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Dec. 31, 2025 - Ron Paul Liberty Report
25:45
The Unnecessary Somali Scandal

The apparent massive welfare fraud committed by Somali-Americans in Minnesota has animated anti-immigrant sentiment in the US. The corruption appears to go deep. But are there other causes to the current crisis? Also today: Pentagon sends more free stuff to Israel...

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Time Text
Minnesota Scandal Looms 00:10:25
Hello, everybody, and thank you for tuning in to the Ron Paul 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.
All right.
I want to start off with one item that we may have mentioned already in our programming, but it continues to be mentioned because it's so scandalous.
And that has to do with Minnesota.
And I guess that governor may be in a little trouble because there's a scandal going on there, and it's not a couple thousand or a couple million.
It looks like it's a big, a big deal.
And for this reason, Trump said, hey, look, you're stealing federal funds.
We're sending money in there.
And he, of course, has an unbelievable ability to do what he thinks is best.
And in this case, he throws all the money to the child care, which makes a whole lot of sense.
It actually challenges something that I've always claimed, that if we were ever serious about cutting back on our budgets, it would be easier to cut down the military-industrial complex than it would be child care.
But there's nothing wrong with what he has done.
And it makes a point, though, is why were we involved in such programs like this?
So it has been discontinued, and something else will happen.
Somebody will figure out a way to restore the funding.
But this is a big deal right now, but I don't think it's anything new.
I think it might stir up more people to do some checking.
And what Cleon was supposed to, Elon was supposed to do, is look into this.
And I think he has to a large degree.
So this is certainly legitimate, but it's not so simple as to saying, well, there's a couple criminals and some of them are illegals and therefore we have to clean up the mess.
I think it's incestuous.
It has to do with ordinary financing of all our programs because that's a transfer of money from one group to another by force.
And therefore, it's a bigger issue than just somebody ripping us off with a few more millions of dollars.
And there's kinds of can be all kinds of reasons that motivate people to go after a problem like this.
But it is a mess.
And rightfully, I think that what I would like to see is it expanded to define this scandalous stuff more as much as this kind is bad.
This is sort of called illegal.
Well, there are some of us who believe that transferring money to the social welfare SAN to the industrial welfares, that it's immoral, but technically they have a law on their side.
And I think this would be a good time for people to start thinking about problems like this are identical in many ways morally to what people do by just getting a majority vote in the Congress or a president that will write an executive order and saying, do this, do that.
So it's the point being that the transfer of wealth under force from one group to another is not a very good characteristic of free society.
But I think right now there will be the concentration on this on the scandal in Minnesota, which like I say is good, but we should expand the definition of the scandal because the government is the big scandal pusher.
Yeah, and it is.
It's outrageous.
You know, there are, I think it's Minnesota is the largest recipient of Somali refugees or Somali immigrants, legal and illegal in the U.S.
And what we see in the news is they've come up with a scam where they scam these child care services.
They don't really send their kids.
They just split the money and they get the federal money.
And it looks like a big scam and it is outrageous.
It also plays into the hands.
It's a political winner for conservatives and for the Trump administration.
There's no question about it.
I think it's also a bit of a distraction, to be honest, because as you point out, yes, as much as these billions being stolen make you angry, there are more billions being stolen elsewhere.
And we're not talking about things like Epstein anymore.
We're not talking about things like failures in Russia.
We're not talking about things like aid to Israel as much anymore.
So there's that.
There are those things.
Well, here's what's happened this morning.
Now, it is a big scam, and it looks like the administration is taking action, and it's going to be a political winner for them, I think, among their base.
Trump administration freezes all child care payments to Minnesota as Somali daycare scandal goes viral.
The HHS secretary said no more federal child care funding.
And it came about because this is interesting too, Dr. Paul.
This is another twist.
If you go to the next one, this wasn't broken by CBS or CNN.
Actually, the story broke from a citizen journalist.
He didn't have a big affiliation with some of the big media, the MSM.
We're covering it up.
Here's a guy with a camera.
Following viral footage from journalist Nick Shirley, which showed nearly a dozen Minnesota daycare centers that had no children in attendance during the middle of the day, yet receiving state funds to operate services.
O'Neill, this is the deputy secretary, said that HHS has identified the centers featured in the video and demanded that the state carry out a comprehensive audit, including attendance records, licenses, complaints, investigations, and inspections.
Now go to the next one.
Minnesota receives hundreds of millions in federally, in federal dollars annually to support its child care assistance program, which subsidizes daycare for around 23,000 children from low-income families.
In 2026, HHS was expected to kick in $218 million, while the state kicks in $155 million, according to state projections.
