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June 18, 2025 - Ron Paul Liberty Report
34:50
Americans OVERWHELMINGLY Oppose War With Iran - New Poll!

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Trump's War Powers Controversy 00:15:01
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 this morning?
Good.
We have a few things to talk about.
That is true.
Economically speaking and freedom speaking.
You know it's interesting that I watch markets pretty closely seeing how quickly they react to you know, potential war or whatever's going on in the world and they're they're pretty good.
But it's interesting today so much of the financial news is related to not the potential World War III that might start or what the next step will be or even the bankruptcy.
It's 99%, and I'm exaggerating probably, the concern is what will the Federal Reserve Board chairman say after the meetings?
What is he going to say?
Is he going to raise the interest rates, lower interest rates?
Will it be a quarter point or a half point?
Maybe he'll slip up and say the wrong word and it'll be worth a trillion dollars in the marketplace within minutes.
So I think the priorities under these circumstances of interventionism and foreign policy and economic policy means that it's uncertain.
And that's the way it seems now.
I would have placed more emphasis, even though I think all economic problems are related to foreign policies as well, because that ends up with tariffs and trade barriers and all this sort of thing.
But the thing is, is the Federal Reserve has way too much influence.
People wait and watch it.
A lot of people who watch it and react to it also know it's all fake, you know, but they have to factor that in.
You know, what are they telling us?
Untruths are label, you know, put on us, whether it's in foreign policy, whether it's the war issue or what's going on in Iran, or even the financial area, you know, what the real inflation rate is, and always deceiving the people to say that, well, oil prices went up yesterday, so there's a little bit of inflation there.
And failing to connect the Federal Reserve monetization of debt and the vital importance of understanding why most of the people in the United States or a large majority are always willing to spend the money if they think they're going to get a piece of the action.
And that's our dilemma.
But today, Daniel, we would like to talk a little bit about where we stand on our next war.
And you and I have worked together for a couple years, a year or two.
And I think when you first started, many years ago now, at the beginning of this century almost, that we've been talking about how do you prevent wars?
And how do we stop them?
Because we wanted to defend the Constitution.
And so we talked about non-interventionist foreign policy.
And yet today, here we are, once again, trying to prevent another war.
And the warmongering is going on.
And that, I think, is the big issue.
And a lot of lies are being told, a lot of scare tactics and fear-mongering going on.
A lot of profiteering is being protected because there's always money to be made in wartimes.
And one of the stupidest things I ever heard people use as a reason for war is it ends depressions.
They probably claim World War II was ended and ended the Great Depression.
But that's a heck of a price to pay because it's not that complicated.
But right now it's getting more complicated in the Middle East.
It is, Dr. Paul, and we're facing a strange situation where President Trump believes himself to have the power to decide whether or not to start attacking Iran.
There was an interview this morning where he said, he was asked, you know, are you coming closer?
He said, I'm not going to tell you.
You think I may do it?
I may not do it.
And I don't know if the framers had that in mind to have a president, a single individual with the power to say, hey, I may do it, I may not do it.
It's up to me.
You know, and we've seen now with a bipartisan piece of legislation introduced by Representatives Thomas Massey and Roe Conno, which I think at last view has got something like 30 co-sponsors, which is not as much as it should have.
It should have 330 co-sponsors.
But it's the war powers resolution type of thing that you used to do with Tennessee Sinich all the time, telling the president, you do not have the power to do this.
You do not have the authority to do this without Congress.
So that is sort of the backdrop.
And now a poll dropped, an economist YouGov poll dropped yesterday that everyone is talking about.
Trump obviously is concerned, in my opinion, about how he's being viewed, especially by his base, because he ran as a peace president.
He started a war with Yemen and lost.
And now he's on the verge of starting a war with Iran, which is no Yemen.
And so this new poll, I think, is incredibly significant because it demonstrates just how much the American people do not want a war with Iran.
Now this, go to that first clip.
This is the Newsmax write-up.
Economist YouGov poll.
60% say U.S. should stay out of Israel-Iran war.
Go to that next clip.
Well, you'd say it's skewed.
Amid the escalating conflict between Israel and Iran, a large majority of Americans say the United States should not get involved in the fighting.
