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July 17, 2025 - Ron Paul Liberty Report
33:49
Good News! DOGE Is (Sorta) Back!

The Senate's recent vote to advance the DOGE recissions bill to the Floor for a full vote should remind Trump supporters of what could have been and should have been before it all seemed to go off the rails. Can Trump re-capture that early energy and positivity? Also today...Trump attacks Massie and goes haywire over Epstein "conspiracy."

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Good News Can Be Bad 00:11:13
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?
Doing well, doing well.
Hope we can sort things out, make everybody happier than they were yesterday.
If we're not careful, we could slip.
People aren't always open to good news.
Matter of fact, sometimes the good news is bad, and that's why I think dictators lie a lot because the good news is telling the truth.
But for some people, telling the truth is the worst thing you can do, and they're exposed.
And a lot of that, what we talk about, whether it has economic policy or foreign policy, we hear a lot of fibbing going on.
And inflation, there's certainly a lot of it.
Just looking at the markets just a few minutes ago, I see gold jumped $30-some dollars instantaneously, but that shouldn't surprise anybody because we're still printing money.
And even though there were some statistics that said the inflation wasn't so bad, but what do they think about inflation?
The other day, I mentioned that one group was defining as sticky.
They can't get rid of it.
Of course, once you print the money, it is sticky.
It stays around and it keeps doing harm, and it lasts a long time until it's eliminated through getting rid of the malinvestment and getting rid of the debt.
So it is going to be sticky.
But today I saw one term that they used that I thought was a little interesting, and that is seeping.
Seeping inflation.
It's seeping from the tariffs.
You know, tariffs, some people call them taxes, and some people call them mischief and troublemakers, but it's really not literally inflation, although it's related.
It pushes prices up, and people think that prices up is called inflation, but it really isn't the technical explanation of why we have inflation, and that is we spent too much money and we increase the supply of money and we diminish the value of the dollar.
Yesterday we talked about the value of the dollar and the dollar is not skyrocketing today and I think it's going to continue to go down.
But the effort here is to fool the people into thinking everything is all right and that we don't have to worry about it because even though we're going to talk about a bill where there's an attempt to try to correct some of the terrible problems in the budget,
but the whole thing is there's probably super support coming from the parties, parties, both parties.
They're not up to it.
Matter of fact, we'll talk a little bit today about what happens if you do stick up for sound money, balanced budget, and really be obnoxious to everybody and just vote the way the Constitution instructs them to vote.
That does not make people happy.
So I think that we're going to see these problems along.
We're going to be talking about some other political events that indicate that Trump may be slipping.
I saw one statistic and they gave the statistic, which is not a fair comparison.
The first week after he was sworn in, he was plus a lot.
Oh, yeah.
But it didn't take long.
What?
Is it six?
I can't believe it's six months already.
Six months.
And he's slipping.
I don't know.
Would you call that a little or significantly?
He's seeping, not sticky.
That's it.
But the first thing I want to bring up, Daniel, is the rescissions, which is not talked about a whole lot.
That means they can go back and have a second look under different rules and maybe cut back on some spending.
And the rules are a little tighter in the Senate.
They can't filibuster.
But the headline today is: Vice President Vance breaks the tie to advance Doge rescissions toward final Senate passage.
So that was close, and it was probably very partisan, but it's something that it's token, but that's not a solution.
The solution is trying, you know, it's sort of like, how do we get out of this war?
Well, it's much easier to not go into the war than to stop the wars that we get involved.
And the promise by some presidents say, we're not going to start any wars, and we're going to stop them all.
It's not that easy.
What we should is emphasize we're going to stop, we're not going to start any new wars, and we should start these economic wars, too.
And that's what they're talking about.
And of course, it's good that we had a vice president, and maybe it gave Rand a chance to vote yes on this.
Who knows?
The bill toward final Senate passage.
So we'll hear more about that.
I think there may be a vote today.
Yeah, it's funny, Dr. Paul.
I do tend to succumb to nostalgia at times, but usually it's things that are more in the rearview mirror of one's life, you know.
But in this case, I feel a distinct twinge, a tinge of nostalgia for just a few months ago because things seemed like they were riding high.
