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Sept. 2, 2025 - Ron Paul Liberty Report
28:10
`Trump Lets Loose On Israel And Ukraine In New Interview

President Trump's Friday interview for the Daily Caller revealed much about his thinking on his two most difficult foreign policy challenges: Israel and Ukraine. His answers may surprise you.

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Total Control Over Congress 00:15:06
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?
How was your long weekend?
Oh, it was wonderful, except for some problems.
Oh, okay.
But they were handled.
Anyway, but if we look at the news, there wasn't much on Friday and on Monday, not much.
But all of a sudden, you know, a couple reporters, I guess, went back to work.
And that war is still going on in Ukraine.
You notice that, I'll bet you.
And I think they're still fighting in Gaza and Israel.
But the big question is, are things shifting around?
There is some hints that things are shifting attitudes, especially in this country.
And some of the interviews, I thought, even though I got confused at time when I was reading Trump's statements, I think he had to modify at least his thinking here and there.
Maybe he slipped out, but that things might not be going so well.
And we have some statistics we talked about before, that the statistics shows that people are wondering what's going on with what is told us and what's really going on.
But there was this interesting interview over the weekend, and that was with the Daily Caller.
And it was a long interview, over an hour with Trump.
And he likes to talk, I think.
And sometimes he confuses me about what is the policy.
What does American First mean?
But he was challenged in this interview.
I mean, it wasn't a softy, even though the person said that he had, you know, voted for him or support him.
And the people that follow him, you know, want Trump to succeed.
But now they're starting to have more questions.
So that's one thing that we noticed.
And the important thing was that the credibility has been lost by AIPAC.
The Jewish special interest group.
They were losing credibility with the Congress.
Now, that's a big deal, I think, because they have had 110% control of that.
And now they're starting to question it.
And that makes us think that something big is going on.
There is a shift.
And we're running out of money.
And the American people now are running out of patience.
Yeah, that's true.
It was a long interview.
And if you read the transcript, now transcripts can be funny because Trump speaks in a funny way.
So when I first read it, I think he used the word gibberish.
That can happen when people speak in a funny way.
But nevertheless, if you do read the transcript, it does seem a little strange, like he's hopping from topic to topic.
But now I got the wrong clip first, but the Daily Caller, now they spun quite a few articles off of it, which is a smart thing to do.
And one of them is, as you mentioned, Trump acknowledges that Israel is losing control of Congress.
Now go to that next one.
There were some surprising comments, Dr. Paul, for a number of reasons.
If you go to that first clip, actually, go to the second one.
Now, this is Reagan Reese.
She's the interviewer.
And I didn't see a video of it, but the question seemed pretty good.
So she said, a different war.
Now, she's citing a lot of things that we've talked about on the program, Dr. Paul.
She says, Reagan Reese says, a different war, Israel.
A March Pew poll found that 53% of surveyed U.S. adults had an unfavorable view of Israel.
That's down, or that's up, from 42% in 2022.
Among young Republicans under 50, 50% have an unfavorable view of Israel.
That's up from 35% in 2022.
There's a growing group, and I highlight this.
There's a growing group within the MAGA America First Coalition.
Republicans, especially younger Republicans, who are skeptical of our support for Israel.
Are you aware of this group and are you worried about it?
Now, Trump's answer is shocking in some ways.
If you go to the next one, Dr. Paul, here's what he says.
Yeah, I'm aware of it.
So Israel is amazing because, you know, I have good support from Israel.
Okay, I have.
Look, and I'll highlight this part.
Nobody has done more for Israel than I have, including the recent attacks with Iran, wiping that thing out.
Now, let's stop right there, Dr. Paul, before we move ahead, because he's admitting with that sentence that he attacked Iran for Israel, not for America.
He used the might of the U.S. military and the billions of dollars that it cost to take those attacks.
He did it for Israel rather than for the United States.
That is really interesting.
And then he said, he goes on about CNN didn't believe that he wiped everything out, da-da-da-da-da.
He said, but if you go back 20 years, I mean, I will tell you, Israel had the strongest lobby in Congress of anything or body or any company or corporation or state I've ever seen.
