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July 2, 2025 - Ron Paul Liberty Report
26:54
Is The Ukraine Money Game Finally Over?

The Pentagon announced yesterday that the regular supply of weapons sent to Ukraine would be halted. The problem? We are running out of weapons! What does it say about a foreign policy that depletes the US defensive capabilities on behalf of foreign countries? Also today: The Libertarian Party reaches out to Elon Musk - can they work something out?

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Reality Checks 00:03:28
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.
Are you cheering on for the new budget?
They cleaned up the mess.
We knew that Senate would help.
And the bill looks pretty good.
Yeah, it's fantastic.
You know, people, you know, are disappointed, and I can understand that.
But some of them seem like they're a little bit surprised.
One thing is that I'm not surprised.
You know, this is not like something that just was unbelievable.
It was more or less the same old thing.
So, yes, they came up with fixing it up.
Now they have to go back to the House.
House has to pass it.
It'll be interesting to see what happens.
They're going to try, I guess, to have the vote today.
But it'll be interesting on what kind of deals have to be made in order to get the last vote coming.
So the Republicans, of course, in the Senate are the ones that really decided to do this.
And they sell their vote is essentially what they do.
And I think that, you know, the political benefit from it all is thought to be, you know, Musk.
I got my bill passed.
It's coming through there.
They're listening to me.
I'm still king of the hill.
But in reality, this just is a mess.
It deserves condemnation.
And it's just too bad that the founders considered a government runaway and they tried to rein in this scope.
One would be, they thought that we wouldn't be going involving so many wars just with the drop of the hat.
And we continue to do that.
It's too easy to start wars and very hard to stop them.
And then there's too many people benefited by.
So this will be interesting to see what happens today.
But quite frankly, I don't think we're going to see any real good news other than the fact that some people will have a sigh of relief if they pass something.
They could.
You know, they could, Daniel.
What if they do have a salemate?
They're not going to close down the government.
They're going to just agree to 30 days, you know, and give them another 30 days to work on it.
They're going to miss their deadline on July 4th.
But their delay will just go with the old numbers.
Well, that's a good idea.
That's the way they should go for the whole year.
Everybody in the country doesn't get an automatic pay raise when their salaries are eaten up with inflation and prices for food and services goes up.
They don't get compensated.
But governments not only take advantage of that, they want to compensate for inflation, but that's just automatic.
Then they want to add on and secure their position on being on the list of the special interest.
So in a way, if you look at it, it spent too much time on it.
It's really disgusting, the way I see it.
Well, you know, the House passed a turkey, and they were hoping the Senate would fix it up, take out some of the bad stuff they put in.
Well, the Senate doubled down and put a bunch more bad stuff.
And we've got some clips later on to show about it.
Musk's Potential Impact 00:15:27
But, you know, another, you know, here's another example of when you think that you are a never-ending empire and you come hard face to face with reality.
I put up that first clip because this has happened yesterday.
This is a big announcement.
U.S. is halting some weapons shipments to Ukraine as its own military stockpiles plummet.
In other words, Dr. Paul, we've been so busy fighting everyone else's wars that we literally don't, the American people had to pay a trillion dollars a year for their quote defense.
There's nothing left.
The cupboards are bare.
Here's what Hedge says: the Trump administration could finally be willing to bring real pressure to bear on the Zelensky government as on Tuesday, the White House confirmed it's halting some weapon shipments to Ukraine.
White House spokesperson Anna Kelly told CBS that the context of the Russia-Ukraine war, the decision was made to put America's interests first.
Now, they're putting a little bit of lipstick on this pig, Dr. Paul.
Go to the next one.
They're claiming it's a victory for Americans first, but it really isn't.
While it's unknown precisely which weapons will be halted or in what quantities, Kelly, the spokesperson, asserted the strength of the United States Air Force remains unquestioned.
Just ask Iran.
End quote.
However, we should note that the massive B-2 bomber raids sent against Iran's nuclear facilities.
This is an important part, Dr. Paul, was widely questioned among the U.S. public for not being exactly America first.
Instead, it appeared to prioritize the defense of Israel first.
So you have Ukraine first, Israel first, everybody first.
