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Nov. 11, 2025 - Ron Paul Liberty Report
27:28
Conservatives Fume Over 'Former' Al Qaeda In The White House

President Trump welcoming "former" al-Qaeda leader and self-proclaimed president of Syria to the White House has MAGA conservatives steaming. Will Trump's obsessive focus on the US overseas sink Republicans in the mid-terms?

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Time Text
Serious Concerns Rising 00:04:26
Hello, everybody, and thank you for tuning into 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?
Doing fine.
Good.
Doing fine.
Excellent.
Looking for some good news.
I found some bad news, but now I'm going to turn that around and make good news of it.
So no matter how bad it is, I find something good.
My argument is if there's bad news out there, we use it to wake people up and say, see what they're doing to our country and to our freedoms.
But anyway, there's a big deal going on right now.
And the biggest challenge we have in trying to get the truth out there, the best as we see, can see it.
And that is explaining to the people, because we're supposed to know what's going on.
We've been to Washington.
We're supposed to know what's happened to explain exactly what's going on with the administration.
But I understand the government isn't even open right now.
Oh, no.
We have to figure out, maybe that means we're saving a lot of money.
I think that's likely the case.
We're going to save a lot of money.
But the big event yesterday, of course, was somebody that I think he used to work for the al-Qaeda, had a big influence there.
He used to hate Americans.
He probably killed America.
And he got a two-hour meeting with the president.
I know the president's a nice guy and all that.
And a few times I've talked to him, he sounded very friendly.
But I tell you what, there's a lot of people not only coming from the Ron Paul Liberty Report questioning this issue of this individual visiting the White House, but it is something that other people are starting to question.
Just what is going on here?
And the significance, I think, is rather great.
It's not like there was once an enemy and they changed their ways and they worked their way back and got a credibility.
Nothing like that has happened.
So it is something that should be dealt with.
And I don't know how it will come out on the mainstream media, whether they probably won't have the same spin that we have and understanding of why we're concerned about this and what does it mean.
So I'm sure you have given this some serious thought.
And if you can't think of anything, I mean, if the stuff that's bad, it's too bad, think of something that we could talk about.
Maybe we'll use it as a weapon against this big government, the mess that we have.
Well, we've talked the past few days a couple of times about President Trump's shrinking numbers, you know, especially with the young generation.
I think he's down 50% in approval.
He was appealed broadly to young conservatives, and we're seeing that go down.
And I think a lot of people now, because he welcomed Al-Jolani al-Shara into the White House yesterday, who was the head of al-Qaeda in Syria, before that, he went to Iraq to join al-Qaeda to kill Americans starting in 2006.
I think a lot of conservatives and supporters, people that wish him well like us, are saying, who is he listening to?
Who's around him?
Who's telling him to do this?
It's not a great idea.
Now, Responsible Statecraft put this first piece up.
They had a good piece that came out yesterday from Connor Eccles.
Trump brings out the big guns for Syrian leaders' historic visit.
Last week, Shara was a U.S. designated terrorist.
Today, he's sitting in the Oval Office.
Not a good look.
If you go to the next one, this is from the article.
The only concrete change expected to emerge from the meeting will be Syria's joining the Western coalition to fight ISIS.
And it really is something Dr. Paul that Orwell might be rolling over in his grave over because you had the head of al-Qaeda ISIS in Syria now being the head of the coalition against ISIS.
And I do, I would blame a lot of that on his followers, but it's a terrible look.
Now, if you go to the next clip, here's a couple of clips of him in the White House of Al-Jalani.
Here he is shaking hands with President Trump.
If you go to the next one, here he is for the pose with Trump.
And I kind of made a joke on X yesterday.
Trump's Dangerous Alliances 00:11:35
I said, Trump better be careful.
This guy's behind him.
He sliced off a lot of heads when he was in Iraq and in Syria.
So it's a pretty serious situation.
It's a pretty serious mistake, made more complicated by the fact that America lost thousands of lives in Syria, in Iraq, I mean, and today is Veterans Day, so on the eve of Veterans Day.
So it's, and we'll have some clips later showing how it's got a lot of people on his side very concerned about it.
