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Oct. 22, 2025 - Ron Paul Liberty Report
27:50
Is Trump About To Pull The Trigger On Venezuela

As the Trump Administration continues to blow up speedboats in international waters off the Venezuelan coast, rumors persist that the US president intends to launch a ground operation against the country. Is the attack imminent? Is anyone in Congress doing a thing to stop it?

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Time Text
Regime Change Dynamics 00:14:06
Hello, everybody, and thank you for tuning in to the Liberty Report.
With us today, we have Daniel McAdams, our co-host.
Daniel, welcome.
Good morning, Dr. Paul.
How are you this morning?
Doing well, doing well.
We're going to talk about an old problem that's old only because we've made it old and we've been pestering again many, many years, and that is people in South America and Central America.
This time, we're refreshing everybody's memory that the United States has an interest in South America, in particular, Venezuela.
But nobody mentions there's oil in Venezuela.
I doubt if that has anything to do with it.
But what we want to sort out is who's running the show.
You know, what is the policy?
Is this a war against drugs coming into this country?
Or is it frightened that the Venezuelans are going to invade America?
Something's going on because there's certainly several different groups.
There's Stephen Miller, the advisor of the president, he's involved.
Marco Rubio, he's really involved telling people what to do, and they don't all agree.
And then there's Richard Grinnell.
He has his opinion, and it doesn't jive with everybody else.
And then Hexa, he's in charge of the DOD.
So there's a lot of things going on there.
And they're going, if you just look at that part, they're going all over.
But it looks like it's getting organized.
Yesterday or the day before, I mean, they could have been identified by somebody trying to herd cats.
And ultimately, the president had to do this herding.
And, you know, he's one guy that must be able to herd cats because it looks like he's come down.
And all of a sudden, they're coming together.
And my big question now is: did the neocons win after the campaign?
The campaign was basically in opposition to the neocons.
And yet, the American people right now, they get nasty if you don't support this neocon campaign.
They're even willing to attack my family member.
It's mugging me.
Yeah.
Well, I think it's clear we've covered this a lot, and people say, why do you talk about it over and over?
Because it's important.
This is what you did in the run-up to the Iraq war, warning people, this is what's happening.
This is what's coming.
This is how they're maneuvering things.
Don't pretend like you're surprised.
Pay attention because this is exactly what's happening.
Now, this first clip is something that came up on X this morning.
I think it's a false alarm.
Someone ran it through Grok and said it's not true, but it got a lot of attention.
This is U.S. Homeland Security News, not connected to the government, by the way, but very pro-Trump.
It says, update the U.S. has informed its allies about an imminent military strike on Venezuela.
I don't think that is true at the moment.
But the Washington Post has been, I ran a piece today about the run-up to the war, and it gives us a lot of information.
Go to that next one.
Trump beats the drums of war for direct action in Venezuela.
So we know, Dr. Paul, that Trump has already blown up seven boats in international waters off the shore of Venezuela.
He's killed dozens of people in these boats.
But go ahead.
He has go to the next one, but he's made it clear his intentions go beyond blowing up boats, saying, quote, we're going to stop them by land in Venezuela.
Several people familiar with the administration deliberations say any initial land strike would probably be a targeted operation on an alleged trafficker encampment or clandestine airstrips rather than a direct attempt to unseat Maduro.
But here's the important part in the post, shockingly, actually prints it.
If you go to the next one, this is what's important.
The vast majority of illegal drugs entering the United States and virtually all of the fentanyl do not come from or through the Caribbean, but from along the Pacific coast or by land from Mexico, according to U.S. government and U.N. experts, Venezuela is generally used as a conduit for cocaine producing trafficking by Colombian guerrilla groups.
So it doesn't come from there.
And here's the other, the last point I want to make about this article that kind of went under the radar, but this is important.
This was, I think, after Trump blew up the fifth boat and killed everyone, of course.
I think there may have been a couple of survivors.
Go to the next one.
This is something very unusual that happened under the radar.
Admiral Alvin Holsey resigned last week as head of the U.S. Southern Command, less than a year into his three-year appointment, something that Shannon and others attributed to his discomfort over the Caribbean operations.
Critics have argued that the strikes are violations of U.S. and international law, and that the administration has not provided sufficient evidence or credible legal justification.
