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June 12, 2025 - Ron Paul Liberty Report
28:10
Americans In A Vice: The Left Puts Illegals First ... The Right Puts Israel First

The American citizen is caught in a vice. On one side there are protests (and many planned protests) against the deportation of illegal immigrants. On the other side there is increased government deficits and debt with a "Big Beautiful Bill," along with a possible war with Iran! The American citizen takes the brunt of it all. "Making America Great Again" appears to be a distant memory.

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Time Text
Imminent Attack Worries 00:15:06
Hello, everybody, and thank you for tuning in to the Liberty Report.
I'm Fidel Castro.
I'm just kidding.
I'm Daniel McAdams.
Dr. Paul obviously is not with us today.
Otherwise, I wouldn't be making a joke.
But I am joined today by my good friend and colleague, Chris Rossini.
Chris, are you there?
I am here.
Great to be with you, Daniel.
Great to be with you.
So, our plan today, Chris, as I understand it, is we're going to chew on three of the topics over the week that we've touched on that are still blazing in importance and still out there with people talking about.
And I'm going to start us out with the Iran attack, Iran-Israel attack.
That many of us, myself especially, were on the edge of our seats last night because there were so many indications that an attack was imminent.
And of course, you can overemphasize different things that look like they are related, you know, that may not necessarily be related.
But the word went out yesterday afternoon, apparently.
It certainly was picked up by Reuters and other mainstream media outlets that the U.S. Embassy in Iraq was evacuating non-essential personnel and that all military bases within range of Iran were being told to evacuate non-combat or non-military personnel.
And that looked like they were certainly getting ready for an attack.
The CENTCOM commander, General Karila, was set to come and testify before Congress today, and that testimony was canceled.
What other things?
There were several other things that President Trump was asked as he was at the Kennedy Center: why did you evacuate some of these military bases?
And he said, well, you'll find out or something to that effect.
So it certainly seemed as we move, Chris, towards Sunday, which would be, I think, the fifth round, if I'm not mistaken, of U.S.-Iran talks.
And as President Trump himself said right after his talk with Bibi Netanyahu earlier this week, the Iranians have changed.
Something has changed.
They're not easier to deal with anymore, and I'm getting frustrated.
So all of these things led us to believe that an attack was imminent, and we were on the edge of our seats.
What it looks like, apparently, from what I've read, is that Cotter tipped Iran off, that Israel was ready, and Israel had to call it off.
Whether that's true or not, I don't know and can't say, but go ahead and give your take, Chris.
What were you thinking when you were watching it?
No, I'm further disappointed, you know, first with that big, beautiful bill.
This is even more severe than that.
I mean, this is the person that was elected because he started no new wars.
And we were told over and over, he's the one that could prevent World War III versus, you know, Kamala Biden and all those people.
And look, here we are in June already, not half a year, and we're getting this big, beautiful bill, which is more government deficits and spending.
And we're on the eve of war again with, you know, for Israel.
So it's, you know, so this is a very disappointing trend that we're seeing because MAGA is becoming a distant memory because these are major promises and war being the biggest.
So we're heading in the wrong direction, and that is not good at all.
And the specifics of it, Chris, are so bizarre and insane because President Trump's complaint yesterday that the Iranians, something's changed with him, it's reminiscent of remember he said a couple of weeks ago, Putin's gone crazy because he responded to the Ukrainian attack with a lot of missiles.
I mean, that's kind of what you do in a war.
The Iranians, if anything, have not changed.
Their position, unlike the position of the U.S., has been absolutely static.
We are willing to give up our higher level enriched uranium, but we will retain our legal right to enrich uranium for civilian use.
I think that's up to 3.6%.
They have not wavered on this.
It's the U.S. that's wavered.
You had originally the U.S. said, okay, that's fine.
And then Witcoff said, no enrichment at all.
And by the way, get rid of all your missiles.
They said, no, that's a non-starter.
And so then back and forth, Witcoff led up, then Trump led up, then Trump said no enrichment.
So it's the U.S. that keeps shifting the goalposts and making it difficult.
But the thing that's most frustrating, you expressed frustration, Chris, and I absolutely agree with you.
The thing that's most frustrating is the Trump administration acts as if it has absolutely no power over Israel, no tools in its toolbox, knowing that if Israel does unilaterally attack Iran, any deal with the U.S. is completely gone.
Thousands of American troops, and I've heard as many as 80,000 are within range of Iran.
Thousands of American troops will be killed, most likely.