Right.
You know, the issue of war is something that I've been preoccupied and occupied with for a long time.
And in reality, it didn't take me long to start thinking more about issues when, in the middle of my medical residency, Uncle Sam knocked on my door and said, pack your bags.
We need your help.
And it was in October of 1962, and there was a missile crisis going on.
So I ended up being drafted.
And that issue didn't last that long.
What really happened after that is the Vietnam War was raging and it expanded.
So I ended up in the Air Force for five years.
But the whole thing is, it should be easier to prevent wars.
It certainly would be a lot better for everybody.
But what happens is we slip into these wars and we've been concerned.
And it's not one or two places, probably six different places.
Right now, we figure that we're doing the wrong thing.
We're interfering.
It's an interventionist policy.
And that will lead more likely to war.
But, you know, the big question is, how do you stop these things?
Are you going to, we had, remember, I think it was George W. Bush.
He had a pretty good foreign policy when he was campaigning.
Campaigning, yeah.
And then we ended up with a Middle East war.
So it goes on.
Then I got to thinking about back when the Vietnam War started.
You know, they didn't even have to have us overextending themselves.
They even lied about extending themselves.
Oh, yeah, we were confronted and the thing didn't even happen.
It was enough for the Congress to roll over and the people to not be astute enough to say, hey, what are you guys doing?
This could explode.
So that is what there's a big difference, I think, there.
But in stopping the war, well, you know, George W. Bush talked about it and the current president talked about it.
This president said that he wants to stop wars and not start any new ones.
And it looks to me like that sounded like a signal to our group of people that non-intervention might be a good idea and following the Constitution might be a good idea.
But that hasn't been the case.
Just look at what they're doing now.
And we don't know what will happen, but one thing I know for sure, it would be a lot more sensible to just not get engaged in the war because I remember so clearly in the 60s waiting for the Vietnam War to end for various reasons.
And it wasn't by having a new administration.
It didn't happen by the politicians that were entrenched in Washington.
It wasn't the deep state explaining to us exactly why we will keep these wars going.
None of that happened.
What I believe, and I think the evidence is there, what happened is the American people woke up and they demonstrated in the streets.
And when I think about it, well, you know, that's not going to happen too often.
But when you think of it, how did COVID idiocy finally end when the people finally said they're the ones that went to the meetings and started clamoring for getting the government out of the practice of medicine?
So that's what we're up against.
We're trying to stop this one from going.
And you, I think, joined with me in Washington when the Middle East war was raging.
And we couldn't do it.
We would have these resolutions and they were totally ignored.
But I think you'd agree.
We would get fewer votes.
Now, some of the votes to stop and cease the bombing and don't start a new war.
I think the numbers are bigger now than they were back in the 70s.
So that's not good news.
But the good news, you've already mentioned, young people are getting sick and tired of what's going on.
And they're the ones who have to pay the price in so many ways.
Not only if it's fighting a war, but it's also the problems that they face here at home.
Yeah, you almost wonder.
I mean, President Trump, especially Trump 2.0, the campaign was great, ending wars.
It was extremely popular.
He did unprecedentedly well among minorities, young people.
But the problem is, you almost start to wonder, because I do believe he's sincere when he says he doesn't want to get into wars.
He wants to end wars.
I think he's absolutely sincere.
But what makes you wonder is once you get in there, because as you point out, the same was true with George W. Bush.
He probably was sincere.
But when you get in there, you know, you lie down with the dogs and you get the fleas because now he's surrounded with neocons.
He's surrounded with people like Marco Rubio and Lindsey Graham.
And he's alienating and isolating people who I believe genuinely want the best and genuinely support him.
And here's one, here's a big surprise, which is Marjorie Taylor Green, staunch MAGA, staunch Trump supporter, very conservative from Georgia.
But even she was upset yesterday to see Al-Shara, to see the head of a former head of al-Qaeda with a $10 million bounty on his head.
I mean, if I was Trump, I would have grabbed him and turned him in for the 10 million bucks.
Nevertheless, here's what Marjorie Taylor Greene put out on X yesterday.
