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May 5, 2025 - Ron Paul Liberty Report
28:20
Escape From Alcatraz

Over the weekend, President Trump said that he is ordering the re-opening of the 19th century Alcatraz prison which sits in the middle of San Francisco Bay. Is this a serious proposal? How much might it cost? Also today: Trump proposes 100 percent tariffs on foreign films and makes recommendations on how may toys children should have.

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Time Text
$30 Dollar Solution? 00:08:29
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.
Happy Monday, Dr. Paul.
How are you today?
All set to go.
Yes, exactly.
Okay, here we go.
They have not balanced the budget.
I wanted to keep you up to the important issues.
They're still provoking wars.
They're spending more money, not less.
So there's a few people who are disappointed who thought there was going to be magic.
And we haven't found that magic yet.
But we keep hoping because on occasion there will be a good thing that happen.
Elon Musk had something interesting to say, which is a positive way, but it's sort of sad.
Here it is.
Elon Musk says Doge should definitely investigate the Federal Reserve after the Post, I assume that's New York Post, reports on a $2.5 billion palace of Merseys headquartered.
I thought we were trying to get rid of the Fed.
And I thought we were going to, we don't even know how their books are, but they probably don't have to look at their books because did you know that they can print money even for themselves?
So the money is not a problem.
$2.5 billion.
They want a fancy office.
And it's ironic because from our viewpoint in the Constitution and good economic policies, you shouldn't have a central bank.
You shouldn't have a Federal Reserve.
There's no authority for the Federal Reserve.
And all we want to do over the, what, how many years now?
15, 20 years now?
I said, at least look at their books.
We don't even get a look at their books.
And they're bold because the building is going to be blatant.
And somebody's going to ask them where the money came from.
The big secrets of the Fed behind the scenes, where they bail out their friends in other countries and get involved in foreign policy.
But here, we don't get the audit.
We shouldn't exist.
And they're blatant and say, you know, I guess I'll make a prediction.
There'll be cost overruns.
You know, it'd be like the military.
They have a few cost overruns, but it doesn't matter.
It'll all be done in secret.
We won't be able to look at their books.
So Muss is saying the right thing.
Definitely investigate it.
But I think investigating this from what I just described, too little, too late, but we still should do it.
I've offered things, even when you don't think you're going to have magnificent success, you've got to put it on the record.
I think someday somebody might really care.
Why did they do these things?
I thought once central banking is discredited totally and the Fed no longer exists and we no longer have control of the world reserve currency, they will say, how did we do it?
Why do we do this?
Why did we run it that?
Why did we ruin the dollar?
Well, maybe it'll be sorted out.
The one thing we don't know, Daniel, is we might say that we're certain they're going to mess it up, but we don't know when.
Could be next week, could be next year.
It could take five years.
We don't know that.
But the trust in the dollar has lasted a long time because it shouldn't have been trusted from the very beginning.
And yet there still is a lot of trust.
And everything that they think in financial things, it's backed by the dollar.
You know, all cryptos are backed by the dollar.
So it's existing, but it still is not viable.
It's not going to last.
Eventually, somebody's going to suffer.
But the suffering has already started because they created the price inflation, the distortion, the loss of good jobs, and all these things.
And they don't put out the statistics to verify it, but a lot of people feel like we're in a recession, you know, already.
So it's a failed system.
And I vote against the $2.5 billion, but it's not necessary because they're going to spend it anyway because they get to print the money.
That's a heck of an improvement of refurbishment, $2.5 billion refurbishment of that evil building just down from the State Department.
I mean, I know that you very rarely went down to Rayburn cafeteria.
You usually brought your own lunch, but it wasn't very good.
I'll be honest with you, Dr. Paul.
I didn't go very often either.
But I wonder what the cafeteria looks like at the Fed now that it's being refurbished.
Probably caviar, maybe a little bit of filet mignon in there.
I was invited to breakfast with Paul Volcker and Lou Rockwell with me.
And it was an early, it was near breakfast time, but we didn't get breakfast.
They didn't even give you breakfast.
Well, I wanted to put up a video just to talk about, this is sort of a catch-as-catch-cand day, I guess you might call it.
But Trump was interviewed over the weekend about tariffs.
