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May 19, 2025 - Ron Paul Liberty Report
27:26
Israel Hits Gaza With Ground Invasion As JD Vance Cancels Tel Aviv Trip

Vice President JD Vance has cancelled his scheduled trip to Israel amidst a massive uptick in Israeli violence in Gaza, with hundreds of civilians killed over the weekend and a ground invasion underway. Is US government attention starting to turn toward the unspeakable suffering inflicted by US bombs and money?

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Ripe for Currency Change 00:06:19
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?
Doing fine.
Thank you.
All right.
Better than the budget.
That is the U.S. budget.
There's a few other budgets that have skyrocketed.
And I always remind people that one of the worst things about the inflation and the debt and the spending is the maldistribution of wealth.
You have more and more now, trillionaires and billionaires.
At the same time, there's a lot of poor people who wonder if there's going to be a recession.
There's a significant percentage of people now who already have their recession because they can't handle the price increases.
But I maintain that the most important thing for people to watch will be the inflation figures saying debt.
And debt is something that has basically gone up almost automatically.
And today there was a report that they have to do some refinancing of a trillion-dollar corporate debt added on to many other things.
Yesterday we talked about the debt that is outside the regular banking city.
Almost half of the financial instruments are done outside of rigor banking, and yet they will be backed up by the Federal Reserve eventually.
So debt is a big deal.
And, you know, I remember so clearly the 1970s, because that was a big deal, because they eliminated, you know, the restraint on the Fed, which wasn't working, and they got rid of the convertibility of dollars into gold with the closing of the gold under Nixon.
And I thought, and other people thought it would be major, and the 70s proved it was a major thing.
But compared to what we're facing today, it was small.
It's much bigger today on how much debt is floating around there.
If you add up all the student debt and all the real estate debt, I mean, it's unmeasurable because people just can't keep up with it.
But ultimately, the bank, the Federal Reserve will back it up because I think there's a religious dedication to not allowing deflation ever to occur.
That is, deflation is when the value of the dollar goes down, which is trying to correct for the overvaluation with the inflation.
And that won't happen politically.
Nobody's going to accept the fact that they would allow deflation.
So this debt will come due, and a lot of it's coming due in this year.
And also, there's a lot of difficulty in understanding about the tariff issue.
And even this budget thing is in total chaos.
And I've always said even if they had a budget, that doesn't mean anything.
There's always an emergency during the year that they have to come through and pick it up.
So I think that it is a ripe for people to think about other currencies.
Here's an article is, is the U.S. dollar done?
Well, it's done in, but I think it's going to exist.
The dollar will exist.
But will it have value and will it be a reserve currency of the world?
Will we be able to be the ruler of the world?
I think that's limited, but the pound is still around, even though it's not the reserve currency of the world.
Something like that could happen with the dollar.
But the debt is out there and it's just spending and I'm not optimistic that they will actually cut spending and that spending because it's fake.
They come along, Daniel, and what they do is, oh, you know, you were there.
They appropriated, by the way, you know, $12 billion for such and such, and then they cut it down to $10.
Oh, well, we just made a big cut in the budget, you know, all fake stuff.
And they really did.
They pretend they're worried about it because a lot of Americans are worried about it, but they aren't or they would do something about it.
There was one statement made in the 70s that challenged me to think it through.
Some people say, well, people who want the dollar to be backed by gold, it could be backed by the economy.
And I would poo-poo that.
I said, no, not really.
But the more I think about it, I think we should have, you know, the gold should be the unit of account.
But in a way, when it comes to getting rid of dollars, and in the meantime, if the economy is healthy, the currency does buy stuff.
When everybody panics and there's this major collapse, people will get rid of the Federal Reserve notes and they will buy stuff.
And the healthier the economy is, the more they get away with it.
And we've been able to do that.
We've had a lot of productivity.
Even in the 20s, they said there's no big problem.
Prices, the stock market is going up, but prices aren't.
But there was an increase in productivity in the 20s, and yet they still had a crash.
Well, anyway, how it comes about on the day of the curve, I don't think anybody knows the date.