According to a new economist YouGov poll, 60% of those surveyed say they do not support U.S. involvement in the hostilities, while only 16% say they back U.S. involvement.
16%, Dr. Paul.
Another 24% said they're unsure how they feel, which is understandable.
But when you look on a chart, go to this next chart, when you look at it in pictographic form, you see that orange bar on the top, all U.S. adult citizens, 60% do not want this, and only, or 60% do not, and only 16 do.
You'd say, well, it's probably skewed by the Democrats.
Actually, no.
You have a good solid majority of 53% of Republicans who do not want this war and another 24 who are not sure.
Who knows how that may skew.
But I'm sure some of those not sure, Dr. Paul, will skew toward don't want.
So you're going to have maybe close to two-thirds of Republican voters saying, Trump, we do not want you to start a war with Iran.
He's got to be paying attention to these polls, I would think.
You know, war has been a big issue for a long time, you know, leading up to World War I, World War II.
It was disgusting and trying to figure out who's for this war.
But obviously, the people in this country, the American people, before World War I, in the teens, before we entered the war in 1917, the American people were not interested.
That's how the presidents won, both Wilson and Roosevelt.
I promise to keep you out of these foreign wars.
And then lo and behold, something terrible has to happen to motivate people to support these wars.
You know, there is an event, and they're so often contrived or exaggerated or used just to scare up the people.
But that's exactly what they did, you know, in the Middle East war.
You know, Saddam Hussein was going to drop bombs on us in no time.
So how can you sit back and not defend your own country?
What kind of a patriotic person are you?
But I think Trump has helped us get people to be anti-war.
His campaign, once again, you know, presidential candidate, he wins.
I've had a secret theory that the anti-war, the pro-peace candidate, you know, gets more votes than anybody ever realizes because people just don't like, oh, he's willing to start a war and we need to get those military people practicing more often, all these new weapons we have.
But Trump, you know, galvanized people.
And just like George Bush Jr., you know, I was galvanized.
You know, I liked what he was saying about foreign policy.
Humble foreign policy.
So they use it.
They know the American people want peace.
And yet now I see the president, you know, sort of in a pickle, you know, because his numbers right now are showing it.
Maybe he won't look at that.
Maybe that won't have any influence on him.
But I think that so far his anti-war position has helped people.
But all you have to do is listen carefully and you hear a lot of people who still claim they are strong supporters like Trump, but he's wrong on this issue.
And so the events that are coming up, so if a bomb gets dropped today, a big bomb, you know, and we are really into it, that's even going to galvanize a lot more people questioning the whole foreign policy.
Already we see the differences within the administration and the cabinet people are, you know, arguing over it, which they always do probably, but not quite so public so early in an administration.
But it is there.
I think it's very healthy.
And I love to see the coalition starting to come together.
And I would say the coalition building is better now than it was when we were working hard in the early part of this century.
Yeah, you're right that the peace candidate does tend to win, does win, and then he turns into the war president.
That was true with Obama, remember?
He was going to not take us into any more of George W. Bush's wars, and then he proceeded to do a bunch of wars and regime changes that we're still suffering from today.
But I do have the feeling that 2024 was different because you had an extremely war-weary Republican Party.
You had a conservative young base that was increasingly anti-war.
And I don't think we've seen that in Republicans for a long time.
But you also had a broader appeal of President Trump with this message to libertarians, who, as you know, allowed him to speak at their convention.
I mean, big L and small L libertarians.
He may not be completely our cup of tea, but if he's really going to change our foreign policy and be more fiscally restrained, then we're going to support him.
And I think probably the libertarians, big L and small L, are responsible for his victory, those that did decide to support him.
So you had a really broad coalition that they were able to build.
Now, those people now are awfully depressed.
And I won't name names, but people that we know who did endorse him.
You can't blame them necessarily, but they're very depressed.
But even people who made up his base, who make up his base, who still support him.
And I look at X a lot, people like Molly Hemingway over at the Federalist, very significant conservative writer, pro-Trump, MAGA base.
She and her boss both, Sean, I forget his last name as we speak, but they have both been critical of this.
They don't want this war.
Yet they are not peacenicks.
They are kind of old-line conservatives, but not neocons.
So you're seeing a lot of this happening.
