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May 5, 2025 - Ron Paul Liberty Report
34:07
100 Days Of Trump 2.0

President Trump's second term will reach its 100th day tomorrow. How should peace and prosperity lovers view the successes and failures thus far? What can he do better?

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Time Text
Government Control Perception Poll 00:09:06
Hello, everybody, and thank you for tuning in to the Liberty Report.
With us today, we have Daniel McAdams, our co-host.
Daniel, good to see you this morning.
Good morning, Dr. Paul.
How are you?
Doing well.
Good.
Good, good.
I always think I'm doing better than the country.
Yeah, you are, trust me.
Well, we have that right and obligation to, because if we had less government, it would be all of us.
How are we doing?
Not how is the government doing.
Exactly.
But what it means when you ask, how's the government doing?
That's like the people who control us, tax us, regulate us.
And if things aren't going well, you can't blame anybody else other than those who like big government.
But anyway, we want to talk about it because we did have a new president come in, sort of new, his second trial.
He was in before, took a break, took a rest.
He had to rest from his first four years.
But now he's back.
He's been here 100 days already, and he's changed the world.
At least some people think he has.
But you know, my first thought was, you know, they emphasize this 100 days, which I think was invented back in the 30s with how aggressive Roosevelt was.
But, you know, my thoughts are, why is 100 years significant?
And it's a political thing, you know, talk.
How fast can you get things done?
But I keep thinking, do you realize that the republic that we were given by our founders, it started to erode during the Civil War.
And think about the progressive era 120 years ago.
It got much worse.
So that invited economic intervention, foreign policy intervention, social intervention, the whole works.
So to expect too much from 100 days, I think, is an illusion, because I think it's important to change a philosophy, which might take many years and a lot more than 100 days, because the big adjustment would be for the people to assume responsibility for themselves and not say, the government will take care of me.
That's why we have Social Security.
Don't ever cut Social Security, even if you have to print a truckload of money.
We want our Social Security.
But that's a different story.
But what we're going to talk about today, Daniel, is there's a lot of stories now.
What did happen the first 100 days?
Has it improved?
And there's a lot of controversy, and there's always some good stuff and some questionable stuff.
And I imagine you could visualize or imagine what it would be like if we gave Donald Trump this podium, tell us what you did in these first 100 days.
He wouldn't be tongue-tied.
No.
I mean, he had just saved the world.
But I'm not going to question his sincerity, but I do question some of his policies.
And hopeful, I mean, and still, if you say compared to what?
Well, you know, compared to the last administration, if you look at the borders, it's hard for people to say, oh, no, we loved the, you know, the wild immigration of everybody around the world that turned into an invasion and a great burden placed on the American people.
So things like that did improve.
But some of the things that I think are real important that Trump has talked about is size up government, cut the size of government, get out of some of these foreign affairs, don't start these wars, quit bombing so many people, and on and on.
Do something with the budget.
But when you get down to the nitty-gritties, it's really hard.
It's really hard to find a balance and say, well, 95% of the things he did was positive, just 5% was negative.
And I think part of the problem is a correction for a problem that developed over 100 years doesn't get corrected in 20, 30 days.
But ideologically, it's critical on what the ideology is being presented.
And that was why the founders were successful in changing things.
And right now, the ideology is up for grabs.
When you think of the economic policies and a foreign policy, it's ongoing, but it didn't all happen overnight.
It gradually changed.
And therefore, we can look and we will find some good things that this administrator has done.
But I think the most important thing is that we're realistic and say, oh, 100 days over.
Everything's going to be all right.
Yeah, I think the 100-day mark, as you point out, has some historic value, but it probably marks the time that the honeymoon's over.
You know, a new president comes in.
He or she in the future has established himself, established a sort of benchmark for what's going to happen in the three-plus years that follow.
And so I would say if you sort of were hovering over, taking a look at the first 100 days of the Trump administration, I think the one word that probably would be used to describe it would be chaotic.
It's been very chaotic, lacking philosophy.
That wasn't a surprise.
It shouldn't be a surprise because that's one of the things that we commented on in the first Trump administration, lacking a coherent philosophy, approach to governing.
And MAGA is not sufficient.
It's not an ideology.
