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Oct. 15, 2025 - Ron Paul Liberty Report
28:36
'War Secretary' Hegseth Takes Aim At US Media

President Trump's "Secretary of War" Pete Hegseth has demanded that news outlets covering the Pentagon sign a pledge to not seek access to "unauthorized" materials. Many news outlets on the Left and Right are crying "foul." Also today, Trump warns that "we" will disarm Hamas if necessary.

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Time Text
Criticism From The Press 00:15:23
Hello everybody and thank you for tuning into 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 very well.
Great.
Let's get back to business.
Business.
Solving the problems or suggestions that we can make.
But anyway, there are a lot of problems out there that have been messed up for a few years.
And yet we're still searching to find some good news.
And there's a little bit of good stuff today.
And of course, we did say that the beginning of peace, supposedly, in the Middle East is a good thing.
At least the shooting has calmed down a little bit.
But as we have gabbed between the two of us, we realize there's a long way to go to solve that problem.
Because if you want to detail what's going on in the Middle East, you don't go back.
You know, we go back in Ukraine for the current problem, back to 2014.
But the centennial is going to be here, which thousand-year millennial it was, because there's been fighting going on.
So let's hope for the best on that.
Yeah, or at least 1948 of the U.S.
Yeah, there you go.
The program today, we want to talk about, but start off with a special interest.
It should be a special interest for all of us.
I maintain that the First Amendment is number one.
It's the number one amendment.
And the way I look at it, it is the vehicle that you can address all the problems.
You know, whether you're going to smooth things over, go to war, get out of war, whatever.
You have to be able to speak out and speak your peace.
But I think we're losing it bit by bit.
And unfortunately, Daniel, I can't say that I'm going to brag about the current administration for enhancing the emphasis on the First Amendment.
I think they're squeezing it.
So the headline today that we want to start with is Zero Hedge.
It is, quote, goodbye.
Hag Seth shows legacy media outlets the door amid revolt against new Pentagon press policy.
Does that mean they're not going to even tell us, let the American people know what's going on?
They have other reasons for doing it.
To me, I interpret this, they don't want the people to know.
And you know what?
I've always argued the case that it's the people when they finally know what's going on and get sick of it that the war's due in.
You know, whether it's Afghanistan or Vietnam or different places, they just get tired of the war.
And there's a fatigue now occurring with the Ukraine-Russia deal.
And the American people are getting annoyed.
But this looks, Daniel, like there's going to be restraint on this, that the American people aren't going to have access to information.
But they're not closing them out.
They say, well, if you register with us and follow our rules, then you might be able to ask a question about what's going on, even though it's the people's money and it's the people's representatives that are responsible for this.
And that's why I want to wake up the people and assume the responsibility of find out.
And the best way to do it, even though there's always a shortcoming in it, you've got to get the message to your congressman and say, hey, look, why are you voting for this stuff?
And we want to talk a little bit about this.
We don't think this is a very good idea to curtail the ability to find information and sign up if you even want to get on a list where you might get a little bit of information.
I think it's a very dangerous move that's going on right now.
Well, of course, anyone watching the show would know we're the last people to defend the mainstream media/slash legacy media.
But this is something different, I think.
And put up this first clip because this is a lot of people are talking about this today.
As you say, Heg Seth shows legacy media outlets the door amid revolt against new Pentagon press policy.
Now, my first reaction, in a way, at least in the first part, is fine.
They don't deserve it.
The mainstream media lies.
They constantly lie.
They're pro-war.
They are stenographers for the deep state.
All of these things are absolutely true.
But when you read a little bit more into this, it takes on more of a sinister look, Dr. Paul.
And they write a growing list of news organizations with access to Pentagon briefings have formally rejected a new Defense Department or Department of War policy that would highlight this.
It would require journalists to sign a pledge promising not to seek unauthorized materials and limiting their access to certain areas unless accompanied by an official.
In essence, it's part of a continuing crackdown on leaks.
Now, you can see at the next picture, you see our Secretary of War, Heg Seth.
He's giving them by Tuesday, 5 p.m., you put that next one on, Tuesday at 5 to sign this pledge or pack your bags and get out.
You can't cover the Pentagon.
People would say, well, yeah, they deserve it.
They shouldn't be there.
But as you point out, they are covering something that we pay for, number one.