Israel was the strongest.
Today, it doesn't have that strong of a lobby.
I mean, it's amazing.
Now, one of the things that he did say, and I highlighted on the first, the other quote, Dr. Paul, he said, Israel was the strongest lobby I've ever seen.
They had total control over Congress, and now they don't.
Those two statements are really startling.
The first that we attacked for Israel, and the other, Israel had total control over the U.S. Congress.
That almost sounds like an anti-Semitic stereotype.
You know, when he was asked that question, he first, he said, yeah, I'm aware of it, but he doesn't say exactly what he was aware of because he does introduce his thinking to, you know, how great the relationship has and his successes, you know, and I did this and I did that.
But at the end, he did sort of acknowledge that things are changing.
Yeah.
He seemed to know.
But at first, it was just, you know, to build up his ego or whatever it is that he does, which he does well because he does convince the people.
But these statistics, the statistics are, I think, important and really telling us something.
You remember back when Pat Buchanan made the quip that Congress is Israel-controlled territory?
And he was drummed out of society.
I mean, he was, you couldn't even use the word Pat Buchanan after he said that for quite some time.
And that always sort of hung with him as something to demonstrate what a bad person he is.
Well, now you hear Donald Trump saying something even more dramatic, that Israel had total control over Congress.
Now, maybe that's his way of using hyperbole, but I don't know if that's going to resonate well with the American people.
But that doesn't really tell us why his policies hasn't changed anything up there.
But he's willing to admit it, and he better figure out.
We all better figure out of the country.
I hope we're on the right track on understanding what's going on there.
But it's definitely changing.
And that is, the more I read and look at this, the more I think it's a big deal, you know, that this is changing.
It's been probably the biggest change and reversal since 1948 when the whole thing started.
The UN started it, yeah.
Well, you think, I mean, I think the thing is that the pro-Israel, the Israel, what have you, they were able to get away for a long time with saying, well, if you say that, that just means that you're anti-Semitic.
But I think Americans are now realizing that if you substitute any country in that sentence, Americans would be outraged.
If Trump had said, China is the strongest lobby I've ever seen, they have total control over Congress.
People would say, what?
Or if he said Greece has total control over our Congress.
So people are starting to realize that this is a problem and it's becoming a big problem, not because it's Israel, but because it's a foreign country having, quote, total control over our Congress.
I thought America, the American people, should have total control over the Congress.
Yeah, I want to refer to the last part of this first half of his interview.
And it talks about Marjorie Taylor Greene, who has been a super strong supporter of Trump when it wasn't exactly the most popular thing to do it.
And she's been consistent, and I'd say she's consistent right now, but she's probably not making Donald Trump happy because she has changed her mind and willing to speak out.
The article goes on to say Marjorie Taylor Greene, a longtime Trump ally, recently became the first House Republican to say Israel was committing genocide.
Those are tough words in Gaza.
Steve Bannon, who has been, you know, another longtime Trump supporter, has spent this summer claiming that Israel is not truly an ally of the United States and has called Israel, Prime Minister Benjamin Yahoo Camp, untrustworthy.
That's Bannon, yeah, that's Bannon.
This is something else.
You know, I asked you earlier about the authenticity and the meaning of this to get your opinion of it.
And it has to do with a group that came out and talked about this.
The World Leading Genocide Scholars Association says Israel is committing genocide in Gaza.
Bannon says it too.
But, you know, that is, I just can't handle that.
It's so bad.
And yet, I don't want to believe it.
And maybe he has a different definition of genocide or what.
This group evidently has been around a while.
And Dave DeCamp is the one that did the reporting on it.
The thing is, Trump tried to still, even though he acknowledges that there's a split within his party, especially his base, he still wants to write it off in the old way.
And this is what he says about when he's asked about it.
He said, but today you have AOC plus three, and you have all these lunatics.
And they've changed it.
So he's trying to still blame it on the squad and AOC, who, by the way, is pretty pro-Israel.
But then as you rightly point out, it becomes obvious that it's Marjorie Taylor Greene.