And you will have possibly the beginning of World War III because the Russians and Chinese, not that they would join in militarily, but they're not going to sit by and watch this happen.
So with all of that, Washington is acting as if the Trump administration is acting.
It has no leverage.
All President Trump would have to do is pick up his phone and say, Phoebe, if you do this, you are absolutely on your own.
We won't give you a bit of intelligence.
And by the way, not another bullet.
It would be over.
It would be done.
But he won't do that.
And I don't know why.
Yeah.
And war with Iran is not like war with these other nations, Iraq and Syria and Libya.
You know, those nations, and no disrespect to them, they were shoved in the situation that they were, were carved out by Westerners after the World War.
Iran is a civilization that has been around for thousands of years, and they have big backers.
By itself, it is formidable.
But like you said, Russia and China have no interest in another country, you know, heading towards them being in chaos, which is what we've done.
We've caused chaos in Iraq, in Syria, in the Middle East.
They have no interest in having Iran in the same chaos.
So as you pointed out also, we have American troops out there for no reason.
They do not belong out there.
That is not America out there.
They're not defending us.
I don't blame the troops.
They're doing what they're told.
They're troops.
That's what you have to do.
I blame the people that stick them there.
And now their lives are in danger.
And our lives would be in danger.
You know, we think that we just watch wars on our cell phones.
Well, with these powers, our lives could possibly be in danger because they can harm us here.
And this is a very, very stupid thing to do if President Trump doesn't backpedal somehow.
And like you say, tell them, we are not going to back you up in this.
You're on your own.
Yeah, the Israelis have gamed out three possible scenarios for them to attack Iran.
And the first one is they go it alone.
And of course, I've seen there's a list of pros and cons for them on that.
The second one is they it's kind of a hybrid.
They go it alone, but they get U.S. intel and they get U.S. air support, you know, which was very, very important back when the Iranians originally retaliated against Israeli attacks on Iranian territory.
And then the third would be a full joint exercise between the U.S. and Iran.
The first does not look very good if they have to completely go it alone.
And it would be difficult, even though Netanyahu is backed into a corner right now, politically speaking, and war is really the only way he's going to keep power.
A disastrous loss for Israel would do one of two things.
It would certainly destroy the regime.
It could destroy the physical existence of Israel, but it would probably prompt Israel to use nuclear weapons against Iran if it found itself backed into a corner.
They've already said that if we're going down, we're taking all of you with us.
So it's an extraordinarily difficult situation.
And unfortunately, President Trump, from what we can see in public, is acting like President Biden, where he says, gosh, sheesh, I wish they wouldn't do this.
You know, I really wish they would stop killing all these people.
I wish they would settle down, but not doing a thing, not exercising any leverage that the U.S. has.
And, Chris, the thing, and I guess we can segue, but the thing about this is that it's easy to blame him completely, but you have a Congress that is completely 100%, with a couple of exceptions, in the back pocket of Israel.
And this, despite poll after poll showing that the American public, including a majority of Republicans, particularly in the 18 to 40 age range, do not look favorably on Israel at all.
There's a massive disconnect between the voting population, the general opinion of people in the United States with regard to our relationship in Israel, and those people who are literally leading us into a war and literally lying us into a war.
I'm actually looking at a post right now on Excel Tom Cotton yesterday, which was a lie, as they all are.
He said today the Secretary of Defense confirmed that Iran's terrorist regime is actively working toward a nuclear weapon for the sake of our national security, the security of our allies and millions of civilians in the region.
This cannot be allowed to happen.
Yeah, we remember this before.
This is exactly the garbage that they told us in the run-up to the Iraq war, and they're doing it all over again.
That's right.
And I want to point out, this will be my final thoughts on this, Daniel, is our nation is not what it was in the early 1900s, World War I, World War II.
We are far away from that.
We were a net creditor.
Now we have the biggest debt in the history of the world, and they want to make it even bigger.
We were a manufacturing powerhouse.
We manufacture virtually nothing now.
We have half of our country supporting illegals staying here, not being deported, rioting, and planning a thousand other protests.
We're not a unified nation by any stretch of the imagination.
So to think that America is in the position to go into a major, deep war is insanity.
It could be the final nail in the coffin of our country.
I mean, I know that that's outrageous, but it could be because we are not in the position for anything like that.
Absolutely.
We're teetering.
People have the illusion that we're not.
Well, let's move on, Chris.
You want to talk a little bit about the riots going on around the country?
Yes.
What's your take on those?
I know you're watching it.