We were having a good time watching Elon Musk and his Doge team running through the United States government, and they demonstrated to the United States people that the massive, massive government that they have is not the government they need.
And in fact, it's working at cross purposes to the American people.
He demonstrated that very well.
His team, young, very tech-savvy people, demonstrated that all of these government institutions were not doing the work of the Americans.
They were covering their own rear ends, and they were feathering their own nests.
And it was enormously popular.
We talked about it so many times on the show, how popular Doge was with the American people, particularly with Trump voters.
And now you had the break between Musk and President Trump.
And that came over what?
The big beautiful bill.
Because Musk actually took seriously the idea that we don't need to grow government.
We need to cut things.
We need to make rescissions.
And so that's where everything went south.
And Musk is out of the administration.
He's become a critic of the administration.
So it is rather sad when you see what could have been compared to what is now with basically forest fires all around Trump.
And he's trying to stamp them out.
And each time he steps on a fire, it actually accelerates the fire and gets bigger.
So we thought we would start today with perhaps a little nostalgia, a little good news, hopefully maybe a prediction of what could be in the future if Trump gets back on his own Trump train.
Now put that first one up.
This is zero hedge, but there is also a good piece in Politico about it I read earlier.
Vice President Vance breaks the tie to advance Doge Rescissions Bill toward final Senate vote.
Now we're only talking, Dr. Paul, about that $9.4 billion.
And that's nowhere near what was promised, but nevertheless, steps in the right direction are steps in the right direction.
Now this is a procedural vote that will advance the bill to the Senate floor, but it is a good indication that it will pass on the Senate floor.
Now that would cut $1.1 billion from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which we have no business being in the business of as a country.
We don't need state media.
And also $7.9 billion for the U.S. Agency for International Development.
As you know, Dr. Paul, we spend a lot of time talking about the things we found out that they do that we don't want done.
We don't need done.
We don't need to pay for newspapers overseas and pay for elections overseas.
So, anyway, I just think it's a good sign if they get back on track with this, then perhaps we could salvage some of this administration.
Yeah, I think you describe it very well.
It's a step in the right direction, but it's a tiny step.
But that's better than having a special appropriation.
Now, traditionally, I was in Congress a couple years, and I don't know how many times it happened, but I always thought it was not infrequent.
It happened, and that is emergency appropriations.
And I remember one specific time under Reagan that they were in a mood for cutting, and they cut a bill that could be construed as corporate welfareism, export-import bank.
And it overwhelmingly passed.
The next day, they reverse the vote.
They had a new vote on it, voted, and they say, No, we can't cut it.
So, this one is an adjustment that is permissible, and hopefully, people will notice that it's moving in the right direction.
But the emergency appropriations, believe me, are always available.
And all you have to do is have some natural event.
I mean, how could anybody not vote just to vote for another trillion dollars if there's an event that is very sad?
And we have them.
But that doesn't mean that the marketplace and property and states and individualism and charitable things can't handle this better.
Because I remember, Daniel, and you do remember why I would get into trouble because I told them I didn't believe that FEMA was the best way to handle emergencies.
You mean you're not going to help the people.
Lo and behold, we had a lot of calls complaining, then later on, we had calls complimenting us because we were helping them get through the paperwork of dealing with FEMA.
Right now, we hear FEMA does not answer their phones very well.
Probably a favor.
So, the other thing that the government can resort to if the rescissions don't do it much good and they don't have enough emergency appropriations, but then there's the secret spending.
And that involves an organization called the Fed, and they can do an awful lot when there's a financial crisis, a banking crisis.
I think it's too hard for anybody except the people who are doing the planning to know who's getting bailed out.
So, those kind of things happen.
So, all this thing about, oh, if we don't do this, the government's going to be closed down, and people's social security check won't get it, and we won't be able to visit the Washington Monument, all the nonsense.
But it's the philosophy of a government that they have to deal with.
And so far, there are more people there now thinking about it.
And I think Odyssey was a good idea, and it made people think.
I think it made a lot of people think about the particular bills.
And like this bill is pointing out some things.
And I think that's a good idea.
Thomas Massey's Vote 00:04:40
So we'll see.
And we'll keep plugging along for limited government.
