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Aug. 7, 2025 - Ron Paul Liberty Report
27:00
Congress Skips Epstein Files Vote For Trip To Israel

Dozens of Members of the US House are on their way to Israel on an AIPAC-paid trip after Speaker Johnson - also in Israel - called August recess early to avoid a vote on Rep. Thomas Massie's resolution to release the Epstein files. Priorities?

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Manipulating Markets and Manipulation 00:03:31
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 good.
Good.
Quite well.
I'm going to start off with a little economic meandering around what's going on.
Because you hear good news if you, if there's a lot of press now that favors the president compared to before, but it's true.
There's confusion on both sides of the aisle.
But I want to mention one headline I saw from the Wall Street Journal this morning.
Trump pledged to bring back manufacturing.
The sector is sputtering.
Their suggestion is maybe it's not as good as planned.
And of course, sort is my position, because I don't like tariffs.
I don't think they work.
And because they could find some things that seem to help doesn't mean that that's going to settle.
I think a lot of people did things in correcting and preparing for the tariff, and that gave some numbers a boost to it.
But this is a bold promise, but there's been a lot of bold promises.
But it doesn't deal with debt or regulations or the wars that are going on.
It doesn't deal with that at all.
It has to do with manipulation and putting pressure on allies and our non-allies to do our bidding.
That will, they'll spend more money here.
It will change the balance of payments.
And we will make sure the dollar stays strong and it will defend the world.
They don't challenge it.
If they can't challenge it, they just ignore it.
So this promise, I think, is just something that is going to get worse because I think as, and I think there was another economic report today on unemployment.
Last week, you know, there was all this excitement, you know, of fudging the figures on how bad it was.
Well, I think the unemployment is going to get bad because of exactly when and where and how is not known.
But it is well known and well established at the Austrian viewpoint about overstimulation with monetary system and spending gives a boom, but is destined to fall.
And I think what we're facing is the wakening up of this has been a big boom.
You know, you could describe it ever since World War II.
We have lived on borrowed money absolutely since 71.
So it is in many ways a huge bubble that the market has control of and all this pledging of spending and doing these kind of things and fixing it without dealing with the problem isn't going to work.
So we have to keep working hard, Daniel, to introduce people to the ideas of markets are smarter than politicians.
And we need less politicians telling us what has to be done and letting people, you know, work in the marketplace.
And that is something I think is going to happen soon that more people will be aware of it because one reflection of this is the dollar's value, the deficit, and the price of gold.
And the price of gold just happens to be, you know, going up as a measurement of what is going on.
Supporting Israel: A Moral Obligation 00:15:05
And it even surprised, doesn't surprise me, but it still catches my attention because it was predictable.
But I guess most people, at least I was always hoping maybe it would get this bad.
And then when Musk came out, I thought, well, there's some, I've been serious thinking about it.
And there were some good ideas, but it hasn't turned into a shrinkage of the spending or the deficit.
So that's why I have turned around not thinking much is going to happen.
Something will have to be done.
But we have some other problems too, some political problems going on in Washington.
Yeah, we do, Dr. Paul.
And the next story, which is our first major story that we're doing today, I mean, not long ago, this would be a lot more controversial.
This topic would be.
But in fact, the American people in the majority have come to our view on this.
And that's the problem of having a U.S. Congress that seems far more interested in serving a foreign country than serving Americans and America.
Put this next one on.
This is from Dave DeCamp at antiwar.com.
Netanyahu hosts 20 APAC-sponsored House Republicans in Israel.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Wednesday that he hosted a delegation of House Republicans who were in Israel on a trip organized by the pro-Israel lobby group APAC as members of Congress are flocking to the country amid their August recess.
Prime Minister Netanyahu yesterday evening met with an APAC organized delegation of Republican members of Congress.
Netanyahu's office said the Prime Minister briefed the members of Congress on the war in the Gaza Strip.
I'm sure they got an objective briefing there, right, Dr. Paul?
And commented on the issue of humanitarian assistance.
Oh, I'm sure they're doing everything to help.