Except we're out of weapons.
We're out of weapons.
Except the American taxpayer.
And, you know, maybe they should get some credit because our government made a promise.
We promised to send it.
We're breaking a promise.
I wonder how critical that is, you know, that they backed off.
What a joke that they promised.
And the authority to send them in the beginning is the real problem.
They didn't have permission for that.
And yet they do make these promises and galore.
And just the starting of these wars.
You know, if it's a skirmish and it lasted for three days, you could sort of say, well, I'll blink my eye and that's over with.
But these things last years, decades sometimes.
It just goes on and on.
And the mission still never got accomplished in many areas of the continent of the world.
Yeah, exactly.
Well, you know, our good friend Larry Johnson, who's spoken at, I think at least one of our conferences, he had a good article out and he crunches some of the numbers, which is important.
If you go to that next clip, he titles his piece today, Looks like Trump is walking away from the Ukrainian Military Casino, which is what it is, Dr. Paul.
Now, go to the next one.
Here's a couple points that he makes.
While the White House insisted that it's just putting American interests first, the move reveals the U.S. has a serious problem in manufacturing certain weapon systems and that supplies are at or near critical levels.
They simply can't make these missiles fast enough.
We don't have the industrial capacity to make them.
It's a brick wall, if you will, that they are facing now.
The missiles just aren't there to give.
Well, in a way, this is good news that the limitation I've always argued would be financial.
They wouldn't be able to afford it or there'd be so much carnage that they would have to quit.
So this means we run out.
But does that mean that if they just take a breeder spell, oh, let's have a truce for a while and let us get caught up.
But it also makes a mockery of this America first stuff.
You know, if they were America first, they wouldn't be giving all the way this stuff.
They wouldn't bankrupt our country, you know, and they wouldn't be engaged in this.
And I imagine that the military-industrial complex is not sweating right now.
Like, oh, they're going to quit sending us our money.
They'll say, well, we'll be high.
Let's speed up.
That's double the work effort.
Yeah, that's probably what they'll do.
Absolutely.
Well, let's go to a little bit more of what Larry has to say because he gives some specific examples of what's happening.
Go to that next one.
Consider what's happened to the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense System, aka Thad, which was deployed to Israel.
Now, these numbers are astonishing, Dr. Paul.
The U.S. currently produces about 50 to 60 THAD missiles per year at a price of $13 million per missile.
$13 million for each missile, Dr. Paul.
The production number reflects production rates as of 2025, which have increased to meet both domestic and international demand.
Lockheed Martin, the primary manufacturer, previously reported manufacturing as many as eight missiles per month, which would equal a maximum of 96 per year.
But more recent and widely cited estimates places the annual output at closer to 50 to 60 interceptors.
Let me repeat that, Larry says.
50 to 60 per year.
This production rate is significant given the high cost and limited stockpile of FAAD missiles.
Now go to the next one.
Now, here's the point where the rubber meets the road, Dr. Paul.
During the 12-day war with Iran, the U.S. expended 15 to 20% of its global FAAD arsenal supporting Israel, highlighting both the high operational demand and the relatively slow pace at which these interceptors can be replenished.
And I highlighted this part, Dr. Paul.
Had the war continued another two weeks, it is likely that the U.S. would have exhausted its supply of FADs.
As in, the cupboard is literally bare.
There's none left if it had not stopped when it did.
But in a way, there's been a subtle acknowledgement that Ukraine is not going to be Ukraine forever.
They're not going to win what they claim we're fighting for and why we're involved.
But that has to do with minerals and all the other monkey business and oil.
But instead of them recognizing, this war is over.
How many more times to do that?
But you don't hear about, well, you know, it wouldn't make a lot of sense, you know, just how you described it.
Why wouldn't we think that even though we can't possibly use all those weapons ourselves, but it would make more sense if you have them and you're supposed to have them, you already have a manufacturer.
Why ship them off to a place you know they're going to get all blown up and not sell anything?
But military interventionism is a wicked program, and we are so engaged in that.
It's been going on for so long.
And, you know, you can go back even before World War I. You know, we were engaged in precipitating events that would cause us to be militarily involved in so many places.