Neither Holsey nor Defense Secretary Pete Hegsteth gave a reason for the Admiral's departure, but quote, you have to assume this is why he decided his career is over, Shannon said.
This is going to be my legacy, war crimes.
Very interesting.
So this guy, this guy in charge of the whole operation down there said, I am out of here.
He was just a few months into the job.
I'm out.
I don't want no part of this.
He hasn't commented, but there's a lot of evidence that that's the reason.
You know, this dissension up there, this argument who's running the show, and it's evolving.
It's changing because Politico even writes about it.
Yes.
They talk about the people who Trump, you know, seeking those boats and killing those people just out of the clear blue.
At the same time, there's people that are more attuned to regime change.
It's Maduro.
We have to get rid of him.
And these factions are now coming together, but it doesn't look like our leader in the White House who advocated and talked about this type of activity and said that we shouldn't be engaging ourselves.
We should be extraditing ourselves, leaving these things.
But here is another example of going in the opposite direction.
And it upsets the president.
So we have to take this seriously and find out whether he should be upset or whether the people who disagree should be upset.
And remember, we talked about it just a couple months ago.
Trump went to Saudi Arabia.
Remember, and he said, no more regime change wars.
And here he is, literally in a regime change war.
I think that's why a lot of people are getting very frustrated with President Trump.
He says one thing one day and another the next.
But this is the politico article, though.
And this is what I think worries both of us because we remember this.
A coalescence of seemingly disparate forces now coming together in favor of a U.S. attack on Venezuela.
Now, this is Stephen Miller, who we've talked about a lot.
He is a sort of the eminence gris whispering in Trump's ear.
He is a neocon.
He is hardcore.
If you look at some of his stuff, he's a little bit scary and weird.
But he apparently, his main thing is immigration.
And apparently, he wanted to maintain relatively good relations.
If you go to that next one, you'll see it with Venezuela because they said, hey, we'll take the guys back.
We'll take the illegals back.
Just ship them down here.
No problem.
And he liked that idea.
It's probably not a bad idea.
If you came here illegally, we send you back where you came.
But Rubio doesn't want any of that.
Rubio wants a regime change.
He's wanted a regime change since Trump 1.0.
He's wanted it well before Trump 1.0.
This is his dream of a lifetime, probably after Cuba regime changed, but he wants Venezuela.
He thinks it's doable.
Nevertheless, it looks like, according to the Washington, or according to this political article, that Miller and Rubio have sort of put away their differences and have decided they're going to go ahead and coalesce around a neocon regime change operation.
You know, sometimes you wonder, well, is this just a threat?
And is this an intimidation?
Because that happens quite frequently.
I'm going to do this.
And all of a sudden, people get adjusted to what's coming.
And then all of a sudden, Trump backs off on this, which is good that he backs off, but it's not good for calming events down.
But we go in, our side will threaten them with bombs.
It's sort of like what they do in the trade war.
There's a lot of threats, more terrorists and more terrorists.
Then all of a sudden, when it looks like, boom, there's going to be a lot of terrorists, then there's a backing off.
Oh, I'll change my mind on that.
I'm going to exclude you and you and you.
And it's not generally very attractive to the people who like to deal with basic and sound principles.
And actually, you know, even if you disagree, it's a lot nicer to have to deal with somebody who, even if you disagree with them, that they, you know what principle they're coming from.
Exactly.
But this one, this is a mixed bag because, you know, it changes the policy changes.
And I know you explained why people should not take this lightly.
This might be, I don't want to believe this, that it could be bad or worse than what the Middle East.
That's just beyond my belief.
But if you don't even talk about it, the big thing is the unknown, the underknown.
I mean, as we sit here, something could be happening that really escalates this whole thing.
And then inviting other people to join in.
That's where the real danger is.
False flag is what you're saying.
I think that could be definitely.
Now, go to the next one.
This is something that's really important.
It caught my attention.
I thought about it for a bit.
Go one forward on this.
I'll keep that up for a second.
Sorry.
I just want to say one thing about this.
The idea that Maduro is a dangerous drug kingpin, that's what the administration is trying to push.
Nobody believes that.
The U.S. intelligence doesn't believe that.
Neither does the UN.
Now, the next one is what really struck my attention.
