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Sept. 23, 2025 - Ron Paul Liberty Report
33:00
Trump Ruffles Feathers At The UN

President Trump's address to the UN General Assembly has left some national delegations seeing red, as his blunt style is not what they are accustomed to. What are the highlights and lowlights of the speech? Does the UN matter? Also, Speaker Johnson is losing the war for the soul of the conservative movement...and that's a good thing!

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Addressing Global Challenges 00:05:10
Hello, everybody, and thank you for tuning in to the Ron Paul Liberty Report.
With us today, we have Daniel McAdams, our co-host.
Daniel, good to see you today.
How are you this morning, Dr. Paul?
Good.
Good.
Excellent.
But we still have a problem or two to talk about.
Yes, that's true.
But, you know, I listened to the speech this morning, a lot of it.
Of course, I ran out of time, but I wanted to see what the tone was.
And that's the speech of our president in the front of the United Nations.
Yes.
But the first thing I sensed that he was in charge of everything.
It wasn't a coming together of a group, but he was in charge.
And even one writer said, Trump's address begins with like a State of the Union address than a UN Assembly address.
And I think, you know, he'd be proud of that.
And if he had, if he were following just everything that we anticipated and we heard in the campaign, it wouldn't be so bad.
But you and I have talked about where does he change?
Well, he's changed at foreign policy.
And I don't think he's a budget fighter.
Boy, you got in trouble.
I think that's one of the reasons he doesn't like Thomas Massey.
Thomas Massey, he thinks we should actually cut things and follow through with what we say.
But anyway, he sets out his vision for the world in the key UN address.
And I imagine it could be still going on.
But there was a lot of bragging in it.
I did this.
And I'm interested.
You might even tell me where all this is coming from.
But one thing that I was interested in, because I'm interested in stopping war.
And by golly, if he's on to something, I don't know what he words he used, but he ended two wars, three, seven wars.
Seven, yeah.
Seven wars.
I mean, we're on a street.
But for some reason, I'm a little bit pessimistic about it.
It's terrible to be cynical, but there's rumors of war, and I'm afraid the wars are going to continue.
But we don't even have a good spokesman at the top of the ladder who knows what to say and do if you want to work about it, because they say that we who want to work for peace, we're isolationists.
We don't want to have anything to do with the world.
We don't want to get along.
But we don't want the sanctions.
We don't want the terrorists.
We don't want the punishments for people not doing what we tell them.
And we're much more in favor of interacting with people, believing that trade is good.
And yet that's not the case.
But Trump goes on.
He's, like I said, he could still be talking, but he did talk a long time that I listened to it.
And there's a lot of boasting about this.
You know, I have a personal philosophy, and sometimes I err on this, but sometimes if you have to build up your own ego and say, I did this, I did that.
You know, the reason I try to avoid that is I think it's a weak statement.
Yeah.
I don't mind being complimented.
But if I have to compliment myself, pay attention, folks.
You know what I did.
I think that is so bad.
So if that's a true statement, I'm saying, what do we have to say about the president?
Why does he have to do this?
To reassure us that he's in charge.
Yeah, I would call it the good, the bad, and the goofy is his speech.
And he started out, and it reminded me of the Trump that both of us like so much, the personable, funny person, good-spirited, good-hearted.
You know, he started out with kind of a joke because the teleprompter wasn't working.
So you can imagine if it was Biden, it would have been a real problem, right?
But he made a joke out of it and he said, it doesn't bother me that the teleprompter is not working.
I'll still give my speech.
And then he said, but I tell you, whoever is running that thing is going to be in trouble.
And everyone was laughing.
So he kind of broke the ice with something like that.
And that's really the nice side of his personality.
And you can put up that first clip.
Here is Trump in front of the UN General Assembly today.
And he gave quite a long speech, as you point out.
But go to the next one because this is exactly what you're saying, this bragging.
And it's just sort of funny.
And this is, I would say, this is the goofy part.
Trump begins by bragging that we are the hottest country anywhere in the world.
There's no other country even close.
I don't know.
I mean, down here in Texas, that has a different meaning.
We're the hottest.
It feels like we're the hottest in the world.
But it's just sort of funny that he keeps saying that and repeating it.