So that's basically what's happening in a nutshell.
Citizen journalists came over there and recorded that they were scamming lots of money out of the federal government in the states.
I think this was the place that misspelled the words on their sign out front.
And they've hurried up and changed the spelling.
Yeah, that's funny.
That was cool.
Because they never even got to the point of spelling a few simple words correctly.
But I think this is very small when you come, if you limit it to a scandal as big as this.
But I think that this will help expose a lot more.
There'll be more people hustling around because these groups, they get too cocky.
They do this for five or 10 years.
They don't even get their hands dirty with the money, but they sure do benefit by it.
And if you're in on the scheme, you're going to benefit by it.
And then nobody speaks up.
And the journalists, the people who call themselves journalists, but aren't, they don't even pay any attention to it.
So it doesn't sound like, it doesn't sound like The individual that broke this was some sort of genius.
He was just motivated to check on a couple records.
Where are the kids?
Yeah, where are the kids?
Where are the kids?
Where's this money going?
Well, I think a lot of people on the right in Trump's base are picking out the aspect of this is a problem with mass immigration from people of very disparate cultures, people very different than us.
And there's probably a little bit to that.
When you bring a lot of people in who are very, very different and they have their own culture, et cetera, that could certainly be a problem.
But when you, as you again, as you mentioned from the beginning, when you want to talk about actual real crime, the white collar and the corporate criminals are a lot better than these Somalia scammers.
But nevertheless, I think it's going to be a political winner for the administration.
It's going to distract a lot of people, which is going to be healthy for them.
Yeah, and I think the alternative that we alluded to is the fact that it's in the military-industrial complex.
I think those dollars that are being transferred and consumed all legally, and the Congress going along with it, just because Congress or the president goes along with it doesn't make it correct, but it makes it socially acceptable as if.
But I think this represents an example of the total absence of a natural law versus, oh, all we have to do is get the people to change the regulation.
You know, we can have an executive order, we can have a bill passed in the Congress.
And even though it's based on, you know, theft, that you steal the money from the people that are producing.
And that's why I think it's proper when you talk about, you know, taxation is theft.
And then if you really want to talk about the theft and the hurting of people, it's when the taxes come out by the stealing of value of the money.
And that's that's really dumping along the people they're pretending to help.
You know, the middle class and the poor suffer the most.
And yet the whole programs are supposed to be helping people.
And they don't even get in the door to get anything.
They don't even look for somebody that's looking for help.
And yet, so I think the individuals that are working on this and hopefully continue doing a great deal, great service, and we might just plant a seed that's saying, yes, just look at every program that government does.
It technically may be legal, but is it moral and a good standard?
Humanitarian Aid's Broken Promise 00:08:59
Well, you say, well, people's morality, how can you understand it?
Maybe you could start with the outline that was given to us by the Constitution.
And the founders had strong opinions about this.
Theirs was that very, the government, the federal government, had certain things, but they were precise in listening this and assuming that they could not do these things if it wasn't authorized.
You know, the other thing about this, as with the Russia-Ukraine war right now, as with problems in the Middle East, the one aspect of this current Somali issue that won't be touched and won't be addressed are the antecedents.
Now, the problem we have with this is that it was driven by bad foreign policy.
Why are there so many Somalis here?
Did they just like our freedom?
Do they like our sunshine?
Maybe not Minnesota, but no, no, it's driven by a very, very bad foreign policy.
And one of those is U.S. intervention in Somalia, starting really in the 1970s and peaking in the 90s.
Now, I just went to AI to get a real quick summary of some of these things.
If you put this next one on, overview of U.S. intervention in Somalia.
The U.S. intervention in Somalia has occurred in multiple phases, primarily driven by humanitarian crises.
And, and I highlighted this, the fight against terrorism.
So, we have early intervention in the early 90s.
Restore Hope was a humanitarian, supposed mission.
And then UNSCOM 1 and 2 were military interventions with the U.S. in the lead in Somalia.
We all remember Blackhawk Down and what happened there.
Counterterrorism efforts since 2007 in Somalia.
Tons and tons of bombing because we say that there's ISIS there.
Now, go to the next one: key events: the Battle of Mogadishu.
We remember that from 93, and that was where the 18 soldiers were killed, the Black Hawk Down.
It shifted U.S. public opinion, but there are ongoing operations in Somalia.
U.S. intervention reflects a complex interplay of humanitarian efforts and military strategy.
Now, here's a well, how did that relate to what's going on in Minnesota?
Well, look at the timeline.
Go to the next one.
In the mid and late 1990s, this is around the time we were there militarily.
The largest number of Somalis arrived after the civil war in Somalia.
