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Jan. 6, 2026 - Ron Paul Liberty Report
26:37
Lies And Corruption Tarnish Trump's Venezuela Operation

The case against Nicolas Maduro hinged on the Trump Administration's designation of Cartel de los Soles as a terrorist drug organization with Maduro in charge. The Administration has now admitted there is no such cartel. The operation looks like not much more than a big payoff to Trump's donors, including "vulture" capitalist Paul Singer who stands to make billions from the operation.

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Time Text
Drug Policies and Military Misinformation 00:12:29
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 fine.
Thank you.
Very good.
We're going back in a continuation of something we've been done several days now.
The total subject we've been on for many, many years, and let's talk about the type of economic policies we have, how it gets mixed up in foreign policy, and all kinds of misinformation goes out, and it's very politicized.
But the major event that's getting attention, a lot of people, people might love what's going on with Venezuela and our willingness to be top dog and take over.
Others are starting to realize that it's not such an easy task.
And it looks like if you're looking for age groups on which direction you're going, the young people are sort of questioning this.
Maybe they're starting to think about how much we're going to have to pay for this, and are they going to be on to take, well, they have to pay for these bills.
But the legal stuff that's going on in the courts now is not as smooth sailing as they want it or as they claimed it was going to be because there's going to be a lot of rush around convictions and a lot of convictions doing in the media rather than a real justice.
So it's a mess.
But one part of this whole incident and almost all of the foreign policy that I get interested in is our major trends and the major trends away from market economy, sound money, gold standards, and minimal government regulation.
Now, the trouble is, from the very beginning, there's always been some regulations.
There's always, for long years, attack on the monetary system.
But now we live in a dangerous age where the power, the scope of our government and our empire is getting very, very dangerous.
And I think this takeover in Venezuela represents this.
But I think what we're seeing is a big boost in the growth of what is described and trying to describe what we have.
And that is crony capitalism and corporatism, where governments and big business get too close together.
And I think a lot of people don't like to even talk about it because automatically say, what are you?
I bunch of socialists, you know, or something like this, because you're criticizing it.
But I think it's a serious matter because it cannot be done successfully.
Eventually it goes broke and eventually a government that does this becomes militaristic and they have to spew out a lot of lies to maintain order.
And I think we're in the middle of this, the correction for this, whether it's monetary, deficit spending, or just plain success in the empire building.
And it to me spells trouble.
And yet I don't see awakening.
They're talking about an awakening of people to this.
But we have a long way to go because to have the system, you know, just disappear and a new system arrive and say, well, it looks like we ought to be constitutionalists.
Looks like what we should do is believe in the free market.
That's not going to happen.
So I think people should be warned on what's happening and why and how serious it is.
Yeah, I think, you know, one of the things that is necessary right now is to take a step backward, just over a few months, really, and try to figure out what happened.
Now, we remember that there was a $50 million bounty put on President Nicolas Maduro's head, the president of Venezuela.
And that $50 million bounty argued that he was the head.
He was the head of a narco-terrorist drug cartel called Cartel del Solos.
And you can actually see it now.
Secretary Marco Rubio, just in November, just in November, he said the State Department intends to designate Cartel de los Solos as a foreign terrorist organization headed by the illegitimate Nicolas Maduro.
The group has corrupted the institutions of government in Venezuela and is responsible for terrorist violence conducted by and with other designated foreign terrorist organizations, as well as for trafficking drugs into the U.S. and Europe.
They spent weeks and weeks on this narrative, Dr. Paul.
There are foreign narco-terrorist cartels running the country.
We've got to do something.
And Americans started buying it.
They started believing it.
Well, maybe there's something to this.
Maybe it's okay to blow up boats.
They're all terrorists.
Well, this dropped yesterday, put on this next clip.
Now that they have Maduro in their grasp, the Justice Department, you wouldn't believe it.
The Justice Department drops the claim that Venezuela's Cartel de los Solos is an actual group.
So they're saying, after hyping this for months, getting Americans hyped up on invading Venezuela, now they're saying, just kidding, guys, there's no such thing.
This reminds me, Dr. Paul, of the WMDs for Iraq.
They swore up and down for years.
They're working on WMDs.
They're working on WMDs.
And then when the invasion happened, they got their invasion.
Remember, President George W. Bush, he was joking about it at a White House correspondence dinner.
He was looking under the couch and looking under the coffee table, laughing.
Where's those WMDs?
They just don't care.
This is exactly it.
The Cartel de los Solos is the WMDs of this operation, and it's already completely falling apart.
And, you know, there's a lot of political significance to this.
And I think it's not over the top to start talking about the key ringleader in our foreign policy right now and refer to him to describe him that he fits the mold of a neocon.