But sort of the goofy part is like you say, when he brags about ending seven wars, and even the participants in those conflicts say he really didn't do this.
You know, it's almost like a schoolyard bragging.
And I actually have that first clip is him saying this.
Trump's Schoolyard Bragging 00:03:55
And I just, I forget how long.
I don't want to listen to a lot of it, but let's listen to a little bit of him bragging about ending all these wars and sort of chiding the UN for not doing it.
You might want to get your earpiece, Dr. Paul, so you can hear Trump talking about ending all these wars.
And I guess it's sort of funny.
Let's go ahead and listen to it now.
The Congo and Rwanda, a vicious, violent war that was.
Pakistan and India, Israel and Iran, Egypt and Ethiopia, and Armenia and Azerbaijan.
It included all of them.
No president or prime minister, and for that matter, no other country has ever done anything close to that.
And I did it in just seven months.
It's never happened before.
There's never been anything like that.
Very honored to have done it.
It's too bad that I had to do these things instead of the United Nations doing them.
And sadly, in all cases, the United Nations did not even try to help in any of them.
Okay, we can turn it off now.
It's just sort of, I'm the one man who solved all these wars.
Not even the entirety of the UN did anything close to it.
I bet if you asked him the details of any of those conflicts and how specifically he ended those wars, he would really have no idea what to say, I don't think.
I mean, that's my suspicion.
You know, he talked about the wars and all, but what about the economy?
He boasts a little bit about the economy, but that is with risk because they don't quite understand why, you know, inflation is not predictable day to day.
But the consequences of it is very predictable.
So to say, you know, the stock market is great means you've printed way too much money.
And that's why the people can't afford to go to the grocery store to buy the grocery.
And the U.S., I think what they're setting up for is, you know, the Austrian school we endorse, and that is that when you distort the market by debt and artificial interest rates, you build bubbles.
And I think everybody, even in the market, you know, they wouldn't argue there's not a bubble, but we're going to take advantage of this.
So, but there will be future blame.
So if he's going to, you know, as he strongly identifies with it, and spending has been reduced.
You know, the inflation hasn't been induced.
Every day we hear of another, I think there was another one today, just recently, another big expenditure committed to.
It's not a million or a billion.
It's up over to hundreds of billions of dollars.
And it's just astounding.
I've always been annoyed by the fact that, you know, that partisanship, you know, there's some benefits and disadvantages.
But the whole thing is, is that, you know, everything that's going on right now is Biden's fault.
It was Bush's last term and it was the president's last time.
It's been the banking system for a long time.
It's all built into it, but it's always played up and everybody looks at it as a political thing.
And that's why we're not going to get very far.
But the market, the market, I live with the idea that markets are powerful and they finally dominate.
And of course, that disrupts the political system.
Yes, indeed.
The one area that was interesting, if you put that next one on, is when he talked about Russia.
And I have not listened to the entire speech.
I only can rely on Zero Hedge for a summary of it.
So I have to be honest there.
Climate Change Controversy 00:08:39
But this is something that a lot of people are speculating, Dr. Paul, and I think it's probably some truth to it, that he's trying to get out of this mess.
Now, he could have done it the easy way by just simply when he was elected saying it's not my war.
I'm not going to have anything to do with it.
But the newest thing that he's done is now he's going to use tariffs and sanctions to end the war.
He's going to put tariffs on countries that do business with Russia.
But he's adopted a new tactic, which I'm sure infuriates people like Kellogg, his advisor.
He says, but the European nations must immediately cease all energy purchases from Russia first.
Otherwise, we're all wasting a lot of time.
I think he knows that Europe can't do that and won't do that because it would absolutely collapse in that manner.
So I think he's just sort of that sort of a taunt that he's doing in that respect.
But I do want to, since I did sort of the negative thing, I do want to do something positive.
And I think we both agree on that.
I know we both agree on this, by the way, which is his comments on climate change.
You know, this is something where he's been consistent.
He's been consistently right.
And I think he draws the right conclusions based on this correct assumption.
Now, if you can put that second clip on, let's listen to that second clip, Dr. Paul, with President Trump discussing climate change at the UN.
If we can call up that second video clip, sorry, I should distinguish between the two.