But number two, this idea that they have to sign away the ability to publish, quote, unauthorized material.
That cuts to the absolute heart of the First Amendment about manipulating and messing around with the press, freedom of the press.
But you mentioned a very important point.
You said that there's a lot of lousy media out there.
But you know what?
When the market works, let's say the magazines and all TV programs, just think of how many big businesses have been closed down when the people say, hey, look, if you're going to follow this political system, we can't stand.
We're not going to buy your beer anymore.
And so there are free market answers to this.
But that right now, you know, this is an authoritarian approach.
And they tempt it by, and they'll use, you know, that point you make and say, these are bad people.
They're lying.
They work for the monsters.
They work for the authoritarian.
They work for the military industrial complex.
And they'll say, and they're all for this.
And that's really a problem.
But I'm glad that this evidence or this thing that's going on here and Zero Heads reporting on it, I think it's very important.
But just think about what would have happened if throughout history the media had never reported on unauthorized material.
Think about the most important media.
Now, of course, they're mostly junkie now, but we wouldn't have had the Pentagon papers.
We wouldn't have known about the WMD lies in Iraq, the lies about Libya, and so on and so on.
So many important things were obtained in an unauthorized manner.
That's what the media does.
They dig and they dig and they find unauthorized things so we can keep informed.
That's why we love Wikipedia so much.
It was unauthorized to release that information, but think about things like the Wikipedia video that made them famous, where they showed that the U.S. military killing unarmed civilian journalists.
Those things are important.
If you muzzle the media in that respect, even the bad, then you destroyed the First Amendment.
You destroyed our freedom.
See, true journalism is the link between what government does and what the people want to get.
And they're looking for the truth.
I mean, there's a people, they may have different opinions, but they just want to have somebody gain the truth.
And that's what journalism should be all about.
And I see this as just an attack on journalism in principle, even though so far, let's say the large majority said, well, I know they're not perfect, but they're getting us some good information.
And that is, to me, what is a problem with any type of intervention, whether it's intervention in foreign policy or economic policy or monetary policy, they shouldn't even be doing it.
But once you do it, then you have this argument go up.
And guess who wins?
And this is a danger statement.
Those who believe in, you know, democracy will just gather together the groups of different people because this type of a system mobilizes, you know, the special interest groups.
They get together, they get 51%, and they become the dictatorship of the majority.
And that is a big thing that I think we have to realize.
Absolutely.
I want to thank Conway Rails for chipping in $20.
He says as entertaining has seen the corporate media, press, and far left meltdown over Trump's stunts.
The entertainment is only temporary pleasure as opposed to long-term advancement of liberty.
That is a good point, and thank you for that.
Well, the good news is that with the bad comes some of the not so bad.
It's not just your usual lefty outlets or mainstream outlets or deep state outlets that are saying, hang on a minute, something smells fishy about this.
Put on this next clip.
So conservative outlet Newsmax, very close to Trump, has also made clear it is not signing.
We believe the requirements are unnecessary and onerous and hope the Pentagon will and hope that the Pentagon will review the matter further, they said in a statement.
Notably, Fox News hasn't revealed the stance.
Executive editor of the Washington Post, one of the bad ones, of course, Matt Murray, wrote a scathing critique of the policy as a violation of freedoms guaranteed to the press.
He got it kind of backward, but it's restrictions on government.
But anyway, here's what the Washington Post said.
The proposed restrictions undercut First Amendment protections by placing unnecessary constraints on gathering and publishing information, he wrote on X.
We will continue to report vigorously and fairly on the Pentagon and government activities.
Now, on the next clip, I did reprint from Zero Hedge the chart of those who agreed to sign and agreed to not sign or disagreed.
Now, on the signing side is one American News, also a right-wing outlet close to the Trump administration.
On the not signing side, it's actually, Dr. Paul, pretty widely represented.
Okay, you got the New York Times, Washington Post, but you also have the Wall Street Journal.
You got AP Reuters, The Atlantic, CNN, and PR, The Guardian, lefty.
Newsmax, The Washington Times, not leftist.
The Washington Examiner, not leftist.
Then you have Task and Purpose, Breaking Defense, Defense One, Financial Times, is not necessarily leftist.
And you've got the Hill and Politico that lean left, but are generally reasonable in covering things and more.