But here's what's interesting.
Here's something else from the poll, Dr. Paul, if you put this next one up.
So they don't want us to go to war.
It's clear.
Americans do not want President Trump to go to war with Iran.
So what do they want?
No, no, go back one, please.
What do they want?
They want engagement.
Most Americans think the U.S. should engage in negotiations with Iran over its nuclear program.
56% of all adults.
And you'd say, okay, you might be skewed by the Democrats.
No, in fact, the opposite is true, Dr. Paul.
58% of Democrats want negotiations, but a whopping 61% of Republicans want negotiations.
And it gets even, and they actually a larger share of Republicans than before.
Because if you look underneath there, I highlighted this.
A decade ago, soon after the U.S. and five other countries reached a deal with Iran over its nuclear program, a larger share of Americans were opposed to negotiating, that's 32%, with Iran, than they are today.
So today, only 18% of Republicans and Americans in general are opposed.
Back then, 10 years ago, one in three were.
So even more Americans now that were in the situation, they want negotiations.
They do not want war.
You know, there's a lot being written and discussed now about why this shift occurred, why the policy changed, and why the rhetoric from Trump has changed.
And even his own administration was a little bit confused about what they were supporting, and they weren't all on the same page.
But the whole thing is, some people claim that Netanyahu is a conniving person that maybe I'll connive Trump.
So the big thing is, is, you know, the, you know, stop all nuclear activity, all peaceful nuclear experimentation and medical and all the whole worst just to stop it.
But and then the other thing is, we have to get rid of the nuke.
We have to make sure they don't have it.
And then they flat out put out on the front.
If you say, Mr. President, right now the evidence is that even our own people, we have some friends that went in there.
They said there's no nukes.
And they didn't have plans.
But the evidence is very strong that they are, I'm sure, being motivated.
That if that's the only way the world works, that what are they going to be like if they don't even have anything that they can say that they can defend themselves?
And they have been able to, under these conditions, get the American people to believe that they're the aggressors, just like what they have achieved in Ukraine.
It was only the Russians' fault, and there's no problems with NATO and other people.
Strong Voices Needed 00:04:29
So the propagandists are very shrewd in winning so many of these battles, and that's what we have to deal with.
So even if we speak with a bit of relevance and understanding, it's what the people are going to look at and how they're going to be motivated.
And frequently there's religious beliefs involved, emotions involved, fear involved, and it's those people that control that.
And that is the reason I am still hopeful that the internet will be a net friend of ours.
But that is also used against us too.
And when there was less expression on the internet, and it was only by three of the major networks, it was a lot easier to control this.
So we can do it.
And I think the people, I would say, people are waking up and coming our way more so than going the other way.
I hope that's the case.
I really do.
Well, you make a good point that we made yesterday, which is that our friend Tulsi Gabbard, she presented the intelligence community of the United States.
All 18 agencies collectively do not believe that Iran is working toward a nuclear weapon.
And when confronted with that, as we pointed out yesterday, President Trump said, I don't care what she says.
I.e., I don't care what my entire intelligence community says.
I think they're close to a weapon.
So the question is, if he doesn't believe, if he doesn't follow the intelligence given to him by his own intelligence community, where is he getting his intelligence from?
And that's the big question.
So if they're all wrong, all of these thousands of people are all wrong, and you have the right answer, then where did you get it from?
It would be interesting to know.
But I wanted to do a couple of other things from that poll, though, because this whole thing is in the backdrop of Trump's overall popularity right now.
And the poll has exposed some very interesting changes in how people are viewing the president in general.
Go to that next one.
This is opinions about Donald Trump.
41% of Americans strongly or somewhat approve of the job that he's doing, matching his second term low.
And if you look at this, I'll just look at these diverging lines.
If you look at how people strongly or somewhat disapprove of President Trump, you can see a very distinct trend upward for now.
Strongly or somewhat approve a thoroughly and distinct reduction.
54% disapprove, 41% approve.
He's got to be looking at those numbers.
But now that next one is even more important, Dr. Paul, if you put that next one up, because this is approval by age of his second term.
Trump's job approval has fallen most sharply among younger adults.
And that is that upper left-hand chart.
You can see that, Dr. Paul.
It has gone down significantly.