Our guide only needs to be two things: one, don't steal money from anybody else if you don't have the right to steal money and recirculate it.
And also, whether or not it's constitutional to do it.
Yeah, exactly.
Not complicated.
Hopefully, things will move back in that direction.
Our humble advice to Trump would be to focus on what works.
Well, let's move ahead because unfortunately we have to temper our good news with some rather less sanguine news, and that is that Trump once again went after Thomas Massey yesterday.
We're going to start out with a video, Dr. Paul, of him.
And you'll never believe how he attacked Thomas Massey.
Thomas Massey is a bad guy because it reminds him of Rand Paul.
That's what makes him a bad guy.
You mean I escaped?
Yeah.
So let's listen to Trump attacking.
Now, there's a couple things I'll point out after we listen to that first video clip, if we can cue that.
Let's listen to the President of the United States.
We only had two negative votes.
I didn't invite those two guys to anything.
We had a guy named Rand Paul Jr.
He's known as Rand Paul Jr. in the House.
He always votes no.
And we had somebody else that did him a big favor, and I said, well, he's not going to, sir.
I don't think so-and-so is going to vote.
I won't mention his name.
And I said, no, he's going to vote because I did him a very big, big favor, very personal favor, as big as you can get, having to do with death and life.
But having to do, no, he's going to vote.
Don't worry about it.
Okay, sir, if you tell me, but I don't think we're going to get his vote.
Don't worry about it.
I said, I know what I'm talking about.
Don't worry about it.
And sure as hell, he voted against this.
And I said another one, Dad, another great move by Trump.
Anyway, so much for favors.
You know, it's welcome to the world of politics, right, right, David?
We know about that.
Let's move to that next clip.
Now, something struck me, aside from the attacks on Congressman Massey.
Put on that clip.
It's a clip of the post on X.
It's highlighted, if you can put that on.
You can see the highlighted part from Breaking 911 on that.
Go forward one.
There we go.
Now, this, I don't know.
I saw your face gasp when you heard this.
But President Trump said, sir, I don't think he's going to vote that way.
This is not Massey, but the other guy.
And he said, no, he's going to vote because I did him a big, big favor, having to do with death and life.
Now, go to the next one.
A commentator, Lucien Wolf, caught that and made a really interesting analysis of it.
It said he just said it out loud.
A sitting president admitted that he leveraged a life or death favor to force a congressman to vote a certain way.
That's not politics.
That's racketeering with extra steps.
And this wasn't some whisper behind closed doors.
He said it smiling behind the seal of the president with cameras rolling.
What kind of favor decides who lives and who doesn't?
And who else in Congress got one of these?
It's always been a system of leverage.
You just weren't supposed to hear it this clearly.
That was shocking, wasn't it, Dr. Paul?
Absolutely.
What struck me also was the length of time he spent.
You know, I could see somebody under a little stress and a little bit annoyed and that he didn't play enough golf with Rand and change his votes, so he could be annoyed.
But a short comment, you know, could be maybe understandable.
It wouldn't be nice, but it could be understandable.
But he spent a lot of time on this.
It had to be that he had to think about this for a minute.
How's he going to handle this?
Yeah, it does.
Well, he's still going after Thomas Massey.
Go to the next one.
This is Massey for Congress's X account.
And, you know, remember, he spent a million bucks.
Trump did.
Trump's people spent a million bucks a couple weeks ago.
So here's Thomas Massey for Congress.
MAGA Inc., which he calls grifters making money off of the MAGA movement, just bought another $800,000 worth of ads attacking me.
That's 1.8 million so far, and I highlight this, that could have been used this cycle to defend the majority.
But they don't want a majority.
They want a uniparty.
And that's a good point.
And now here's the good news, Dr. Paul, because all these attacks are not hurting Massey.
Trump should understand how this works.
Israel Bombs Syria City Center 00:04:15
Go to the next one.
This is from AP.
Thomas Massey, GOP congressman who broke with Trump, reports strong fundraising.
Trump should know this.
The body line.
Yeah, when you get attacked on principle and you stand for principles, you'll be successful.
What do you think the odds are that there's a Republican that is sort of seen as independent-minded and honest, whispering into Trump's ear, you know, this might backfire on you?