The thing that Americans hopefully will start asking themselves is, hang on a minute, we spend more on our military than the next, what, seven, eight, nine countries combined.
We spend more than anyone in the history of the world, and we're out of weapons.
That doesn't seem to make sense.
You know, that's a good question they should be asking.
And, you know, the issue of increasing the manufacture of these weapons, as I understand it, it's not something you can just turn back on.
You know, if we went to a World War II-type war footing, if we brought all of our industry online in the U.S. to manufacture weapons, now, what would it do to the domestic economy?
You know that as well as anyone.
It would destroy it.
And still, you would have a five, 10-year lag time before you'd be able to start churning these things out.
Not very efficient, not very good planning, except for the people who are making money.
That makes sense to them.
And so that means, well, who are these people?
They're buried in the deep state.
It's hard to find them all.
They never get punished.
Yeah.
We get punished.
Well, I have one more from Larry, and I recommend the article.
So in R21, is Larry's site.
I read it every day.
The first thing, one of the first things I read is that in the morning.
But Larry is not talking just about thads.
He's talking about the Patriots.
Put that next one up if you can.
He says, then there are the Patriot missiles.
Lockheed Martin has that contract as well and reportedly produces 550 missiles a year.
A Patriot missile launcher can carry a different number of missiles depending on the missile type.
It can hold four, 16, or 12 different types of Patriots.
Usually there are, this is important.
Usually there are at least two Patriot missiles fired for each approaching threat, such as a missile or drone.
Two days ago, Russia fired over 500 missiles and drones into Ukraine.
If Ukraine still had functioning Patriot missile launchers and a supply of missiles, that Russian attack would have depleted both the U.S. and Ukraine's supply of missiles.
Just one volley, Dr. Paul, one volley of missiles from Russia, if they had had the missiles, the Patriots would have completely wiped out our entire supply.
Zero left.
That's it.
Done.
I keep, when I hear this and look at it, I keep thinking, why do these people exist to have so much power and influence and not very much common sense?
It doesn't have to be deep philosophic thinking.
It just should be a little bit of common sense.
What are we doing to this?
And can't they see what's happening to the country?
And at this rate, you know, it's not the demonstration here on this budgeting stuff in the last couple of days.
This demonstrates how close they are to solving the problem.
And by increasing the national debt limit by $5 trillion.
That's really the answer.
That'll do it.
Oil up the printing presses.
But, you know, these thads at $13 million apiece for every Iranian incoming missile, they had to shoot two.
That's $26 million every time Iran shot a missile.
And those missiles that Iran is sending over cost about $50,000 to $100,000.
So you think about it, when you talk about a war of attrition, that's a war of attrition, the attrition of the American taxpayer.
You know, it's unbelievable.
But the average American doesn't see the connection.
To a way they do, but they don't really understand what they have to cut.
They can complain about some type of policy or one incident, but they have to deal with the principle of foreign policy and about non-interventionist foreign policy because you can't say, well, we have this responsibility.
And Republicans and Democrats say we have this moral responsibility to bring peace to the world.
It's all through bombs and killing and financing.
Maybe they'll wake up.
Maybe they will.
I don't know.
We'll keep trying.
Something interesting happened, by the way, Dr. Paul, for this next piece.
Let's talk about it.
Now, I got the order messed up a little bit.
If we can click, put up first the Politico with Elon's picture on it.
Libertarians seek partnership with Elon Musk.
Now, this is intriguing, isn't it?
And not necessarily because we're interested in party politics, but we know that Elon Musk has been very frustrated over this so-called big, beautiful bill.
He's openly broken with President Trump on this bill.
He's obviously concerned.
He said, I'm going to start a new political party the day this bill passes.
Well, the LP says, hey, hang on a minute.
We're here.
Well, let's have a talk.
So it's kind of an interesting development.
No, I think it is very interesting.
And this shows the bankruptcy of the system, but both political parties, too, with ideas, because interventionism and deficit financing and all this mess that they've created and constant wars, it's a failed policy.
So somebody new and different, and it wouldn't be smooth sailing because I've been around and spent some time there because immediately you'll have factions in the politics.