And then you look at the 30 to 30 to 44-year-olds.
You also see a significant decrease recently.
The only place where it's not significantly decreasing is the 65 and older crowd.
They call them the boomers who probably are watching Fox News constantly.
But if I'm Trump and I'm looking at these numbers and I'm looking that you're losing young people who you promised you wouldn't take to war, because these are the kids that are going to be drafted to go fight this war, I would be concerned as well.
So I just, I can't believe that there's not someone in the White House that's looking at these numbers.
You know, there's a few, like Thomas, Massey, that emphasizes the authority.
And we talk about the pros and cons of why we're there and who's the influencer and what are the neocons doing to have success.
And yet I don't think they spend enough time authority, authority, authority.
You know, where do they get the authority?
And of course, I think, you know, if you don't like an excessive, really powerful, independent executive branch, we haven't been doing so well because that's one thing.
But the people who were sick and tired of the policies that we had, they have to say, yeah, but look how bad it was.
So we have to have somebody that really speaks out strongly and wants these changes.
But you have to ask, you know, is it morally correct?
And I think the use of the word democracy is the wedge that they use.
Democracy, it's always the majority, majority rules, the majority does this.
Trump's Israel Trap 00:09:36
And everybody uses it.
You know, even the good side and the bad side use that.
And I think that's what's dangerous.
Absolutely.
Well, you know, there's an old friend of ours who we've part of that elite group that spoke to the Thursday lunches back when you were on Capitol Hill.
We worked very close with him in the run-up to the Iran deal under President Obama and in terms of just improving relations and that's Trita Parsi who I believe is over there at the Responsible Statecraft pardon me and the Quincy Institute.
Well Trita Parsi put out a post on X today that I think so succinctly explains what happened.
And now people will say, well, you shouldn't give Trump this much credit.
But he's talking about how Trump walked into a trap.
And it's a short piece and I wouldn't mind just reading it, especially for our viewers that are listening.
Pardon me.
Because the timelines are always important.
We remember this from 02 in the Iraq war.
Timelines are critical.
So here's what Trita Parsi wrote on X Today.
It's important to understand how Trump got America into war with Iran despite saying he wanted peace.
The original sin is that Trump walked into Israel's trap halfway through the negotiations when he moved the goalposts and adopted zero enrichment fantasy, i.e. that his red line was the elimination of Iran's enrichment program altogether rather than restricting it.
The Israelis knew very well that Iran would never agree to such capitulation, at least short of war.
And that describes as an aside, Dr. Paul, how we were confused that the administration kept saying, well, you can have peaceful nuclear power.
No, you can't.
Yes, you can.
No, you can't.
And it was confusing.
He's talking about a trap was set by the Israelis.
So here's Trita continues.
Predictably and by design, this position led to a deadlock in the talks.
This deeply frustrated the impatient Trump.
Predictably, the Israelis stepped in and convinced Trump to give them a yellow-green light to bomb Iran in order to soften its negotiating stance.
And you can almost hear the cajoling as we sit here speaking, Dr. Paul.
Come on, let us do this.
They will capitulate.
Now go to the next one.
Predictably, bombing Iran hardened their position and prompted Tehran to fight back by targeting Israel with missiles.
Predictably, within 24 to 48 hours, the Israelis returned to Washington and insisted that the U.S. needed to step in to finish the war.
Israel has sought to trap the U.S. into war with Iran for more than 20 years.
Much indicates that this was the Israeli plan from the outset.
And I highlighted this, Dr. Paul.
This is the biggest tragedy of the entire chapter of our history.
Had Trump not walked into the Israeli trap and adopted zero enrichment, there would likely have been a framework nuclear deal by now.
We would have had that deal.
Remember, you wrote a couple of weeks ago on your column, take the deal, Mr. President.
Take the deal.
It's right there in front of you.
Well, the Israelis sprung a trap, and President Trump walked right into it.
You know, along with this zero enrichment, he goes on with this line about how far along they were with the new nuclear weapon.
Here they're using this zero thing, and they don't even have an existence of a weapon.
And if Trump's own people told them that, you know, like you already mentioned today.
So that is a bit bewildering, and it's not a surprise that people get very frustrated with this.
But, you know, it all hinges on now.