You know what happened when they impeached you.
It was a badge of honor for you, and you made hay of it.
So why are you going to be exempt from human nature?
So there's going to be a limit.
And this is, in a way, it's an indirect Democratic vote, you know, in the true sense.
How's the people's attitude?
Are they going to accept this or not?
And they don't even have to wait for the next election.
He doesn't wait for the next election to try to do it.
He wants to penalize them immediately.
So they would like to do it, but I think it's immediate.
I think the people's attitudes changed, just like we didn't have to have legislation to curtail some of this idiocy of COVID.
So people's minds can be changed.
So it remains to be seen.
But what you just read, though, indicates that there's going to be some people that aren't going to put up with it.
Yeah, absolutely.
Well, we're going to do a quick one here because this just happened this morning, which is that Israel bombed Syria in a big way.
Put on that next clip.
Let's watch what happened.
This is dramatic footage of this isn't some place out in the desert.
Dr. Paul, this is downtown Damascus.
Don't start it quite yet.
This is downtown Damascus.
This is the governmental section, governmental center of Damascus.
And this is Israel flying over and bombing.
Let's watch this for a second.
Okay, now let's go to that next video.
You can see how dramatic.
This is the city center.
Bombing the city center.
Now, this is a live newscast as the bombs hit.
Watch this, poor woman.
City center.
Okay, that's good enough on that.
This just happened today.
The Israelis just bombed the city center of Damascus.
Are they going to use the argument this is all defensive?
Yeah, yeah.
Well, now, yeah, now that they've got their people in there, they did, and that they've disarmed, there's no more Assad.
This is what they've done.
But I just want to read Aaron Matei, who we know, who's a great guy.
He's with the Gray Zone.
He had a good analysis that I just grabbed off of X that I thought we could put up.
If you put that next clip up of what this is all about, and we're not going to go into the trees here, but we're just going to report this as it happened.
Netanyahu took credit for helping regime change Assad and put Syria's new ruling al-Qaeda offshoot in power.
Al-Jolani, the former al-Qaeda leader, turned new Syria president, then tried to appease Israel as it destroyed Syrian defenses and grabbed more Syrian territory.
Jolani declared that Israel and Syria have, quote, common enemies, Iran and Hezbollah, and expelled Palestinian groups.
Now, Netanyahu repays his al-Qaeda allies by bombing them.
Alongside the sectarian killings that most of the world ignores, yet another reason why regime change cheerleaders should have questioned the wisdom of making common cause with Israel.
So very, very dramatic scene that you're having here.
Once they're disarmed, they get bombed.
And you better believe that Iran is watching this.
You're suggesting they should have asked more questions when we were changing administrations of a foreign country.
Maybe they didn't ask enough questions in 2014 about Ukraine.
Epstein Allegations Digging Deeper 00:07:38
Yeah, we're going to change it.
Oh, you guys are making that up.
But if there was ever one example of the evidence being so appear about how we were involved in the change of the administration there in Ukraine, and look, we're still going after that.
And, you know, there was a hit we were going to quit.
I still don't understand who's telling the truth.
Are they lying or are they just totally inept?
Oh, no, we didn't know that we could quit bombing them.
Or we said we wouldn't present any more weapons.
Oh, yes, we better do it.
Yeah, well, the last thing we're looking at, and this is an ongoing thing, but this is still the Epstein issue.
And this is from Politico.
Now, I got the order messed up.
They loaded slowly, so they're in disorder.
But if you can show the one with the Steve Bannon picture.
There you go.
Thank you.
You read my mind.
Now, this is a piece we both read this morning.
The Epstein saga has splintered Trump's movement like nothing before.
Ain't that the truth, Dr. Paul?
Boy, that is for sure.
And this is why I don't understand.
I understand a lot, I think.
But it turns out to try to figure out how human beings that are powerful and rich and have motives and have no allegiance to honesty and they have no allegiance to the Constitution, how they can sleep well at this.
They sleep better when they have more comfort with, we just made umpteen dollars and we achieved this.
And this whole episode is, you know, I thought it would be more narrowed, but once the information came out of the possibility that some of this may be involved in involving the foreign policy and, you know, bribing these people to tow the line.
