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May 21, 2020 - Rubin Report - Dave Rubin

26:29

Opinion of Trump, Lockdowns, & Exposing How Dems Abused FISA | Rand Paul | POLITICS | Rubin Report

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rand paul ▲ ● ▼		With regard to General Flynn and his unmasking, I think it goes at least up to Joe Biden.
		Joe Biden, we now have documents that were declassified yesterday by Rick Grinnell that
		show that Joe Biden requested the unmasking of General Flynn.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		I'm Dave Rubin and this is the Rubin Report.
		Quick reminder, everybody, to subscribe to our channel and click that little bell so you get delivered our videos.
		And more importantly, joining me today is the junior senator from Kentucky and the fiercest defender of liberty that we have in the United States government, Senator Rand Paul.
		I'm thrilled you're finally joining us.
rand paul ▲ ● ▼		Glad to, Dave.
rand paul ▲ ● ▼		Glad to be on your show.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		All right, so let's dive in.
		I think we're just gonna split this interview.
		I know you've got about a half hour.
		We're gonna just split it into two parts.
		Let's spend the first half talking about this FISA amendment that you just proposed.
		Can you just talk a little bit about why you did it?
		What's going on with surveillance?
		I sense people are seriously confused about the whole Flynn case, what the Obama administration may or may not have known.
		So if you could just kind of do a 101 to clean up some of that, that would be great.
rand paul ▲ ● ▼		Well, the FISA court is the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, and it was set up in the 70s basically to investigate, spy on, surveil foreigners and possible terrorists.
		It was never intended really to be used against political candidates or to investigate American political campaigns or American political figures.
		But as everybody knows, this is what the secret court that they used to go after President Trump in 2016 in the summer and the fall.
		And I think this was a horrendous abuse of power.
		And using a secret court to go after an American, I think, is a travesty of justice.
		So this is a court that lacks constitutional protections.
		When you go to a regular court, a constitutional court that was established by Article 3 of the Constitution, you get a lawyer.
		That's one obvious thing you get.
		But you also get the Fourth Amendment.
		The Fourth Amendment says that they can't search your house or your phone or any of these things.
		unless they go to a judge and they have to say that there's probable cause that you committed
		a crime. It's a fairly high standard, but it's the constitutional standard. In the FISA court,
		they go to it and they say, "Well, you just have to have probable cause that we think you
		are associated with the foreign government." So that's what they do with Carter Page. They said,
		"Oh, we see you've talked to the Russians." And he said, "Well, yeah, I told the CIA. I
		I've run into Russians.
		I do business.
		I'm in these think tanks.
		And I told the CIA, and they know that I've talked to the Russians before, and I've tried to give them information.
		They discounted all that, lied to the FISA court, and then what began this whole Trump investigation.
		But here's my point.
		A lot of Republicans, a lot of conservatives, a lot of libertarians are upset.
		How do you fix it?
		One way of doing it is to try to make the FISA court system more like a constitutional court, so add protections in the scheme of things.
		But here's my point.
		I don't think it's possible to make it constitutional.
		They don't notify you that they're investigating you, so it's secret.
		You don't get a lawyer.
		Some of the reforms are to give you a friend, an amicus, a friend of the court that argues for you, but they still don't tell you you've been accused of anything, so you don't really direct My amendment would simply say this.
		The FISA court really isn't constitutional for Americans, so let's exempt Americans from it, and let's use it only on foreigners.
		It's called the Foreign Intelligence Court.
		Why don't we go after foreigners with it?
		And people say, well, what if there really was a spy in a political campaign?
		What would you do?
		Well, use the Constitution, go to a judge, ask for a warrant to search the person or to surveil the person, and judges do grant things like that, but you have to have evidence, but you'd also have to obey the Bill of Rights and the Fourth Amendment.
		That's what I'm for, but unfortunately, I'm in the minority up here.
		I think that would win with your crowd watching, but I'm afraid it probably didn't have enough votes in the Senate to win.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, well, I assure you, you're doing just fine in the majority on my audience, and we've got some work to do there.
