it.
This is how they gather.
This is how tribes gather their civilians, and you just bomb them while celebrating it.
And it made me wonder, Dr. Paul, my last comment on this: how many hundreds of billions do we spend on intelligence?
Isn't there a Yemen guy somewhere?
Mr. President, that's probably not a good target.
That's kind of how they gather.
So he just liquidated and celebrated liquidating dozens of people gathered peacefully.
The government is still too big.
And in spite of the efforts of this, this year so far, I imagine the government is really bigger than it was when they started.
Although there's a lot of pretense and a lot of people were laid off, but it doesn't look like they were not really laid off.
They still get, a lot of them still get pay and all this stuff.
And I mentioned earlier about that they always come back.
There will always be an emergency.
And the article, the article from Nazi Rohits mentions this and describes what they think.
It says, one of the sources said the Pentagon will likely need to request supplemental funding from the Congress to continue the operation, but may not receive it.
They're analyzing it.
And they said the offensive has already been criticized by both sides of the aisle.
And that is true, but I don't think I'd bet on the side that it seems like the power behind the scenes will decide whether that money gets spent.
And then if they don't pass the money officially, for some reason, they still get what they want.
It'll come out of someplace or they'll switch the money around.
But unfortunately, the whole system, the Congress does not put brakes on these interventions, economic or foreign policy.
But I see some of the people are saying, now they're talking about, I talked a little bit about this last week, and that is, what does the Constitution say about putting on tariffs?
And it gives authority both to the president and the Congress to do this, but never to the extent that they've used this.
And now they're talking about legislation.
And that might be a good idea because there's some explicit things in there.
It looks like people could easily abuse it.
So it's an easier spot than where if it had not been in Article 1, Section 8, you can't put on tariffs unless there's a vote in the Congress.
But that's not the way it is.
Yeah, I think Rand's been working on that too.
And you mentioned Congress.
You know what their criticism will be?
Because you know how it works.
They won't be saying, Mr. President, why the heck are you bombing Yemen?
You need to stop.
There's no money.
It'll be, why isn't it more successful?
We've got to double your money.
We want you to double the bombing.
Isn't that how it always is?
Stop pussyfooting around.
Take those people out.
And in their desperation, they keep killing more and more civilians.
And in fact, one of our friends who is one of the most astute observers, George Galloway, he put out a post about it.
And I think he absolutely hit the right.
Now he was responding to President Trump bragging that he killed a bunch of tribesmen thinking that they were planning a war out in the middle of the desert in a big circle.
Like, really?
So Galloway says, I'm genuinely shocked that you did that, i.e. bomb these tribesmen and saw fit to boast about it.
This was a tribal gathering, as Scott Ritter points out.
And anyone who knows Yemeni society could and should have told you so.
For all you know, these tribesmen sitting in a neat circle may not even have been Houthis.
Their sons are now.
And that's a great point.
The reports have been very explicit.
They usually just automatically put U.S. bombing.
Most of the time, they try to avoid that because we hop people out to do the dirty.
Yeah, I think the Brits do it too.
They did that.
But, you know, there's two pictures in my mind that is so astounding and represents the stupidity of our policy.
One was the conclusion of the Vietnam War or the semi-conclusion.
You know, when our troops and our personnel was leaving after the war was so-called over and uh, that was so tragic, trying to get on that helicopter on the roof, but but what about the?
They've made a lot more of the Afghanistan thing and that was tragic too.
But I kept thinking, if I was reporting in this, I say it never changes.
Look, this is what we did 30 years ago, this is what we're doing now, after 20 years.
Billions of dollars, millions of people dying, and the policy stays the same.
Yeah, and then the and the uh Military Industrial Complex rolls on, rolling up more money and uh, someday.
But the thing of it is they tinker around on the edges.
They tinker around like and you mentioned like a like where and when to bomb or we'll make it more efficient, and they have to change the policy.
That's why uh, that's why we have a more precise foreign policy, like non-intervention, and live by the constitution.
And that's quite a bit different than just intervene.
These executive orders when it comes to these foreign policies, the fact that the presidents can put these tariffs dealing with trillions and trillions of dollars of mischief uh, and yet it is legal for them to do something with tariff but uh, that that needs reined in.
Why We Have a Flawed System 00:01:54
As far as i'm concerned, yeah well, we've talked about it before, we'll talk about it again it seems like we're on the right track wrong track, you know and so hopefully we'll, we'll finish up well.
We want to thank everyone for tuning in.
I do, at least personally and uh, please hit that thumbs up button and i'm going to kick it over to you, dr Paul, very good, and I, I too, want to thank our viewers for tuning in today, because it is a tough job getting the message out, because when there is euphoria and and and rightfully people hoping and wishing for a real change in direction it's, it's discouraging to know uh, or realize that probably the spending is not going to be cut back, probably we're not going to bring the troops home.
Yes we'll, we might bring some home in one place and get some, get some uh, advertisement of it but uh, for some reason, I don't think we're going to all of a sudden abandon Ukraine and we haven't abandoned Syria and we're all over the place.
We have troops and CIA agents and and uh people, people being involved in 120 countries.
So it it uh, it could be a blessing in disguise, in disguise, if we just flat out go broke, and we can't afford this anymore.
That's the way most empires end.
They can't feed into the empire.
That's how the Soviet system collapsed because it was a flawed system.
And ours is not a Soviet system, but we have a deeply flawed system.
And it's being challenged right now.
And we'll have to wait and see.
But we have to work hard at describing the replacement of that.
And we can start with looking at the size and scope of government that our founders wanted, because that would be a strong step in the right direction.
I want to thank everybody for tuning in today to the Liberty Report.
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