And the ideology for many of the MAGA people would be, well, they hated Biden so much, he was so bad that no matter what Trump does, it's going to be better.
And there's an understandable aspect to that.
We certainly, I don't want to use the word hate, but we certainly thought the Biden administration was an absolute failure on pretty much every single front.
But anyway, so there was a poll taken, Marist poll, and usually I think polls are quite useful.
I think this one probably is not very useful.
And it's to show Trump in a bad light.
But let's put it up anyway, just to have a look.
This is the one poll that I did see.
President Trump's first 100 days, April 2025.
A plurality gives Trump a grade of F at the 100-day mark.
Job approval rating slips to 42%.
Now, the next one will show the poll.
It's pretty dramatic the way it looks here.
I actually thought it was fake when I first saw it on X. Go to that next one if you can.
I thought it was fake because it does look quite bad.
There you go.
You have 45% saying that he gets an F grade and only 23% saying that he gets an A grade.
But you have to remember a couple of things, Dr. Paul.
Number one, this was carried out by, I'm pretty sure, NBC News along with PBS.
And so obviously you're going to have some skewing there, I think.
I go to the next one.
Here's a couple of things from the poll.
42% of Americans approve of how President Trump is doing his job.
That knots down slightly from 45% in March.
We've talked about that already.
53% disapprove.
39% of Americans approve of how he's handling the economy.
55% of U.S. residents.
Now, here's the part where I'm saying this makes it of limited utility.
88% of Democrats, 59% of Independents, and 17% of Republicans disapprove of how he's dealing with things.
So very, very skewed on party lines.
And go to one more just from this poll before we move on.
34% of Americans approve of how the president's handling tariffs and 58% disapprove.
Well, 90% of Democrats disapprove of how he's handling them.
73% of Republicans approve.
That's why I think this is rather not a useful poll in demonstrating anything other than the fact that the American voter is extremely polarized still about the Trump administration.
Yeah.
And the economic issues are the things that I like to pay attention to.
And I would say that the biggest surprise is how aggressive Trump has gotten.
I knew he was not, you know, laissez-faire and you had free trade, but the degree of emphasis on these tariffs and the tariff wars, and I don't think that has been settled at all.
I think it's in terrible.
People are blindly, I think, right now, hoping for the best because on the surface, a company here or there will benefit.
Oh, okay, my competition has been wiped out and we're going to do better.
But when they find out that big companies depend on maybe 37 different imports to run their business, all of a sudden it doesn't look so well.
So the tariff issue and to be a super supporter of tariffs and then use it as weapons.
That's what I don't like.
Tariffs as Weapons 00:11:01
That's the thing.
If you give and provide funding for the universities or whatever, if they don't do anything, the president will want to even regulate their speech.
Oh, you didn't support the right person on the foreign policy, so we're going to take away your funding.
And that becomes very messy and a lot of anger.
But the other part of his economic policy, a major policy that bothers me, and that is his squabble with the chairman of the Federal Reserve.
Oh, yeah.
But Trump, you know, they came up with a statistic showed that prices did this, you know, came down a little bit.
But they're not going to come down because nobody's giving up on debt and spending money and printing money.
And this argument about interest rates, I mean, he makes the case for lower interest rates.
And it is true, as the cycle goes, as interest rates go down, it is a signal for people to do certain things.
But that's the market action.
But it is not the demanding of somebody setting the interest rate.
So he's claiming he interest rate.
He did that even before he was in office.
We need lower interest rates.
But he never says, you know what, we need is more printed money.
We need to inflate the system because, you know, that'll stimulate things.
Yeah, stimulates prices.
So the whole idea of lower interest rate, there's very few in the administration that will challenge him and say, lower interest rate, Mr. President, comes from printing money and manipulation and then directing that credit to go in certain ways.
So it's dangerous and it gives the Federal Reserve even more clout.
But of course, that's what his challenge is.
He thinks he should be equal to the Federal Reserve Board Chairman.
And I think they should be equal, equally out of business of regulating interest rates.
And one of the, I mean, sort of our inspiration for the show today, everyone's talked about first 100 days.
And I just grabbed one from the Wall Street Journal, which is good and bad in many ways.
And we were kind of modeling it after at least the topics that they chose.