Ultimately, I think this is good to get the ideas out there and maybe some really good things could happen.
Sort of like what Trump did was he did bring to light some of the horrendous things, but didn't solve the problems.
You know, it's still there.
And I think politics is definitely secondary to what the people are thinking.
You know, you didn't have, I keep using as an example the transition of COVID.
You know, you didn't re-educate a generation of people, you know, about what the government should be involved in medical care.
But the people immediately recognized that it was government being the doctor was a mess.
And they gave up on it.
And it moved along much more rapidly.
And that's what I think, you know, Musk could do, move this thing a lot faster.
But it would have to be some pretty good picking, you know.
But there's been a few times people get frustrated with the Republican Party and they join the Libertarian Party and the money wasn't there.
But this would be different if Musk got behind it.
Yeah, there would be.
Now let's look at just a couple of things from the article.
Now you have to step back one because again, it uploaded wrong.
Libertarian National Committee Chair Stephen Nikaela has a pitch for billionaire Elon Musk.
Join us and don't fight the uphill battle of launching a third party.
Here's a quote from Stephen.
Making a third party would be a mistake.
The Libertarian Party is the most set up party to be the dissident subversive party.
Now go ahead twice to the next clip.
Nikhila has not heard directly from Musk, but he said the party's trying to break through to the billionaire who's been showing continued support for one of the most libertarian leaning members of Congress, Kentucky Republican Thomas Massey.
Musk, who in recent days reignited his war against the GOP's mega bill, said once the legislation passes, he will immediately go forward with his new American party.
So that America party, sorry.
So they're saying, wait, there's an alternative.
And they do make a good point.
And you know this very well, Dr. Paul, how a third party has so many hurdles to jump through just to get ballot access.
You know, we think we have such a free electoral system in the U.S., but it's not really the case.
And there's no doubt the practical arguments that the Libertarian Party are making are good arguments that they've existed.
They know something about getting on ballots.
And not only would it save a lot of money, it would save a lot of time.
Ballot Access Barriers 00:03:28
I mean, I remember when I was trying to send a message in 1988, it was like he spent more money on just trying to get on a ballot in Free America, open elections.
And guess what?
When they didn't want you on the ballot, it was bipartisan opposition.
Oh, yeah, of course.
It wasn't the Democrats that said, we don't want them because they might rob Republican.
They all of a sudden are bipartisan.
They want him in the club.
Well, you still are a member of the Libertarian Party.
Technically, I'm a member because they never can take away with it because I wanted a permanent.
I paid for it in a gold ounce.
That's right.
Yeah, that could almost be the whole budget the way things are going.
Well, here's a reason why Musk and a lot of others are frustrated, Dr. Paul.
I sent you this chart last night, and I think it's absolutely dramatic if you can put it up.
Now, this is the bill, as you started in your opener, talking about the big, beautiful bill that the Senate has made even bigger, but less beautiful.
Look at this chart, Dr. Paul.
This is incredible.
Mark Goldwine writes: the Senate bill is as big as CARES, the American Rescue Plan, bipartisan infrastructure, and CHIPS combined.
Combined.
Remember how we thought the CARES bill was unbelievably massive when COVID came out.
Terrible, broke the bank.
This makes that look like a piker.
Look at that, as written in the Senate.
Look at how big that is compared to CARES.
This is why a lot of people are upset.
And the other thing I think, Dr. Paul, that Americans are frustrated with the Republican Party is the hypocrisy.
Put this next one out.
I'm not picking on this member specifically, but there are plenty of these out there.
Now, back in November when Biden was president, Representative Anna Paulina Luna said, Congress must quickly address the skyrocketing national debt.
It's become a national security threat for our country.
We simply cannot allow this to continue.
Well, that same representative said when the big, beautiful bill came out, 2 a.m. floor speech debating our big, beautiful bill.
Yes, it passed.
So you have that.
And my last piece of evidence, I would say, Dr. Paul, is the open contempt that the Republican Party has for small L libertarians.
And this is in the person of Stephen Miller, a top aide to President Trump.
This is something he posted on June the 30th.