Yeah, let's listen to the second video clip about climate change.
But we're not letting this happen in America.
In 1982, the executive director of the United Nations Environmental Program predicted that by the year 2000, climate change would cause a global catastrophe.
He said that it will be irreversible as any nuclear holocaust would be.
This is what they said at the United Nations.
What happened?
Here we are.
Another UN official stated in 1989 that within a decade, entire nations could be wiped off the map by global warming.
Not happening.
You know, it used to be global cooling.
If you look back years ago in the 1920s and the 1930s, they said, global cooling will kill the world.
We have to do something.
Then they said global warming will kill the world.
But then it started getting cooler.
So now they could just call it climate change because that way they can't miss climate change.
I thought that was a really good, really good one on his part.
You know, I want to mention something about this directive to Europe.
Don't buy another drop of oil from Russia.
But what happened when the Cold War ended?
There was a brief period of time where the movement was to do exactly the opposite.
And I thought it was working rather well.
Absolutely.
But all of a sudden, you know, Europe was doing well and they were getting their oil from Russia and there were more pipelines.
But it obviously was not pleasing the deep state because they thought, well, we have to change this attitude.
They're getting along too well.
And so what was it?
They needed a little war over there.
Say, well, we'll have a little activity in Ukraine.
Maybe we can use that to slow down all this because we don't like to be embarrassed because this is actually working.
And the Europeans were getting cheap.
And here they're hanging on to it at the last minute.
And yet, listening to this propaganda about why we have to stop this trading, because, you know, yes, and every day I worry about some of the things Russia does, and they deserve, you know, they deserve their criticism.
But the whole thing is, is when the West and the East are getting together and talking in a serious way, they just need to play a little bit more soccer.
Yeah, baseball.
Anyway, this is not going to be easy to deal with.
If they come down and we'll mention this later on, we're going to be talking about Thomas.
What has he done?
You know, they blame him for trying to have trade and freedom and no inflation.
It's a dangerous position to hold when the deep state is still around.
Yeah.
Well, one of the things that Trump talks about incorrectly, but I don't think he understands the cause.
He talks about the declining influence of the United Nations.
And I think that's a fact.
And now that's not something that would bring tears to your eyes as someone who's always wanted to get us out of the U.N.
And I think that's absolutely correct because of its lack of accountability.
But ironically, it really is U.S. behavior that's contributing to the decline of the United Nations.
And I'll just put forth two examples.
If you put this next one up, this is something that I think is disgraceful and an embarrassment to the United States.
The U.S. envoy to the deputy U.S. envoy to the UN, Morgan Ortegas, was the sole no vote in a proposition calling for an immediate unconditional ceasefire in Gaza.
The U.S. has abused its position on the Security Council dozens and dozens of times to run cover for Israel and Israel's crimes throughout the region, particularly in Palestine.
And I think that's one thing that really undermines.
And the second one is again the use of the Security Council by the U.S. for its own foreign policy goals.
If you think about the snapback sanctions on Iran, for example, the U.S. was very, very involved in motivating those snapback sanctions against Iran.
But something very interesting happened when that happened, which is that China and Russia said for the first time ever, we are not going to abide by this vote of the Security Council.
They've always, they've always abided because we think it's lawless, it's against the law, the way these sanctions are being put back on.
And Iran had agreed to inspections just the day before.
So I think using it for a political tool of dominance has undermined the spirit of the UN at least.
So anyway, that's, I think, Trump at the UN.
You know, and I don't think Trump would be serious and he hints to go, well, we don't need the UN and all this.
But the way I see it is he's very critical of it.
And it's like you point out, some of it is justifiable.
But I see it more that he'd like to be more in charge of it.
Yeah.
You know, that if there's going to be a UN, you guys better straighten up and I can do it for you.
And then there's people now reporting that the atmosphere for Trump at the United Nations is a lot different this time than the last time.
Let's go around.
So that tells you something.
So if you can, well, I guess nobody can expect everybody to agree with everything a president says for sure.
But, you know, the thrust of some of this and just look at the militarism of our own government right now.
There's very strong support for that.
You know, we get more criticism for our position than they get for supporting warmongering, you know, coming from our own government.
Yeah, exactly.