She said, the new leader of Syria is a former al-Qaeda terrorist wanted by our government who's meeting with President Trump today at the White House.
Now, here's the point.
On the U.S. Marine Corps' 250th anniversary, and that stuck a lot of people because there were Marines killed in Iraq when Shara al-Jolani was killing Americans in Iraq.
She said he rose to power in December of 24.
Sanctions were lifted off Syria in June, and many Christians and minority groups have been killed before and after the sanctions were lifted, which is true.
The first thing when he took over is he went on a rampage killing a bunch of Christians and Alawites and Druze in Syria.
We talked about it on the show.
Thousands of them slaughtered.
Syria is the oldest home of Christianity outside of Israel.
The Apostle Paul met Jesus on the road to Damascus.
I pray the persecution ends not only in Syria, but all around the world.
However, I would really like to see nonstop meetings at the White House on domestic policy, not foreign policy, and foreign countries' leaders.
Start by hauling in the health insurance company executives.
Let's start formulating our Republican plan to save America from Obamacare, ACA tax credits that have skyrocketed, health insurance.
So I think she does make a good point.
President Trump, I'm a friend, stay away from these people that are pushing this stuff on you that's just hurting you and making you unpopular.
You know, the decision shouldn't be difficult, but sometimes they don't ask the question.
When the new members go, when they have this intent of doing exactly what they have promised, and they're going to, and I don't, I think you know this, Daniel, but do you realize that every member of Congress takes an oath to the Constitution?
That bugs me a bit.
And when it comes to war, you know, presidents aren't allowed to go to war.
And when does it become a war?
Well, early on, after World War II, they were getting back involved again, and the people weren't going to have another declaration of war.
And Trubin has a war anyway.
Oh, that's a police action.
They didn't even, they just have to lie their way into it.
Usually it's lies and fear that get the people to roll over and do this.
But you'd think it would be easy to convert people to be loyal to the Constitution and common sense.
The history is so strong, so much on our side.
But if the choice they make, they make the choice: are they going to be loyal to their oath of office and the Constitution, or are they going to be loyal to an aggressive president, a powerful president?
That, you know, if it's used for good, that's one thing.
But if it's being used to, you know, punish the people, believe me, there are some people getting punished because they are standing up that their crime is they're defending everything they do by the Constitution.
And that becomes a crime in the eyes of the authoritarians.
Yeah, absolutely.
And unfortunately, I mean, President Trump, now he's surrounded himself with these neocons, he's actually lashing out the people who want to help him, like Marjorie Taylor Greene, who made, I think, a very good point yesterday.
But what Trump, instead of sort of reassessing, he lashes out.
And I'll put this next one on.
This is from our friend Dave DeCamp, wrote this up on anti-war.com.
Trump says Marjorie Taylor Greene has lost her way after she criticized him for hosting former al-Qaeda leader.
He said she lost her way.
I don't know what's happened to Marjorie.
She's a nice woman, but I don't know what's happened.
She's lost her way, I think.
And which is unfortunate.
He said, I have to view.
Oh, no, this is the part.
You brought this up, actually.
And this might be what happens.
And I don't necessarily blame him because I think this is what happens when you're in that office.
Something weird happens.
He said, but I have to view the presidency as a worldwide situation, not locally.
I mean, we could have a world that's on fire where wars come to our shores very easily if you had a bad president.
So I think that is where he's getting seduced by this idea that he's got to be the global leader.
And she responded, I haven't lost my way.
I'm 100% America first and only.
So it's maybe it's a spell that they cast on you when you're in there.
You know, when he says those statements, he wouldn't say them if he thought this was going to very, very much damage what he's trying to do.
But I think it's the understanding of loyalty to empire as well, because a lot of people in a religious sense are dedicated to bringing about peace in the world.
They want to do that.
So they go about, but they have to have some authority and rule.
So he's talking about world rule.
And nobody realizes, you know, and even he's admitted that maybe he should consider more stuff at home.
Yeah.
Then just talking about starting all this activity.
Republicans and Interest Rates 00:05:36
And you know what?
It's all going to be limited because this country is totally bankrupt.
And the people can wake up.