So it's good to see that there is some resistance, maybe not for the best reasons, but this idea that you can muzzle the media is a dangerous thing, and the right really should think twice about supporting it, even if you like Trump.
This is strange, but I want to re-emphasize the New York Times statement.
Yeah.
Because I think I can't believe I'm reading in there.
This sounds good.
The New York Times has said that the new Hegst policy severely limits journalists' ability to cover the U.S. military, which is funded by nearly $1 trillion in taxpayers' dollars annually.
The Allah said that the public has a right to know how the government and the military are operating.
It just think of how many times that, you know, all kinds of horrible things happen in wartime, and they shouldn't be repeated.
And the American people, the people who pay for this, now they're signing something.
So, oh, well, if you don't want to tell us, we know you'll take care of us.
We believe in representative government.
We don't think the people should have any say in it.
So it's a cancellation of voluntarism and people dealing with this in an orderly fashion, not by asking a bunch of people to get together and limit and regulate who can come and what questions they can ask.
So that list, that I think we could say is a bit of good news out of some dangerous proposals.
Pretty good, pretty good stuff.
Well, it doesn't happen very often, occasionally, but the zero-hedge spin on this, I disagree with.
I think they're kind of in the category of, yeah, we're going to stick it to them.
Fair enough.
We can't stand the mainstream media too either.
Nevertheless, here's their take, and I do disagree with it.
And even the comments are pretty bad.
If we go to that next one, they say, this is all well and true.
And yet, these MSM gatekeepers would have more of a leg to stand on if they hadn't already long proven themselves, by and large, mere pro-war stenographers of official government narratives time and again.
This was especially bad in the wars of the Global War on Terror era, from Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, to Obama's massively expensive covert war.
The media loves to fawn over military commanders and anon sources, which they already agree with, from hawkish pro-Israel, pro-Ukraine stances to regime change operations abroad.
That's when criticism from the press goes out the window.
All true.
All true.
They are horrible.
We agree with everything they said here.
However, it doesn't justify putting your boot on the neck of the First Amendment, regardless of how bad they are.
That is for sure.
And I can, once again, see glimpses of hope within this system because there is a limit.
The age of great journalism, it comes and goes, there's ups and downs.
And we still, I mean, we have our dozen or so that we know that we can totally depend on no matter what the officials are saying.
But the opposition is pretty powerful.
It is a, they have the money, then they get to control the political system.
And they propagandize for us.
No wonder that the people go around because basically the people don't want to fight and they don't want to fight with their own government.
And now when there's threats, they'll say, and a lot of them are sympathetic to a little bit of authoritarianism anyway.
They say, yeah, we have to have guidelines.
People can't just say whatever they want, and that's what should be challenged.
Yeah, absolutely.
Trump On Disarming Hamas 00:04:51
Well, the second story, unfortunately, is not great news either.
And this is disturbing.
I listened to it yesterday a couple of times.
And, you know, maybe it was just Trump being Trump, but he was in a press conference again, and he was asked about Hamas.
I go to that next clip.
If Hamas doesn't disarm, quote, we will disarm them, perhaps violently.
So the key here is what does he mean about the word we?
That is a big question.
And let's actually listen to Trump do it.
I pulled up the clip.
Let's listen to what Trump has to say about it because to me, at least, it sounds like he's being, there's no uncertain terms here.
You might want to grab your earpiece and listen to Trump.
This is about a half a minute long.
Let's listen to him being very, very emphatic about this we going in to disarm Hamas.
Let's hit it now.
We have told them we want disarm and they will disarm.
And if they don't disarm, we will disarm them.
And it'll happen quickly and perhaps violently.
But they will disarm.
Do you understand me?
Yes.
Because you always, everyone says, oh, well, they won't disarm.
They will disarm.
And I spoke to Hamas and I said, you're going to disarm, right?
Yes, sir, we're going to disarm.
That's what they told me.
They will disarm or we will disarm them.
Got it?
Okay.
About that, a couple of things.
He spoke to Hamas.
That's the first we ever heard that he actually spoke directly to Hamas.
But secondly, if you go to that next clip, this is the still from the video we just watched.
And the poster here on X, go to the next one.
Arya points out something very important here.
Hamas never agreed to disarm.
This is a pretext for a new war.
And that is true.