Yeah, I mean, this is a tough one because President Trump was elected to do what he's doing.
He is enforcing federal law.
So you can't blame him for that or his supporters.
People that are here illegally should not be here.
That's illegal.
So you can't criticize that unless they, you know, President Trump goes Lincoln and just scraps the Constitution.
Then we have a problem with that.
But as of now, he's not doing that.
The only thing I wanted to point out, too, that's big is I see a lot of the bar is a little bit too high, I think, on the right, because they keep saying deport them all, deport them all.
And hey, if you could wave a magic wand, that would be one thing, but that's not the world we live in.
Like I said, you had 50% of the country.
Trump only in raw votes had 2 million more than Kamala that are okay with the consequences of illegals.
You have governors, you have mayors that are, you know, resistance.
There isn't a unified thing where the whole country thinks we've been invaded and we have to get these people out.
Half of them are okay with it.
So deport them all.
You may want to lower the bar a little bit because you have to, because that's the reality of the situation.
And I know you're going to talk about the big, beautiful bill, how that's being used against us, you know, using that deport them all stuff, Dane.
Yeah, the thing that's fascinated me from the very beginning is this whole idea of who benefits from this.
And in a weird way, everyone kind of benefits.
The right benefits, the Trump supporters benefit from this clash because it solidifies Republican disdain for Democrat policies and it causes them to radicalize even more and be convinced that they're right even more about this.
So definitely it shores up President Trump's base.
The Democrats benefit from it.
And Dr. Paul and I have talked this week about how Gavin Newsom has emerged from the ashes to all of a sudden be a great leader challenging President Trump, arrest me, arrest me.
You can find me at the French laundry.
Wait till I finish my filet.
You know, I mean, he's emerged.
The Democrats, it reinforces all of the things that they want to get to their base, which is that Republicans are cruel, evil people who want to break up families.
So it's such a tangle of worms, Chris, that it's almost like something that they can turn on and off at will.
And that's why a lot of people have said, well, what are we not paying attention to as we're paying attention to these riots?
Yeah.
And Americans need to be careful of the opportunists because every crisis, they look for an angle to increase power.
So we have to have President Trump stay within the law, not give him extraordinary powers, because then that'll be it.
Those extraordinary powers will stay.
And the next AOC, Kamala Harris, progressive president, radical, will have those powers.
So this is a very tough situation.
You know, the die was cast when they let them in.
They knew that when they let them in, you're not going to get these people out.
You can get some, but how are you going to find them?
Where are you going to put them?
Where are you going to send them?
You know, you know where they're from.
What are you going to have planes going all over the world carrying people?
What's the cost of something like that?
How are you going to deal with all the resistance?
They were smart in a very bad way, knowing that once we get these people in here, getting them out is going to be virtually impossible.
Now, Republicans hate to hear that.
They want go remake California, like go remake Iraq.
No, you can't go remake Iraq.
You're not going to go remake California either.
So this has to be done somehow without all of us suffering with more tyranny because you want to solve a very big problem.
Surveillance State Concerns 00:03:32
You made a great point, Chris.
I mean, who's the biggest beneficiary?
Maybe it's the surveillance state because you're seeing a lot of Republican manga types in this lumer influencer.
If you saw, she put out a post a few days ago saying we need to bring Palantir in there.
Basically, she's calling for the police state 1984 surveillance of people.
And a lot of Republicans are signing on to it saying, we can do this temporarily.
We have to employ these extraordinary measures.
But trust us, when we get rid of all of these evil illegals, we'll go back to normal.
Where have we heard that before, Chris?
Yeah, no, that's it reminds us of 9-11, Patriot Act, Patriot Act.
You know, when there's crisis, you've got to watch out for opportunities.
Look at what we did after 9-11.
We attacked a nation that had nothing to do with it with fervor, with everybody supporting it.
What a disastrous, what an embarrassment.
These people are sitting over there, and here comes America going to destroy us, and we did nothing to them.
I mean, what's that?
I was just going to say we actually attacked two countries that didn't have anything to do with it because Afghanistan itself, they were only hosting al-Qaeda.
And all they asked for when the U.S. demanded the right to go after Al-Qaeda, they said, well, just show us your evidence.
And, you know, George W. Bush and his neocons were so stoked for war, but they wouldn't have none of that.
We're going to go in anyway.
So technically, I would say two, because none of these guys were Afghans, as far as I remember.
They were Saudis and, you know, Yemenis and all that.
No, that's a great point.
So that's two countries that we went out with full force to destroy and they weren't even involved.