But I do believe Austrian economic policy is that if you spend, spend, spend, and it's universally accepted by most people, especially the politicians who are running things and the lobbyists, this will end badly.
But, of course, our goal is to try to warn people about this and try to protect themselves.
But one thing that we've concentrated on a lot has been the foreign policy and even advocated that if you are going to work your way out of the debt, which is not going to happen, you should start with the stuff that is most vulnerable, the very poor people who have been sucked into this system and can't afford food anymore, and they're already in the recession.
Preparations For Grim Developments 00:12:33
But right now, it affects the poor people a lot more.
But there is preparations going on for this.
But one thing I want to talk about a little bit, and you're the expert on this stuff, this Middle East, Israel, this is the article from anti-war.
This is scary stuff for me because there's a lot of people who would be speaking out about it, but because of the politics, I think we're finding Trump sort of in the Middle East saying one thing and saying, well, maybe I can't go along with Netanyahu and all this stuff.
But it says Israeli strikes kill hundreds in Gaza as an IDF announces.
And this is the emphasis, extensive ground operation.
And when you read the details of that, that's bad news.
And one reason why I don't think, I think Israel's overestimating their values is I see, I think home, the people who consider it their homeland will fight to the bitter end.
So I don't think the Palestinians are going to walk away.
And a lot of that territory had been occupied by the Palestinians.
And they can't just say, well, they're not a people.
Well, even Trump talks about moving them all to another part of the world.
So, this was a big issue today, and it looks like the war is not going to fade.
I don't think Trump's going to have an announcement today.
It's peace in our time, and they've agreed on a ceasefire.
I just wanted to make a comment on your economic talk because I didn't clip it, but our friend Justin Amash kind of you can tell that he's been there too.
He captures what happened.
He said, The big, beautiful bill is the GOP's establishment's latest scam.
Spending goes up, debt increases by trillions, and the cuts are designed to never happen.
These scams never end, he says, because there's a whole industry of conservative influencers ready to provide cover and mislead GOP voters.
You know, we've been there, we've seen that over and over again.
We saw now that the big, beautiful bill passed out of committee.
And it's also a pattern, too, where you'll have some members, I won't necessarily name them by name, but who make a lot of loud noise.
But when the rubber hits the road, they sort of become little kitty cats and they don't stand up, they back down and they vote present so that the bill can pass.
And this bill does the opposite of what you just said, because you're saying that you know there needs to be some protection for vulnerable people during the transition.
Well, what this does is it's cutting, you know, and we're not opposed necessarily.
You've never been opposed to cutting it eventually, but it's cutting welfare for the poor and adding it to welfare for the rich in the form of a huge, huge military budget.
Which if President Trump is saying we don't want to be neocons anymore, we don't want to be interventionists anymore, we can't do it anymore, then why the massive uptick in military spending?
It doesn't make any sense.
Yeah, that's for darn sure.
Yeah, I want to read one little paragraph from this article that was on anti-war describing exactly, not exactly, at least the thrust of what is being planned in that area.
And this article claims: the purpose of Israel's new offensive is to capture more territory and flatten every remaining building in Gaza with a goal of full military occupation.
Israeli officials have said another goal is to concentrate the Palestinian civilian population into a stiny, a tiny area in southern Gaza.
That's going to store up some real problems.
And I still think that a few people there will think it's their homeland and they're not going to go away easily.
Yeah, but don't forget they have been starving since March.
They haven't had a bite of food.
So if you starve people long enough, they're going to go to where there is.
And that's how they're doing it.
I put up that clip.
This is the first.
This is thanks to Dave DeCamp over at Anti-War, who's written up several pieces of information.
And as you say, Dr. Paul, Israeli strikes kill hundreds in Gaza as IDF announces extensive ground operations.
We're talking 140,000, 150,000 killed each day, or 150 people, mostly women and children, killed each day over the past four or five days.
Massive strikes.
They're striking their tents.
I saw a photo that I'm not going to put up, but it's a photo of the aftermath of people living in tents after they were shredded by U.S. bombs.
And I'll tell you, it's one of the worst things I've ever seen.