		So can you just clarify a little bit?
		It seems that sort of right-leaning Twitter, let's call it right now, is saying that this stuff really went up the chain of command, and it's possible now that Biden and or Obama themselves actually knew about it, and we're instigating some of this stuff.
		What's the actual evidence at this point?
rand paul ▲ ● ▼		Well, with regard to General Flynn and his unmasking, I think it goes at least up to Joe Biden.
		Joe Biden, we now have documents that were declassified yesterday by Rick Grinnell that show that Joe Biden requested the unmasking of General Flynn.
		What does that mean?
		They get like a national security or a FISA warrant to listen to the phone call of the Russian ambassador.
		I can kind of understand that.
		We spy on ambassadors, they spy on us.
		That's what goes on around the world.
		But if that ambassador is talking to a person who's elected to our government or part of the administration, like General Flynn, they're supposed to say, oh, no, he's talking to an American.
		We're not supposed to listen.
		Or if we listen, we're not supposed to unmask that person.
		Well, the thing is, if you're a prominent person, a lot of people know you by your voice, and you may well introduce yourself by saying, Mr. Ambassador, this is General Flynn.
		So it's hard to really completely mask it.
		But here's the point.
		You're only supposed to unmask that person if there's a national security reason.
		So if they're plotting to attack the US, you'd say, well, that's reasonable.
		You unmask them to try to stop the plot.
		But if they're discussing policy, and the person's the national security advisor, there would be absolutely no reason other than a politically motivated one.
		So if this is politically motivated, then it becomes illegal surveillance, illegal eavesdropping, And really, you remember we had this impeachment trial over them saying someone in government used government to go after a political opponent?
		Turns out what they did to General Flynn sounds exactly like that.
		They abused government.
		They used surveillance to go after their political opponent.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		Are you worried for a limited government guy, you don't want the administrative state to be too big?
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		It's like, you can get in the weeds on all of this stuff, but in many ways, this is what you've spent your whole life fighting, that the whole system has just gotten so big and crazy at this point, that even if you tell people what's true, and we have all the facts in front of us, that sort of the ship has sailed on reining in the things that I think you and I and most of my audience are worried about.
rand paul ▲ ● ▼		Yes and no.
		I think if you were asked your audience, obviously it's probably a very limited government audience.
		But even if you're asked a general audience, so for example, if I ask everybody in Kentucky about whether or not a secret court where you don't get a lawyer should investigate political campaigns, how much of that polls at 75%?
		Particularly if you keep Trump out of it.
		Now, Trump's pretty popular in my state, so it doesn't hurt so much.
		Really, if you could get Trump out of it.
		But the problem is, people won't vote on principle and ideas.
		So I didn't get any Democrat votes on this.
		I only got 11 Republicans, but I got no Democrats.
		Even though many of them profess to think that FISA has too much power and shouldn't be investigating Americans, they wouldn't vote for it because they saw it as a vote rebuking FISA over Trump.
		And so they saw it as a political vote.
		But I guess I don't look at it this way.
		I lose a lot of time.
		I'm And I'm used to losing on votes in the Senate.
		But I think most of this, and this is where we do have some ability.
		So we pass out a sheet of prominent tweets that went out from senators each week on Wednesday.
		And all my office does this sheet.
		And they all complain because we'll put out something and my tweet will have gotten 30,000 retweets.
		And then we'll put out Senator so and so and they got six.
		So one of the things they see is that The Liberty Movement has reach well beyond them, and they fear the electorate.
		These people are afraid of elections.
		They're afraid of me.
		They're afraid of conservatives because they're afraid someday someone's going to wake up and challenge them in the primary, and that's what has to happen.
		It's sort of like this.
		Democrats don't care at all about the deficit, and they'll tell you.
		They want to spend more money.
		They're honest about it.
		Republicans Say they're against debt, say they're against spending, but they're also, most of them, big government Republicans, vote lockstep with the Democrats.