The Congress is not going to wake up and stop the wars.
But the people could wake up and force that to happen.
And another thing is the finances can also do it.
And there's a lot of people right now anticipating that we're to a huge type of financial crisis, which has been ongoing.
And under those circumstances, there may be some competition out there as it's known now.
There's competition for the leadership in the financial world of the dollar as being the reserve currency of the world.
Things like that can change.
And that could change our foreign policy.
Because I do believe markets are powerful.
They pretend they know what interest rates were.
And you have these major debates with the chairman of the board and Trump.
What should interest rates be?
But neither one of them knows what interest rates should be.
And that's all mischief.
And yet they spend all this time.
But the market will tell you what interest rates are going to be.
And if they want to get a hint where they're going, they probably ought to look at credit card interest rates or something like that.
Well, I know, Dr. Paul, you don't like calling people out and you don't like mentioning people in a negative way, but I do sometimes.
And I do sometimes like making fun of people, especially people that deserve being made fun of.
So I did collect this and I did.
You can close your ears maybe, but I'll put this next one up.
Now, this is Joe Wilson.
You remember Joe Wilson?
I don't know.
There's something about, I love South Carolina.
It's a beautiful state, but they elect some weird people.
And Joe Wilson is one of them, not the brightest bulb, I do have to say.
Now, you remember right after 9-11, he was elected, I think, not long after that.
And he would go down to the floor every single day.
And we used to laugh about it in the back office.
He would give his five-minute or his one-minute or wherever.
He would always sign off by saying something like, God bless America, and we will never forget 9-11.
Every single day he said it.
Well, here's Joe Wilson.
He had a photo of himself snapped next to the former leader of al-Qaeda in Syria, and he's proud of it.
He says, grateful to meet with President Al-Shara.
A free, united, prosperous Syria is the biggest opportunity, et cetera.
It looks, Dr. Paul, like Joe Wilson may have forgotten 9-11.
Here he is standing with Shara.
But moving on now, this is the other part we wanted to make, which is that conservatives who are very much in President Trump's camp, very loyal to him, not just Marjorie Taylor Greene, but others are sounding the alarms.
Now, it's not just over Shara, Jolani, Al-Qaeda in the White House.
It's also about this business, as you alluded to earlier with the boats.
They've blown up the 19th boat.
They say they're all drug runners.
There's no evidence being given.
And I'll put up that next one.
Now, here is an important point.
At a moment that more and more conservative voices are calling for President Trump to drop the distraction of entangling foreign policy issues and instead work on settling domestic issues after a lengthy government shutdown, the Pentagon has announced yet more strikes on alleged drug boats.
Now, I pulled this up because this is definitely not a bomb thrower.
Sean Davis, if you put this next one up, Sean Davis is very sober, very conservative, not libertarian, I don't think, probably leanings.
He's the founder of the Federalist, which has always been very supportive of President Trump.
And I believe he's definitely in the loyal part, not even opposition.
But he had a stinging post yesterday on X. Stinging.
And it made a lot, got a lot of attention.
He said, I don't know who's advising congressional Republicans on a strategy right now, but whoever it is, it has an IQ barely approaching room temperature.
Republicans right now have no accomplishments, no plans, no vision.
Why on earth would anyone be excited to go vote for them 12 months from now?
Now, this is the part I'm going to use this fairly somewhat bad word, I guess.
Trump needs to ditch the foreign policy crap and focus all his attention on the domestic economy, which is still not working for majority of people.
Right now, he looks weak and rudderless.
Be mad all you want, but that's the truth.
Newly minted college grads can't find work, are saddled with debt.
Where is their path to the American dream right now?
Who's giving them a future worth fighting for?
Now go to the next one.
He finishes up by saying, I won't read it all, but if you put this, does anyone in Washington care about this?
Republicans had better wake up because right now their nightmare is only beginning if they don't start making massive changes.
Now, this is someone very loyal, but I think we're coming off of the elections we had on a week ago today.
We're seeing, you know, it may not be indicative of where we're going, but certainly doesn't indicate that people are going to be turning out a lot for Republicans.
I think you need someone like Sean to raise a warning flag.