But anyway, go to that next one.
It's not just, well, here, let's look at APAC Tracker, which I highly recommend to follow on X, by the way.
APAC Tracker, a group that tracks donations to U.S. lawmakers from pro-Israel lobby groups, identified 20 House GOP members from a picture posted online by Netanyahu's office.
U.S. House Speaker Mike Johnson, also in Israel this week, visited illegal Jewish settlements in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, including one where he dined with Netanyahu.
But don't worry, Dr. Paul, it's not simply a Republican problem of abandoning our own country.
According to Punch Bowl News, about 20 House Democrats are also headed to Israel during the recess on an APAC-sponsored trip.
The strong show of support for Israel from so many U.S. lawmakers comes as Israel is regularly massacring over 100 Palestinians a day in Gaza.
Put that back up, please, including many desperate people seeking aid.
And Palestinians are starving in Gaza to death every day due to U.S.-backed Israeli blockade.
Now, here is that photo they referred to, and I hope American voters will remember this photo when they go to vote in the midterm elections.
These are people who skipped out of the country to sit and pose for a photo op with a foreign leader in a foreign country.
I think that's a kind of a disgraceful photo, Dr. Paul.
And I think that's Randy Fine sitting right behind Netanyahu.
He's the guy who said, let them starve about the Palestinians.
Okay.
What do you think, Dr. Paul?
I think it's a bad deal.
The big picture I see is that this movement that the House did, it demonstrates the delivering of sovereignty to Israel from us.
You know, they're making us the one statement I think was not too friendly to America, first issue, and that is, well, there's a problem over there between Israel and with Gaza and the Palestinians.
But we don't want to interfere.
And I think that's up to Israel to make a decision on what to do.
But the money keeps flowing and the support keeps flowing.
The weapons keep flowing.
And it's always a religious belief about you have to do it.
People, a lot of these individuals supporting it, they're deep into religious defense of what they're doing.
They've been directed to do this, and that depends on whose interpretation and what year they interpreted that to happen.
So, that to me is so sad.
There's a lot of wars been fought over sovereignty, and I think there's a certain aim of it, and some of it is decent.
You want to be, I always thought it would be great for us to have an influence by setting standards on how to bring about peace and prosperity.
But no, this is very disturbing to me, even though the main design here is designed to say that what we have to do is punish those people who the Democrats who are leaving, they want to hold up a vote.
I remember that happened in the 1970s.
That was it.
It didn't last, and it wasn't as vicious as here.
They didn't fly to Israel to avoid the vote back in the 70s.
Well, the thing is, and you remember this well from the many seasons you were in the House, August is the time you go back to your home districts, you hold town halls, you meet with people, you get a sense of what your district is interested in, the kinds of legislation, you touch base with people that you're supposed to represent.
Well, this isn't the case, and let's put this next one up.
Now, this is an old friend of ours, Medea Benjamin, who is an anti-war activist, herself Jewish, by the way, as most people know, a progressive.
She makes a heck of a good point.
And this is a picture of a bunch of Republicans standing at the Western Wall.
And she says, Why aren't these Republican members of Congress at home in their districts taking care of their constituents instead of being in Israel?
America first or Israel first, says Medea Benjamin.
And our old friend Thomas Massey makes also a very important point in that next clip.
If you put it up, he put this out a couple weeks ago.
He said, The Speaker of the House recessed Congress early Thursday for a month to avoid dealing with the Epstein issue.
Mr. Speaker, the American people won't forget my legislation isn't going away.
It'll be right there when we return, and I'll force the vote using a discharge petition, which is a special technique that is used to get something to the floor.
Now, that's a good point that he's making.
They ended Congress early because they didn't want to deal with the Epstein issue, but they immediately got out of the country rather than doing their business.
Now, I have a clip of Speaker Johnson, Dr. Paul, who is also in Israel, as I mentioned earlier.
If you want to grab your earpiece and listen to what Johnson said here over in Israel, because it speaks to exactly what you just said a moment ago, Mike Johnson, the 56th Speaker of the House of Representatives in America, we're here with a delegation of members of the House.
