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Nov. 6, 2025 - Ron Paul Liberty Report
30:10
Is Trump Officially A 'Lame Duck'

The anti-Trump Politico has officially labelled President Trump a "lame duck" president after across-the-board electoral defeats this week. Is the vote a harbinger of what it to come for Republicans next year, or can Trump's involvement keep a GOP majority in Congress?

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Energy's Complex Landscape 00:03:47
Hello, everybody, and thank you for tuning in to the Liberty Report.
With us today, we have Daniel McAdams, our co-host.
Daniel, welcome to the program.
Good morning, Dr. Paul.
How are you this morning?
Good.
Are you ready and raring to go?
I will do my best, sir.
And I was worried that all the problems would be solved before the weekend was out.
But guess what?
I found, just looking around a little bit, I found something.
But before we get into some of the things we want to spend a little extra time on, I just want to mention one little news clip, which is economically related that I found, you know, rather typical in the age that we live in, the age of economic interventionism.
This comes out of Zero Heads, one of our favorite sources.
Energy Department announces $100 million in funding the refurbish of U.S. coal plants.
I wonder how much we spent to close them, you know, and ruin them, you know.
And they've struggled with all the radical environmentalism, but all of a sudden, $100 million to do this.
And it just really doesn't make any sense to me.
And, you know, we're in this age of worrying about inflation and the spending.
But the bigger picture is, why did we ever get involved?
And then you say, well, the government messed it up, so they should help clean it up.
Well, we ought to learn a little bit about prevention of problems like this.
So they're going to do something.
They'll come up with some regulations and spend the money to rebuild these plants and make up for all the problems that they gave.
I think, obviously, it doesn't take a genius.
I think this is an inefficient way to provide for energy.
And besides the coal threat, we have to be careful.
But I think it was blown way out of proportion.
And when you think of some of the problems with windmills, more windmills than solar, but some of that, you know, is worth studying.
But to force it on people, you know, it's back to the force.
Government will force them to do it.
And then there's certain areas of the country, energy prices are still going up.
You know, energy shouldn't be that expensive, you know, especially if we knew how to use nuclear energy.
It would be cheap.
But no, we worked it out.
There's going to be a lot of expense.
Gives them an excuse to print a lot of money.
And they're doing that.
So that's one little tidbit we're not going to solve today.
But I just wanted to mention that, you know, that's the way the system works.
And that's why a lot of people get frustrated with politicians and political things.
But it's also an important thing to understand why the grocery bills are up.
If you understand issues like that, they're related.
What do you think about the coal mine thing with the AI bubble?
You think that's a relation?
I think it definitely was because they've really pushed.
And, you know, I was astounded when I found out about, you know, even before AI, how much, oh, just looking for crypto.
What are they doing?
You know, well, it takes a lot of money to do mining.
You can't mine gold cheaply either.
You know, it costs money.
So, but it's so silly if, well, anyway, it depends on what your opinion is on crypto, but that's a lot of money and a lot of energy.
That's a big thing.
And I think that's the point you make.
So now we're short of energy.
Now they're going back to accepting the ideas that they fought over for 20 years or so.
Lame Duck Politics 00:07:20
But there's another issue that I want to bring up, which was big in the news, and that is What some people might like to brag, it's the wiping out of the Trump administration.
He's a lame duck now.
We'll never hear from him again.
But in reality, we'll have to wait and see just what the damage has been done to the Republicans and to Trump.
Yeah, and this is a piece that came out in Politico, and we kind of both started thinking about it and pondering with their claim.
If you put that first clip up, Donald Trump enters his lame duck era.
And this is in reference, of course, to the shellacking, you might say, that the candidates he backed received in the elections on Tuesday from New York City to the state of Virginia, you know, and elsewhere, New Jersey and elsewhere.
The Trump backed the Republican candidates.
They lost completely.
Trump even endorsed Cuomo in New York City.
He got smacked on that one.
So here's what Politico says about it.
If you go to the next one, welcome to the dawn of Trump's lame duck era.
Don't expect an immediate stampede away from the president, according to interviews with GOP lawmakers and aides Wednesday.
He remains overwhelmingly popular with GOP voters and the party's most dominant leader in a generation.
But top political aides signaled Monday that the White House is not worried about a messy family conversation.
And here's the point.
But with Tuesday's stunning election losses crystallizing the risks to downballot Republicans in 26 and beyond, there are growing signs that lawmakers are contending with the facts of their political lives.
He'll be gone in just over three years while they will be still around.
Now, obviously, Politico has a bias.
They don't like Trump.