And you wrote about it this week in your column.
It just came out.
And there's a lot of talk about tariffs because people are saying, will they raise prices?
And Trump insists that they won't raise prices.
Well, here, this first video clip, you might want to get your earpiece ready, is an interesting little exchange about Trump explaining what will happen with these tariffs.
If we can cue that first one up, and let's listen to this whole piece here.
You said this week got a lot of attention.
You were at your cabinet meeting.
You said, quote, I'm going to quote what you said.
Maybe the children will have $2 instead of $30.
And maybe the $2 will cost a couple of bucks more than they would normally.
Are you saying that your tariffs will cause some prices to go up?
No, I think a tariff is going to be great for us because it's going to make us rich.
But you said some dolls are going to cost more.
Isn't that an acknowledgement that some prices will go up?
I don't think a beautiful baby girl needs, that's 11 years old, needs to have $30.
I think they can have $3 or $4 because what we were doing with China was just unbelievable.
We had a trade deficit of hundreds of billions of dollars with China.
When you say they could have $3 instead of $30, are you saying you Americans could see empty store shelves?
No, no, I'm not saying that.
I'm just saying they don't need to have $30.
They can have three.
They don't need to have 250 pencils.
They can have five percent.
So three dollars and five pencils.
You know what I thought about when he did this is he's right about it.
You know, sometimes we have excesses when they print too much money and there's a bubble.
Fancy cars and big houses, and then the recession and adjustment comes and people then lose a lot of that.
But he said $30 might be too much.
The question he should ask is, how many skyscrapers should be added?
Do you think three skyscrapers would satisfy?
Or you have to have 30 skyscrapers plus your private jet, which indirectly is related.
There's a lot of wealthy people, a lot of real smart people like Warren Buffett, and they know the system and they, I believe, earn it under the system.
A very fair thing.
They're astute at it.
But none of this wealth, no, no, no, the successes in the wealth.
You know, you wouldn't have this many trillionaires if you didn't have the valuation of the dollar.
So eventually they're going to look at.
Well, now we have a thousand trillionaires.
Yes, but a loaf of bread is $40 a loaf or something like that.
So I don't think he was interested in applying that to the excesses in building and in construction, because he might make the case, well, we use them all and they create jobs and this, which isn't exactly true either, because a lot of mistakes are made on this.
But I don't think he'll be critical of anybody that has 30 buildings.
Locking Up Symbols 00:04:24
But you're not allowed to have 30 baby dolls.
No, no, no, no.
Well, it was kind of a weird weekend for Trump.
I don't know what's going on over there, but it produced some chuckles.
So at least we have him to thank for some entertainment.
Now, I have a couple clips.
I don't have a clip of this, but it started out by him writing about World War II.
He said, we did more than any other country by far in producing a victorious result on World War II.
I think the Russians slash Soviets might have something to say about that.
And people were sort of wagging their tongues when he said that.
It doesn't detract from what our soldiers did do.
But anyway, then he moved on to Alcatraz.
And I honestly, Dr. Paul, I had to just check, double-check, triple-check, because you know how it is on X sometimes, you know, people will spoof and do all sorts of things.
No, it's absolutely true.
And go to this first clip here.
Now, this is what Trump posted on Truth Social.
And it really is him.
He said, rebuild and open Alcatraz.
For too long, America has been plagued by vicious, violent, and repeat criminal offenders, the dregs of society, who will never contribute anything other than misery and suffering.
When we were a more serious nation in times past, we did not hesitate to lock up the most dangerous criminals and keep them far away from anyone they could harm.
That's the way it's supposed to be.
No longer will we tolerate these serial offenders who spread filth, bloodshed, and mayhem on the streets.
That's why today I'm directing the Bureau of Prisons, together with the Department of Justice, FBI, and Homeland Security, to reopen a substantially enlarged and rebuilt Alcatraz to house America's most ruthless and violent offenders.
I'll skip the rest because I've already read too much, but he said the reopening of Alcatraz will be a symbol of law, order, and justice.
We will make America great again.
So reopen Alcatraz.
Well, if you have too many laws, I guess you need a lot.
You have to really punish people.
No excesses.
But they have that to help hide us sort of like a Guantanamo at home.
Who knows what will go on?