We're so grateful to be in Israel, particularly on this day, recognizing the destruction of the temples and two types of district.
But it is such a moving time for us to be here to be here at the Wailing Wall.
We've offered our prayers, we put our notes into the wall, as is traditional, and we're so moved by the hospitality of the people and the great love of Israel.
Our prayer is that America will always stand with Israel and that we will pray for the preservation and the peace of Jerusalem.
That's what scripture tells us to do.
It's a matter of faith for us and a commitment that we have.
God bless you.
That's what Scripture tells us to do.
I didn't think that we were a theocracy, Dr. Paul.
I thought we had a separation of church and state.
Yes, and you know, as I hinted in my statement earlier, and as he hinted strongly, that there's a moral obligation to support Israel and a Christian obligation, which is a controversial position.
But I do think there's a moral principle here, but it's somewhat different.
What about the moral principle of stealing money from poor people in this country and sending it over into these war zones and having no control of who gets killed and who gets starved to death?
I think that you could ask him, don't you feel any moral obligation that you support taxation and allow that money to be sent to a country that its principle is to starve children.
And then, well, I think even the Republicans here say, well, that's an exaggeration.
That doesn't really happen.
But you know what?
The world opinion has changed.
It's not easy to change the world opinion, both liberals and conservatives.
And in our country, there is a split.
And even in Israel, there's a split.
You know, there's more Israelis and now they're speaking out.
Enough is enough.
And to see the starving children is just atrocious.
And that is moral.
So you can't hide behind this thing that, no, in recent times, it's been understood by many Christians that you're obligated to do whatever Israel wants.
And that doesn't make any sense.
We're not even morally obligated to do everything our government tells us because they tell us a lot of things that we have to distrust.
And maybe our moral obligation is to point out these mistakes that they make and why liberty is a much better way to make these decisions.
And even in this situation, you could say, well, if you still don't want to accept our arguments on this about taking money from poor people here, that maybe we, you know, the fact is, is I wouldn't support a law that said that if you have a strong feeling about this, for you to go and participate, you can do it.
But that is not likely to be accepted.
Yeah, the other thing, we mentioned it a couple of weeks ago, Israel is one of the richest countries per capita on earth.
You know, they have free health care.
They have free, not that that's such a great thing, but free education, what have you, while Americans are suffering.
You know, back when the Holocaust happened in World War II and the Nazis were annihilating people, a lot of people did know it and they did nothing, which is horrible.
But there wasn't the technology then that there is now.
And as you say, a lot of people deny what's happening, but the pictures are everywhere.
As you say, the entire world sees what's happening.
The pictures are out there.
They can deny them just like they tried to deny what Hitler's doing in the Holocaust, but you can't deny it.
And it's even harder to deny it today.
The other thing is interesting, you know, he says we must support Israel because of scripture.
But the thing is, even though, they say that was true, but why does he get to define what support is?
We might think, okay, that may be true, but we would support Israel by telling them to stop making enemies around the world by killing kids.
You know, that might be just as much justifiable as what he says supporting Israel.
The Bible is very clear.
Jesus is very clear in a position that you should have concern and help the people who are downtrodden and are hungry.
But that doesn't mean that you have the right to pick up guns and steal money from one group, give it to another, and follow the orders of one government body to attack the other one.
But I still was annoyed the most by, oh, we're going to stay out of this one.
Israel can take care of themselves.
We'll let them decide when they're going to take over completely Gaza.
You know, that to me is not very open-minded.
Yeah, you can decide, but here wants some money.
We'll give you some more money.
Well, he's asked, why are they flocking?
Now, they do it all the time.
But why are they particularly flocking this time to Israel?
That's because these members of Congress are hearing an earful from their constituents.
Americans are sick to death of what's happening over there, and it's reflected in the polls.
Now, we've showed this figure before, but look at this next poll.
This is a recent Gallup poll from last month.
Only 32% in the U.S. back Israel's military action in Gaza, a new low.
And I've again put that chart up.
If you can look at the rest of it, this green one is Americans who approve of Israel's actions in Gaza.