I mean, what an embarrassment.
But we have to learn from this.
You know, the propaganda was all there to get Americans whipped up.
The propaganda will be here.
God forbid that there's going to be war with Iran.
We're going to be lied to like never before, because this would be a much bigger one.
So, but we have, you know, there's X.
We have the government is not trusted.
Israel's perception of Israel is terrible.
So we do have good things going for us if we want to avoid something like this, but we have to be vigilant because they will lie us into another disaster without caring at all.
Just like they don't care about Iraq, we have to care.
And the best way to care is to get to the truth of the matter and speak it as best as we can.
Absolutely.
You know, the other thing I was going to say about it is the surveillance state being used against us in a temporary way.
But the thing that I think that might be successful, and I don't know if this might be a compromise, but as you said, deport them all.
Maybe, you know, because there's a problem with due process in some ways.
Maybe the people who are here illegally who have already been convicted of a crime.
I mean, couldn't you kind of start with some low-hanging fruit?
No, I know.
And that seems like the obvious thing, but, you know, they went right for Los Angeles where there's no support.
And if, you know, now we're where we are.
So it's, we're, we're being squeezed, like we say in our title from both sides.
Senator Paul's Opposition 00:08:01
If you want me to move on to our last topic real quick, we just wanted to cover the late with the BBB, the big, beautiful bill, which, you know, hardly beautiful.
The one thing I wanted to talk about because it came up is this Rand and Massey, who are the heroes in this story, are, you know, here comes the propaganda again.
What are your accomplishments?
What have you done?
Well, think about the situation we're in.
We have the biggest government in history, which is not what America should be.
It's the exact opposite.
So is passing legislation to create this monster an accomplishment?
Because that's how it's handled.
That, where are your bills that got us to this disastrous level?
Show us how you got us here.
And they can proudly say that they don't.
They are against all of it.
They are against more deficits, more debt that is bankrupting us.
So to be these are noble successes.
That is the success to go up against the big empire and all of its propaganda and all the people that want to continue all the bad.
So that's the accomplishment.
And it matters.
It matters because the other side, even though these are two people, are obsessed with them.
They can't take their eyes off them.
They have to constantly bash them.
They're obsessed because all you need is a little seed of truth and it could take the whole thing down.
So they want to squash that seed and lie against it and say, where are your accomplishments?
So, you know, Massey and Rand are on the right side, and it's very hard to be on the right side.
Oh, yeah.
We've been there with Dr. Paul.
You know, you may have seen I got into a dust up with one of these influencer conservative blockheads who started attacking Rand, saying exactly what you're saying.
Well, what have you done?
All you've done is sit there and voted no and passed and put in legislation.
Well, that's kind of their job.
And what have you done to get rid of illegals?
Yeah.
Okay, Senator Paul, it's the weekend.
You got to suit up and people aren't sitting illegals.
I mean, the level of understanding of basic civics is really shocking in this country if that's what they think the job of a senator is.
You know, they can use their position.
They can use the influence that their position conveys upon them, especially in the Senate.
Obviously, and they do do that all the time.
Most of these gentlemen that we're talking about do that all the time.
But this idea that, you know, that Senator Paul is not personally out there with those plastic twisties arresting people who won't show their ID, it's just preposterous.
You know, it's outrageous.
Yeah.
And, you know, the good side, the other side of the coin, is afterwards, after everybody calms down, we get to the point of, well, Massey was right again.
Rand was right again.
Massey was right about the CARES Act.
Look at the inflation.
He was right to be the only one, even though the president went after him, primarily him, which he won the primary.
And then there was Rand.
Well, he tried to get accounting for the Ukraine money.
Yeah.
But he was Putin's puppet.
And then afterwards, well, Rand was right because 75% of that money, nobody knows where it went.
So they do get that part of it, but they right now they have to deal with the tough part of being right.
And that's everybody slinging the slings and arrows against you because they're blitzed with propaganda that they, for some reason, can't ever get past in their minds.
Yeah, that's true.
And the worst thing is when they don't even get credit, because it'll be, well, no one could have saw that coming.
You know, nobody could have known that the Iraq war wouldn't have turned out well.
You know, no one else was saying it.
You know, no one else was saying that spending $8 trillion on nothing is, you know.
So it's bad, but you know, this big, beautiful bill, there's so much focus on it.
And the president, unfortunately, has tied so much of his political capital to it.
And it's an absolute disaster.