So anyway, hundreds of Palestinians have been killed by Israeli strikes in Gaza in the recent days as the Israeli military has launched a new phase of its assault on the Strip called Gideon's Chariots.
On Sunday, the IDF announced it was conducting extensive ground operations in northern and southern Gaza.
And medical sources told Al Jazeera that at least 144 Palestinians had been killed by Israeli attacks in Gaza since dawn.
So you're seeing a massive increase.
And as you say, the point is to completely depopulate the area.
And what's happening is two things.
Now, first of all, they've been starved since March.
Virtually no food has gotten in since March.
We've seen pictures of people, I've seen pictures of starving kids, dead babies who've starved to death, etc.
So when you've starved people for that many months, and then you offer the aid, so some limited amount of aids coming in, it's a cord.
It's coming in according to a very weird scheme whereby I think there are maybe four or five distribution centers for two million people.
So they're each going to have to distribute a half a million meals, which is almost impossible if you think about it.
But what they are is they're built into basically walled-in concentration camps.
So if you're hungry, you've got to go where the food is and you've got to get locked in.
It's almost using this food as bait to get these people to leave the rest of Gaza and come in and finally get some food and then they will have been ethically cleansed.
So in what looks like it might be a humanitarian concession, in fact, is the opposite.
It's a way of doing the final cleansing of the Gaza Strip of Palestinians.
And it does seem like there's no realistic allies to the Palestinians in the region.
Sounds like the vocal people are on college campuses getting their civil rights abused because they're not supposed to even talk about it and say that there's something unfair about what's going on.
Of course, our position is not deciding to pick sides as much as pick our side.
I say just stay out of it.
Because when you look at it, if we said, well, why don't we accept the principle that we don't give weapons and we don't send equipment and all and support this type of operation?
I mean, just think how much money we'd save there.
I mean, we could do that without cutting food stamps.
But that is, and that's one thing that hasn't, they're not even pretending to cut that.
They were right up front bragging about how they're increasing.
And next year it's going to be more.
You know, even on a country like the money they spent in Yemen.
Remember, they said it could be a trillion dollars this year, but it could be two trillion dollars.
And it wasn't like they were warning.
It was like, you know, it sounds good.
To those who were listening, the ones that's making profits probably signed into it too.
Yeah, and you make a good point.
Not taking sides is important.
But what we saw, we've seen, I think it was just today, maybe it was late yesterday, several very large military transport cargo planes landed at Ben-Gurion Airport, loaded to the brim with bombs.
Those bombs are going to be used to kill Palestinians, most of them being civilians, you know.
But the other thing that happened, you say there's not a lot of people standing up for Palestinians being killed in Gaza.
Now, the Yemenis did it, and they prevailed, but it's almost like it was an in-your-face because Trump was meeting with Arab leaders last week, as we discussed on the show.
And in the process of meeting with them, he was told some, my guess is he was told something about the Palestinians.
You've got to try to do something for what's happening in Gaza.
Right as he was being told that is when Netanyahu's government announced, we're going to actually go in and have a ground invasion and flatten the place out.
So it was almost an insult and put Trump in a kind of a bad situation where he's over there meeting with these people.
And meanwhile, Netanyahu is trying to make it difficult for him.
But here is something that's pretty grim.
Now, this is from Dropsite News.
This was just released.
If you go ahead, skip one and go to that list, that post, that ex-post.
The Health Ministry, this is in Gaza.
The Health Ministry has released a new 1,000-page document with the names, ages, and other info of 52,959 Palestinians killed in Gaza.
For the first 100 pages, over 5,000 names, the age is listed at five years or younger.
The first 18 pages, the age is listed as zero, i.e., under one year.
Now, you could say, well, this is the health ministry, this is Hamas, it's propaganda, what have you.
But this is a list of every person with the details of their lives who've been killed and so many babies killed.
It certainly is a horror.
But it has affected the travels of our vice president.
Yeah, yeah.
He was speaking out by canceling a trip, at least sending a message.
But I think they're sort of in Trump is in a box because I think his instincts want to say one thing, but he's also very strong support money-wise and weapon-wise for Israel.