But the whole thing is, there's too many laws, of course.
But why do we have to have these laws?
This will be a federal prison.
This is not going to be a DC prison or a Texas prison.
This is a federal prison.
But you know what?
Well, maybe we're just following the Constitution.
They said that we have to lock people up like this.
And if you look in the Constitution, you're not even allowed to have a police force to police the safety of the country.
That was meant for the states to be the policeman.
And so here they have all these laws that they introduce.
And yet, if you follow the Constitution, there's just three or four that are explicitly criminal and that they, you know, treason, a few serious things, counterfeiting.
They don't follow that one on counterfeiting because somebody let the secret out.
The Fed is the biggest counterfeiter in all of history.
Well, I have a video of Trump talking about, they asked him, well, what were you thinking when you proposed Alcatraz to reopen?
let's put on our earpiece and listen to um listen this is a very short clip but it's just sort of funny to listen to him explain his rationale as you get the idea for reopening alcatraz
Just an idea I've had, and I guess because the judges, so many of these radicalized judges, they want to have trials for every single biggest, every single person that's in our country illegally.
They came in illegally.
That would mean millions of trials.
And it's just so ridiculous what's happening.
And it's long been a symbol, Alcatraz, of whatever it is.
I mean, it's a sad symbol, but it's a symbol of law and order.
And, you know, it's got quite a history, frankly.
Oh, Tariffs and Shoe Buying 00:02:22
So I think we're going to do that, and we're looking at it right now.
I wonder how much it'll cost because it's actually, it's a museum, you know, it's a museum.
People go there.
But it's in the middle of San Francisco Bay.
And the reason why they closed it in the early 60s was that it costs so much money to maintain because you have those salty sea air that just basically corrodes everything and coming around from all sides.
So it's going to be a pretty expensive thing.
You ever ask yourself, is he serious?
Is he serious or having a joke on it?
Well, you know, when you hear about the tariffs and they're going to put 100% tariffs on something, you know, and you say, is he really serious?
And because you wonder, because the argument against that is, well, that's what he's saying today, but that 100 goes down to 80 or 70 or 60.
And, you know, all of a sudden it's a game they play.
But the markets, I would think that the markets will be just pushed around up and down, up and down.
Oh, tariffs is going to do this and that.
Oh, okay, but we're going to get rid of the income tax and we're going to have all this income.
But so far, the income, the numbers don't show, but it's just still early on the tariffs.
The real damage to tariffs hasn't even really started.
It's just the talk and the fear of the tariff.
But the biggest change on the fear of the tariffs is the preliminary buying stuff from overseas.
You know, the imports were huge because people say, well, boy, if there's going to be these, I want to beat them.
You know, there are reactions to these things, even if you say, well, we don't know.
Maybe it won't be that high.
But I don't know.
I make it simple.
That probably is why some people don't think I understand it.
But I think that tariffs are taxes and there's a tax on people.
And also, you're taking money from people and you're telling people how to spend their money.
Why are they supposed to be able, if you save money and you could buy shoes for half of the price because they're made in India or China or whatever, why do you take it away from this?
Tariffs And Taxes 00:13:03
You know, the government here has created a lot of poor people in this country, even though they're generally hidden.
It's a big deal for them if they can buy shoes for $50 instead of $100.
So they go ahead and make it, and they end up paying the price, paying for all this nonsense that goes on.
So tariffs, a violation of personal liberty on allowing people to spend the money the way they want to spend it.
Now, if we're at war or something, maybe that might be different.
If it's a legal declared war, but to have all these things that say, oh, yes, you can spend such and such overseas for this product, but not this other product.
There's too many laws.
And then what do we get?
Too many lawyers.
Too many laws, you know.
And that's why on the what I did is I looked up on the prison thing because he's saying we need more prisons for people.
We don't have enough prisons.
We need more prisons.
And so I looked up incarceration rates by country.
And if you put that next clip up, you'll see this is what I actually looked at here.
And there'll be a chart after that.
If we have that next clip, yeah.
So here's incarceration rates by country.
Now go to the next one.
Here is a list in order of the highest incarceration rate per capita in the world.
Now, El Salvador has everyone beat by double.
I don't know that that's a mark of success, but it's El Salvador, Cuba, which we believe is a police state.