And that gets too political.
And what does that mean?
Well, it means that our foreign policy has become more militant.
It supports the empire.
It supports the careless and frequent use of military and sometimes not even sure of why they did it.
Now, the way you bring up is the whole thing is, you know, if that's the number one reason, and they tried to make that the number one reason, well, it wasn't true.
I hope there's a judge around who asks some questions.
How can you justify this?
You know, if the organization doesn't even exist, oh, it can exist.
It's like a small meeting group or social group, but it has nothing to do with organized crime.
Yeah, it looks like the whole case is falling apart.
And all they're left with was, well, Maduro owns some machine guns.
Well, he was the president of the country.
But it's so blatant that they lied, and they knew they were lying.
And it was obvious to everyone that they were lying about this narco-terrorism.
Now, skip one and go to the one that starts, but experts in Latin America.
I think this is the New York Times article.
But experts in Latin American crime and narcotics issues have said it's actually a slang term invented by the Venezuelan media in the 90s for officials who are corrupted by drug money.
And on Saturday, after the administration captured Maduro, the Justice Department released a rewritten indictment that appeared to tacitly concede the point.
So the original indictment, Dr. Paul, before they snatched him, or as they snatched him, still mentioned this cartel of the sons.
But once they got him, they went and they rewrote it and took all of that out of it.
The prosecutors still accuse Maduro of participating in a drug trafficking conspiracy, but they abandoned the claim that Cartel de los Solos was an actual organization.
Now get this.
Instead, the revised indictment states that it refers to a patronage system and a culture of corruption fueled by drug money.
So that's what the whole thing was.
Basically, that he has a corrupt government.
Well, I've got news for them.
All you have to do is look into the Biden administration, the Trump administration, Obama administration, if you want to talk about corruption in government.
Well, what we should be looking for is, is there one out there that is not corrupt?
Yeah, yeah, tell us about it.
Yeah.
The other thing they said is that still, even though knowing this, Rubio on the Sunday shows at Meet the Press, he still referred to the Cartel de las Solos as an actual cartel.
So he didn't get the memo that, no, we can't really say that anymore because everyone knows the thing was completely fake.
Now, if you go to the DEA, the Drug Enforcement Administration's annual drug threat assessment, which details major trafficking organizations, has never mentioned Cartel de las Sulas, nor has the annual World Drug Report by the UN Office on Drugs and Crime, just like the WMDs in Iraq, completely made up.
You know, Mises, the great Austrian economist in human action, wasn't bashful at saying exactly what he believes would happen under a system of corporatism where the government and big business get together.
He says it leads to fascism.
But then nobody likes to say, you're a fascist now, unless they throw the term around and they have different definitions to go with it.
And so Mises says it will evolve.
But, you know, maybe it won't this time.
And the reason is it's not a good reason.
I mean, it's not going to be a gentle reason.
I think it might not make it all the way to Mussolini's fascism because everything is not exactly the same the next go-around.
But the system we have is collapsing.
A lot of people now won't argue with that.
You know, when you look at the price of gold and silver each morning and what's going on, there's something big going on.
And I think the collapse of this system will have a conclusion, you know, before it gets to the point where you have the super militant approach, you know, where they're using it on our own people.
I mean, we're using the military.
I mean, how many countries are we in?
Was the CIA involved again in Venezuela?
They don't even bother asking a question.
Everybody knows they were involved.
So if that happens, then people ought to start preparing to say, yes, if this goes bad and people have to give up and you can't just spewing out these trillions of dollars and think it'll last forever because there will be strong effort to maintain it.
And what the danger is, which I'm trying to head off, is the use of the military against our own people.
Yeah, we've seen hints of that too.
How about the attack on our First Amendments right now?
If you don't agree with some of these things, you're going to be in trouble.
Yeah, you can.
Well, now we can see the rationale is based on lies.
But the other part of it, and this gets into something that you always look out for very wisely so, is that this turns out that it's an actual bonanza for donors.
This is going to be a big, big payoff for big, big donors.
Now, skip one, go to the next one.
This is an article.
There's a lot of stuff coming out about this.
This is one I picked up.
You're not going to believe this, Dr. Paul.
Rationale Based on Lies 00:14:05
Venezuela raid enriches MAGA billionaire.
That is Paul Singer.
Go to the next one.
In a Saturday morning raid ordered by President Trump, U.S. forces captured Maduro.
The extraordinary attack violated U.S. international law, et cetera, et cetera.
But it will create a financial windfall for prominent Trump-supporting billionaire, investor Paul Singer.
In 2024, Singer, an 81-year-old with a net worth of $6.7 billion, donated $5 million to the Make America Great Again, Trump Super PAC.