Well, you make a great transition to our next story, which is a piece in Politico, if we can put that up.
The title is exactly what you said.
No one's laughing at Trump at the UN this year.
And if you go to that next one, here's the opening.
It says, when President Donald Trump addressed the United Nations General Assembly during his first term, he railed against globalism, drawing derisive laughter that momentarily derailed his remarks.
No one's laughing now.
And I'll go to the next one, and they are definitely singing a different tune.
Many world leaders have been over backwards to flatter and appease Trump since he returned to office this year.
But their outward deference makes Massey a deep and growing concern about Trump 2.0.
And for as much as the president has relished the flattery, he remains focused on imposing his will on the world.
And I think you just said that yourself, actually, using leverage and threats.
Now, this is sort of funny in a way.
No less than seven foreign leaders have nominated or endorsed Trump for the Nobel Peace Prize.
Several more have come to the White House ready to engage the president's terms.
One flew to Florida for a round of golf, and another called him daddy.
And that would be Mark Rutte of NATO, the head of NATO.
But now I think it's, in a way, it's oddly encouraging that they're not laughing at him anymore.
I wish it was for doing things that are different than he's doing on foreign policy, but it's an interesting point.
Increasing Recognition 00:09:23
The danger period will be if the decline comes, if the bursting of the bubble occurs, like many people believe, as I do, but I also understand why you can't tell us, we can't pick the date and say, you know, within six months, you better be aware or something big is going to happen.
But more and more people are recognizing this.
And I think in spite of the grand reception compared to before, Trump is not flying that high because, you know, for all the things that you're getting credit for, if they're not authentic and they're not really happening, if the economy, you know, he's bragging about an economy, but, you know, a good Austrian economist, and there are a few, when they look at it, they say, this is a mess.
I wouldn't want to adopt on this economy.
I'd be telling, you better change it or you're going to have problems.
But if he said, you do it our way and it's looking wonderful and everybody loves it and the bubble's getting bigger.
So everybody's happy.
But when it comes, who knows what will happen.
But usually on a horrendous crisis, you know, the political system becomes disruptive.
And that's the real danger.
Yeah, it is.
Well, the next one we want to do is a piece written by a friend of ours, someone we've known for a long time.
I think he used to work on your campaigns, and that's Jack Hunter, who's done a lot of writing over the years.
He has a great piece today in Responsible Statecraft.
And we wanted just to draw some attention to it because he really, this is a short article, and he really hits all the points in such a concise manner.
It's really a joy to read.
But he writes, Mike Johnson can't stop the GOP's internal split on Israel.
And it's funny because when you walked in the room, you said, this is going to be our good news story for the day.
And they said, yes, agreed.
You know, it's a good news story for sure.
But if you go to the next one, House Speaker Mike Johnson took part in a private meeting with pro-Israel leaders from a variety of organizations on Capitol Hill last Wednesday, during which he reportedly expressed concern about growing isolationism in the GOP.
So isolationism is what they're calling it.
See, I think what's happening in the Republican Party is very, very important.
And yet there's another faction in the Congress that is in a way on our side of this argument, and that would be the far left.
But they're not going to be as credible, you know, in our audience and on the side of the conservatives because they see this as a cave-in.
But I think that's pretty important.
So you put the coalition together.
The left now are where some of them were even when we were in the Congress that they were easier to talk to to try to vote against the dollar from the DOD budget.
But things are changing now.
And that's what I think it's at least my writing for my first reflection on this article is healthy debate.
Yeah, yeah.
And that's going to come.
And you know what?
That's something about the conflict in the Congress that has to do with money.
But so far that we've been losing, our side has the belief that we actually should cut something.
And we're losing it because it just goes on and on, which means that the predictions and the understanding of why this is going to cause a crisis, because as it's taught in Austrian economics, that the bubble is always there and the bubble will correct.
Yes.
You know, and it'll happen different ways.
And you don't know who all the victims will be.
But the top-notch people, the people now that are the trillionaires, they'll be protected.
Yeah, for sure.
Well, let's go back to that first one because it tells a little bit about this meeting.
Several individuals attended the meeting.
Jewish Insider reported, quote, Johnson, who described himself to a group as a Reagan Republican, focused on peace through strength, acknowledged that isolationism is rising in the Republican Party and that the party's likely bound for a major debate on the issue after President Trump leaves office.