		So really, when people ask me whose fault is it, Republican or Democrat, I say, yeah, you know, it's really both parties' fault.
		But, you know, we could give up and just try to protect ourselves.
		But, you know, I think if we give up and the few good voices here go away, then really, I think it goes much quicker towards socialism.
		It goes much quicker towards Indebtedness and big government.
		So I have to be some voices.
		There needs to be more.
		The newer people up here, I think, are frankly better than, you know, the ones that have been here a long time.
		So I have good conversations with Senator Braun, Senator Rick Scott from Florida, and who I think are open to, you know, I think both voted with me on the FISA amendment.
		Mike Lee voted with me on the FISA amendment also.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		Can you talk a little bit about your relationship with Trump?
		Because one of the things that I've said to my audience repeatedly is, first off, I should tell you, you'll appreciate this, I voted for Gary Johnson.
		I'm here in California.
		And I had the luxury of, you know, doing a third party situation, which obviously, certain people, depending on where you live, you didn't have the luxury of doing that.
		But I wanted to make a vote for liberty more than anything else.
		But one of the reasons that I've become more okay with Trump over the last couple of years is that the guy that I respect most in the Senate, you, has become one of his big allies.
		And my feeling was, well, if Rand Paul, who I align with on so much of the liberty stuff, sees something in him, He doesn't come from a steeped, developed notion or philosophy of libertarianism.
		Can you talk a little bit about your relationship personally,
		but also just what do you think his actual governing principles are?
		'Cause it's hard to say they're traditionally conservative or Republican or whatever else.
rand paul ▲ ● ▼		He doesn't come from a steeped, developed notion or philosophy of libertarianism.
		However, when you talk to him about war and he talks about the Iraq War,
		he gets it more than any other Republican, obviously other than my dad or myself or Mike Lee.
		He gets it.
		And he says the Iraq war was a mistake.
		He was unafraid to criticize the Bushes for making what he said was the biggest foreign policy blunder of the last few decades.
		And he's right about that.
		And if you talk to him, he'll tell you consistently, he wants to bring the troops home from Afghanistan.
		He wants to end the war.
		But here's the problem is it is a tug of war.
		I try to influence and really, I don't think you can change people.
		I think you can tug at their instincts.
		John Bolton was a disaster.
		them in a direction they may already believe in. And I think he already does believe those
		things. The hard part is he's been surrounded often, and many of his appointees have been
		people with opposite opinion of ours, but also opposite opinion of the president's.
		John Bolton was a disaster. John Bolton sort of is the antithesis of libertarianism. He's
		a big spending hog and never met a war he didn't like and never met a civil liberty
		who wouldn't trample.
		And yet he got picked and was on the inside, but he was there every day.
		And I'm talking to the president once a week, so I'm at a disadvantage.
		Lindsey Graham's on that same side as well.
		So he's pushing one way, we're pushing the other.
		But I can tell you in private, when it's the president, I, and Lindsey Graham, he'll often rebuke, if not always rebuke, Graham for being for so much war and being for a perpetual war.
		All that being said, libertarians, limited government people, people who want less war who are conservatives, all get frustrated.
		It's like, well, how come we got about the same amount of troops?
		We've got more troops in Saudi Arabia.
		But also look at it this way.
		It's always a balance of what it could be.
		So, for example, the conflict with Iran.
		Had you had Lindsey Graham as president during that, we would have blown up Iran.
		We would have had a whole war.
		We may well have had regime change and people say, Oh, that'd be good.
		Well, but it could be chaos and it could be another 10 or 15 years of chaos in that region.
		So I think the president does show restraint.
		You know, they shot a drone down.
		You know, of course they said they didn't, but I mean, all evidence pointing towards them shooting a drone down and the president showed restraint.
		He said, well, nobody was killed.
		And they were encouraging me.
		Everybody wanted me to attack Iran.
		It was going to be limited, but we're going to kill, I don't know, 150 or 450 or something.
		He just said, you know, we're just not going to do it.