The two sides only agreed on the first phase of the peace plan, which is an exchange of prisoners and hostages.
Now, that has, for the most part, happened.
But when he says, they called me up and I said, you're going to disarm?
Yes, sir, we're going to.
That conversation could not have happened.
It must be something he made up out of thin air, which is pretty disturbing because it does sound like a pretext.
They told me they would disarm.
And so if they don't, then he's going to say, okay, we're going in.
Who's we, though?
That's the question.
You know, this whole mess, I see it in the context of a larger issue and how this is being handled.
And you could say, well, the American people and even we said, well, if it's going to nudge itself a little toward peace and a little less killing, you can't, you could warn and this might not answer it.
And I think that warning is legitimate because it isn't the answer.
There's still a problem there.
I think this whole mess of us being involved becomes a moral issue in deciding how much authority do we have to do this?
How much authority has been given to a single person to make these decisions and rally the crowds?
And of course, when the government is spending a trillion dollars, there's a lot of stake on whether you're going to stop wars really or what's going on because they always have to have some excuse for more money in the Pentagon, no matter what has happened in these last couple years.
And then a new administration comes in and more money for the military.
And we have more fronts now than we had before.
But I think the other thing that they fail to look at is the Constitution.
Are these acts of war?
I think they're acts of war.
You know, what we have done, because it's our money.
You know, all these skirmishes and fights with Ukraine or the Middle East, I think they're unconstitutional.
And they can't even be justified and say, you know, it's really in our national security.
And that is a stretch.
I think it's a threat to our national security when we participate in expanding some of these wars.
So I think in a practical way, this is not a practical thing for us to do.
It doesn't benefit us by going along with this, whether it's financial or whether it's our safety.
And I think the key element here is this, we will go in.
Is he talking about U.S. troops?
Is he threatening to send the U.S. military into Gaza to physically disarm Hamas?
Because if that is the case, American soldiers will die.
They will die in Gaza.
It will happen.
So the question is really, once again, where's Congress?
Someone, preferably a Republican, should put in a resolution right now on the floor telling the president he does not have the authority to put troops in Gaza.
President's Gaza Threats 00:03:15
And I remember back in 2011, you asked me to draft up a resolution on Libya, and we wrote a nice short one.
We always write nice short little resolutions.
They weren't hard to read.
But essentially, it was reminding the president, you do not have the authority to go into Libya or to commit aggression against Libya without coming to Congress.
Short little thing.
Someone should do that now.
He should be told, you cannot just do this.
You don't have the authority to do this.
You know, Trump flaunts that because he brags that he has a, you know, I'm the president.
It sort of reminds me of some of the statements about Nixon.
I'm the president and I'm allowed to do this.
Now Nixon looks like a softy.
He does.
He does.
He looks like a soft.
Because he had a little different opinion on China and he challenged a big system.
And I thought, I even still think that a good has come from it, but we're whittling away at that.
Now we're just looking to fight with them.
Yeah.
I saw something.
I don't know if it's true, but someone said just before the show that he's threatening 500% sanctions on, 500% tariffs on China if they keep buying Russian oil.
So that'll be nice for the American working people, right?
Oh, yeah.
Well, it's been a kind of a couple bad news stories, but I'm excited about being able to do a good news story for a change.
Now, skip that next one and go to the one after it.
And I don't like the way Bloomberg, well, you know, this is how Bloomberg says it.
Quote unquote, Bitcoin Jesus to pay nearly $50 million to settle U.S. tax case.
And of course, we're talking about Roger Ver, who is a longtime pro-free market.
He calls himself anarcho-capitalist, voluntarist.
He is one of the early investors in Bitcoin, one of the very early investors in Bitcoin, friend of the Ron Paul Institute, by the way, and in my opinion, a terrific guy.
Well, he has been arrested in Spain.
He was facing extradition to the United States for a long time, and he's been fighting for a long time to avoid a long jail sentence.
Well, yesterday, some good news happened.
If you go to that next clip, you'll see that he came to an agreement with the U.S. government.
He agreed to pay nearly $50 million to resolve a U.S. tax evasion indictment without having to admit any crime.
The Justice Department said.
U.S. authorities agreed to dismiss the indictment against FARE, who admitted in a deferred prosecution agreement that he failed to pay all the taxes he owed on the sale of Bitcoin in 2016, according to the Justice Department.
