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Dec. 11, 2025 - Ron Paul Liberty Report
32:39
Ahoy! Pirate Trump Seizes Venezuelan Oil Tanker 'We'll Keep The Oil!'

Just one month after US CENTCOM condemned Iran for boarding a commercial vessel in international waters, the Trump Administration boarded and seized a Venezuelan oil tanker bound for Cuba and seized the cargo. Is this another provocation hoping for a Venezuelan response to kick off the war? Also today: Massie introduces bill to get out of NATO.

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Government Escalation Concerns 00:14:30
Hello, everybody, and thank you for tuning in to 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 well, thank you.
Gets me upset.
More criticism.
What's the first upsetting today?
Well, it has to do with our Navy, our foreign policy, our executive branch of government.
Oh, I got everyone going.
I'm upset with government.
That's a good safe position.
So, but something did happen that was sort of outrageous and stands out in our minds, and that has to do with us taking over a ship.
I guess it was a Venezuela ship, or what was going on?
The tanker, yeah, yeah.
So that to me, you know, we preach against that, and we are appalled when it says that somebody would do that to us.
Yeah, here we go.
We finally said, what are these people doing?
And this to me, but evidently it was authorized.
That's part of our Navy.
It's part of this incentive to stir up a war in Venezuela and Central America.
It seems like they're doing a very good job every single day.
They're aggravating.
They're looking for an accident or they're looking for somebody overreacting, but they're not using any common sense.
And I think that this cannot end well unless they change their policy dramatically in the next few days.
Because what we as the United States are doing down there is just looking for trouble.
They say, oh, it's only Venezuela.
They'll get out of there.
We'll scare them a little bit.
We'll tell them we're tough.
You better do what we tell you.
And so we're in there just trying to aggravate.
And I am really concerned that the thing is going to get out of hand.
And there's three, four, five people in the Congress that agree with us.
Well, I mean, we were told this is all about drugs.
We've got to take down this narco-terrorist regime that's sending fentanyl to our kids and killing 25,000 people per boat.
It has nothing to do with oil.
This reminds me of another country that was invaded for that same reason.
Well, it turns out the U.S. put up that first clip, if you don't mind.
The U.S. boarded and seized a Venezuelan oil tanker in international waters off the coast.
And they basically said, we're taking this.
The U.S. officials told CBS News the seizure involved 10 members of the Coast Guard, 10 U.S. Marines, and Special Operations Forces.
So this was a U.S. military operation to take the Venezuelan oil tanker off the coast of Venezuela.
And this tanker is, by the way, on the way to Cuba to deliver its cargo, which obviously had been purchased.
Now go to that next clip.
Trump was asked what would happen to the oil.
He said, well, we'll keep it, I guess.
So it's literally piracy, Dr. Paul.
During the first Trump administration, the U.S. stole several shipments of Iranian gas that were bound for Venezuela and sold them.
Iran and Venezuela's trade relationship grew at a time due to both countries.
Proponents of the regime change appointed the country's vast oil resources as a reason to attack.
Representative Maria Salazar said, Venezuela, for those Americans who do not understand why we need to go in, Venezuela for the American oil companies will be a field day because it will be more than a trillion dollars in economic activity.
Very brazen in that, but it really is an escalation.
But this pretense that they're enforcing the law.
We write the law, we put sanctions on people, and don't you dare do anything to ship oil around the world with Iran.
So they put these rules on them, and they allude to the fact that this is the law of the land, you know, and this is the world issue.
So they use this as an excuse for doing this.
And yet at the same time, you know, we do it all the time, you know, and we raise cane about it.
So I think this is just a horrible thing that's happening here because, yes, they are.
They're stopping things that they aren't supposed to according to our law.
This goes along with my argument that we are in charge.
We tell them what to do.
If they do it, we give them more money.
If they don't, we bomb them.
Now we're in the midst of bombing and seizing ships and blowing up little vessels and all kinds of things.
So I cannot understand the tolerance.
You know, libertarianism is tolerance of people doing things that we don't like, but they're not doing any harm.
Well, this, we don't tolerate this kind of stuff.
At least I don't.