It's people like Thomas Massey.
It's Steve Bannon, who had long been extremely pro-Israel.
There's a real problem.
And when we were putting this together, I found another article that was on the same site that goes into this, Dr. Paul.
And I'm sorry I didn't share it with you, but it really, I think, emphasizes.
If you go to the next one, this is the Telegraph, the UK Telegraph, which is probably one of the most pro-Israel newspapers around, certainly in Europe.
The growing Republican split over Netanyahu was the article, Dr. Paul, and it talks about the National Conservatism Conference that's going on, I guess, in D.C. If you go to the next one, and it talks about this split.
Now, this is a gathering of conservatives, and that they're saying that this conference now is really divided.
The Telegraph article starts with Donald Trump and J.B. Vance in power.
The annual gathering of the National Conservative Movement in Washington will be partly a celebration and partly an opportunity to share winning tactics.
But there will be an interloper at the party, a growing split over what to do about Israel.
And here's a quote: If MAGA and the America First Movement, or whatever you want to call it, really wants to be ideologically coherent, then it can't be America First with an exception asterisk for Israel, said Kurt Mills, the executive director of the American Conservative magazine and a speaker at the conference.
And then they go on to talk about Bannon, which you just brought up, Dr. Paul.
Go to that next one.
Mr. Bannon, the host of a highly influential War Room show, has repeatedly argued against foreign interventions.
When Israel launched its 12-day war with Iran in June, he was among those on the right wing warning that Washington risked being sucked into a devastating Middle East conflict.
Mr. Netanyahu pushed back against the warnings this week.
He told Breitbart, quote, Israel is fighting Iran, and you can't be MAGA if you're pro-Iran.
You can't be MAGA if you're anti-Israel.
The next clip is the same article, Dr. Paul.
Mr. Bannon, this is how he is.
Mr. Bannon fired straight back, writing on the social media site Getter, quote, American citizens do not give two F's about your thoughts on MAGA or what our citizens need to believe.
They care about exposing your pathological lies in order to keep us out of your next war.
That is tough coming from Iran.
That's not AOC.
That's Steve Bannon.
Maybe they'll start using the scheme of saying, maybe we just need one enemy that we can unify on and bring up Iran.
Can we gang up on Iran and get away from this subject?
But once again, I think our philosophy is creeping in because they're looking at this strategically and financially.
Do we have the money?
And does it make much sense that we can police the world?
And how many people are suffering?
And there's a genocide humanitarian approach to this.
So I would think that the Israelis, and there are some, there are some Israelis that wouldn't be frightened by what we're saying.
And they were not ethically happy with their president over there, prime minister, Yahoo.
NATO's Role in Funding War 00:09:51
But it looks like this little squabble or whatever it is is going to continue.
And I would guess it is going to get a lot worse, which hopefully is positive.
Yeah, yeah.
I mean, I think the last thing that what remains of the Israel lobby is clinging to is that, oh, you're a leftist if you don't support us.
In America First, and the conservatives are saying, no, that's not true, actually.
We don't hate you.
We're not opposed to you, but we don't believe that every time you start a war, we should send our planes over there and our missiles over there.
And I think that's the side that's winning.
So we have a little bit of good news.
So the second thing to come out of that interview, Dr. Paul, and it's also in the Daily Caller, is Ukraine.
And if you go to that next one, Trump lays out America First Plan for Helping Ukraine end war, cast doubt on a Putin-Zelensky meeting.
Now, here's Reagan Rees.
If you go to the next one, she says, I want to come back to Russia.
Are you still considering with securities guarantees using U.S. soldiers?
And here's a good news part, Dr. Paul.
Trump simply answers, go back, please.
Yeah, no.
No.
He's not considering U.S. troops, which that's good.
He needs to stick to that.
Right.
And, you know, they're talking about the Ukrainian thing.
And they're talking about what would the America first position be?
Yeah.
And Trump said, well, well, probably some airplanes.
Or in a way, his one phrase in there, or whatever is necessary type of attitude.