Rwanda, not a free state.
Turkmenistan, not a free state.
Then right after that, it's the United States.
So we're literally in the top five of highest incarceration rates on earth.
And the president doesn't believe it's enough.
He wants to reopen Alcatraz and put more people in.
But as you just said, maybe the problem is not that we have not enough prisons, but maybe too many laws.
That's right.
But then they say, well, then there will be unemployment.
We'll have to fire all these policemen.
I mean, can you imagine you get rid of the drug laws, how these prisons would empty out, how many billions you'd save?
And to me, the prisons are filled with nonviolent criminals, too.
And when they're in prison for tax violations, and some of it is, you know, some of it, you know, is outright fraud and theft and all that.
But a lot of it can just be technical things.
It might be you might be defending a resistance because they argue from a constitutional viewpoint.
And if you look at the way we collect taxes, it is unconstitutional.
You're guilty until you prove yourself innocent.
It's crazy.
It's sinful.
You're going to get audited.
Be careful.
We love the IRS.
Well, I want to close this Alcatraz section with a very humorous post that my friend Lee Strandahan put up.
If you can skip that next one and just go to the Lee Strandahan one.
It's pretty funny, Dr. Paul, because it's right in the middle of San Francisco Bay.
And so here's what Lee posted.
He said, Imagine prisoners engineering an escape, swimming across the icy waters of the bay, taking a look around San Francisco and going back.
Trump orders the feds to reopen Alcatraz to house it.
I could actually imagine that.
They finally get out of Alcatraz.
They land on the streets of San Francisco where people are doing their business on the streets and what have you.
Take me back to Alcatraz, man.
So anyway, I was just going to move on from that funny post to another pretty weird thought that the president had.
And again, I do wonder, as you said, is he joking or is he having one on us?
But go to the next one now.
He got up, I guess, grouchy about the film industry.
He's angry.
He said the movie industry in America is dying a very fast death.
Other countries are offering all sorts of incentives to draw our filmmakers and studios away from the United States.
Hollywood and many other areas in the USA are being devastated.
This is a concerted effort by other nations and therefore a national security threat.
It is, in addition to everything else, messaging and propaganda.
Therefore, I'm authorizing the Department of Commerce and the U.S. Trade Representative to immediately begin the process of instituting a 100% tariff on any and all movies coming into our country that are produced in foreign lands.
We want movies made in America again.
You know, if you think about why, you know, parts for automobiles for movies or whatever, why would they go overseas?
There has to be an advantage to the businessman serving his customers here in this country.
So that's why they do this.
So costs are higher here.
And who knows, it might be related to labor costs.
Maybe they're not at market value.
And of course, you can't touch that because then you'd be unpatriotic and you're not allowing the market to determine that.
And also the quality that is made in the United States, most people talk about it and they talk in conversation they say, you know, Americans aren't that productive anymore.
They don't, and this wouldn't apply to a lot of people.
A lot of them are great workers and all that.
But, you know, getting workers to do jobs, we find that they're not that ambitious and the costs are higher.
And all of a sudden, you know, it's in their best interest.
And it should be freedom, the freedom of choice on where to go.
And it should serve an economic benefit.
So if we don't have the right kind of automobiles, which at one time we were really bad on, and they were buying too many automobiles from overseas, but what did they have to do?
They started making automobile heal by parts that are coming in.
So now we're going to boycott the import and make the prices go up again.
Too bad they want to test the theory of freedom of choice.
Yeah.
I just, you know, the thing about the whole film thing is goofy, it's funny, whatever.
But the thing that's a little bit troubling is this sort of, I view this as a national security threat, you know, and it's, I mean, everything is in national security, national security.
I think it's crazy.
Now, go to that next clip, though, because there are real world effects when President Trump decides he gets up grumpy and he wants to say something, he's mad at something.
There are real world effects.
Now, this is from today's Zero Hedge.
Devastating attack.
Wall Street dramatically responds to Trump's proposed tariffs on foreign films.
Now you're seeing the big players in the entertainment industry.
Netflix loses 2.5%.
Warner Brothers, 2.7%.
Disney, 1%.
Paramount, 2%.
Roku, 2.25%.
Fu Boo TV down 3%.