The report added, now this is a publication, Jewish Insider, the report added, and Johnson told the group that in his candidate recruiting efforts, now this is really interesting and important.
In his candidate recruiting efforts, he's working to filter out isolationists to prevent the wing of the party from growing larger in the White House, four people who attended the meeting said.
So he's doing his best to destroy the core of the Republican Party, which is America first.
Isolationist means we don't want to be involved in the affairs of others.
We view it as a pejorative term, but we don't want the government involved in foreign affairs.
He's trying to weed them out.
Yeah, but some of the very good things is if you don't support tariffs, then you're an is you know, you know, if you support them, you're if you don't go along with what they do in their foreign policy, if you don't support the wars, they call you an isolationist.
And I think that's a big argument and debate that should go on is they should not be able to get away with it.
And here, the Speaker of the House, and it was a long-term plan, and he's using it deliberately.
And if you happen to be a single person in the Congress that's doing it, you know, they'll even overlook the fact that somebody strongly supports Trump in almost every vote of cutting spending.
Anything truly cutting is supportive.
It has.
The record is very good for him.
No, they're going to still say he's an isolationist.
They believe.
And, of course, this started out prior to World War II, that if you didn't want to go to war immediately, and then that's why Roosevelt knew you had to have a big event.
Unifying the country.
He brought the country together.
Indeed, everybody knows about December 7th.
Yeah, exactly, exactly.
They applauded it, unfortunately.
And we only came to find out decades later, as you always talk about the JFK assassination, and probably it'll be true with the Charlie Kirk assassination.
We're only going to find out many years later what happened.
But so Jack goes on in this great article, while it's unclear what Johnson meant by isolationists, it's likely given his audience that he's referring to those who don't support the far-right pro-Israel view, oppose Israel's war in Gaza, and or advocate for Palestinian rights.
The term, now he correctly points this out, is often used by neoconservatives and other proponents of American militarism more generally to smear advocates of restraint.
Now, he points out, we don't have time to really go into it, but he traces this through history, and he talks about Pat Buchanan's run against Dole in 96, which I remember very well, and how they did their best after some early victories to sideline Pat Buchanan.
And then they also mentioned someone we know called Senator Rand Paul.
If you go to that next one, he makes a good point.
I could actually just read this article and it would be worth doing.
He said, after Paul, this is Senator Paul, won the general election in a landslide, former George W. Bush speechwriter and prominent neoconservative David Frum lamented, and I love this quote.
I want to make it into bumper sticker.
How is it that the GOP has lost its antibodies against a candidate like Rand Paul?
That's great.
The senator's father, himself, a former member of Congress, never got anywhere near the White House in his two Republican presidential runs in 08 and 12, but he did help inspire a sizable anti-war populist movement, the popularity of which has worried the old guard for decades.
And that is really the core and the source of this.
And of course, that's the element, sometimes a remnant that nobody knows where they are because I was a little bit surprised.
Where did these people come from?
So I was delighted that they were interested, but they're out there.
So I argue that there's something wrong with us in presenting our case because I think it's such a wonderful idea of living with peace and prosperity, living within the Constitution and living within a moral standard.
And why are we losing?
Especially, that's where the prosperity comes from.
But people with short, they're short-eyed.
And I think Americans tend to be more so than other countries because I've argued that we don't remember, the foreigners never forget some of our enemies, and we never remember anything.
Americans.
Yeah, I know you don't like the praise, but when people say, well, how many bills did Roland Paul pass?
They don't realize you started this debate.
I mean, Pat made some mention in the 90s, but really your campaign started this.
Yeah, started the good friend of ours and yours for a long time started this split.
And the split is a good split.
Young Conservatives Rising 00:05:51
And I think it's mainly a lot of it's happening because of young conservatives.
And that has a lot to do with what happened to Charlie Kirk.
But I think they're recognizing because young people, as you've always said, they're not susceptible to the, for lack of a better word, BS, that they're being told.
They're recognizing the inconsistency.
How can we be America first and be giving billions of dollars for wars in Ukraine and Israel and everywhere else?
They're recognizing it.
Be interesting to see what these young people are doing.