You guys, you've got to refocus here because we have some problems on the horizon.
You know, the president has to bear responsibility for a lot of this.
And he could change it.
And he shouldn't mislead us and that sort of thing.
He says, we could and should criticize the president when we think he's off target.
But then again, we interject frequently.
Well, he has all the wrong advisors.
Who hired him, though?
Who hired him?
So the advisors are important too.
Preparing for Change 00:05:49
You have to deal with that.
And then you have to say, well, what about the Congress?
They vote for all the money.
They don't even, it's not even close votes sometimes.
Do whatever you want.
And they march on.
So you have to have to deal with that.
And then you say, well, maybe there's something else going on.
Maybe there's something, maybe this thing about the military industrial complex, maybe it exists.
And maybe they're powerful.
And maybe they have a lot of influence to see good members of Congress give good speeches and vote basically pretty good when it comes to foreign policy.
That is, they'd vote against food stamps for babies that are dying before they'd vote against militarism.
But ultimately, it has to be the people that wake up.
The people, you can't stop there and say the people are just suffering.
They do and they will.
But they also have to wake up the people.
And that's why I look to the experience of watching what was happening in the 60s.
The people woke up and said, enough is enough.
But then, of course, people try to write them off.
Well, they're violent.
They're getting violent and they get upset.
But you can resist.
The people can wake up.
And then the ultimate effort that will cease these wars coming, I've already mentioned.
And that is, we're going to run out of money.
So we better prepare for a different system because there might be a few jobs lost and a lot of more people suffering.
But I think we're in a very difficult position right now because there's no admission to what the real problem is, and that is the moral bankruptcy and the financial bankruptcy of this country.
You know, all this stuff going on is week after week, and they close down the government.
They keep fighting it.
All during this time, they were bombing boats down in Venezuela.
When are we going to have somebody attack it?
And when will somebody falsely attack one of those people so we can have a real war?
I mean, that's evil.
But the people have to wake up.
That's why I think we hopefully, yes, we're not going to have the biggest program in the world doing what we're doing.
But I believe sincerely that the people we do reach are very, very valuable to us because they are willing to look for information.
And that's what we want.
We want people to look for information and spread the word because that is one thing is that, like I've said many times, you know, if an idea is whose time has come, you can't stop it.
And I claim that the idea of liberty is still with us, is alive and well, and you can find places where things have improved.
Even in monetary policy, as bad as it is, there's been some things that have been moved in the right direction, like allowing Americans to own gold again.
Sounds mediocre, but there are things.
But I think the educational system outside of the government educational system is alive and well.
And that's one of the reasons, of course, I have a homeschooling program.
Sure, now I'm going to close out, Dr. Paul.
We have our viewers on the internet, can't see it.
We have some guests here in the studio.
We're eager to get to know them and talk with them a little bit more.
So I'm anxious to do that.
So I'm going to close out.
I'm going to thank everyone for joining.
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So thanks again for watching.
Over to you, Dr. Paul.
Very good.
And once again, I would like to close with an issue or a program that I've been working with for a long time.
And that is that all our problems could be solved if I should modify that.
We'd be a lot better off because we don't have access to perfection.
Nobody will have perfect liberty.
Nobody has perfect tyranny.
But there are some systems that the founders understood and promoted.
And I think it can be just explained in two words.
Things in life ought to be voluntary.
When you think about that, everything personal, everything economic, everything international, it would be voluntary.
And that means two sides have to agree.
Wouldn't that reduce a lot of violence?
And yes, that means you could not lie, cheat, or steal, or kill.
Well, we already have laws against that.
But I want to apply that to the government.
And that's a big difference.
And the government should be dedicated and people should be there, and this is a shortcoming, to that of non-intervention.
We don't need to be in 120 countries.
There's some sincere people who have studied these issues, and they don't believe that we really need to have the type of CIA and the FBI that we have now in order to preserve liberty.
Because I think there's an argument made that the fear of our own government taking away our liberties is probably a lot more likely and significant than the Venezuelans invading us and taking away our liberties.
I want to thank everybody for tuning in today to the Liberty Report.
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