But see, that's when you have a mixed bag.
It just doesn't work.
You're either for right or wrong, right and wrong, or you're not.
But at least we heard some resistance.
That's coming from public pressure, evidently, because politically it looked like they admitted they didn't want to look like they were endorsing this tremendous increase in the killing over there.
So they were trying to back off from that.
Yeah, there is some speculation as to whether it was related.
But if you go to the skip the Greenwald post, we'll come back to that in a minute if we can.
But go to that cradle post.
U.S. VP cancels Israel visit as Gaza invasion expands south.
Now, JD Vance has claimed that it's only a logistical problem that kept him from meeting with Netanyahu.
That may well be the case.
He said kind of a quip of who's going to watch the kids if we spend extra days out here?
We've got to get home.
Could be the case.
Nevertheless, think about this scenario.
He traveled to Rome to attend the first mass given by the new Pope, an American Pope, a new pope who has spoken out about violence in Gaza and elsewhere.
So for him to go from what he, I think J.D. is Catholic, from that holy experience and then go straight to Tel Aviv where they're slaughtering people, I think the optics of that, anyone in the White House would say this is going to be a bad look.
So you do have to wonder.
But go to the next clip because this is what the Cradle reported.
U.S. Vice President JD Vance backtracked on a decision to visit Israel due to the new military operation being carried out in the Gaza Strip.
Axios reported on 19th May, that's today, citing a senior individual.
Vance considered traveling to Israel on Tuesday, but decided against it due to the expansion of Israel's military occupation in Gaza.
The U.S. official said, the U.S. official continued, Vance made the decision because he didn't want his trip to suggest the Trump administration endorsed the Israeli decision to launch a massive operation at a time when the U.S. is pushing for a ceasefire in hostage deal.
So that's what they say.
That's what they claim.
Barak Ravid is the reporter from Axios, who does a lot of reporting over there.
I think he was in the IDF before.
But anyway, so that's apparently what we're being told.
And the visuals, the optics would be terrible, I think.
Bankruptcy Of Interventionism 00:04:54
That's why in a position whether it's economics or foreign policy is not very fruitful because they endorse interventionism, whether it's the economy or foreign policy.
Therefore, you can go either way.
And nobody wants to go to the extreme.
Nobody say we're for laissez-faire, total freedom, no government, or go to the point, well, we endorse the most vicious dictator ever to come bring about peace.
So everything is intervention.
And then that invites democracy to go in and vote.
And then what does that invite?
That invites the special, you know, the special lobbyist.
And That's who carries and are able to manipulate the news coming in there.
And they do sway things.
We saw that happen, how powerful they are.
And I can just see when you see this stuff, well, we would do this, but under this, you know, we're going to get pressure from this group.
It's still saying, well, the right thing to do is to mind our own business and follow the Constitution.
Why should that be so hard?
Why should the American people demand it and stand up and cheer?
But too often, what does it do?
It's very divisive.
The Americans are forced to pick a side.
And that's so in economics and in foreign policy have to pick a side because they don't understand, nor do they believe, but they're convinced that if too much is left to the people and individuals, that they're not able to cope with it.
They mess things up.
What if you left the people decide how many shots they should get, how many vaccines they should get in a year?
Wouldn't that be terrible?
Well, maybe it's terrible having the government tell them everybody they have to do it.
If you don't do it, we're going to, you know, you lose your job.
Yeah.
That kind of stuff.
You know, everyone's dancing around the issue.
There are all these plans floating everywhere.
But everyone's ignoring the elephant in the room, which is that it's actually very simple.
You know, today Trump and Presidents Trump and Putin are having a phone call.
Probably as we speak, they're talking.
President Trump expressed his frustration that his peace plans are not being accepted by both sides.
The elephant in the room is if the U.S. were just to stop doing these things, stop sending cargo planes of bombs to kill children, stop sending weapons to Ukraine to get that country flattened.
Stop supporting these wars.
If only we stopped doing things, everything would work itself out and we wouldn't have to take sides.
You know, it's so simple.