		And I think there's statesmanship and restraint.
		And I think he shows that.
		I think his instincts are good on war.
		And I think libertarians who decide, you know, I want to affect the election, not mine as a battleground state, I think should look for things like that.
		Is he a perfect libertarian?
		No, he doesn't seem to be too concerned with debt or really the size and scope of government as much as many of us would wish.
		But on war, he has some instincts towards less war, less intervention, on money we spend overseas and international agencies and all this stuff where we give up our sovereignty and these international agencies, you know, blast us and harangue us and tell us how evil we are while cashing our checks that pays for all their Salaries.
		He's very good on understanding that and thinking that other people need to pay their fair share.
		And so there's a lot to be said that's good.
		I tell people, if you want the perfect candidate, run for office yourself.
		Otherwise, you're always picking and choosing and trying to find the best that you can find.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		So, all right, let's shift a little bit towards corona and stimulus and just what's happening broadly.
		I'm finding right now that there actually is a really nice moment for liberty-minded people, because one of the things that we're suddenly talking about in America that we never talk about, or when I go to libertarian conferences, they talk about it, but nobody else talks about it, is states' rights.
		That is actually something being discussed at a national level right now.
		I think people are realizing they should be able to protect their family.
		So talking about the Second Amendment, I think people are realizing that maybe they don't wanna be in giant cities anymore, and I sense we're gonna have some really interesting population things changing.
		Do you sense that because of coronavirus, that the Liberty Movement and people realizing that your congressman and your senator are way more important, or should be way more important to your life than your president, are you hopeful that something might crack here?
		I mean, I'm even seeing lefties say, we should lower taxes on people now because they need more money in their pockets.
rand paul ▲ ● ▼		Well, you're optimistic and I'm glad you're optimistic on it.
		I would say this.
		I would say one of the lessons we can and should learn from the way government responds to this virus is that one size doesn't fit all.
		And that would go along with federalism, and that would go along with really, you should try to devolve to the smallest governmental unit.
		And really beyond that, you know, the Ninth Amendment says the rights not listed are not to be disparaged, but they're to be left to the states and the people.
		It's important it's not just state governments, because state governments can be tyrannical as well.
		Really, and the people.
		The problem we have is, even though we have devolved, most of Trump's pronouncements, even the ones that have been restrictive, have been guidelines without penalties.
		Most of the penalties and most of the punishment and most of the absolute shutdown of the economy came from governors.
		So even though I did devolve the states, the states were draconian, my state included.
		I call him DWP, drunk with power.
		The guy's intoxicated with his own power.
		Here's what happened.
		In our state, the legislature, who knows when, years ago passed an emergency action bill and said the governor gets it during an emergency.
		I think he even gets to declare the emergency.
		There's no check and balance.
		Our legislature can't call themselves back in session.
		We have a majority Republican legislature.
		They have no say.
		The governor has become essentially the sole He closed everything down.
		And he's still saying things like, well, we're not going to have childcare open up until we get a vaccine.
		It's like, really?
		So working parents aren't going back?
		What if we never get a vaccine?
		He banned church.
		He banned interstate travel.
		The court struck him down on both of those, but he keeps on going, and he acts as if he's, you know, he's really out there to try to help save the people.
		We've had a little bit over 300 deaths, and that's sad if it was somebody in your family, but that really, the number of deaths in Kentucky closely mirrored the flu from before.
		I'm not saying this is the traditional flu, but I am saying in certain states, the outcome has not been worse than the flu.
		The other thing about one-size-fits-all that we need to recognize is Young people have almost a zero mortality to this.
		Zero to 18, almost zero.
		Less than the flu.
		They don't want to hear it.
		But zero to 18, the deaths among children is less than the flu.
		Flu is more deadly.
		Now, if it goes up, it's the opposite.
		When you get to 70 and 80, particularly if you're 80 and above and you are in a nursing home, it might be 20 or 25% mortality, which is, you know, 50 times worse than the flu.