He donated tens of millions more in the 24 cycle to Trump's allies, including 37 to support Republicans to Congress.
He also disclosed, gave a bunch of dough for the transition.
But here's the thing, Dr. Paul.
Remember back in November when we started, if you go to the next one, remember November when we were doing all this, declaring Cartel de Solos and he was a narco-trafficker?
Well, something else happened in November.
In November of 2025, Singer acquired Sitco, the U.S.-based subsidiary of Venezuela's State Oil Company.
Singer, through his private investment firm, Elliott Investment Management, bought Sitco for $5.9 billion.
The sale to Amber Energy, a subsidiary of Elliott, was forced by creditors.
Now, Sitco owns three major refineries on the Gulf Coast, 43 oil terminals, and a network of over 4,000 independently owned stations.
Now, here's the part.
By all accounts, Singer acquired these assets at a major discount.
Advisors to the court that oversaw it valued Sitco at $13 billion.
Venezuelan officials said they were worth up as much as $18 billion.
So here's a guy who in November acquires this investment for a song, and then a little over a month later, he's going to make billions off of it.
That's just a coincidence.
Just a coincidence.
And then we know that Singer, we talked about it yesterday.
He's the guy that's bankrolling the fellow who's trying to get Thomas Massey out of his seat.
Right.
You know, the one thing for sure is going to happen, because it's already seen, the people who are much more aware of what's happening have been upset to the point of anger on what's happening.
But when they read and hear these stories, of course, we want them to know the truth, but it's almost dangerous.
When the people hear this, they're going to be angry too, because what we have to do is cultivate a culture where, well, why are they doing this?
How'd they get away with it?
Why do the people allow this to happen?
I mean, the rich people, the corporations, just don't do it secretly.
I mean, the politicians that do it, we know who the neocons are.
And they get re-elected and people get excited.
They get talked into this militarism as a patriotic zeal that if you give into it, you're un-American or you won't support our troops.
And right now, we're starting to realize maybe no Americans died in this thing.
But there were a couple people died on 100, yeah.
Yeah, and uh, and that's going to make the rest of the world angry at us, and the people are going to be angry.
So that's why we frequently and constantly try to describe, you know, what we have to institute in order to alter this course.
Of course, I've started a long time ago with a big one, and that is have honest money.
And that subject is coming out because the world and a lot of people in this country now are saying, well, maybe there's something to this idea that honest money should be used.
And all of a sudden, there's a lot of people now seeking, you know, honest money where the government can't just print the money and let these guys get away with it.
This whole thing of promising these things, you know, that, oh, well, we are going to have to rebuild these oil wells and all that.
Well, the neocons.
I think we can handle that.
We can give them a health.
Yeah, it might be tough on them, but it's just an assumption.
And the people, you know, just go along with it.
The apathy that allows them to do this without looking into it is the big thing.
But then again, I feel like I always had to be cautious not to overstate it, scare people, give them false information.
And yet, I think we still have enough freedom to get information out.
And I think just the fact that we're recognizing that young people who have access to a lot of information, they're coming down and say, this doesn't make any sense to them.
Well, the other thing that's fascinating about Paul Singer, of course, he's invested a few billion.
He's going to make a ton of billion of dollars.
He was also the chief backer of Marco Rubio.
Remember when Marco ran for president?
He wrote checks for millions of dollars to little Marco, and now he's getting his payback.
It's going to be billions.
And we were disgusted by the Biden administration for its corruption, Hunter Biden, all this horrible garbage.
And I think a lot of people were voting for President Trump because they were sick of this.
But the corruption is endemic to both parties.
We're seeing it right here.
And Trump doesn't even try to hide it.
Remember, he said, oh, here's Miriam Adelson.
She gives me hundreds of millions of dollars and I do whatever she says.
You know, they don't even try to hide it.
But it is even worse than that.
And you alluded to it just now.
But if you go to that next clip, the NBC News clip, this is exactly your area of interest, Trump.
Trump says the U.S. government may reimburse oil companies for rebuilding Venezuela's infrastructure.
We're going to have to pay for it, Dr. Paul.
We're going to have to pay to fix their broken infrastructure.
You know, all these dollars, billions, and they're starting to, well, they are.
We're up talking about trillion dollars, you know, on the DOD budget.
So it's money available one way or the other.
But when you have a fiat system, the money doesn't get distributed fairly.
It gets distributed unfairly.
And that's why there's that much money.
That's why a sound monetary system is rigging all the interest rates and all the financial arguments.
That's why it's so important for people to realize this.
But on a sound monetary system, there just wouldn't be trillions of dollars to throw around like this.
So there'd still be the same effort, but it would be so much reduced because all of a sudden it's people who talk about trillion dollars after trillions, not billions.