It caught my attention, Dr. Paul.
And I thought about it for a minute.
And you know what?
A light went on.
This is Iraq War 3.0.
Go to that next clip because you'll see they are pushing for a justification.
And that is that this is a drug issue.
So this is Carrie Filipetti.
She led Venezuela policy at the State Department under the first Trump administration.
And she said, right now, Venezuela is not being treated as a foreign policy issue.
It's being treated as a homeland security issue, and rightfully so.
Of course, she's a neocon, so she agrees with that.
But what this is exactly is what the issue about Iraq was.
This is not about foreign policy.
Saddam Hussein has weapons of mass destruction.
He's going to put them on drones and blow up New York City.
Remember, we even saw Colin Powell down there with this little vial of ricin or whatever it was.
He's got these chemicals.
So it's a homeland security issue.
They are going to attack us and ruin our country.
25,000 people die with every one of these boats that get through.
And the average American says, well, geez, blow them up then.
It sounds terrible.
But the fact is, this is a pretext.
This is exactly what they used to get us into the Iraq war.
And people just sort of shut down and close their mind.
And also from that same clip, this has resulted in unified messaging from the White House and the Venezuelan opposition about how much of a threat Venezuela poses as a hub for global drug trafficking, which is not the case.
They don't.
Just like Saddam did not have Demi MDs, Venezuela, for all of its faults, is not a hub for global drug trafficking full stop.
You know, looking for a target is one thing.
Who are we going to go after?
And I think what's happening is that, you know, there is a war going on and it's very dangerous.
And I'm concerned about it.
But I think they have their targets all mixed up.
I think the war is domestic in the sense that the paying for these pretend wars and they say and something else, who are they warring against?
I think it's the American voter and the American taxpayer and the civil liberties of Americans and our Constitution and the Republic.
That's where the war is going on.
And it happens no matter what is said in campaigns.
The policy seems to be controlled by maybe a deep state or something because the same thing happens over and over again.
And I think that the war against the Americans' civil liberties, our Constitution, these are serious and these lead to all these other problems that we try to sort out one here and what's he doing this.
And it's miscellaneous.
It makes no sense whatsoever.
And yet I think that the only sense that it makes is, you know, some people do enjoy seeing, you know, chaos in the streets.
And when we get to the point where it's not a big deal to be able to elect a communist to the largest city of our country, something's going on inside America that, you know, going in and invading Venezuela doesn't make a lot of sense to me.
It doesn't.
Well, why don't you grab your earpiece?
Why Chaos Is Entertaining 00:04:53
Because we're going to hear from a senator who's been speaking out.
Now, he's withstanding the slings and arrows of the neocons in the administration who are furious that anyone dare to question the president's ability to make war when he wants to.
This is Senator Paul, not surprisingly, on the Pierce Morgan show.
It's a little longer of a clip than we usually play.
It's about a minute and a half.
But listen to what he says in this.
He makes all of the counterpoints.
What the heck are we doing?
And before we put that on, I'll say one thing, Dr. Paul.
If Trump goes through with this and it goes bad, which it will, Rand will be the hero because he's the one who spoke up before and said, don't do it.
He'll come out as the hero.
So let's listen to Senator Paul's excellent, excellent, outstanding explanation.
We have dangerous people in a lot of American cities, but we just don't go in and shoot them.
I mean, we have trials.
I get legal representation.
And even on the high seas, it's been that way for generations.
If you go off the coast of Miami, the Coast Guard will be stopping boats today.
And about 25% of the boats that they stop, that they're suspicious of drugs, there won't be any drugs on board.
So 25% of the time, the suspicion is wrong.
And that's why we don't shoot and just blow up boats off of Miami.
But neither should we be blowing them up off the coast of Venezuela.
Number one, there is no fentanyl made in Venezuela.
Not just a little bit.
There's none being made in Venezuela.
These are outboard boats that in order for them to get to Miami would have to stop and refuel 20 times.
They're in all likely going to Trinidad in Tobago, which is an island right off of the coast of Venezuela.
So there's a lot of reasons to be worried about this.
But number one is the broader principle of when you can kill people indiscriminately when you're at war.
That's why when we declare war, it's supposed to be done by Congress.
It's supposed to be thoughtful.
It's supposed to be debated.