They want to portray these elections, Dr. Paul, in the worst possible way for Trump.
But nevertheless, it's something that we want to think about, that people should think about.
Is even just a few months into his administration, maybe the first year into his administration, is he kind of losing the magic?
And we have a few different things within that context to talk about.
But first of all, let's cue it up to something that I think Trump said yesterday, where he was talking about how fantastic, amazing everything is with the economy and elsewhere.
That first audio video clip, let's listen to that one and hear what he has to say.
And then you can have a comment about that, Dr. Paul.
Here we go.
Let's listen to Trump here.
And I'm pleased to report that today the United States has the strongest economy, the strongest borders, the strongest military, the strongest friendships, and the strongest spirit of any nation anywhere.
We have the greatest economy right now.
A lot of people don't see that.
But if you look at what's happening with all the factories, AI, auto plants all over the country being built, that if you would have thought about that two or three years ago, you would have said it was the opposite.
They're all leaving.
Now they're all coming in.
They're all coming back.
And then some.
And I think that we can honestly say, and I think you're going to see it even more so over the next 12 months, that this is the golden age of America.
This is the golden age.
And I'm pleased.
Greatest economy, greatest everything, greatest military.
Should we close shop?
Maybe we should just go home.
Because it's going so well.
But, you know, it doesn't seem fair, you know, to go after him and say it's all his policies.
His policies are contributing to it, obviously.
And some of it is, you know, pure political schedaneries.
But what he's doing, though, is he's taking, you know, he's addressing and trying to say everything is all right, but the problems weren't all his doing.
Yeah.
You can't have the biggest bubble in the history of the country standing out there by Trump in either these last six months or even plus his four years.
He didn't create that.
So he's dealing with some things that are just locked in place because the country, the consumers, the business people, the politicians, everybody, you know, they accepted the temptation of printing money and not working and saving for the wealth that we have to have.
We start off with a lot of wealth and we've been living off and it's like a rich family and rich kids.
They used up their inheritance and finally they have to buckle down.
And I think that's what's happening to our country.
So this recession is really ongoing.
It has started.
But for him to have to defend and say it didn't, well, I didn't do it.
I didn't do it.
Well, why doesn't he tell us the truth of who did it?
It's this appetite for free stuff and free money, low interest rates, all these things.
And I think that people would accept this, you know, if it sounds logical to them.
But nevertheless, there's going to be a big problem.
And it's a name blame game now.
Who's going to get blamed for it?
And this is what they're saying.
The explosion of articles and sentiments.
This is his swing strong song.
This is lame.
He's a lame duck now.
He's never going to be able to do anything.
But it's going to be somewhere in between.
But I think what they forget about and hope they never have to think about it is the built-in dislocation of investments and savings.
And just look at the debt.
He didn't create this deficit.
He contributed to it.
It's a system of government.
But nobody, either they don't know about it or they don't want to know about it and they'd like to forget about it.
Or maybe they're admitting to themselves, we can't do anything about it.
We better grab our share and get out of here.
Well, one of the things he did say, and I don't have an audio clip of it, but he said that prices are way down.
Food prices are way down.
And a lot of people have pushed back on that.
And in fact, if you're, you know, you always, you always use the Fred charts, the Bureau of Labor Statistics charts.
And this does show the Consumer Price Index.
Yes, when he first took over, the prices were definitely going down.
This is early in March.
But interestingly, like that, April was the low point.
And if you remember, that's when the tariffs started kicking in.
And that has to be a contributing factor.
But when you look at that U-shaped curve, you see an acceleration of consumer price increases way off the charts and accelerating.
So if you look at the numbers, now everyone has a different reason and a different excuse, but if you look at those numbers, you can't look at those and say prices are way, way down like the president claims.
And, you know, predictions are hard to come up with with monetary policy or tariffs or government mischief because it's hard to predict what people will do and how they will respond because you can print a lot of money and pass it out, but you have no idea how people are going to spend it.
The Numbers Don't Lie 00:09:26
Maybe they're just going to try to pay off their debt or something like that.
So that's why it's impossible.
And this is one of the reasons, the Keynesian approach, where you can use a computer and figure it out.
My computer tells me this is what's going to happen.
And that's what they live with.
So those charts are sort of frightening and they're emphatic about what's happening.
But it's not likely to say they've just discovered a new way to analyze, put on, you know, Trump said, put on tariffs.
Look, everything was going good until so-and-so happened.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Well, the other area where he's, you can see that he's losing support, and we can speculate as to why, and that is with young voters.
There was a CNN, a CNN article that came out recently.