Somali community in the U.S. is now among the largest of Somali diaspora.
The U.S. was supporting one side, they were supporting the government in the civil war, and their government was overturned.
So, we were there militarily.
We destabilized the country by getting involved in their civil war.
And the result, surprise, surprise, is you get a ton of refugees.
So, we can talk about the fact that they're scamming us out of welfare, but why don't we talk about intervention in the first place, which causes these problems?
And the story must have gone out that, you know, the welfare benefits aren't too difficult to come by.
Yeah, yeah, they're no dummies.
Shared by all.
Yeah, yeah, there is.
And it goes on to this day because, you know, President Trump, if you put that first bonus clip, now he came out today with a very strong social media comment.
I know it's going to be hard to scramble.
Yeah, here's what he said today: much of the Minnesota fraud up to 90% is caused by the people that came to our country illegally from Somalia.
Congresswoman Omar keeps now he goes on and talks about how she's a lowlife.
I don't want to read that because I think it's rude.
Send them back from where they came.
Somalia is the worst, most corrupt country on earth.
Okay, that may all be true.
But what President Trump is doing is continuing to make the problem worse.
Go to that next bonus clip.
What is happening?
The whole thing is caused by intervention.
Look at those lines.
This is thanks to Dave DeCamp for showing this.
U.S. air drone and ground operations in Somalia by administration and year.
That one on the right that is bigger than all the other ones before that, that's President Trump bombing Somalia just this year.
Dave de Camp says, to understand how unprecedented this bombing campaign is in Somalia, check out the handy chart from New America.
They do a good job of tracking the war.
Trump has bombed Somalia this year more than Bush, Obama, and Biden combined.
So what creates illegal immigrants, people desperate to come here?
Well, it's the U.S. bombing their country.
Maybe we could start by stopping to bomb Somalia, which has absolutely no effect on U.S. national security.
That's too difficult to understand.
They can't put that together.
And right and wrong is not complicated, but if it offends a person or limits their little programs they're running, then all of a sudden they get a little confused on these reforms that should have been put in place.
And I'm sure AFRICOM needs something to do over there.
You know, they need to bomb a few places.
So anyway, again, it's going to be the frustration of wanting to deal with the cause of the problem, but nobody else wants to.
They want to deal with the effect.
So I guess we move on to the second topic today, which is the same thing, which is money being wasted on things that have nothing to do with our security.
Now, this is something that Dave DeCamp wrote up on anti-war.
More money for Israel, U.S. to fund $8.6 billion Boeing contract for Israeli F-15 fighter jets.
The Department of War, I say defense, announced on Monday that Boeing has been awarded a contract worth up to $8.6 billion to sell, quote unquote, I would say, new F-15 fighters as part of a deal funded by U.S. military aid.
Now, this is nothing, you can't pin the whole thing on Trump here because the bill was passed in November 24 before he came into power.
But nevertheless, that money is being used and it will be going to buy these F-15s for Israel.
So, but this costs a lot of money.
It costs a lot of money, yeah.
But you know, I think behind the scenes and deep down in the hearts of the planners, this is a good deal for our stats.
Yeah.
Because, you know, what's the DOD?
A trillion this year?
Yeah.
Give or take.
Yeah, give or take.
But what it does for the stats is, and this is something the current administration loves, you know, GDP just went up.
All that money is counted in GDP.
And then there's the taking of the money, which is pain and suffering to initiate it.
And then there's the inflation that they participate in.
Then there's the interest that they have to pay on this.
And they say, well, this is really good.
Our economy is booming.
And that's why I highly resent it when people argue the case that, you know, when things are tough, what we need is a good war to end the depression, because that's what they were told, you know, in 1938 and 40 about why we need this war, because it will be good for the economy.
Yeah.
Yeah, right.
It's terrible.
Well, a little bit more from the article, if you go to that next one, the U.S. has continued to provide Israel with massive amounts of weapons despite its genocidal campaign in Gaza, which of course is illegal.
The U.S. is not allowed by law to provide military aid to a country that is committing humanitarian crimes, which it is obviously doing.
That's just my aside.
According to several studies, they likely killed more than 100,000 Palestinians, including tens of thousands of women of children.
U.S. military aid and direct military intervention have also supported Israel's wars in Lebanon, Syria, Yemen, Iran, and the occupation of the West Bank.
Dave continues, according to Brown University's costs of war project, and I highlight this part, in the two years following the October 7th attack, the U.S. government spent at least $21.7 billion on military aid to Israel and another $9.65 billion to $12 billion on U.S. military operations in the region in support of Israel.
So you are looking at over $30 billion spent just in those two years in support of Israel's war in the region.