And we're not supposed to do it willy-nilly.
And then when you have war, you just kill people in the war zone.
And even then, there are rules of engagement.
But interdicting drugs has always been a criminal activity and a criminal anti-crime sort of activity where we don't just summarily execute people, we actually present evidence and convict them.
We have danger.
Yeah, that's a great point.
25% of the boats that they do board do not have drugs.
So what does that tell you about the seven boats and dozens of people that have been killed?
You got to factor in the 25% of them probably were innocent.
So that is just murder.
And even if they were, as he points out, we don't just going to kill people because they're dangerous.
You know, it's, I can't believe that we have to even raise the issue.
But, you know, one other thing that we have to try to understand and deal with is that it doesn't get people challenging and thinking about our current foreign policy.
Matter of fact, the current foreign policy is being well endorsed and the people are responding.
But that might be the media, how they're presented and what they have heard, because we know millions of people who are thinking differently.
And what does that do?
That invites, again, war against the people, war against the freedom of speech.
And we've talked about so many times that maybe if you register, you might be able to ask questions.
And you have to sign up and try to get a piece of the First Amendment that will protect you from, you know, to seek out information.
But that to me is the real problem.
And people have to wake up to this before.
See, the wars start so easily and they end so badly.
And all I can think about is, you know, in my lifetime of closely watching everything from Korea to Vietnam, the Middle East, Afghanistan, and now it's South America.
It's just been going on.
And yet, I think that people are spoiled because we have always been a wealthy nation.
And we are still wealthy, but we have been blessed.
And we've had a degree of freedom that has allowed even more production.
So we have, but the problem is we're accepting this and we are still very strong militarily and very rich.
But the one result of a system like this is there's not a reasonable distribution of the wealth.
And at a free market, the distribution is much better.
Today, we see more and more trillionaires and many more poor people who are looking for a food deed.
Yeah, exactly.
Vote Within 10 Days 00:07:49
The other point that Senator Paul made that's important, because basically, I mean, I hate to say it as bluntly, but Trump lied.
He said they were bringing these drugs on these boats to America to kill Americans.
And Senator Paul made an important point.
Yeah, if that were the case, they would have had to stop 20 times for gas.
There are not any gas stations out in the Caribbean.
They would have had to stop 20 times to refuel before they could even get there.
So it's absolutely not true.
He's telling a lie, just like they told the lies around the Iraq war.
You know, an impossibility.
But I want to thank Georges who kicked in 20 bucks, and he said this is a distraction to distract people from increasing Israel's unpopularity.
This Venezuelan business could be true.
You never know.
Could be true.
But Senator Paul, again, this is Senator Paul's show, but he is offering a solution, and it's a good one, and it's the one that Congressman Paul would have done and did do over and over again.
If you put that next clip up, bipartisan bill in the Senate would block Trump from going to war with Venezuela.
I mean, it's almost sad that we have to read this article, Dr. Paul, because it should be a no-brainer.
Of course, you can't go to war without any kind of even authorization.
But he joined together with Tim Kaine and some others on the Democrat side.
I wish there were more Republicans.
There should be more Republicans on the Senate side on this if they care about the Constitution that they claim to care about.
But Dave DeCamp writes it up on anti-war.com: a bipartisan group of senators has introduced a war powers resolution that would block President Trump from attacking Venezuela amid a bombing campaign.
As most people probably understand, there is a clause in the War Powers Act that allows an expedited trip to the floor for a vote if the war powers resolution is invoked and the president they believe may be ready to use the military.
So that's what they're doing.
I think there has to be a vote within 10 days, if I'm not mistaken, and taking it to the floor.
I go to that next clip.
And Senator Paul said, American people do not want to be dragged into endless war with Venezuela without a public debate or a vote.
We ought to defend what the Constitution demands, deliberation before war.
Again, it should be a no-brainer.
It's sad that Senator Paul has to remind us.
It was introduced on October 17th.
It will be forced to have a vote within 10 days.
It's SJRES90 in anti-war.com correctly said that Americans can contact their senators and urge them to support it.
And I would say you absolutely should call your senator.
We don't lobby for bills on this show as a matter of course because we're a C3, but we're within the limits of that when we say this is one bill that you should get active and have your senator vote the right.