I don't tolerate this whole thing that this is justifiable because, okay, they're doing something that we told them not to do.
We wrote a regulations and we put sanctions on them.
So you better listen to us or you'll be in trouble.
It's a bad situation.
It is bad.
And let's watch that first video clip because here's President Trump explaining what we did.
He's not denying it.
He's very, very happy and proud of it.
You want to grab the earpiece and put that in, Dr. Paul, to listen to this first video.
This is President Trump explaining what they did right after it happened.
Well, thank you very much.
It's been an interesting day from the standpoint of news.
As you probably know, we've just seized a tanker on the coast of Venezuela, a large tanker, very large.
Largest one ever seized, actually.
And other things are happening.
So you'll be seeing that later, and you'll be talking about that later with some other people.
The largest tanker ever seized, by the way.
He has to always add that.
The greatest, the biggest, the largest.
An achievement.
Yeah.
But he said other things are going to happen that you'll soon be seeing, which is also disturbing for sure.
Well, here's Pam Bondi's explanation.
If you put that next clip on, and we'll play the video as well of the seizure.
That next clip is Bondi.
Now, the Attorney General, she's the one who announced that she said today the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Homeland Security Investigations, and the U.S. Coast Guard, with support from the Department of War, executed a seizure warrant for a crude oil tanker used to transport sanctioned oil, that's what you said, Dr. Paul, from Venezuela and Iran, Iran, Iran.
They've got to add that.
What is her evidence?
For multiple years, the oil tanker has been sanctioned by the U.S. due to its involvement in an illicit, illicit oil shipping network supporting foreign terrorist organizations.
This seizure completed off the coast of Venezuela was conducted safely and securely in our investigation alongside the Department of Homeland Security to prevent the transportation of sanctioned oil.
I would just say all lies.
The idea that Iran is involved in this oil is just thrown in there to get Americans excited, I think.
And sadly, there's no reassessment of overall policy.
And they're getting the support from the Republican Party, which is sad because there are so many good things that they said would be done.
And a few things have been beneficial, you know, and they're moving in the direction.
The rhetoric is pretty good.
But when they do this, this cancels out that overwhelmingly because it's such a big issue.
And it could be the downside of this is so much greater than merely putting a tariff on and walking away from it.
But this is, in a way, you know, this is part of a tariff war.
Yeah.
When you think about it, because we put on sanctions and play that game of control of trade, somebody does it, and they become arch enemies.
And then we go ahead and set the stage for just expanding this war.
This has not reduced the chances of a big war.
This has increased the odds of us being involved in a big war in the near future.
It's almost like we were saying yesterday.
It's almost like they're just begging Venezuela to shoot back.
You know, yesterday it was the fighter jets inside their bay, just begging them to do something, you know, hitting them with a stick, like the meme says, you know, do something so we can justify this war.
Now, I do have a video of the seizure of the ship, and you can see it if we can put it on.
It is definitely a military operation here.
Let's watch.
I don't know that we need to watch all of it, but let's put on a little bit of that second video and have a look at that.
Here they are.
Here we go.
Here's the U.S. military in action.
Well, that's probably enough to see what we need to see.
This is obviously clearly a military operation against a commercial vessel.
And Max Blumenthal, do we have that?
That's a clip.
No, is that the wrong clip?
Anyway, Max Blumenthal made the point that this oil was going to Cuba.
Cuba, you know, it's got probably a bad economic system.
We don't agree with it, but the people are impoverished.
And now they had their oil stolen.
They're already an impoverished country.
Now they have the oil stolen from them.
Isn't it strange that there's a flood of oil right now for this sort of period of time?
And prices are down in oil right now.
And yet they're still going, well, we've got to get more and more and more.
And we have to control this.
But it's discipline here.
They're working on discipline.
If we speak, you better listen.
That's the story that they're telling us.
So to me, it's a tragic thing that's happening.
And I wish we could wake up a few people because nothing is going to change with the crowd that we have in Washington.
The voices there are, you know, the few that are there are loud and crystal clear, but they're not going to change policy.
Matter of fact, some have been motivated to become less principled when there seems to be support for this.