And yet at the same time, we always know that.
We talked about it.
Is it the F-35 that they build in every state?
So why is that?
Oh, well, that's efficiency.
Political efficiency.
We want everybody to serve.
We want democratic distribution of the wealth.
So we've got to, and that might be one of the reasons the plane's not working too well.
And we spent a couple extra dollars from the original intent.
Yeah, you talk about the bribery that may be involved in the Epstein case, but we just saw in the previous story, Trump himself admitted to bribing a member of Congress to vote for a bill.
He openly admitted it.
I don't know if they realized that.
But now go back, one, this will correct my mistake.
On Saturday, Trump, now this is from the article.
On Saturday, Trump, who's long been referenced in documents released in court cases surrounding Epstein, but not accused of wrongdoing, tried to tamp down the intra-MAGA revolt with a post on Truth Social reiterating his support for Bondi.
Now that would be Pam Bondi, the Attorney General, and suggesting that the Epstein files had been manufactured by his Democratic opponents.
Yet Trump's digital massive appears to have done little to quell the MAGA movement's fury over the controversy, which continues to dominate the discussion in conservative circles.
The fallout over the Epstein report has been distinct from the recent skirmishes over Iran and immigration.
Instead of neatly dividing Trump world into two opposing and mutually antagonistic camps, the debate has fractured the right into a kaleidoscope, kaleidoscopic melange.
I wonder if he got paid for those words.
Nice words.
Kaleidoscopic melange of competing factions throwing into sharp relief the divergent and often contradictory ideological impulses coexisting within the MAGA world.
A lot of pros there, but what the point is that it's blown up the Trump support.
It's blown it to smithereens.
Yeah, and I don't think anybody can quite comprehend what is happening tomorrow.
But I think this article in particular said you're a little late for prevention.
That goes back to what we said on the previous report.
Why don't they think these things through?
Whether it's a coup of a country or support of a dictator in Syria and all the nonsense go on, you just wonder, because I want to start off with they can't be that stupid.
And yet the people who go along with it, you can't call them stupid, but they're vulnerable because they do go along with it because they're getting their news from places that aren't given to telling the truth.
But to keep the deep state and to keep the empire together, you have to use lying.
And lying becomes a philosophic position.
And they justify it.
We've heard that.
Governments are permitted to lie.
They're permitted to do a lot of things that individuals aren't allowed to do.
And that's the big difference between living in a dictatorship in a free republic where you can express oneself.
But once they get control of that, and that to me is one of the biggest threats we have, is the control.
Maybe denying that money to public radio, maybe that'll help a little bit, but probably won't solve our problem.
Yeah.
Well, the one thing that Trump is doing now, and this is subsequent, this happened just this morning, rather than digging himself out of a hole, he's actually digging his hole deeper.
Because at first he said this is all made up by Democrats.
But now what he's saying is that this is a hoax, just like the Russia hoax, just like the laptop, just like the 51 Intel officer senior.
The problem is, he says that the whole Epstein thing is fake.
It's fake news.
It's fake.
But literally everyone in the center of his administration, Kash Patel, Pam Bondi, Dan Bongino, even his own son, Donald Trump Jr., has multiple times referenced the Epstein files as being very, very real.
So what Trump is doing by saying this, and I'll put that one up, this is Trump's post on Truth Social.
I won't read the whole thing, but it's pretty crazy stuff.
I mean, he outdoes himself every day.
He's taking the crazy pills.
The radical left Democrats have hit pay dirt, just like with a fake and fully discredited steel dossier, the lying 51 intelligence agencies, the laptop from hell, which the Dems swore had come from Russia.
No, it came from Hunter Biden's bathroom.
And even the Russia-Russia-Russia scam itself, a totally fake and made-up story used to order to hide crooked Hillary Clinton's big loss in the 16 election.
These scams and hoaxes are all the Democrats are good at.
It's all they have.
They're no good at governing, no good at policy, and no good at picking blah, This new, their new scam is what will forever be called the Jeffrey Epstein hoax and why my past, all caps, my past supporters have bought into this BS, and I'm censoring that part, this BS hook, line, and sinker.
So he basically says that everyone who doesn't believe that this is a hoax like the Russia hoax is a past supporter.