It's deep, deep, deep underwater, an all-time low.
So, what do members of Congress do?
Do they listen to their constituents who say, We got to do something about this?
We've got to stop supporting this with money and weapons.
No, on the contrary, they ignore their constituents and go to that foreign country and say, We will do whatever it takes to facilitate your continuing to do what is irritating our own constituents.
You know, it's incredible.
You know, we criticize pure democracy, and democracy can become the dictatorship of the majority.
But I think what is happening now, though, is that you can watch this and you can find out what the majority is thinking.
And I like to use the phrase of prevailing opinion.
And you just talked about a prevailing opinion.
It shifted.
That had happened in COVID.
That type of democracy, which is sort of voluntary and people speaking out and getting together.
And for the most part, even under COVID, people were angry and upset, but they didn't start murdering people.
But unfortunately, there were some people killed by bad policy.
We know that.
That's true.
Well, the second topic we're going to talk about a little bit today is a twist on corporatism.
And if you put that next to them, this is from Politico.
Amazon Web Services gives the Trump administration a $1 billion coupon.
Now, I like coupons, Dr. Paul.
When I go to HEB and I see a coupon, I snatch it up and get something, but I have never had a $1 billion coupon.
That sounds like influencing something somewhere.
And to me, it just emphasized the whole concept of corporatism because one of the theories that I'm working on, my personal approach to this, is they never get pure authoritarianism because it usually fails.
But there's a lot of them.
And the authoritarians who are the nihilists don't believe you can find truth versus the people who say there's natural law.
You don't even need government to seek the truth.
But the agreement is interventionism.
Governments can intervene.
But if it's intervention per se, you can go out and you can intervene slightly left, slightly right.
Bipartisan Interventionism 00:04:47
They talk about that all the time.
But all the intervention is not permissible, you know, by legislation.
So that invites all the special interest groups.
And then they think they're doing something wonderful.
Oh, that's what they're a bipartisanship.
We just love that.
But every time a bipartisan gets together and they say, well, 90% of this bill is pretty good, but 10% is bad.
But I can vote for 10%.
I tell them, well, what about if you do that constantly?
If you vote against liberty 10% of the time, soon you don't have any liberty left.
And I think that's what's happened over the last 30, 40 years.
Yeah.
Well, here's what it's all about.
This wonderful coupon is not a bad one.
Amazon Web Services giving the Trump administration a $1 billion coupon to use their services for the federal government's digital transformation and artificial intelligence capacity.
On Thursday, the General Service Administration announced a sweeping one gov agreement with Amazon Web Services that would yield up to a billion dollars in cost savings.
Isn't this funny, Dr. Paul, how they're pretending that this is actually a free market?
You know, they're doing business.
Amazon is doing business and they get a coupon as if this is a free market transaction.
That's why the trickery and the distortions of what they're doing.
I think corporatism is a good one.
I think the world has come together like that because when you look at what China's doing, China's not like they were when it was 100% communist.
They know how to make profits, you know, sometimes better than we do.
You know, so it's corporatism and, you know, getting together and saying we have to be bipartisan.
You have to give up this.
You get all sorts of things, but neither side develops and defends their principles.
The people who know that freedom is beneficial, they say, well, we have to give up on that to get what we need.
And also, it leads to so many troubles in foreign policy.
Yeah, this is okay, but these people are suffering and they make an excuse for avoiding non-intervention.
And that, of course, is a mess because I think not believing in the principle of liberty and freedom and markets and property and knowing that people can seek and understand what right and wrong is.
They don't want you to do this.
I think you point out some areas here where right and wrong, it's all over the place when they don't start with a basic principle.
Yeah.
Well, here's the other component.
We talked about it before the show is that we basically are talking about corporatism, but with a political dimension.
Now, put this next clip up because this is where we see the political dimension.
We'll play ball with you.
We'll give you a billion-dollar coupon.
Here's from the article.
Federal Acquisition Service Commissioner and Doge staffer Josh Greenbaum, who has played a leading role in negotiating the deal, called it, quote, a foundational piece to help implement President Trump's AI action plan.