The rules you just referenced indicates that as they were writing this rule, they considered going to war still a very important subject.
And they were reacting to the most recent wars, the Vietnams and the Middle East wars and things like that, because they said this was introduced the 17th of October, as you said, and it has to be voted within 10 days.
That drives them nuts.
You see what they did this summer when they had this crucial vote?
They just adjourned, you know, when it had to do with that sex scandal.
And it's just, oh, it might hurt a Republican.
You don't, you don't you think I should be loyal to my Republican Party?
Yeah.
No, not if they're doing evil.
You know, and if they're if the Republicans start the war, the Democrats start the war, it's all the same.
And it's so tragic that people can't see it based on principles because we've had a chance as a nation, as a people, to at least study and understand, you know, what can make great prosperity.
And we had a taste of that.
The Constitution was helpful, very helpful there, but there was a more, there was more interest by the people of understanding this from a moral viewpoint.
But now that's beyond reach.
It's so much floating in the air and people are doing this and they don't listen.
But I still think mentioning this is important, you know.
And so I have to be very glad that somebody in the Senate did do what was done.
And, you know, Senator Paul, when he was going after Fauci, and he's still doing that, it was pretty popular with Americans, you know, and that was good.
But what he's doing right now, he didn't have to do it necessarily, but it's not very popular with a lot of people in the conservative side who loved him going after Fauci.
So it's really great to see him.
Not that we should be surprised, but standing on principle, even if he knows he's going to get hammered, which he's getting hammered by Trump, he's a wacko and all this stuff.
You know, that's what he called him.
So it's not a popular, but as I said, I think he'll come out smelling like a rose if Trump is dumb enough to go in there.
I do want to thank Conway Rails, who chipped in on the super chat and also made a good point.
It's not by any coincidence that the wars at home and abroad that are tightly linked to the desire to grow the power of government and the loss of liberty.
War is not peace.
Slavery is not freedom.
Very good point.
A little bit of philosophy.
And with that, I'm about to close out and thank everyone for watching the show, reminding you to please hit that like button, hit the subscribe button, share the show.
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So please do share that around.
And we thank you for doing that.
Over to you, Dr. Price.
Daniel, I think the good part of Brown's statement was the declaration of war should be done.
And then a debate to go on.
And you will well remember when I was pushing a similar on a Middle East war, and I was on the committee that was doing the declaring.
And I was so outrageously attempting to follow the Constitution that I said, all right, you guys, I didn't see you use those words.
Listen, if this is what you want to do, you want to start a war.
I said, I'm going to give you a chance to make it legal, make it constitutional.
I'm going to introduce this resolution to declare war.
I said, I'm not going to vote for it, but you should vote for it because you want the war.
And I was hammered right in a committee.
And the chairman of the committee said, well, Congressman Paul, I know you're our champion of the Constitution, but there are certain parts of the Constitution that we don't listen to anymore.
We don't follow that part of the Constitution.
In a way, he says it's impractical.
But he was very blatant, you know, that part of the Constitution was.
And I was told that I think a week after I went to Washington, I was on a little radio debate with somebody that was, I don't know what war was going on there, but there was always a war going on.
And I was, you know, new.
I didn't know anything.
And he was on a committee that dealt with it.
He said, well, from my position, let me tell you, Congressman Paul, there will never be another declaration of war again.
And I thought, oh, that's over the top.
I can't believe we'll ever do it again.
Well, that didn't take long.
How many wars have we fought since 1976?
A few, a few.
How many people died?
How many Americans died?
How many innocent civilians have died?
And the people, oh, okay, whatever you say, we'll do it.
Why Send More Money? 00:01:00
But, well, why don't you deal with our high cost of groceries?
We can't even feed ourselves.
Why don't you do something about that?
And I said, what do you think we should do?
They said, send us more money so we can buy the groceries.
So I would say then that's when I re-emphasize daily and constantly that what we need is better education to have people.
Why can't we send people through very expensive universities?
And they don't have the vaguest idea, you know, what inflation is.
They don't even ever use the correct definition that it's a monetary issue.
And they just go on, but they get away with it.
But that's why I think it's so important that we spread a message of an understanding based on principles of liberty and private property why we wouldn't have to deal with these kind of problems.
I want to thank everybody for tuning in today to the Liberty Report.
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