But even the propaganda, what we read in the news, you can't sit around and trust it.
You know, this is happening because the news might report, oh, you know, it's a great thing.
The whole thing is, isn't it amazing that they're at a point where they're not embarrassed by it.
Here, we're a bunch of criminals, and it's sort of like a criminal robbing a bank.
And they take a video and turn it over to the police.
But, but this attitude is what bothers me because they think nothing of it.
They have convinced themselves that they're doing right and they're righteous, and that they're on the road to peace and prosperity by working this hard to start a war.
And they would, of course, be denied, deny that because they say, oh, no, we're working on keeping peace.
We're telling people what they can do and can't do.
And they have to follow us.
So we'll see what happens.
But what will that?
It's like, what do you wake up to each morning?
What kind of an incident is there going to be?
Because, you know, first it's bombing and then seizing of ships.
And who knows?
There'll be some accident.
Evidently, it's going as they plan.
This motivation to intimidate, you get Matua and Maduro just to walk out and say, okay, give me a million dollars.
I'll take $10 million of our money.
Bribe them.
They're trying bribery over.
And they call that policy and principle.
So what does that do?
You know, you get if you subsidize stuff, you get more of it.
So other people might try the same thing.
Maybe that'll happen in Ukraine.
Bribe these people to quit fighting.
They'll offer us 10 million to quit yapping.
That would be it.
I take it.
Yeah.
But, you know, let's be honest, our numbers are down.
The show numbers are down.
I hate to report it.
I'd like to say that we're through the roof.
It ebbs and flows.
We get more viewers sometimes and less.
But since we've started criticizing things that the Trump administration does that we think go against the best interest of the United States, they go against the principles that we believe are important.
People don't want to hear it.
Just like remember the run-up to the Iraq war, just like all these other things.
I don't want to hear it.
Don't criticize my idol.
Don't criticize my team.
And it is very depressing when that happens because it's not like you keep changing your tune depending on who's in office and you're just out to get Trump.
You've always stood on principles.
In fact, I was had a conversation with Judge Napolitano yesterday earlier this morning.
And I mentioned, hey, you know, we're really taking a hit on this Venezuela stuff.
People are mad.
They're calling Ron Paul really nasty names on X because we don't like blowing up boats.
And Judge said, and I don't think he'd mind if I reveal our conversation.
He said, yes, it's happening to me too.
They're really mad.
He said, but it only stiffens my backbone to speak out against it.
So, but it is dismaying when people are angry and they don't watch the show because they don't want to hear the truth.
You know, they can't handle the truth, I guess.
But here's one other thing I wanted to point out that's very interesting.
Just a little under a month ago.
So here's what we're talking about today.
U.S. Illegally Seizes Tanker 00:07:34
The U.S. has illegally seized a commercial tanker in international waters.
That's according to international law, absolutely what happened.
So rewind three weeks ago, the U.S. Central Command put out a press release, put the next one up.
Here's the press release.
They're condemning Iranian forces illegally seized commercial tanker in international waters.
You know, we always like to point out hypocrisy.
If this isn't hypocrisy, Dr. Paul, I don't know what is.
They literally did the same thing and we are attacking them for it.
And we turn around and we do the same thing yesterday.
Now, put that next clip on.
This is from that release.
Just three weeks ago, the U.S. Central Command forces monitored an incident involving Iranian forces illegally boarding and seizing a Marshall Islands flagged tanker transiting international waters in the Strait of Hormuz, November 14th.
It was boarded by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, who arrived by helicopter.
I mean, this literally is what happened, but just change the name.
The operatives then steered the tanger to Iran's territorial waters.
And now I've highlighted this part.
Iran's use of military forces to conduct an armed boarding and seizure of a commercial vessel in international waters constitutes a blatant violation of international law, undermining freedom of navigation and the free flow of commerce.
We call on Iran to articulate to the international community the legal basis for its actions.
You can't make this stuff up, Dr. Paul.
This is literally what they just did yesterday.
You know, the word that comes to my mind is schizophrenia.
Yeah, schizophrenia.
You know, to be able to do that with a straight face.
Yeah.
That just is so bewildering.
So they don't start with a basic principle.