You know, the young men who they have to, you know, toughen up.
And also, now that they're trying to expand and renew and emphasize the military draft, why are they working so hard on that?
So, that's a bad sign.
So, where will this young group go?
And I'm still optimistic, especially with young people, because if I gave the same speech to the young people versus the Chamber of Commerce, believe me, the young people not only understood it, they took it into their hands and they got it very active.
And I think there's a lot of activity still going on because it's so important.
So, I don't fear that the young people are going to turn, even though they'll come up with some statistic as a result of the government school nonsense that's coming out of school.
But we also saw a statistic the other day where there's going to be a lot more homeschooling coming up, and the numbers are going up there.
Let's hope they don't put too many restraints on that.
And you know, the young people who were inspired by your two campaigns are now probably in their 30s, and so there's a whole other generation of people that are having kids and raising kids and hopefully homeschooling their kids who are sending those values on to the next generation.
So, it's no longer the young kids, the 15-year-olds that were inspired by your campaign.
They're now grown up.
But anyway, let's have a little bit of fun with our last little mini story.
I know we're getting close on time, but we can't fail to mention this.
This is one of the ones that both you and I think were chuckling out loud when we read it.
It's from the Cincinnati Inquirer.
Put that next one up.
I love this one.
As Trump pushes to unseat Massey, why have no challengers entered the race?
Go to the next one.
President Trump is serious about ousting Republican U.S. rep Thomas Massey.
He vowed to lead the charge after Massey first voted against Trump's massive spending and policy bill in May.
Two of his key political advisors launched a super PAC dedicated to defeating Massey in June and reiterated the call for someone to run against Massey in July.
One thing Trump is still missing months later: the quote wonderful American patriot, end quote, who will do the job for him.
No one is standing up to run against Massey, at least right now.
But, you know, just the headline, this issue, this is a news item.
All you need is that one sentence.
And there's a lot of news in what they're saying.
Well, why don't they have sensational candidates?
And I don't think the other Republicans have turned against Massey in Kentucky because it just happens that Rand happens to be from Kentucky and a strong endorser of Thomas.
Absolutely.
Well, I think Thomas Massey himself pretty much understands why, at least to this point, there haven't been anyone, despite tons and tons of money out there.
If you go to the next one, here's what Thomas Massey said.
They're proposing to these candidates to do something they've never actually done before.
They've taken out incumbents, but those were incumbents who weren't very conservative and voted against Trump on the impeachment measure.
Well, I'm a conservative, popular incumbent.
And of course, he opposed very strongly the impeachment efforts against Trump, something which Trump would do well to remember.
When the chips were down, Thomas Massey was there in his corner and doesn't deserve to be treated the way he's being treated.
Yeah, so somebody told me a story, and I won't name any names, but he was talking to the president, and he was, and the president wanted to know how to have an open door to the more libertarian people.
And it was said that he told the president, well, if you want more support, you don't attack the best guy in the Congress and try to work all this effort to get rid of him.
Exactly.
And say that, oh, yeah, I'm really open to the libertarian viewpoint.
Stop attacking libertarians.
Well, I'm going to close out, Dr. Paul, and I'm just going to mention that I'm looking right now.
If you're watching us live on Rumble, and I'm seeing only 36 thumbs up, and that makes us both very sad.
You don't want to make Dr. Paul sad.
So you've got to click that thumbs up.
If you're watching us later, please click the like so we continue to grow our program.
And I do want to thank those who are watching, whether live or in a recorded version of watching the Liberty Report.
And over to you, Dr. Paul.
Very good.
And I, too, want to thank our viewers for tuning in today.
And I want to re-emphasize one item that we have been talking about, and that's the word isolationism, because that is a term they use to try to, you know, blackball anybody who's moving in the direction of free trade and honest money and limited government.
And they say, oh, well, you're isolating yourself.
If you don't endorse these wars, you're an isolation.
It's been used for decades now.
And I think that has to be canceled, that understanding, because it doesn't make any sense.
But a lot of people believe that.
They've been convinced that if you don't support everything that Deep State wants, then you're an isolationist.
But I imagine most of our viewers understand that issue.
I want to thank everybody for tuning in today to the Liberty Report.
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