It's in the president's camp, as it always has been, because no matter what the conditions are, his personality, his character, his beliefs are such that he is not going to really defer to somebody else if they are challenging him.
And most people think, well, that's what you need.
If you happen to be a neocon and you happen to think that policy is good, I mean, they're gloating.
But the big thing is this poll showing that most Americans now, or large majority of Americans, aren't in agreement.
Very unpopular.
But the thing is, it's not just Tulsi Gabbard and the 18 U.S. intelligence agencies who are saying Iran does not have one and is not working toward one.
If you put that clip up, this just came out today.
This is the head of the IAEA, the international body responsible for monitoring Iran's nuclear program.
They are on the ground and have been on the ground, Dr. Paul, for a very long time in Iran.
They would probably know at least as well as our intelligence community.
And I would say probably quite a few of their team are connected to our intelligence community.
Nevertheless, listen to this.
This is from today.
Quote, we did not have any proof of a systematic effort to move into a nuclear weapon, affirms the director general of the IAEA, Mr. Grossi.
So you have our entire intelligence community, and you have the organization there that's responsible for monitoring it.
And believe me, they are not a pro-Iranian organization.
They're dominated by Western powers.
So where is Trump getting his intelligence telling him that they are, as he insists that he have?
That's a big question.
You know about the saying that how to maintain an empire, you have to lie your way through it.
Lie your way through it.
Anything that contradicts you, just keep telling the lie over and over again.
But there's a limit to that, too.
Eventually, I keep thinking, well, it doesn't look like the people are going to wake up.
I still always felt obligated at least to put the truth down to the best of my ability because maybe someday somebody will want to sort things out and find out, you know, just how this transpired.
So I think we're getting some people speaking out like Parsi that's great to have that evidence there.
He's speaking out, but they're not going to all of a sudden jump up and down and put him in the cabinet.
Yeah.
Well, it's easy now to just blame Netanyahu, and we've done plenty of blaming for Netanyahu.
But to be honest, we can't say he's entirely responsible for this.
And I just want to put one last thing out there before we go because this was a piece in Politico.
Skip one and go to the one with Carrilla's picture on it if you can.
This is extremely important because there are also people from within.
And we talked, we had a show a while ago about the purging of people inside the Pentagon who are skeptical about war with Iran.
I think it was about a month or two ago we did a show on that.
Well, I think now the purge is having an effect.
If you can go to that one, Hegseth defers to general on Pentagon's plans for Iran.
This is one of the top generals who is set to retire.
He is the Central Command CENTCOM Commander, General Eric Carrilla, and he has an oversized influence in the Trump cabinet.
Go to that next piece.
I'm just going to read a couple of things about it because this person is a key figure in what's happening.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has given an unusual level of authority to a single general in the latest Middle East crisis, an Iran hawk, who is pushing for a strong military response against the country.
U.S. Central Command Chief General Eric Carrilla has played an outsized role in the escalating clashes between Tehran and Israel, with officials noting nearly all his requests have been approved.
Go to the next one.
Now, who was this guy?
Well, here we go, Dr. Paul, a longtime military official who is close with Mike Waltz, the former national security advisor, as an aside who was fired.
and nominee for U.S. ambassador.
Listen to this, Dr. Paul.
He has had more FaceTime with the president than most other generals, according to people who were granted anonymity.
He was also at the end of his tenure leading Central Command, meaning he may be less fearful about pushing the president.
And now I want to just do one last thing, if you'll indulge me, Dr. Paul, about what's happening here.
Go to the next one.
Carrilla's arguments to send more U.S. weapons to the region, including air defenses, have gone against Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Dan Kaine and Pentagon Policy Chief Elbridge Colby, who have urged caution in overcommitting to the Middle East, according to four people.
Here's a quote from one of them.
CENTCOM is trying to grab every asset they can from every other theater.
The person familiar said, that's what CENTCOM always does.
So the president's own chairman of the Joint Chiefs, the top policy guy, Elbridge Colby, who's considered somewhat of a realist, they're telling President Trump, do not listen to Carrilla.
Carrilla keeps pounding on President Trump's door, whispering in his ear because Carrilla wants a war.
He thinks he's going to go out with a bang.
Giving Away Weapons 00:03:07
And that's what's happening.