So essentially, he no longer has the U.S. government on his back threatening him to put him in the slammer for probably a lot of years.
So this is great news.
I'm sure it's unfortunate that they had to extort that $48 million out of him, but nevertheless, for him to regain his freedom, you know, we saw Ross Ulbricht earlier this year get his freedom in a somewhat similar case.
And I think the two of them both supported each other when they were facing this.
So the fact that Roger has been able to settle this, I think, is fantastic news.
Roger's Freedom Settlement 00:05:05
You know, it gets a little mushy about government's authority to collect taxes per se.
But the income tax, of course, they passed the constitutional amendment, but it still has been and still is wishy-washy in the sense that where do they get the authority the way they collect taxes?
You know, that that is that's where they really violate the Constitution.
But the biggest thing is there's a need for money.
And they always know that if they print too much too fast, but they have to be smart enough to know exactly what the market sneezes.
So they go, they go in and they print it up, but they still need money.
And that's why they have to, you know, satisfy.
And the people, you know, they're conditioned and they're trained to want the money.
And they're trained to realize that if you vote for the right people, they'll fight for their cause, even though the causes are never, you know, really delivered.
And the other thing is, is this whole idea of why do they need the money?
And are they allowed to do it?
But to me, they have to steal the money.
You and I can't take the money from people.
But now we've legalized the fact that anybody wants anything, get together.
They have a gang.
There's a gang of gangs and they have 51%.
And it's sacred.
And the more I look at this, the more annoying it gets.
And I guess I'm stealing the importance of democracy because the founders couldn't stand it because they understood what happens in a pure democracy.
And that doesn't mean the government does anything and everything.
They're supposed to be, you know, follow the rules and set the rules.
But the big, the big thing is their warning by the founders was, because if you don't have a moral people and you have some rules and they don't obey it, the system breaks down.
And I think that's where we are right now.
But you're pulling, you're pouring cold water on this good news, though.
I mean, we're happy that Roger is free.
I mean, I'm sorry for Bitcoin.
Absolutely correct.
Absolutely correct.
But, you know, he was always, you know, he's a philosophical supporter of all that you've done.
And so we're happy that he's not going to be in a cage.
Boy, that's for sure.
Sorry about that.
No, no, no.
I shouldn't be gloomy.
I just need a little bit of good news every day, just a little bit.
So anyway, I'm going to close out by thanking everyone for watching the program today.
Please hit that thumbs up.
It's looking a little bit slim right now.
Hit that thumbs up or like wherever you are to help us get the show out a little bit more.
And I'm going to turn it over to you, Dr. Paul.
Very, very good.
I am very much satisfied that he's at least not suffering away in jail, you know, for that.
And he has stood for the beliefs that we have.
He's not bashful about being a libertarian.
He wants to lead his own life and he's been a generous person.
And we've tried to the best of our ability to stay in touch.
And he's stayed in touch with us.
So this is good news.
And it's horrible that we have to work so hard.
You know, you give up a bit of liberty and you might be able to do that in an hour.
You might have to do it with an executive order, but it might take you 10 years.
I mean, we went to how many wars have we gone to under executive orders?
How much money did we spend?
And how many years did we waste, you know, trying to correct it?
This is why this is why the founders were on the right track.
It's limited government.
It's volunteerism.
Responsibility stays on the individuals.
The sovereignty should be with the individual.
It will not be perfect.
But if you want the best chance for peace and prosperity, you have to look for a system that emphasizes personal liberty.
Believe me, it's not complicated.
It emphasizes non-intervention and non-authoritarianism and non-violence.
With all this, it shouldn't be hard.
But right now, we have wasted our energy and continue to waste it.
And something big will happen.
And all you have to do is look at the gold prices going up and again today, up $50, $60.
And that's telling you, that's sending a signal, even though there was a ton of so-called good news in the economy.
No, things are going better.
You know, tariffs aren't that bad.
That gives us a boost.
On and on.
But no, the market is very powerful and it will sort it out.
And you might have a lot of benefits, win wars, and give a lot of money to poor people, except the rich people get more than the poor people, and they march along.
So we argued the case from the Liberty Report that we emphasize personal liberty and personal responsibility, and that is the best way to achieve peace and prosperity.
I want to thank everybody for tuning in today to the Liberty Report.
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