They don't start with the principle of the Constitution or the principle of non-interventionism or a principle of fairness, a principle of common sense.
They ignore all that because they're determined to follow the leader and they're going to get the oil that we don't even need.
You know, that to me is sad.
It's very sad.
I wonder what the American people are thinking about.
Well, I do have one clip before that, if you don't mind.
This is kind of a bonus video clip of Trump.
He's not satisfied with just threatening Maduro.
Here he is threatening the president of Colombia.
I just wanted to put this in to show the aggressiveness.
If you put that third video on, let's listen to this.
He takes questions yesterday.
He starts threatening Colombia.
We have to be country sending trucks to the U.S., Mexico, Venezuela, and Colombia.
Can you talk to the president of Mexico?
You already thought that he was on the group.
Have you considered talking to the president of Colombia when you called Adropia?
No, I haven't really thought too much about him.
He's been fairly hostile to the United States.
I haven't given him a lot of thought.
And he's going to have himself some big problems if he doesn't wise up.
Did you tell Mr Frank Colombia is producing a lot of drugs?
They have cocaine factories that make cocaine, as you know, and they sell it right into the United States.
So he better wise up or he'll be next.
He'll be next.
He better wise up or he'll be next.
It sounds like the Godfather movie.
Yeah, and I get a little frustrated because there's a few people out there, either people who don't like Republicans and what's going on.
They are doing that, but they don't seem to be challenging him like they could.
Yeah, because in some way, in a weird way, Trump sort of benefits from the insanity of Trump derangement syndrome because beforehand, people were so insane with their hatred of Trump, his skin color, his hair color, the way he looked, all of these completely superficial things that now when people raise legitimate questions about his policies, in fact, I think we both could say we like Trump.
I heard Colonel McGregor saying on a show yesterday, I like Trump.
I think he's a nice person.
He's a decent person.
You found that out when you talked to him on the phone.
Very, very easy.
But his policies right now are detrimental not only to the United States, but to his own party, to his own presidency.
And so by pointing those out, in a way, we just get blanket, this blanket accusation of Trump derangement system.
No, the opposite is the true.
We want him to do the right thing, but people don't see it that way.
He benefits from how crazy his critics were previously.
This is self-limited because the type of policy we have now costs money.
No matter what they say, we're spending more and more money.
And what they do at the last minute, we're in the middle of the last minute for the budget, is add billions of more dollars to this type of activity.
You know, it costs money to go out there and blow up ships and maintain all the militarism around Venezuela and, well, around the world.
You know, if we brought everything home, we wouldn't have a place to even a place to keep the stuff where there's so much.
We've got to keep it moving and keep intimidating people.
So anyway, I wonder what the American people are thinking about all this.
Yeah, that's a good question.
Now, this is a Reuters article that came out yesterday, I think.
A broad slice of Americans oppose Venezuela boat strikes.
Reuters Ipsos poll funds, if you can put that next clip up.
Now go to the next one.
A broad swath of Americans oppose the U.S. military's campaign of deadly strikes on boats suspected of carrying illegal drugs in Caribbean and Pacific waters near Venezuela, including about one-fifth of President Trump's Republicans.
About half of the respondents, 48%, said they opposed conducting the strikes that have killed 87 people without first getting authorization from a judge or court.
Well, 34% they supported them.
18% were unsure.
So the majority of those asked, well, 48% concluded that they do not approve of these.
Now go to the next one among Republicans.
Now, this is important.
Okay.
Among Republicans, 67% supported the strikes.
And then among Democrats, 80% opposed them.
So you could say, okay, well, what's the big deal?
Why are you guys even bringing this up?
Republicans are all for it.
It's popular within the Republican Party.
But, Dr. Paul, there is a midterm coming up.
And the Democrats, if they play this right, of course, they'll be hypocritical about it, but if they play it right, it's going to motivate the people to vote.
Whereas a lot of Republicans quietly are having reservations and they're not going to show up to the polling station.
And one thing we have learned over the years is that we can get converts through foreign policy issues more so than food stamps.
This is obviously a bigger issue.
And this article you were quoting from, it says, I want to quote one sentence.