They did a poll just before the elections, and they showed that his approval rating was the lowest it's been of his presidency so far.
I think it was 37.
Don't quote me on that, but according to them.
But the other thing is that among young voters, especially young Americans between 18 and 29, his numbers are dropping like a stone.
Now, this isn't that CNN survey, but this is a different one.
This is in a YouGov Economist survey of this next article.
Trump's honeymoon with Gen Z voters is officially over, and the numbers are devastating, according to a new poll.
And go to that next one.
Here's some of the numbers on Gen Z.
The latest survey conducted from October 24th to 27th found that 20% of adults under the age of 30 approved of Trump's performance as president.
That marked a 30-point drop from February when 50% of 18 to 29-year-olds approved of Trump and 42% disapproved.
Trump's approval rating with 30 to 44 demographic also dipped by eight points during the same time range.
Now, you can speculate about why.
Actually, go to the next one, you'll see this dramatic chart, Dr. Paul.
This is really something that red is under 30s, his net approval rate.
Now, among all adults, it's definitely gone down quite a bit, but among the under 30, it's absolutely cratering here.
And one of the things that we've talked about on the show many times, and I think this is a factor, is foreign policy.
The president came in, no new wars, I'm not going to start wars, no saber rally.
I don't want to get involved.
I want to stay here and make America great again.
But he spent this entire time on foreign policy, and he's increasingly surrounded himself with neocons.
He's going to go campaigning for Lindsey Graham and against Thomas Massey.
And young people, we know from the polls we've talked about, particularly with regard to Israel, young people do not want us involved anymore.
They're becoming more non-interventionist.
And I think that might be a big factor as to why the young people are turning away from Trump.
Maybe the group of people out there that are involved and maybe drafted or sent off to war are looking at this and saying, well, this is what we should expect, you know, under these circumstances.
But I think in politics, and I think Reagan established this, that, you know, you can't be dire.
You can't be negative.
You know, I think they compared Carter with being too negative, and Reagan could talk in a positive manner.
And I believe in that to a degree because I think the people want to hear a good message.
And, you know, what I drifted into using when I was talking during the campaigns, the national campaigns, that I found fascinating is that I would spend, if I was to spend an hour with a group of college kids, probably 45 minutes would be on, this is a mess.
You guys are inheriting this.
And really, you know, trying to explain it and explain inflation.
But then I would end by saying it doesn't have to be that way.
It's not complicated.
There's an answer to this.
And what I was impressed with was later, after a speech and many times later on, they said, I really liked what you're saying, Ron, because you're so positive.
I said, how can I be positive?
I spent 45 minutes telling you how bad it was.
But I think it was that thing that sort of just came about in a natural way.
Wasn't a strategy because I so sincerely believed that if we had done the right thing, these wars that we talk about, I mean, just now, we'll mention in a little bit about, you know, are we trying to have another war in Venezuela?
And if people are too patient on this, look how they are.
But I think what your point was, they're getting less impatient, less patient about this, impatient, and they're looking for some action, especially if they learn that what we do overseas and spending all that money has an effect on their grocery bills.
That's what they have to learn.
Absolutely.
Well, I just surveyed a couple of people that I thought had some pretty interesting and astute insights.
They tend to be people on the right or libertarian, and I thought I'd just put a couple of them up.
Now, Mike Cernovich is sort of a Republican influencer type, but sometimes he does veer off into an independent area.
And I think he has a good assessment of why Trump is in trouble and why the election the other day went as badly as it did for him.
Cernovich says, Trump spent all year on the Middle East.
His big donors loved this.
The voters did not.
Virginia is going to be under a Democrat supermajority now.
Keep listening to Mark Levine, Mr. President, and you'll be back to impeachment trials in 2026.
Very good advice.
Our own Chris Rossini had some insight as to what went wrong.
If you put the next one up, now this is about the election of Mamdani in New York City.
Chris said back in January, it was Trump who had the mandate.
He blew it all on Israel, on pretending he could bully the world when he can't, and a big bankruptcy bill.
Now Democrats are capitalizing and will continue to capitalize.
Chris, of course, is right.
Our good friend Dave Granowski also had some good insights.
He's got a good piece, by the way, that we republished it on RonPaulInstitute.org.
Go to that next one.
Here's what David wrote about.
We watched for a whole year the whole administration flying to Israel every week to co-sign our tax dollars, going to clubbing old ladies, picking olives, and destroying innocent families.
And that's a very good point.
And now let's turn to the master himself, Thomas Massey, with a great list of what went wrong.