But, you know, Senator Paul was, you know, I think both read a piece in Zero Hedge today where Senator Paul said, hey, look, if you want me to be a yes, there's one simple trick to do it.
Just take out the debt ceiling increase.
Because if you want to add $5 trillion to this, make that a separate vote.
Do it somewhere else.
Don't hide it in this bill because that makes everything else completely goes by the wayside because this is what it's really all about.
And that's the one thing, of course, they refuse to do because Republicans, and there were some great quotes from Senator Paul in it, but basically, you know, Speaker Johnson is going to, well, he'll be conservative next time.
You know, after the midterms, he'll go back to being conservative.
You know, that's the idea of it.
But putting all of this in there into this big, beautiful bill and passing it all and increasing the debt ceiling is just a non-starter for Senator Paul and hopefully for at least four others because the bill needs to go down.
It needs to die.
Yep.
Well, very good, Daniel.
That's it for me.
Senator Paul, Congressman Massey, we're with you.
Stay with your principles and you'll always have our support.
I know, Daniel, you want to mention our upcoming conference, which I hope people will join us.
I'm always there.
I love meeting new people.
Daniel, you can finish this off.
Okay, thanks.
I was just going to say one other thing, actually, which is that, and Senator Congressman Massey talked about it yesterday.
He put up a post on X about it yesterday.
And this is the idea.
And I don't want to get out of my soapbox here, but that Congress is incapable of doing its primary job, which is passing appropriations bills, individual appropriations bills for each sector of government.
That's what their job is.
And they can't do it because they're too busy doing other showboaty things.
Now, Marjorie Taylor Graham said yesterday that she thinks that, and by her count, there have been 26 resolutions passed by this Congress opposing anti-Semitism and endorsing Israel.
Even if you think that's a good cause, that's a little bit of overkill.
And there was a post on X yesterday, Chris, from Speaker Johnson, the very same Speaker Johnson, who is incapable of getting appropriations bills passed under regular order in the House, who announced that at the end of this month, he's going to chair a, he's going to speak the Knesset in Israel.
And so he's doing all these things except his job.
And Massey responded to the speaker's announcement that he would be going to Israel to, I guess, open some, I don't know, hearing in the Knesset by saying, you wait.
This is Massey.
He says, you wait.
September 30th will come around.
None of the appropriations bills will have been passed.
And Speaker Johnson and those around him, his lackeys, will say, well, we just didn't have the time to do it.
We were so busy doing other things.
Yeah.
All of the things they're doing are things that they are not supposed to be doing.
Or at the very least, after they've gotten their work done, you know, after you get your job done, then go off to Israel, go do whatever you want.
But they're not getting the work done.
And that's the frustration.
You know, and it's hard to imagine.
I've said it before, Chris, and I don't want to, again, soapbox it.
But when I was on the hill with Dr. Paul, we had regular order.
We voted on the individual appropriations.
Without doing that, what the effect of that is, is it puts enormous power in the executive branch.
Literally, Congress is abrogating its constitutional obligations and saying, okay, President Trump, you do our job for us.
We've got other shiny objects that we want to chase.
So you just do our job.
And it's very frustrating.
And we can never fix this country until we fix this massive, massive problem in the legislative branch of government.
And what would take strong, decent men and women to be elected who actually care about the Constitution and the country.
Blueprint for Peace 00:01:28
And we've got a couple of them.
We need to have a lot more of them.
So anyway, stepping down off my soapbox, Chris, I want to thank everyone for watching the show today.
And I do want to remind everyone that we will have the Ron Paul Institute's ninth annual conference in Washington, D.C. Actually, it's in Dulles near the airport, so you don't have to go into town if you want.
Blueprint for peace.
We've got great speakers lined up.
We're going to be announcing more great speakers, but talk about someone who's been in the news forever, who's been right, Colonel Douglas O'Gregor.
Everyone's talking about him.
Everyone listens to him.
He's on all the shows.
He has graciously agreed to come and join us again and give a talk.
One of the great minds of our time, Nassim Nicholas Taleb, the author of The Black Swan, the books about anti-fragility and all of these sorts of things, an expert in the Levant and in the policies of that region.
We're delighted to have big thinkers like him as well.
We're not having people that are going to be pounding on the podium.
We're having big thinkers who are nevertheless interesting, funny, witty people as well.
So get your tickets.
We'll put the link in the description.
We're all going to have a good time.
We're all going to learn something.
And we're going to try to help together to construct a blueprint for peace, not just internationally, but here at home as well.
So thanks again for tuning into the Liberty Report.
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