The libertarian delusion is that there's a large political constituency for their ideology.
It does not exist.
Libertarians have never performed nationally above a number rounding to zero.
And when libertarians run for president within the GOP, they are the first ones out.
Now, that last part irritated me particularly, Dr. Paul, because it sounded like a little bit of a jab at you.
You weren't the first one out.
As I remember, unless I was sleeping through 8 and 12, you were far from the first one out.
You were the first one on a lot of polls.
So that's a bit of a nasty, but it shows how the Republican Party really views libertarians.
Now, he may be right that there isn't a large political constituency.
The only thing I remember about that is they announced I was out early on, and it wasn't true.
Wishful thinking.
Yeah, that's right.
They wanted you out.
But, you know, I compare what happens in politics with the drug issue.
Libertarians and Political Addiction 00:03:13
They get addicted to it.
There's an economic addiction just as there is a medical addiction.
If you take drugs that are addictive and maybe take a small amount, but you don't know what you're doing, and people feed them to you, and there's money involved.
So next time they take it, they need a little bit more.
Then they need a little bit more.
And that's what happens here until the point where it is exponential.
And that's why the amount of money they need and interference is growing leaps and bounds.
And also the reason people should wake up and say, it's not going to be solvable with the Republicans and the Democrats arguing on the weekend to have a 4th of July celebration.
Say, oh, we solved our problem.
I mean, that's pretty naive to think that's going to happen.
But there's an exponential need for more spending because the people, you know, and I talk about and emphasize so much, which the founders did not mention, and that is the democracy, you know, pure democracy, where the dictatorship of the majority can do whatever they want.
So what do they do?
They just gang up on it.
There might be 20 different groups, but if they get together and have 51%, they think they can keep this spending going.
And they did.
They have done it.
But I think we're living in an age and witnessing that, you know, that the addict eventually either kills himself or he has to go and get treatment.
Yeah.
You know, because they can't live with that exponential growth.
And if you look at those charts on the spending, I mean, they used to do this.
Now they're doing this in the growth.
And, you know, it's like, well, if it's providing good national defense, why worry about it?
Yeah, the national defense, like what you just described about the missiles going to Ukraine.
Yeah, we're out of them.
Yeah, it's terrible.
And, you know, I mean, it's frustrating when you see people of a certain age who populate the Senate putting such a burden on the younger generation.
They really won't have a future.
They have nothing to look forward to because of their inability of the leadership to live within its means.
It's terrible, terrible stuff.
Well, anyway, I just want to remind everyone: Blueprint for Peace, Dulles, Virginia, October 16th.
Get those discounted tickets.
I'll put a link in there.
Got a lot of great people speaking, a lot of great people coming already, a lot of tickets sold.
Make sure that you're part of the cool crowd by joining us.
And thank you for listening to the show.
Over to you, Dr. Paul.
Very good.
I'm looking forward to our convention.
And I think that the enthusiasm and the need for our message of peace and prosperity is as vital as ever.
And I see it as the strongest weapon around.
I mean, I think ideas are, you know, cannot, if the time has come for it, and that's what we would like to promote, the time for peace and prosperity.
It can't be stopped by all this weaponry.
Weaponry finally doesn't have any effect.
Ideas As Weapons 00:01:16
The people who are making weapons go broke and the people get disgusted with it.
So I think that the people make a big difference.
And it's up to us to help spread the message because I think it's amazing to me that there's not more enthusiasm for the principles of individual liberty.
If you can get the statistics and they're there, that the freer a country is, the more prosperous this country is, and the more peace there is under those conditions.
And the bigger the government is and the more authoritarian it is, the more pure democracy exists.
That you can just vote all this and you can vote to undermine the whole tax system and the monetary system.
Things go badly and eventually it ends.
It self-destructs.
And people will say, does that mean you can't stop it?
It's going to be difficult.
Probably won't happen, but it's happened many, many times over the centuries where a country will self-destruct, but it's always rebuilt.
And sometimes it's rebuilt with an evil empire afterwards.
And sometimes it is rebuilt as the founders did it.
They rebuilt it when the chaos came and gave us a republic.
Hopefully we can work in that direction.
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