And I think that's why, Dr. Paul, you're seeing more and more Americans and even conservative Americans saying, why are we doing this?
How does it benefit us?
And how can we stop doing this?
You know, Trump did, and I acknowledge that this was, you know, reasonable.
And that was he was freezing all the fund for child care payments because of the monstrosity of what they've been doing and the whole thing that somebody has to call attention to this.
Empire's Last Stand 00:06:17
But there's a lot of other things that go on.
So that I don't, that won't save money.
You know, they're not going to have all the funding.
It just bumps up and somebody else is going to do it together.
But what about the ships?
The Trump class.
The golden flea, and we're going to call it the Trump fleet.
Yeah, the Trump fleet.
So Trump saves some money.
He not saves it, but people applaud, as we do, that, you know, we're going to cut down on this wicked fraud, you know, on these child care programs.
But then they come along and they go and they plan the fleet, you know, they're on schedule.
They're putting on schedule, they're going to build two of these things.
And I was always told by the experts that I knew about that battleships were old-fashioned.
And I still believe that statement because battleships and aircraft carriers, you know, well placed to missile, that can't be that big of a problem.
They could put people on Mars and the moon and everything else that they could hit a battleship.
And yet they said on and on.
But just think of what that's going to do to the GDP.
Boy, our country is going to look so wealthy.
You know, our GDP is growing now at 7% if we just keep spending.
And as long as the people will loan us the money, there's the catch.
And as long as they can maintain the purchasing power of the dollar, they can get away with it.
But it's fast approaching that these conditions are changing.
Yeah, and some people are getting very, very rich, but it's a very, very narrow layer at the top.
10% of the people put in that group.
Yeah, absolutely.
Well, I'm going to close out today with a couple of things.
First of all, this is going to be our last show of 2025, Dr. Paul.
We've been at it for the whole year.
It's been a challenging year.
It's been a year of ups and downs, of highs and lows, of excitement and disappointment, and that's just the nature of life.
But I hope you recognize that if you've known Dr. Paul and followed him as long as a lot of people have, that, you know, we are not beholden to political parties or political shifts in the wind.
And sometimes that makes us popular.
Sometimes it makes us less popular.
But we do appreciate more than anything is having you along with us, whether you agree with everything we say or not, just coming along to listen.
And I will remind you, if you put on that very, very last clip, that we're just hours away from midnight.
That means we still have about $24,000 to raise in our $100,000 challenge from a donor so that we can continue not only the Ron Paul Liberty Report, but all of the things that the Ron Paul Institute does and wants to do in the coming year, our conferences, our Ron Paul scholar seminars, and a lot of other things that we have cooking up that we'd like to get going.
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If you can help us get to that, we are getting really close.
So if you can help us get to that magic number by midnight tonight, we will be extra thrilled.
Over to you, Dr. Paul.
Very good.
You know, the emphasis on the principle of empire has been mentioned more often in these last several months and several years.
And of course, what we try to emphasize, too, is a very much emphasis on this issue, and that is that, you know, non-interventionism is a type of foreign policy where you mind your own business.
If people aren't attacking you, you don't engage.
But you voluntarily, you know, trade with people and get along with people.
And that is what was intended by the founders and the Constitution.
But the empire building, I think, really started in the 20th century and after World War II.
And there's being challenges to that right now.
And the empire is going to always be looking for people who will support more government because there's problems out there and the government has to take care of these problems.
And I keep trying to figure out how can we put up with so much great technology, but we don't have a little bit more common sense on how to get along with people.
And that is one reason why we spend time on the Liberty Report talking about non-intervention, because people are not perfect.
We make mistakes, but they should be limited to the people that they're making mistakes on, on the local people.
But if you send them all to Washington and they make mistakes, then it's really painful.
But so there has to be dealt with a principle, and the principle we push here on foreign policy is non-interventionism.
That where we trade and talk and work with people, but we don't go on and say that what we need to do is build the empire.
And I'm afraid to say that in these last year or two, there's been an acceptance of too many people about the glory of increasing the empire.
And that attitude has to change.
We have to talk about how do you work and develop a system where you assume the responsibility and assume the conditions that you create.
And that, to me, would be non-intervention, mind our own business.
And first order, just do our best to follow the rules that were laid down.
And that every member of Congress takes an oath to help us.
Sometimes I think they cross their fingers on that because I didn't see many people who really watched it closely.
I do want to thank everybody tuning in today and at other times for the support because without your support, we really can't do much other than offer something else.
And we feel good about the people who have come to our conferences, the people who have participated, the people who have supported us financially.
We deeply appreciate that.
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