And I didn't clip this.
I just neglected to do it.
But it says their editorial board, editorial op-ed, says, at 100 days, Trump 2.0 is in trouble.
Subtitle, The Tariff Shock He's Unleashed Could Sink His Second Term.
Now they start by saying positive things, and I think it's certainly worthwhile to discuss them.
And here's what they say, and I agree with these first two positive things.
He says, there's no denying Trump's energy or ambition.
Mr. Trump is pressing ahead on multiple fronts, and he has had some successes.
His expansion of U.S. energy production is proceeding well and is much needed after the Biden war on fossil fuels.
He has ended the border crisis in short order.
So that's two good things.
He's also rolling back federal assaults on mainstream American values, such as policing racial favoritism.
Trump was elected to counter the excesses of the left on climate, culture, and censorship, and he's doing it.
So I think that's about four or five things.
Now, I would disagree with a couple of those, with at least one of those on censorship.
But nevertheless, energy production, border crisis, ending the racial favoritism, and the climate business and the culture business.
I think those are all on the wind column for him right now.
I think so also.
The energy thing is pretty good because he was able to do that.
And I think legitimately with some of the executive orders, a lot of the stuff done was by an executive order.
And it was more government and more regulations.
And I think that the people who do this do it for special interest.
You know, it's always this, you know, he still has to deal with, and we don't know where he stands on this, or with the Middle East.
We never deal with, you know, we can produce a lot of energy.
And Trump emphasizes we can be self-sufficient.
But why do we have to make sure we get involved in the discussion on who controls Syria?
Because they have oil there.
How about Ukraine?
All these places, the Middle East, Saudi Arabia.
Why are we making these big military deals with Saudi Arabia and thinking that that's necessary?
And yet they can affect the markets.
But I just think that is very bad.
I think we should concentrate on efficiency.
Just think how much was lost, and it's still being measured.
How much was lost with this emphasis on windmills?
And I like wind energy because it makes a lot of sense when you live out in the country.
You have a windmill or a solar panel.
You know, they're used a lot of times.
But not to light up New York City.
That doesn't work that way.
So it's not the market working.
But I think the energy thing is especially beneficial because it got rid of some of those regulations and it is going to help.
I just wish we would have more confidence in ourselves that we can produce.
And if we can't produce something and we need it, trade it.
But don't be so involved with tariffs that you have difficulty making trade deals.
Of course, if you're the king of the hill, then you get to have a lot of control on these deals that you make.
But that doesn't last forever.
Yeah.
Well, the next thing that they talk about in this, and I think we can probably talk about it too, he says, they say, on other priorities, the execution hasn't matched the promises.
That would seem to apply to Doge, which we've supported, but has been so frenetic, it isn't clear what it's achieving.
Easy targets like USAID make for symbolic victories, but no fundamental change in the growth of government.
And I think that's a good point.
Doge, great idea.
Very enthusiastic.
You wrote about this week in your column.
Very popular among Americans.
But then you have the issue of the legislature not going along, passing a bill that increases the size of government, increases the deficit.
So great idea.
And you can't blame Trump necessarily for the lack of follow-through in Congress.
No, and he's been willing to address the subject, the insanity of what they have done to women's sports.
Yeah, that's true.
And that, that probably genderism is just crazy stuff.
And he's also willing to attack and change it.
It's been changed in the military that things are done by the DEI rules and regulations.
And it's nothing more than control of who gets to do what rather than merit.
They think merit is horrible.
And that's why people get very nervous about, I wonder how he got that job.
So that is not good.
But I think that movement is good, and he's good on that.
And on the Doe, it's a shame that it's fizzling.
I think maybe it has fizzled.
But Elon is awfully quiet, and he has to deal with his own problems.
I can't imagine he's not frustrated by the lack of real serious.
You lose $10 billion.
I know it's not much, but it still probably catches his attention.
That would be a rough morning to wake up and find that out.
Well, and you touched on this as well, the tariff issue.
This is the Wall Street Journal.
Being the Wall Street Journal, of course, they focus on this being the real danger to it.
And they say that's especially true on tariffs, which could sink his presidency.
He was elected to control inflation and raise real incomes, but tariffs do the opposite.
We would agree with that, I think.