		So, but that means maybe we should have a different strategy for the kids than we have for the elderly.
		Maybe we didn't have to close the economy down.
		Maybe we could have done what Sweden did and not close the schools down.
		We still have knuckleheads like my governor who wanted to keep schools closed in the fall.
		It's a disaster.
		The economy can't function.
		Many people work with their kids in school.
		That's where their kids go to.
		It's a form of a place for your kids to go while the parents work.
		So we've got to open the schools.
		But That's the biggest thing we have to do.
		And you're right, some of it devolves back to states and we should want more.
		But really, we shouldn't stop the devolution of power with the governor.
		We got to go to the cities, mayors, and really, ultimately, if you own your business, it's your business.
		And you're going to have to respond to public pressure.
		I don't have to tell you what to do, but if you run a restaurant and you say I'm going to do nothing, you're going to get some people like me who have already had it and would love to come to your restaurant.
		But a lot of people are going to be worried you're going to have to do other things.
		You may have to have a senior citizen section.
		You may have to have some spacing.
		But if the government mandates it, they'll be idiots.
		They'll tell everybody to sit six feet apart.
		And if I've got five kids, I don't need to socially distance from my kids.
		We should all sit at one table on top of each other.
		But if the government mandates it, they're going to do ridiculous things.
		Businesses will figure this out.
		Churches will figure this out.
		If your mother's 85 years old, and she lives in a small town, and 20 people go to her church, and they'll space out in the church, and she wants to go, by golly, let her go.
	But if your mother's 85 years old, and she goes to a megachurch with 2,000 people crammed into the pews, I wouldn't mandate that she not go, but if she were my mother, I would tell her not to go.
	I mean, so we're not stupid.
	We should let people make decisions on risk.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, so you mentioned knuckleheads, and I'm here in California, as you may know.
		So I've got Gavin Newsom as my governor, and I've got Eric Garcetti as my mayor here in LA.
		These are big government progressives.
		So I'm gonna ask you for a little life advice right now.
		For the first time since I moved to LA, I love it here.
		It's 85 and sunny every day.
		My life has thrived.
		I've got a great small business.
		I'm in my garage right now, Senator.
		It's pretty sweet.
		But I am honestly thinking about leaving because I don't trust that these people will make the right decisions.
		And I wonder just generally, what's your philosophy on, because I think a lot of people are seeing this right now, if they live in a state that their officials' ideas are totally incongruent with their beliefs, Do you generally believe in stay and fight, or would you say, no, you can get on over to Kentucky, get on over to Florida, get on over to Texas, and go where maybe your ideas are more in line?
		Because I think this is like the most unspoken thing in America right now.
rand paul ▲ ● ▼		Well, my family lives in Texas, and I grew up in Texas, and I'll tell you what they tell me about Californians.
		You can come, you can bring your family, You can participate in the economy in Texas, but leave all those stupid political ideas of the majority in California in California.
		But they worry.
		So many Californians come complaining about high taxes, and then they come and they vote for high taxes in Texas.
		But Texas is kicking butt.
		So is Nevada.
		I mean, all the states that have low or no income tax.
		You know, look at the professional golfers like Nicholson.
		Remember they gave him such a hard time and then I think he finally did quietly leave.
		He says, Oh, I'm not leaving.
		Then he finally did.
		I mean, you're, you're a fool if you're making high.
		I know California is beautiful, but they take all your income and they're going to probably keep you in your garage forever.
		You know, your beer is going to turn out.
		It already is turning gray, but I mean, they let you out, you know?
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, all right.
		So I think you're telling me to get going.
		I've got a lot of invites.
		I'm trying to get Ted Cruz to officially give me some sort of package to get me there.
		So we'll see what happens.
rand paul ▲ ● ▼		You know, it is so beautiful, the coast and the mountains and all of that.
		It's just an amazing state.
		I love going out there.
		And it's like, except for your legislature and the craziness you've got, you've got so many problems.
		I don't even know how you exist.
		In fact, you're a good example of how resilient capitalism is.