So that was one thing that I guess it was Johnson was the one in the 60s would say, I don't want to be the first president to lose a war.
The war was lost.
The way we went into, in a way, it was flying the way thousands of Americans died.
You know, such a mess.
But he was thinking about his reputation and what he would be remembered by.
So he said, I don't want.
So how many people died because of that stupidity?
For his reputation, yeah.
Exactly.
Terrible.
So Reagan Reese follows up with that no, which is a good answer.
Good answer, Trump.
But as you say, Dr. Paul, she follows up and says, and planes in the air, I mean, in the air?
He says, maybe I'll do something.
If you can put that next one up, maybe I'll do something.
We'll do something.
This is how you say, Dr. Paul.
He's almost sort of cavalier about it.
I'd like to see something get solved.
They're not our soldiers, but there are 5,000 to 7,000, mostly young people being killed every single week.
And here's what he said: that it seemed disconnected with reality.
If I could stop that and have a plane flying around in the air every once in a while, it's going to be mostly the Europeans, but we'd help them.
Then, you know, they sort of need it, and we'd help them if we could get something done.
So the idea that flying a plane around in the air once in a while is going to stop Russia from pursuing its stated goals is pretty delusional and actually risks a wider war because Russia will shoot down the plane.
So that's a big problem in that.
You know, this idea about Trump saving money.
We're not going to do it.
NATO has to do it.
Can you think of laundering money?
Do you think all of a sudden they're going to cough up their money and pay all their dues and spend it all in America?
That is daydreaming.
You know, the money is not going to be found.
And we're going to print it as long as the people are going to continue to accept that kind of counterfeit money.
But the whole idea that, or if another thing is, if we can fool the people long enough, we'll just give them the money or give them a loan.
And then they say, oh, yeah, we fulfilled it.
We borrowed this money.
And now we're sending it to Donald Trump to pacify him so he doesn't come after us with tariffs.
Yeah.
Yeah.
That was exactly the next clip we were thinking on the exact same terms.
Because if you go to that next one, she said, they don't want Americans over there at all.
This is Reagan Rees, the interviewer.
Are you concerned about how that might square with the American first agenda?
And Trump said, so there are a lot of people that so agree.
Look, we were spending hundreds of billions of dollars in that war.
Now we sell equipment to NATO.
They pay for the equipment.
We're not spending any money in the war.
So I found a little chart, Dr. Paul, that we've put up periodically.
So NATO is funding the war, not the U.S.
Well, who funds NATO?
Hit that next chart, and you will see in the blue is the United States.
We fund NATO.
70-some percent of NATO is American money.
So to say that America doesn't fund the war, NATO does, is a little bit of a fib, Dr. Paul, I think.
You know, I still find it a dilemma to try to figure out people and how they think.
Now, are they stupid or are they desperate?
They just don't understand economics or they don't care or they want to grab as much as they can get while the grabbing is good or there's something wrong with them because it makes no sense whatsoever.
All this stuff, if going to war was followed correctly, like have a declaration before you do this, it might make a difference.
But like I told a story once about, somebody warned me about that in 1976.
There will never be another declaration of war.
It's always going to be fought this way.
And even more now because it's becoming sophisticated weaponry.
So you're never going to know when it started or who did what.
You know, it's easy for us to Monday morning quarterback President Trump.
And we're guilty of it here too.
He should have done, he would have done, he could have done.
And that's the case.
We don't fully understand the pressures that are on a president, and I'm sure they are enormous.
But nevertheless, I think this next little clip that I put up there captures his frustration that things aren't going like he thinks they should.
He's kind of used to saying do something and it happens.
Maybe that's how you run a real estate company, but it's not how you run the government.
And in this sort of next clip, you almost feel sorry for him, even with his braggadoccio tucked into each sentence.
So he said, they want to see it get settled, but if we can help them, I'd be willing to do that.
We're talking about a lot of lives.
We're not talking about something that I started.
I inherited this war.
And I'm trying, when all I'm trying to do is put out the flame, you know, and I thought I had it done.
I did it seven times with other, I did it with wars that were tougher than this in terms of nobody.