Now, it may not be political, but when you do it like this, Dr. Paul, it doesn't look like the government's just buying a service.
It looks like that service is providing political cover for the person in office.
You know, it's the system now depends on, you know, a type of leadership that we're seeing in the administration today.
But a lot of this is personal, you know, warnings and telling them and be badgering people.
And you can promise and then you make promises like we hear here now.
This is another promise, another actually give rewards to it.
And then wheel and deal with the power of this every day.
There's a new change in tariffs.
We'll give you this, but we'll take this.
I think tariffs rarely do much good.
I see they do good for some industries for short periods of time.
But this whole thing that they do this, they really have expanded the use and manipulation of the power of promising and giving and taking.
And just think of how it's messed up the concept of the First Amendment.
You get the universities dependent on government money, stealing money from one group, and then all of a sudden the colleges have to give up some of their freedom to have speakers that don't satisfy the administration.
Judging Freedom: Natalie's Talk 00:02:31
They say, oh, we're taking your money away.
Well, it'd be best if they just don't take the money ever and we don't volunteer to give them the money.
That should all be private.
Absolutely.
Well, I'm going to close out, Dr. Paul, with a clip that a friend of mine, Simon, who's a producer over at Redacted.
He sent this pretty neat clip over to me yesterday, and I put it up.
And I think it would be fun because this is from the Redacted, and that gentleman on the right is our board member and good friend, Judge Napolitano.
Let's listen into this.
This is pretty neat.
Natalie and I are going to be together next week without you.
Did you know that?
Apparently, I heard about this.
You'll be at the Ron Paul Institute giving a speech together.
Is that right?
500 people there.
We're actually doing a judging freedom from there on the dais with the regulars who will be accompanying Natalie as a speaker.
But I'm staying until the end because I want to hear what Natalie has to say.
Oh, thank you so much.
Now, just to be clear, Clayton was invited too, and we decided we would flip-flop.
So Clayton will go to the next one because we still have three kids.
Yeah, someone's got to hold down the fort, as it were.
There are many great gatherings of serious, small government, maximum individual liberty, pro-peace people, as you'd expect at a Ron Paul gathering.
Well, I can't wait to hear about that.
I can't wait to watch it and listen in as well.
Isn't that neat?
How far did that, where did that get to?
Where did that spread?
Where is that being?
Well, that was on their program.
They had the judge on their program, and Simon just did a little clip.
It reached a few people.
I wonder if we'll have enough chairs.
Yeah.
Yeah, there's a huge buzz around it, and everyone's talking about it.
So I do have a link there in the description.
It's getting close, but there's still some tickets left.
So snatch those up.
So when the judge and Natalie gets there, it's going to be standing room only.
So we hope to see you there.
Over to you, Dr. Paul.
Very, very good.
And I, too, am excited about what's going on.
I sometimes get a little discouraged, but not much because all I have to do is come back and do a program.
And we meet and talk to, and especially these conferences, it's a real boost to us who, you know, work at this for a long time.
And we don't know if there is anybody out there listening.
And it's certainly very nice to hear three people talk about our program because we are not alone.
I mean, I didn't invent the stuff I talk about.
Aristotle's Wisdom on Monetary Policy 00:01:03
You didn't invent it.
It's been around for a long time.
Monetary policy goes all the way back to Aristotle.
Aristotle knew a lot more than most people in Washington, you know, about good monetary policy.
So I think that is so exciting to have this.
And I have so much confidence that we can solve our problems and produce peace and prosperity if we accept basic principles of non-intervention and nonviolence, because that is the way that people get along much better.
Our Constitution suggested a few ways we could do this.
And for a while, we did a fairly good job on that.
It's never going to be perfect.
And the authoritarians can't be perfect.
We can't be perfect.
But we do know when we're going in one direction or another.
Right now, we've lived through several decades where the apparent amount of liberty we have has been shrinking.
And there's no reason that we can't expect that direction to change.
I want to thank everybody for tuning in today to the Liberty Report.
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