And Thomas Massey writes on X: To avoid a repeat of last night's shellacking in the 2026 midterms, Republicans should quit covering for pedophiles, put America before Israel, put farmers before corporations, quit funding wars abroad, reduce spending to control inflation, and quit attacking independent voices.
A very good bill of particulars from Thomas Massey.
I think we could vote for that.
And we could vote for that guy.
Absolutely.
But, you know, Trump has made some promises.
You know, he said it many, many times.
We're going to stop wars and not start any new ones.
But at this point, he has lost credibility.
People have lost confidence.
And I think that's part of what's happening right now.
And these numbers are going to change because people want to have confidence.
But if you listen to him, you know, saying, you know, it's not that way.
It's wonderful.
It's perfect.
There's not an ounce of problem.
And I think people want to hear the truth of where the problems are and why we're not accomplishing.
If he gave Thomas Massey to write his speech for the Middle East, you know, it might be a different story.
And he also might get more American people, you know, supporting it as well.
So that's the thing.
And I think that contributes to the loss of confidence in Trump because, you know, we liked what he was saying.
Sure.
He was not going to start it.
And he made an effort and made overtures to this.
And yet here we are.
I mean, has anything really changed in Ukraine or the Middle East?
Some of those places have gotten worse rather than better.
He surrounded himself with neocons just like in his first administration.
He's got Lindsey Graham speaking in one ear, Marco Rubio speaking in the other ear.
He's got Mark Levine picking up the phone and yelling at him, telling him what to do.
He's got Miriam Adelson writing checks and telling him what to do.
He surrounded himself with neocons who aren't putting America first.
And that's just a fact.
And young people, as you always say, they're not stupid.
They recognize what's happening.
They're not getting what they paid for.
They're not getting what they voted for.
And they're going to sit at home.
That's the biggest threat for him in the midterms.
They're just simply not going to show up.
And the numbers are starting to show that.
They're starting to show that for sure.
And here's a perfect example.
Now, skip one and go to that next one.
Trump considering menu from the hedge now.
Young People Recognize Misuse 00:08:30
I've got you running back.
Let's skip this one for now.
I think we got that one covered.
Here's an example.
Trump considering menu of Venezuela attack options, including oil field seizures.
What?
What on earth?
Though Trump campaigned on pledges to end America's endless wars and regime change campaigns, the White House has now assembled a list of possible military attacks on Venezuela.
That's according to the New York Times, if you believe it.
Go to that next one.
The Justice Department is evaluating legal rationales for the various options with an eye on, quote, and I have highlighted this, justifying unilateral action by the president without congressional authorization for the use of military force.
Now, what they're doing, basically, Dr. Paul, as you know, is they're going to lie.
They're going to say, no, no, this isn't a war.
This is a narco-terrorist group that has to be taken out.
They're basically merging the Dick Cheney wing of the party with now the Donald Trump wing of the party.
And it's bad.
Now, here are the three options they have, according to the New York Times.
Airstrikes against military facilities to sap Maduro's support from the country's armed forces.
Opponents argue that such strikes may instead galvanize the military's bond with Maduro.
Number two, using elite units like Delta Force or SEAL Team 6 to seize or kill Maduro himself.
Or three, tasking counterterrorism forces with seizing oil fields and related infrastructure along with airfields.
You know, Dr. Paul, we can almost hear the neocons whispering in his ear, this is going to be a cakewalk.
It's like they said with the, don't worry, Mr. President, this will go just fine.
And I remember the days when shortly after the UN was established and a war quickly broke out in Korea and a lot of Americans died over there.
A lot of innocent people died over there.
And it was really the first clear-cut defiance of how we handled the war issue.
Imperfectly before there, but at least they went through the ritual.
And it obviously was appropriate to go to war when Japan started the bombing.
That story can be expanded if you really look into it.
But Truman said it's a police action.
And how long did it take for people to realize what is he talking about?
But I think that established this whole principle to, and it reminds me of the story I tell about when I first went to Congress and had a mini debate with a Democrat on the Foreign Policy Committee.
And he says, Ron, you're whistling Dixie.
Well, there's never going to be a declaration of war again.
And that's like, how did we get rid of that?
Well, I was told that we just ignore it.
We just ignore that part of the Constitution.
It's anachronistic title.
And what they do is they choose something that everyone opposes.
Oh, Maduro is not a leader of a country.
He's a narcoterrorist.
Well, geez, I don't like narco-terrorists.
Same thing with Gaddafi.
Oh, he's a pervert.
He's handing out Viagra to his troops.
Oh, I don't like perverts.
Take him out.
Or Saddam, he's bayoneting incubators, babies and incubators.