		Despite having a bunch of, the best word is knuckleheads, socialists, government planners running your cities.
		And yet somehow, you know, California still has so much going on with the great climate for agriculture, the great coastline for tourism.
		So, you know, we'll see.
		There's a chronic exodus from New York, California.
		I'll give you an example of what Rick Scott told us the other day, the former governor of Florida, now a senator.
		He said, Florida has 3 million more people than New York state, but has one half the state budget.
		This is another reason not to send these people more bailout money because they'll just waste it and we'll just reward bad behavior.
		They also will never open the economy.
		If we pass this Democrat latest one, in addition to all the other bailouts, do you think they're more or less likely to open their economy and we give them money?
		The only reason these people will open their economy is when they run out of other people's money.
		And so that's coming.
		State treasuries are bare and they're going to have to eventually open up, even though they love controlling you and telling you what to do, they're going to finally become frightened when there's no money to even pay their own salaries.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		All right, Senator, I know you're crunched for time, so I just have one more for you.
		Can you just lay out sort of the broad sort of libertarian approach when it comes to helping people that need help most and stimulus packages and everything else?
		This is where I see libertarians get hit all the time and don't necessarily have a good comeback when we see 30 million people unemployed and we don't have the money to bail everything out, yet we always do it and get further into debt and you're basically the only guy in the Senate talking about it.
		What is the proper Or better than proper, what is the responsible approach to helping people when we're telling them that they can't work, yet also knowing that we don't even have the money in the first place?
rand paul ▲ ● ▼		I think the most humanitarian economic system is capitalism.
		It creates enormous amounts of wealth, and that's how you can help those who can't help themselves, is by having great enormous amounts of wealth created.
		Socialism doesn't work.
		I mean, if you think you're gonna be a humanitarian, Don't rub it in.
unidentified		Don't rub it in.
rand paul ▲ ● ▼		It's not going to work.
		Socialism doesn't work.
		Capitalism is humanitarian.
		And then the only other thing to remember is that don't let people guilt you into anything.
		Look, I feel an obligation to my fellow man, and most people do.
		I feel an obligation.
		I want to live in a community where there are not people in the streets hungry and begging.
		I want people to be taken care of.
		My wife and I participate in several different charities in our community.
		We try to help raise money for them and we want there to be a place for people with addiction, for people getting out of prison and trying to get a skill.
		All those things are, we actually want them for a selfish reason because we want to live in a community.
		John Allison is good at describing this and saying, you know, he's big with United Way because he wants to live in a community where there aren't poor people everywhere that are begging and on the streets.
		He wants a community where there is charity that takes care of them.
		And we shouldn't be embarrassed to that, that there's a selfish reason to give charity, sort of an Ayn Randian sort of, you know, self-interest in altruism, actually.
		But the other thing is, is that we should remember that there's a difference between an obligation and a right.
		So I have an obligation to help my fellow man because of my religious and moral beliefs.
		But you don't have a right to a penny from me.
		And Bernie Sanders does not have a right to conscript me and make me give my services to somebody who doesn't have any money.
		As a physician, I do get my services.
		So, but we just can't, you know, once we give in and say we have a right to our services, then we're all slaves and we shouldn't do it.
		And I've had this fight with Bernie before, and it's a good YouTube clip of he and I going back and forth in committee.
		But we shouldn't give in on these things.
		We've got to keep fighting, even though we don't always win.
		I think there's a much broader audience out there than there is in Washington.
		We've just got to replace a few people.
		If you'll help me replace a few people, it'll be a lot better.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		I'm with you, man.
		Well, I really appreciate it.
		I wish we had more time, but I know you've got actual work to do.
		So get to fixing the whole system, and I hope we can do this in person at some point.
unidentified		All right.
unidentified		Thanks, Dave.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		If you're looking for more honest and thoughtful conversations about politics instead of nonstop yelling, check out our politics playlist.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		And if you want to watch full interviews on a variety of topics, watch our full episode playlist all right over here.

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