Why Colleges Spread Mischief 00:05:48
Well, does that include Bongino?
Does that include Patel?
Does that include his own son, Trump Jr.?
Talk about digging a hole.
Why won't they?
Some people say, we don't even need to believe the explanation of the steel dossier.
Maybe you're lying to us on the examination and they're looking at it.
Then all of a sudden, people don't know who to believe.
And I think that is a big problem because that is done deliberately.
And if they don't do it deliberately to be evil, they do it out of total ignorance, which doesn't help the people they're pretending that they're very worried about, taking care of the middle class.
So that's why we want to spend money and give them inflation, and they won't know who isn't helping them.
It's a real mess.
It is a mess.
Well, I'm going to close out now, Dr. Paul.
Today is the 16th of July.
And technically speaking, that means our conference is one month away as of today, one month away.
There's still time to get those tickets.
We've had a lot of good sales just recently.
Now, put up that last clip because I did mention it yesterday.
I broke this news that Natalie Morris will be joining us from the Redacted, massively popular show.
I love Natalie and Clayton Morris because they're kind of like we are.
They don't have some kind of weird Trump derangement syndrome, but they're not afraid of criticizing the president when they think he's doing something boneheaded.
And that's what they've done on foreign policy and they do it on domestic policy.
And one of the reasons I wanted Natalie to come out is that her show and her husband's show is enormously popular, has a massive, massive following.
And she's going to talk about being in the independent media and what it's like to be someone like that.
So you're going to want to see Natalie Morris live, especially if you're a redacted fan.
So snatch up those tickets.
There is a link in the description.
Get them while they last.
It's going to be a lot of fun.
You're going to meet a lot of like-minded people as well.
And just have a blast.
We have one more big announcement I'll make probably in a few days.
So over to you, Dr. Paul.
Very good.
You know, we talked early on in the program about a $9.4 billion rescission, which means that we're going to back off and cut the money, actually.
But in the budget that we're talking about, it's a very, very small amount, especially if we're looking at trillions and trillions of dollars of spending and deficit increases and total debt that we have.
But it's still, like we say, even a baby step in the right direction is a good thing.
So it'll be a shame if it doesn't pass.
That would be so that makes it even worse.
They can't do it.
But then we used to have some bills up there cutting five cents out of every bill or something like that.
Nobody would even cut five cents out of a bill.
So this is a shame.
It's a philosophy of government that matters.
And you say, well, we have the wrong kind of people in Congress.
Yes, in a way, there's a lot of truth to that.
But I think it's a little bit more complicated than I think.
I think the people have been fed a lot of mischief and a lot of lies.
They've been told to the wrong colleges.
Now it turns out that our colleges aren't all that super.
They've been getting nonsense.
Of course, we've argued that they've had the nonsense on economic policy, and that's why we've had organizations like the Mies Institute and others to teach good, honest economic policy.
So, this is something that is the most important because that is what the leaders of a country or an economy or universities really pass this message on.
Right now, I don't have a whole lot.
There are some good universities, there are some good professors, and I have to admit that I, you know, I went to all grade school and high school, government schools, and we survived.
It might not have been as bad, the challenge might not have been quite as bad as it is today.
I know it has to be less because we were back in the old days, we actually said a prayer when we opened up a classroom, you know, but that was canceled a long time ago.
Anyway, what we like to emphasize is what is positive, and that is the positiveness of personal liberty in our Constitution.
And to make the point that morality supersedes anything that the people who believe in nihilism, that lying is good and proper, and you need to do it.
And of course, there's always an excuse.
We even talked today about information, and I think a few people either fudge a lot or they're lying to themselves, and that's probably the worst kind of lie.
And a lot of that goes on.
People lie to themselves and they justify, and they want to avoid any sense of guilt because they're doing something very positive because people in government are very special.
They know what to do to help the poor people, and we know what to help.
We know what to do to help bring about peace in the world, which isn't true.
It's a philosophic debate.
The founders spent a lot of time on it, did their very best.
They came up with a wonderful document.
But quite frankly, we need to reassess our dedication to the rules written in our Constitution.
I want to thank everybody for tuning in today to the Liberty Report.
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