They guarantee at least a one-time increase in prices on imported goods that will flow through the economy.
They portend shortages for consumers and for businesses that source goods and components from abroad.
I think they get that pretty right.
It's a real danger.
Yeah, there was one statistic to show that the arrests and stopping people at the border, the number under Trump has gone down because people are staying away.
So maybe there's a real solution there.
But that was totally out of hand.
I bet you there hasn't been many times in all of history where a country would say, come in and do anything and we'll pay you.
We'll take care of you.
We'll feed you.
We'll kick out our veterans.
We'll do all these things.
We want you in here.
But they say, well, it wouldn't be because we think they're going to vote for us.
We want to just help people who are downtrodden.
But when you see some of the pictures, you wonder about who actually come.
So I think that guidelines on the borders is a good thing.
And Trump certainly is making that's been successful.
You know, the Wall Street Journal does mention the censorship issue, and I think they get this part of it right.
Now, they say, even on popular causes, one problem has been needless excess.
Harvard and other universities need to change.
I think we'd agree with that.
But trying to dictate their curriculum and faculty choices is an intrusion on free speech, and it risks defeat in court.
A good point.
Of course, and you've talked about this a lot, the way things are subsidized in the universities and how they shouldn't be.
But the specific really does smell like censorship.
If you don't like our Middle East policy, we will kick you out.
If your curriculum features this perspective on Middle East policy, then we will withhold your money.
Isn't it bizarre?
Now, how is he going to do that?
Well, we're going to take away your federal funding.
Well, where is the federal funding down?
It should have all been stopped and never started.
But now it's used as a weapon, so they'll say, well, we'll give you this.
It's sort of a bribery thing to control speech.
So the speech issue becomes the major issue there, rather than just the fact that they're getting these subsidies.
But, boy, the universities, well, I see these write-ups.
Some of those universities are really, really wealthy.
Oh, yeah.
And I saw some pictures and description of what's going on at Harvard.
And it didn't make me feel good about Harvard.
U.S. Carrier Groups and Yemen 00:05:36
Yeah.
I'll tell you.
They should give us some money.
Well, now, on the foreign policy, this is, I think, where we definitely diverge away from the Wall Street Journal because they're neocons.
We don't like neocons.
And so they praise the reapplication of the maximum pressure policy on Iran.
They think that's great.
They think that clearing the shipping lanes in the Red Sea are great.
That's our job.
And they think that he's way too pro-Putin.
He needs to be more pro-Ukraine.
We disagree with that.
But I think I picked out the Yemen one really just to emphasize a little bit today because this policy is clearly nonsensical.
It's counterproductive.
And it's just downright cruel.
We were looking at anti-war.com today at that strike that killed 68 Africans that are in a migrant center.
They're just bombing willy-nilly.
They're bombing everything in sight in Yemen to try to punish the people.
We talked about it a couple weeks ago.
They bombed the water supply.
They're frustrated that Yemen won't bow to the knee, and so they're bombing it.
But something else is happening too.
And I think I sent you a clip yesterday, Dr. Paul.
And that is that Yemen is effectively defending itself as well.
Now, something really strange happened yesterday, and I got into reading a lot about it.
If you put up that next clip, so a couple of U.S. carrier groups have been far away from Yemen because they're vulnerable.
As you've always said, it's easy to sink an aircraft carrier, and the Yemenis have the ability.
They have hypersonic missiles.
They've demonstrated their ability to use these.
Well, yesterday, even though the USS Harry Truman was a long way away from Yemen, something really bizarre happened.
And this is a DD Geopolitics friends of mine who run a very, very good shop over there.
They reported on it.
Earlier today, this is yesterday.
The U.S. Navy reported an FA-18E Super Hornet and a tow tractor were lost overboard from the USS Harry Truman while operating in the Red Sea.
According to official reports, the aircraft was being moved in the hangar bay when control was lost, sending both into sea.
One minor injury was reported.
An investigation is underway.
However, new satellite imagery may suggest a much bigger story.
The USS Harry Truman appears to have performed an emergency turn on April 27th to evade a large-scale Yemeni missile and drone attack.
The maneuver was so severe, it could have caused the loss of the Super Hornet.
One more point.
If true, this is the important part.