Well, gosh, I don't like that either.
Let's take you out.
They do that.
They make these lies out there.
Yeah, but they're targeting somebody.
And people say, well, that might be true.
But what about the lack of indication of killing people in those, how many times have we blown up a little boat?
It looks like a fish.
17 now, 17.
17.
Right.
So that's another story, too, because they don't ask any question.
They don't want it.
And of course, when you look at some of the most notorious murders and assassinations of the country, we don't ask questions for after 20 or 50 years and then they just mumble about it.
But that type of killing goes on even domestically.
Yeah, that's absolutely true.
Well, let's do one thing.
This is two things in this last clip.
It's another indicator that there's some pushback.
Now, his bullying isn't working, but it's also something else.
It's something positive that can happen.
If we go to that very last clip, this is from anti-war in Dave DeCamp.
The Senate is expected to vote on Thursday.
That's today, to block Trump from starting a war with Venezuela.
Now, this is a great sign because it shows that Congress is finally starting to wake up.
We've talked about this resolution.
It's a privilege resolution, which means that it has to go to the floor for a vote under the War Powers Act, a war powers resolution.
It's one of the only good things about the War Powers Resolution.
So the Senate is expected to vote on Thursday at 5 Eastern on a bipartisan war powers resolution that will block President Trump from attacking Venezuela without congressional authorization.
We've talked about this before.
Senator Paul is on it, as is Senator Kaine and others.
Of course, one of the things we would say is for people to call your senators and tell them we don't want this.
But it does show a little bit of pushback on the president for this insane idea of going into Venezuela and having a nice little war.
You know, attitudes are shifting.
Opinions now are shifting in the direction of more common sense.
And, you know, technology and the spread of information is a two-edged sword.
It could be used to build up.
And if you have a good cheerleader, it does the opposite.
It has people cheering for the wrong thing.
But when it's just honest to goodness information that is spreading, you know, one computer to another, all of a sudden you can't change opinion.
So I think this should be put down as a positive because they're predicting that that thing might well pass.
That'd be a historic thing.
And when you think about where we did it trying to stop the Middle East war, this is a tremendous step in the right direction.
Instead of waiting, you know, years and years, you know, the examples, 10, 20 years, and we just never end up.
Like right now, we thought the war in the Middle East was supposed to be short-lived.
Well, we did that soon.
Oh, and then there was a peace.
Oh, yeah.
But we're moving in there.
We have military and everything else in Iraq.
It's sort of like we, you know, all that fanfare, we own it.
We own it too.
And putting troops back in Syria.
But yeah, you made a good point.
I actually forgot to make, and I'm really glad you brought it up.
There's a good chance of it passing.
Now, it won't pass in the House.
But that doesn't, as we know from all the ones that you and Dennis Kucinich did, it's not necessarily that you pass it, but even passing in this end is a big sign.
If four or five other senators beyond Senator Paul vote to restrict the president from going to war without approval, that could, as you say, that slight shift in that direction could be the signal of a real wake-up call in the House and the Senate about this issue.
Let's hope so.
Let's hope so for sure.
Well, I'm going to close out today by thanking everyone for watching the show, reminding you to go to ronpaulinstitute.org, not only read the great articles that we put up every day, if you want to know what's going on in our head, well, you see what we post on the Ron Paul Institute website every day.
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And if you want to make a tax-deductible donation, of course, we're happy to have that too.
We're very happy to have it too.
But we're also very happy to have you watching the Liberal Report every day, and we hope you continue to do so.
Over to you, Dr. Brown.
Very good.
And once again, I will make a pitch for some issues that have been ongoing and the positions we should hold.
Of course, we should have guidance from our Constitution to help us decide what our policies ought to be.
And there's various reasons why that would be beneficial, but I want to just make a statement about one of the most important in a political sense.
Practical Arguments for Peace 00:01:05
There's a lot of other ones.
There's war arguments.
There's constitutional arguments for not going into these wars.
But a good one for the average congressman is going to be practical.
They do respond to lobbyists when there is enough of them in their district to come across with a certain position.
And I think the whole idea of personal liberty and personal sovereignty, if you accept that, yes, you have to accept a tremendous amount of responsibility for your own well-being.
But the thing of it is that it's practical.
Why this is practical is if you're looking for a system that over hundreds, if not thousands of years, where the maximum amount of liberty, personal liberty, where people were allowed to make their own decisions, you were more likely to have peace and prosperity.
And we certainly need that.
And that's why we will pursue this effort to move us in the direction of personal liberty.
I want to thank everybody for tuning in today to the Liberty Report.
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