So it's not just Bibi.
There are a lot of people inside the administration who are bad dudes.
You know, one job everybody has, and it bothers me that I have to keep looking and looking and never know for sure who's really winning the war.
And, you know, there's a lot of propaganda there because let's say the war's over and everybody knows who's going to win.
They're still agitating where the boundaries are going to be, and they fight to the last soldier to die for a property line.
And yet that's going on with the Ukraine thing.
Who was winning at the very beginning?
And they said, well, the Ukrainians are and were winning.
And then all of a sudden, it looked like they were losing, and then they pull off a surprise attack in eastern Russia.
And people say, well, maybe they're doing better.
I think a little bit of that is going on right now.
Who really is winning?
And yet, today there's an announcement, Israel's running low on missile interceptors as Iran proves a stronger foe than expected.
And I thought, are they really?
But you know what verifies that is the begging and the pleading.
Remember how Netanyahu came to the floor?
Well, at the time, he was mentioning a major, we don't need you so much troops, but he always needed our money and our technology.
So he comes in as interceptors, and now they're begging and pleading on this.
But then they say, why don't the American people say, well, you know, you do, you guys against having a good defense?
No, I think a good foreign policy is a good defense.
And I think defensive weapons are a good idea.
But what about the weapons that we have?
Possibly they were defense.
At least the money we were spending on it, we gave them away, gave it away.
How many weapons did we leave in Afghanistan?
You know, we leave and they get blown up.
So in a way, they're running out of weapons.
But some people could make the case, they always use it at least for debate.
We're running out of weapons too.
We can't cut the budget.
And they'll use that as an excuse to keep the military industrial public going because we always have to have more and more weapons.
And then they have to have more and more experimentation for the newer weapons.
And yet they don't want to give up World War II aircraft carriers.
Yeah.
Well, Israel is using hundreds of the aero missiles.
They're about $12 million each.
I've seen an estimate that they're going through about $250 million a day in trying to defend from these missiles.
The issue is that the United States can only produce about 100 of these aero missiles a year, and they're using way, way more than that.
So we, in fact, our own military readiness, they've said they're concerned about because we are literally giving all of our weapons to Israel right now.
But it's a great point that you make about the missiles.
But I'm going to close out by saying you're probably watching all this thinking, what can I do?
Fictitious Missile Tickets 00:02:35
You know, beyond calling my representative, which of course you should do.
Get on Massey's bill.
That's what you should be telling them.
What can I do?
You can vote with your feet.
And how do you do that?
You get a ticket to the Ron Paul Institute Summer Conference.
If you put that last clip up, they say, well, come on.
No, a room full of people packed to the guilds, as we usually are every year, of people who do not want these wars.
That is your response.
Now, several of our conferences have been covered by C-SPAN.
That means millions of people around the world are seeing that there is a peace movement in the United States.
What do you think the neocons, what do you think the general guerrillas of the world are going to say when they tune in and they see the show on and they see it's a half empty room or a quarter empty room or nobody's there?
They're going to say there is no peace movement in the United States.
So that's why I really would encourage you in the strongest terms possible, particularly now that we have discount tickets available for the next couple of weeks, get those tickets.
Fill that room so when they look in there, they will see a strong peace movement.
We do not want this war.
You can vote with your feet and come join us in August in Dolas, Virginia.
Dr. Paul?
Very good.
You know, the other evening I was sitting pondering all these events going on, and something popped into my brain.
It was a daydream.
I wasn't really dreaming.
I mean, it wasn't real.
But my daydream was that the president called me and asked me to give him his little advice about what he should be doing there.
That surprised me, of course.
It was all fictitious.
But I have been thinking about that, and I just might do that.
I don't have a letter written, but I'm thinking about writing that letter to the president and trying in the most diplomatic fashion and the most persuasive way that I can reach Donald Trump.
I've only had one conversation with the president, and that was during his last administration.
And his persona is one thing, but I was really impressed with him spending probably 20 minutes or so on the phone.
Nowhere, very polite and very cordial.
So I feel like there's no reason why I can't write a letter and give him the suggestion, even though it may be fictitious.
Maybe he might read it anyway.
What a thank everybody for tuning in today to the Liberty Report.
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