If true, and it does appear that it was true, this indicates that A, U.S. carrier group air defenses, including escort ships, failed to intercept the incoming attack.
B, U.S. assets were vulnerable enough to force a last resort emergency maneuver.
And C, Ansar Allah, that's the Yemenis, the Houthis, have reached a new level of operational pressure against forces in the Red Sea.
Now, if you go to that next clip, you will see the satellite image of this turn that the USS Harry Truman performed.
That does not look easy, Dr. Paul.
That looks like something that you might see over there at the San Bernard River on skis or water skis.
Very, very difficult maneuver.
And I will just on Yemen, just one more thing.
Ryan Grimm, who I look at a lot, I think he's a good commentator.
He makes a great point.
Why are American aircraft carriers in a war off the coast of Yemen when Yemen has said if we leave, they will let our ships go through?
I mean, it's kind of a duh moment, scratch me.
Why is Trump determined, so stubborn, to fight this war against Yemen?
You know, when I read these stories, I used to think about the 68 reported killed and hospitals being killed.
And I said, don't they have better equipment?
I think they could aim better.
I always thought it had to be an accident.
But for some people, they really believe they target these places.
The children are killed.
It's not, Yemen is the headline right now.
But what about Gaza and Palestinians?
How many people are there?
But that we should ignore because they're a lot of people.
They're not human beings.
That's what Huckabee says.
Yeah, exactly.
So you don't have to pay any attention to that.
So I think Yemen is a terrible, stupid policy that is counterproductive.
And it's going to be, that was a lucky miss for the Yemenis.
They may take out a carrier.
Can you imagine what would happen?
They've already knocked out half a billion dollars worth of drones.
So go to the next one.
Now, this is Max Blumenthal.
Now, this is still on Yemen.
He makes good points always, of course.
So Max says yesterday, after losing 21 MQ-9 Reaper drones, the U.S. has now lost an F-18 jet in a failing war to defend Israel's ability to commit genocide in Gaza.
The U.S. has failed to restore freedom of navigation in the Red Sea, cannot suppress Yemeni missiles or drones, and is massacring civilians.
Well said, Max.
That's exactly it.
And on the subject of Gaza, I would say that's another huge failure for Trump.
Go to this next one.
Stopping The Bombing 00:08:14
Now, I hesitate to do this.
This is a sensitive photo.
But this happened yesterday, and it's heartbreaking.
The 2,000-pound bombs that Trump sent to Israel just did this.
Now, it's a mother holding her murdered daughter.
You can see the blood.
Don't look if you are squeamish.
But the fact is that was our bomb.
That is a bomb that Trump just sent.
And this is what it did, destroyed the life of this mother and, of course, of the daughter.
So an absolutely failed, cruel, inhuman policy.
And it's hard to believe that more American conservatives, pro-life conservatives, are not standing up and saying enough.
When this recent bombing was started up again, they had pictures of the president stuck with the TV watching it.
It was sort of like, you know, ah, boy, look at that type of attitude.
That is so sad, so unnecessary.
But what the American people have trouble with, if we charge, and I do, that we all have a responsibility for this, all Americans say, because it's your money, our money.
And we should do what we can to stop this.
And we heard some information coming out from the candidates, the Republican side, that they intend to stop this.
But it is disappointing when it doesn't stop.
It continues, and more and more money.
Just think the number of dollars we've reported on that, how many dollars that's going to contribute to the deficit.
So I think those are some of the things that they haven't really touched at all.
You know, is the deficit, the monetary policy on inflation and control of interest rates, tariffs, tariffs up there for grabs and they're debating.
But Those things, those things can cancel out their celebration, but I don't think they realize that.
Yeah, well, we're running out of time.
We probably have more things to talk about.
You know, there is good and there is bad.
I would just mention in closing the chaos at the Pentagon with the firing of these three, and then the chief of staff now is going to be reassigned, and now he's left.
You have a real problem.
You have now, there was an interview, surprisingly, that Goldberg from the Atlantic was given an interview by Trump.
He's the guy who was on the signal call.
I don't know whose idea it was to interview him, but he was asking Trump about Heg Seth.
And this is a couple of things I didn't realize.
And there was actually an interview by one of the three who were fired.