Experts say the strikes may be illegal.
They may be illegal since there has been little or no proof made public that the boats are carrying drugs.
Even if they carried the drugs, they'd be illegal.
This is not exactly from a right-wing newspaper either.
Yeah.
Yeah, I mean, they would be illegal either way.
You know, but so anyway, let's move on, Dr. Paul, to a little bit of good news because it's been another kind of bad news day on policy.
Massey's NATO Critique 00:08:37
Representative Thomas Massey, our great friend, a board member of the Ron Paul Institute.
From the very, very beginning, Thomas Massey was very friendly to us.
He introduced a bill for the U.S. to dump the Cold War relic, NATO.
Conservative and outspoken libertarian-leaning Republican, Representative Thomas Massey of Kentucky, introduced legislation Tuesday for the United States to formally withdraw from NATO.
Senator Mike Lee is also helping lead the charge, introducing companion legislation in the Senate.
Nice to see Mike Lee on the right side of this.
Great to see Massey on the right side, but not surprising of this.
It really is starting to make a splash that people are looking at this piece of legislation, Dr. Paul, and wondering what's going on.
Why are we still in it?
Well, what I find ironic and wonderful about people who stood fast a while ago, and I'm going to quote from one of the major speeches of Taft at this particular time.
It says, the speech on the North Atlantic Treaty by Robert Taft in July of 1949.
I could say I remember that, but I really don't remember it.
I was old enough to pay a little bit of attention, though, to foreign policy in 1949.
So, but I want to read a couple of sentences because it tells you so much of Robert Taft and what we're doing now because he was so prophetic about what he believed.
He says, I believe our foreign policy, this is Taft, Robert Taft.
I believe our foreign policy should be aimed primarily at security and peace.
And I believe such an alliance is more likely to produce war and suffer.
So that's what he's saying.
He says it's not going to work.
He says, if we undertake to arm all the nations around Russia from Norway on to the north to Turkey on the south, and Russia sees itself ringed about gradually by so-called defensive arms from Norway to Denmark to Turkey and Greece, it may form a different opinion.
It's just, where are we now?
Do you think we've ringed Russia and ringed Iran?
Yeah.
So he was worried about it.
He said it could, and he in his speech, Menton, you know, if we keep doing this, this could lead to a World War III.
And he says, nobody will win that one.
It'll be a total disaster.
And I hope we get enough brains that we don't do that now.
But we'd have to have a different foreign policy.
We can't do it with this because even if they want to do it limited, maybe they're just, you know, scare them a little, threaten them a little, and get our way.
And we're on the side of peace and prosperity.
But sometimes it gets out of hand.
Maybe we'll run out of money.
Or maybe there'll be an accident.
Or maybe we'll have somebody that wants to take two or three ships down in one day.
And who knows what can happen?
But it's very fragile.
And that's why we should be more concerned about it.
Well, you made a great point when we were talking before the show.
I was at least feeling a little bit down that our numbers are down.
People don't like this.
It's an unpopular view that we shouldn't be fomenting a war.
And you said, imagine what it felt like to be Robert Taft in 1949 coming out with this strong statement against NATO, you know, against the Soviet Union.
That you're right.
I mean, that must have been incredibly unpopular for him to have taken.
Well, you know, it gets worse because when the Cold War ended, we promised, and there's documentation of this, that we wouldn't be putting bases in East Europe where we decide that we should really test the waters on this.
So we go to bed with NATO, the NATO nations and Europe, and then use Ukraine for this to challenge Russia right up to their doorstep.
And matter of fact, to even bring about a coup that has precipitated this, and that's been going on for 2014.
So this extra fighting that's been going on is already 12 years old, over 12 years, and it's not ending so far.
But there's peace talk, so see what happens.
Well, I think the lesson here is be a Robert Taft, be a Ron Paul, do the right thing, even if it's not popular.
And I think it was Conrad Rails on our chat here saying that you'll be vindicated soon on this, which has been the case.
So there are a lot of good comments today, and we appreciate them.
Let's go to the next one.
Just a couple of comments of Massey about introducing this legislation.
And we'll close it out with a couple of things here.