So the markets do react, Dr. Paul, when President Trump decides to be angry at films in the morning.
You know, if 100% doesn't work, what if somebody says, I need to do it, I'll pay it.
Maybe they'll raise the tariffs up to 200%.
I mean, the way they think.
But a lot of times there's special interests involved.
There's no doubt about it.
Some companies get protected and some people get relief.
And it's all boils down to endorsing the principle of interventionism.
You know, we generally recognize that we shouldn't have intervention in personal behavior, personal relationships, and sexual relationships and religious relationships.
But when it comes to this, we allow, you know, everything from total anarchy to total totalitarianism.
And in between, you could do anything you want and approach either side.
So this tariff, you could have no tariffs or you could have 100% tariffs.
So there's something not very good about this system.
Well, here's another thing from the article about this.
And this is Zero Hedge quoting Bloomberg, quoting Barclays.
But he said, there are literally no details available at this point other than a social media post from President Trump.
Therefore, it's not clear how this will be implemented.
However, and I highlighted part of this, if this is deployed on a wide scale, it may end up harming the very industry it's supposed to help, especially given that the U.S. exports three times the amount of contact that it imports.
Media stocks like Netflix have been seen as defensive due to lack of exposure to tariff-related threats.
And now, the final clip that I have on this is from our friend Peter Schiff, who, of course, is always very insightful.
If we can put that last one up, this is Schiff's take on the announcement, Dr. Paul.
Today, Trump announced a 100% tariff on movies produced outside of the United States.
But movies aren't physical goods that come across the border in a way that a tariff can be applied.
This would be some new kind of federal excise tax on Americans who watch movies filmed abroad.
That last sentence, I think, Dr. Paul captures it in a nutshell, more like a federal excise tax than a tariff.
I doubt if he's going to get a lot of coverage on this, but he has stuck to his principles when it comes to monetary policy and spending.
And all I think about so often is how our government treated his father because that was atrocious, what they did, because he believed that the income tax was unconstitutional, the way it was applied was unconstitutional.
And to read about how they punished him is very, very evil.
Yeah, it's good that he stuck to his guns, though.
That's a good, it's a good observation.
Well, I'm going to close out, Dr. Paul, and we've had kind of just to point out, have a little bit of fun pointing out some of the goofy stuff that Trump's up to.
I kind of wish, I mean, I'm guilty of posting too much probably myself, but then again, I'm not the president of the United States.
He probably, I think, should maybe keep a diary or something, keep it to himself every time he gets an idea, maybe not post it.
But anyway, I'm looking over here.
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Thanks for tuning in to us on a Monday and over to Dr. Paul.
Very good.
Last week, I believe we talked about the coming up budget, and there would be some cuts in non-defense budget, but the military budget would go up.
And it's exactly the opposite of my suggestion.
If we were serious about cutting back, the easiest cut back should be cutting back on our empire and all the wars we cause and don't cut back on the social benefit.
That neither is going to happen.
They're going to continue to spend.
They're going to say, well, we will cut the non-defense budget, but we'll never cut military budget because you would be isolated because you'd be the most un-American person in the world and so unpatriotic.
But now the White House is joining in this.
They're agreeing with the House who wants to cut in the non-defense spending and add more to the military.
Before you know it, we talked about trillions of dollars now.
It's going to be over a trillion dollars this year.
And some of the administration say, well, $2 trillion next year might be a good idea.
That type of thinking makes me think, no, and I try to indicate that nobody knows exactly how economic matters matter, the timing of how things go sour.
But when I read stories like this, I think it's getting closer and closer.
That's about all I can say because this cannot be sustained.
And I don't know whether the end point on the deficit is it's certainly not $36, $37 trillion.
It could be 40 or could be 50.
But anyway, since that is not going to be reversed easily, there's too many special interests and the Federal Reserve is alive and well and you can't even audit to find out what they're doing.
I'll tell you what, it is coming.
And let's hope it doesn't come immediately.
We hope to educate enough people to realize that when the time comes and we have to cut spending, people better understand exactly what that means and not resist it.
Already, you see the resistance.
Anytime there's a suggestion for cutting spending, the special interests pop up and they usually reverse that trend.
I want to thank everybody for tuning in today to the Liberty Report.
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