Extremely concerned about his image.
Now, that's understandable, you know, how it goes.
But apparently, he's had a makeup room installed in the Pentagon so that he can always be, you know, that's how it is, whatever.
But there's also the criticism that he spends a lot of time looking for leaks.
He's like, you know, he's going everywhere looking for leaks, trying to find leaks, and he's also spending a lot of time.
It's probably a wise thing, but working out with the troops, exercising with the troops.
It looks good.
It's good visuals.
But the aide that was fired said policy at the Pentagon is in chaos because he's very, very concerned about his image.
So there is a problem with the Pentagon right now, and there's a problem with foreign policy.
It would be nice to see a couple of those things fixed.
You know, I mentioned this thing about complacency of the American people, not assuming responsibility, because this system we have is set up where we should have a say.
And I think, you know, there's a bit of benefit from this.
I think the sentiment was very positive in changing policies with COVID.
And I think some of the good things we talked about on Trump come about because the people are awakening to this.
But the complexity of this is something that is more difficult to sort out when you look at special interests.
You know, you look at a plane that goes down, and we would make fun.
Who cares?
Who do the big guys care about?
We'll get a new order tomorrow.
There wasn't a list of people that benefit from all this spending.
And it's for weapons that are not necessary for our defense.
It's destroying our, it's destroying our currency, and it's destroying the results of this.
And I don't see how, unless we change major changes in our moral and financial institutions, how we can last that much longer because people are going to get disgusted with us.
And right now, I think these economic things, I'm glad they're addressing it.
And there'll be a few people saying, yeah, that's right.
But I also saw some of the resistance to it.
And the special interests, the deep state, they have a lot of power and clout.
And the time we were trying to stop that war in the Middle East, to me, was a witness because they did not have that vote immediately because the people did not want us to do that.
And that went on for more than a year, maybe two years of propaganda.
And finally, they had to vote because, oh, Saddam Hussein had a nuke and he was killing babies and doing all kinds of things.
So the sentiment of the people.
So that to me is information and getting information out to people because I think if you could blot out this contest between Republicans and Democrats and just say, well, do you think we should tax you to take money to buy bombs and kill babies and do it on purpose, hit the hospitals?
And nobody's going to say, oh, yeah, I think that sounds like a good idea because that makes us safe.
It just doesn't make any sense.
So I think the effort to get our information out, and that's why the attack on the First Amendment is so disastrous if we don't do anything about that.
As long as we would protect the First Amendment, I think the people would get the message out there and be on the sides of personal liberty.
Oh, sorry.
Hugh, go ahead.
I was just going to say, I just want to thank Georges and Daniel Hamel for kicking in on the chat today.
We appreciate your donation.
And I also just want to say one thing.
We do listen to your comments.
You were complaining.
We've been complaining for a while about our sound quality.
So we listen to you and we got some new microphones.
I hope they sound better.
Thank you for those of you who are kicking in to help pay for us to do these improvements on the studio.
We still have a lot to do, as you can see.
You can always go to ronpaulinstitute.org, make a tax-deductible contribution to help us make some of these improvements as well.
And we will continue to watch the Trump administration.
We will criticize where it's necessary and we will praise where it's necessary because we're not on either team.
You know, we are on the side of peace and prosperity.
Over to you, sir.
Well, we certainly appreciate the support we get from our viewers because that's where the message really gets spread and the people change their minds.
I think that's the most important.
I don't think that people who have the most bombs are the ones that are going to be winners.
They're going to go bankrupt and they're going to be turned against because it doesn't make any sense.
But we're going to continue to do our best to keep you up to date about what is happening and to figure this out because that information is so key.
That means that we go back to that First Amendment and we see the manipulation of the First Amendment, like bribing them.
Okay, you don't say anything about so-and-so, and we'll give you foreign aid.
I used to say, if you don't do what we tell you, we'll bomb you.
Well, we still do a little bit of that too, bombing people that we just disagree with.
But the one thing that is nice to think about is the solution is not complicated.
It's a good solution.
It's morally correct.
And that is protecting the personal liberty of every single person equally.
And believe me, we can usher in peace and prosperity with those conditions.
I want to thank everybody for tuning in today to the Liberty Report.
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