So three of those wars are going on for more than 30 years, and I got them all done.
This war is just, it's been very difficult.
It's been a difficult war.
It's almost kind of sad when you see that because I genuinely do believe he doesn't like the killing that's going on there.
I wish he had that same thought about Gaza, but nevertheless, he wants to.
But he doesn't realize that it's not as easy as he thinks.
Whereas we advised him at the very beginning, you're right, this isn't your war.
Just walk away and it'll be done.
You know, I found it entertaining about his comparison to kids fighting a war, fighting a battle or a little game, playing.
And they fight, fight, fight, and argue and can be pretty noisy until they get tired of it.
And I kept thinking, and he even used it as an analogy.
But he's right on some of this stuff because that's what happened in Vietnam.
We just got tired of it.
We got tired of Afghanistan when we embark on these stupid wars.
So that thing about the kids, we'll just wait and fatigue them out.
But we got to pay them money to keep doing it.
We might as well make some money while they're getting tired of war.
Yeah, yeah, he just doesn't get it.
Well, anyway, there was an interesting interview for a lot of reasons.
I encourage people to read the transcripts.
Again, even as I say that it's not really fair to judge a person by the transcript, the written transcript of how they speak.
But nevertheless, it's enlightening.
I'm going to close out, Dr. Paul, unless you've got something else you want to bring up.
No, I don't have anything else.
Well, your closing statement.
My closing statement will just be to remind everyone: if you click that last link to go to the Rumpaul Institute website, we've got some good articles there.
And look at the top of the heap is Dr. Paul's weekly column.
Go there, a couple, three articles a day.
Not a lot to read, but we try to pick the ones that we think are most important.
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Over to you, Dr. Paul.
Very good.
You know, more and more in the news, it's recognized that the financial situation in this country is getting worse, not better, and that it will come to a conclusion.
Matter of fact, there are some bond sales coming up here shortly in the next month that may be a real blowout and information guided.
Fundamentals of Running a Country 00:03:03
But there's still a lot of people naive and they're still arguing over the name of the Department of Defense.
They're arguing about who knows what the interest rates would be.
And they're not dealing with some of the fundamentals as far as I'm concerned.
It's the fundamentals of how do we run a country.
We don't run a country.
The people are supposed to run the country.
And if you're going to go to war, the people should decide about it.
Where are they going to get the money?
They have to get the money for the people voluntarily.
They can't print up the money and steal it from one group and give it to another group, making one group much richer and the other group much poorer, all at the expense of not only a financial situation, but at the expense of our liberties.
So the war is not of much value to anybody other than the profiteers, the weapons manufacturers, and the people who want power.
And it's been this way for a long time, like thousands of years.
But that does not mean that the people who have thought about trying to prevent it, as our founders did, that we should always give up and say, we can't do it.
It's too big a job.
But the founders knew about it, and they were very, very cautious about bragging about it.
But the one thing they warned about to keep a situation like this from developing, and that is democracy.
What?
Democracy?
That's what we're fighting for.
What are you talking about?
Well, no, they say that the founder said democracy isn't the answer.
And they even projected that probably democracy will become a dictatorship because all you have to do is get 51% and you could destroy all the minority rights, the weak people who can't resist the taxation and the wars, fighting the wars.
So it's a system of government that has to be exposed.
The founders made their effort and little bits and pieces have existed ever.
I say that spirit is still alive.
And though we talk about all the things that we worry about, it looks to me like our numbers who believe in freedom and restricted government power, less war in a serious manner, that if we follow some basic rules, and most of the time I say follow the Constitution.
But before that, we ought to have a lot more people in this world, in this country, or in the United States, to realize that natural law gives you a strong hint of what should be done.
It's a really difficult rule to understand.
No lying, cheating, stealing, or killing.
And don't let the government do it either.
No more complicated than that.
It's a moral issue.
So we're not, you know, preachers, but we do like to emphasize that we want to try to understand better every single day and to pass that message along to you and ask you to spread the message of liberty.
We'd all be better off.
I want to thank you for tuning in today to the Liberty Report.
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