I guess it's too simple for the people who make money off of it.
I think this is a good demonstration of the bankruptcy, both moral bankruptcy and economic bankruptcy, because in a moral sense, you ought to obey our rules of law and non-intervention, and that is a great deal of benefit.
But what about the financial bankruptcy?
See, there's a limit to it now.
That's how great empires always end by bankruptcy.
They can't afford it.
And we've talked a lot now about the plans of the people who desire to overcome the dollar.
The dollar can't remain king.
And it's been over decades now just getting weaker and weaker.
And these last weeks, it's well in the news again about the weakening dollar.
Because if the dollar is weakened to the point where it can't rule, we'll lose our friends.
We'll lose our ability to boss people around.
We'll lose our ability to send everybody all the weapons they want forever.
In a way, some people are making up.
How can we keep sending more weapons to Ukraine?
We're using up our own weapons.
And the British have done that too.
And in a way, that type of bankruptcy should be an eye-opener.
And they can't be content with that.
Markets, I think, are so often much more authoritarian and they act out.
They limit some of this stuff, but they take advantage of the system to the last man alive until everybody realizes this is done for.
And that is usually in a climactic end.
And when I read this stuff on foreign policy and people trying to, I imagine still there's a lot of people who aren't paying much attention to the Middle East, unless they happen to be from a Palestinian family or a Jewish family, maybe.
I do want to shout out to Georgist who chipped in 30 bucks for today and saying thank you so much for covering Gaza.
We appreciate all the support for the show.
The Pie Is Getting Smaller 00:03:28
I'm going to close out with a clip from Glenn Greenwald.
And I think, you know, what we're in danger of seeing is that the Trump administration being as helpless and hapless as the Biden administration was.
If you remember, all of these, the years, the four years of Biden, Biden was hoping that they would stop killing, was hoping that this would stop.
It doesn't have any kind of forceful, this needs to stop, you know, kind of thing.
So put up, Glenn, because Glenn, as usual, captures it perfectly.
He put this out earlier today.
Now, he listed all of these headlines from Israeli officials saying what their intentions are.
And over and over, so many headlines, too many to count.
And Glenn says, one bizarre aspect of U.S. discourse on Gaza is Israel admits they intend to starve Gaza and destroy it all so that residents are either forced to flee or live in small concentrated camps paid for by U.S. workers.
Yet Israel's U.S. loyalists angrily deny those are their goals.
So he's basically saying Israeli officials admit what they're doing, yet the Americans, and they're doing it, but American supporters of this vehemently deny it.
They're not doing this.
They're not doing this when it's right before our eyes.
Some of them are, they need it.
If they're in the profit business, they need it to continue, or they don't want to be on the defensive, so they go along and say, oh, no, we wouldn't be for something like that.
And some of it is bought in by the propaganda, you know, and they see this.
And you're not going to get the answer, you know, from regular television.
And I don't know whether they'll get it from internet, but at least we're on the internet.
That's right.
I'm all done, so I'll turn it over to you.
And I, too, want to emphasize our respect for our viewers tuning in, because the only way we can get our message out is with the help of all the viewers and supporters of the freedom movement and the ideas of liberty, the sound money principles, and non-interventionist foreign policy.
But my message over the years has come with a dire warning.
And the warning has been there a long time, a long time before we've had any major problems.
But they've been there and they're not going to go away.
And yet, the magnificent thing is the answer is not complicated.
It's based on a moral principle of minding our own business and not permitting and endorsing the right of government or the authority of government to do things that an individual can't do.
If we can't lie, cheat, or steal or kill, why in the world do we just roll over and let our government do that constantly?
What about the whole idea of the income tax?
It's illegally collected.
It's authoritarianism.
Everybody would cringe if they get a letter from the IRS.
And yet people continue to do it, continue to do it in finance.
They get by as long as they think they're getting a piece of the pie.
But guess what?
The pie is getting smaller, and the end will come, and people will have to take a position on what is right and what is wrong.
We happen to take the position that liberty is the right way to go.
I want to thank everybody for tuning in today to the Liberty Report.
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