We should withdraw from NATO and use the money to defend our own country, not socialist countries.
Now, I might quibble a little bit here with Massey because we are a socialist country, but I'll give him that.
He continues, U.S. participation has cost taxpayers trillions of dollars and continues to risk U.S. involvement in foreign wars.
America should not be the world's security blanket, especially when wealthy countries refuse to pay for their own defense.
And now, if you go to the next one, here's Thomas Massey's post on X showing the bill.
Now, it is HR, I'm going to put my glasses on here, 6508 is the legislation that he's put out there.
You can go to congress.gov, dig up that legislation, read it, familiarize yourself with it.
You can even read a summary.
I'm sure there's a good summary available.
If not, then in a few days, get familiar with it.
And then you can even, if you want, why not talk to your own representative and say, hey, this is a good piece of legislation.
Let's stop wasting money protecting other people.
Let's, it's very American first, right?
Let's defend our own country first.
You know, it's way too easy to get involved in wars and fighting and bombing and testing the waters and pretending that they're here to save the world.
At the same time, once the thing gets out of hand, it's real hard to stop.
There are too many people benefiting.
Just look at just look at what's going on in Ukraine now.
The argument now is who's going to pick up all the loot?
Remember, I guess it was Afghanistan or one of them.
It's always the case.
Who's going to get the weapons?
We walk away and leave all these weapons and somebody else comes in and picks them up.
Well, we don't want them.
We can't get more made.
We can't keep the military industrial complex.
They want us to blow up all this equipment.
We don't have to replace them.
I saw a hilarious video on X the other day.
I didn't clip it.
I should have.
But it showed a tank that we left behind in Afghanistan.
And some very crafty, clever farmer was using it on his fields, to hoe his fields, whatever you call it.
That's good.
Swords literally into plowshares, which is pretty funny.
But I'm going to close out with this will be my last day of the week.
I want to put up that last clip and just update everyone on the RPI challenge.
Every dollar that is donated, which will be tax deductible, by the way, before December 31st, will be matched by our wonderful benefactor up to $100,000.
Now, some of you may look at that $5,200 and say, wow, that's an awfully slow start.
I don't feel worried, Dr. Paul.
I know that our people believe in what we do.
I know they'll step up to the plate.
And by the way, that's 20% of our goal.
You know, it would be nice if it was 80% right now, but it's not.
I'll take 20%.
20% is nice.
And in fact, we've heard from a few people who are going to be raising that up there really quick for us.
But take heart.
20% of our goal is raised.
You can make your tax-deductible donation.
I put a clip or a link in the description of today's show.
Let's get that up there.
We know you, for the most part, believe in what we're doing, and we want to get the word out that we put principles over parties and politics.
And that's what you've done for 50 years or more.
So you'll continue to do it, I'm sure.
So over to you, sir.
Well, I want to start off by once again thanking our viewers for tuning in and participating in this effort to get a message out, which I so strongly believe in and which has done us so much good in this country.
Belief Over Partisanship 00:01:46
And those are the views that were established and put down on paper with our Constitution.
And right now, though, I believe a lot of that has been forgotten.
And people, the moisy thing to me is everybody takes the oath of office in Washington.
And if they have 100 votes, but they have one vote that is on their side of the interest they want, they cite the fact, this is a constitutional position on it.
But if they wanted to try to do it and protect all people's civil liberties and all the non-intervention and not starting these wars, starting as wars only when the Congress declares it, that is so beside the point now.
And I've told the story before that probably the first day or two that I was in Congress, way back when I won a special election, I was told by somebody on the Military Appropriations Committee, Ron, you're on the wrong track.
He says, there is never going to be another declaration of war.
That is old hat, and we don't need to do that anymore.
It would be complicated to have that.
So that has been erased from the Constitution.
That's why it's not getting any attention.
So, yeah, and there's other things that's been erased from the Constitution.
I'm afraid to sit here and outline it might depress you.
But I don't think the answer comes directly from the Congress.
I think it comes from the people when they finally say, enough is enough.
And they start to let the people know by demonstrations.
That's the way the Vietnam War ended.
I want to thank everybody for tuning in today to the Liberty Report.
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