One guy, And this coincidence, how the heck did he know to buy the oil company right before this invasion?
What a smart guy.
Good investor.
But, you know, the crony capitalism, the corporatism that you always talk about is so obvious with this because, you know, the right-wing influencers that jumped onto this as we're going to get free oil now.
This is going to be wonderful.
Well, there's a hitch, and this is the hitch.
We're going to actually have to give our money to the oil companies to fix the infrastructure in Venezuela so that they can make profits, billions of dollar profits with it.
And that's why it's so important for more people in the poor class and the middle class, when they say, well, there's too much inflation.
You know, give us more money so we can buy bread.
And, you know, they're being misled.
They have to connect, you know, this passing on the tax because printing money and giving it their special interest, the money circulation, money value goes down.
And that is a tax when you take away half of the purchasing power.
And a big way to monitor this is obviously watch the best measurement of this is the gold price that's been around for 50 years, 100 years, a couple of centuries, 1,000 years as a measurement of real value.
So this is something that unfortunately from the very beginning of our government system of money, they teach people that these things are wrong, they're not right.
Anybody in a government college class, if they would, and I know of, you know, personal experiences with people who would tell me that they would bring this up and argue because they had a little understanding of Austrian economics, and they were really put down badly.
They probably didn't get a very good grade.
Yeah.
Well, the last thing we want to cover here, just briefly, is a poll, and you alluded to it earlier in the show.
If you could put on that American Conservative article poll, Americans not on board with Trump on Venezuela.
Now, this poll, Dr. Paul, was taken on Saturday when everyone was still pretty amped up and pumped up about it before a lot of this stuff came out, like the false pretenses, the corruption, apparent corruption involved.
But if you go to that next one, Venezuela per a January 4th YouGov poll of 991 adults, when asked, do you approve of the way Donald Trump is handling Venezuela?
Only 39% of Americans responded favorably compared to 46% who expressed disapproval.
But Dr. Paul, as we have talked about endlessly on this program, when you talk about younger people, it's much, much worse for Trump.
Go to the next one.
Now, this is that same poll.
Younger people were particularly unhappy with Trump's actions.
Only 19% of 18 to 29-year-olds approve of the president's policies.
A sharp contrast with the 50% of 65-plus-year-olds who support Trump's approach to the country.
So this is still when things looked like they were going relatively well.
You had terrible numbers, especially among the youth.
And I think as this thing begins to unravel and fall apart, which I predict will happen, it's going to get much worse for him.
That's right.
People keep coming back.
How are you going to do it?
How is it going to be established?
The founders made an effort passing the Constitution where they understood natural law and they understood history.
And they tried to give us an outline and a blueprint on what to do.
But in many ways, you could argue that has failed.
We're in a mess now.
They failed pretty early on about the monetary system.
And now it's the aggressive foreign policy we have.
But I think there's, you know, we also, we always should follow this, the formality of having an organization, a constitution that says certain things.
The founders recognize natural law.
And I think natural law is worth some thought.
And that is, it basically says, you know, individuals have an instinct that they're not supposed to lie, cheat, steal, and kill.
Well, that would be a pretty good world.
But I don't think there's a large majority of people that have ever even heard of a natural law and an instinct, and you should try to follow that.
But in a society that would, all of a sudden things would be quite different.
But in the meantime, I think what we have to do, people say, well, what are you doing now to invest to try to protect against it?
I said, to me, the most important thing you do, if I'm giving a speech or something, the most important thing you could do is promote the cause of liberty because it's the liberty that we have and the rejection of violence and the aggression is what provides the atmosphere that we need.
And they say that's sort of idealistic.
It certainly is idealistic.
And I don't claim that, you know, what we need is a few more people join us and everybody's going to believe in natural law.
It doesn't work that way.
But it doesn't hurt to encourage people to, you know, follow the laws that are laid down by our Constitution and also talk about natural law and what people do because there are still, even though that's not the majority, there's still a lot of people in this country and around the world that knows about history and its long-term history of people that understood and promoted natural law.
I think, Daniel, this is what we want to continue to do.
And that's only part of our goal is education as much as trying to people to understand what's really going on.
Thank everyone for watching the show.
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And we appreciate you watching the program.
I'm going to turn it back over to you, Dr. Paul.
Very good.
And I too, of course, want to thank our viewers for tuning in repetitively and providing information for other people because that is the source of spreading information.
And it's been around for a long time.
You say, well, not one-on-one or one-on-ten.
Or if it's an idea whose time has come, believe me, the armies and the politicians and the debasement of currencies, they can't survive it.
I do think in the long run, truth will win out.
And I want to thank you very much for tuning in and giving the support to us that we deeply appreciate.
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