Stay Free - Russel Brand - Rand Paul: Trump, Tariffs & The Tyranny of Centralized Power - SF623

00:00:07.000 Ladies and gentlemen, Russell Brand and Russell Conspiracy Theory.

00:00:12.000 Trying to bring real journalism to the American people.

00:00:17.000 Hello there, you Awakening Wonders.

00:00:18.000 Thanks for joining me today for Stay Free with Russell Brand.

00:00:21.000 Wherever you're watching us, make your way over to Rumble.

00:00:22.000 And if you don't have Rumble Premium yet, get Rumble Premium now.

00:00:26.000 You get additional content from me, but not just me.

00:00:28.000 From Tim Paul and Tim Cast and Crowder and Mug Club and Glenn Greenwald and Dave Rubin and a whole host of other Rumble content creators.

00:00:36.000 If you're watching the Snakex or YouTube, you're ultimately going to have to come over here if you want to watch my conversation with Senator Rampaul.

00:00:41.000 And it's an interesting one.

00:00:43.000 Thanks, Tim Cast, for the raid.

00:00:44.000 Thank you, Mug Club, for the raid. 0.96

00:00:47.000 And we'll be throwing to the quarter in at the end of this show.

00:00:50.000 In this conversation with Senator Rampaul, we talk more broadly about the principles of libertarianism and whether or not the systems of government as they currently are can deliver anything other than continuity for systems of power.

00:01:01.000 It's a brilliant conversation and I found myself agreeing with Rampaul on a lot of issues except for using the metrics of materialism and consumerism as the metrics by which we might evaluate our own success.

00:01:13.000 Let me know in the comments and chat what you think whenever anyone pulls a bunch of statistics that tell you, actually, in the old days, everyone only had a dollar a day and now life's fantastic.

00:01:24.000 You're happy.

00:01:25.000 What do you mean you feel down? 1.00

00:01:27.000 You can lay on your back at home lowering your own genitalia into your mouth. 1.00

00:01:32.000 I don't know why that's the image I went for. 1.00

00:01:33.000 As you know, I'm suffering from mental illness.

00:01:36.000 Anyway, wherever you're watching this, get over to Rumble.

00:01:40.000 Let's get into the conversation with Senator Rampaul right away.

00:01:45.000 Thank you for joining us, Senator Rampaul.

00:01:48.000 It's a pleasure to meet you in person, sir.

00:01:50.000 And it's a pleasure to meet you at this peculiar junction in American political life where it seems that whatever was wrought by the unusual and anomalous emergences of Donald Trump and the reskinning of the Republican Party is now undergoing a further analysis as the second term in government sort of deviates and warps.

00:02:13.000 Do you think that the big, beautiful act as it is now is what will come to define Donald Trump's presidency?

00:02:19.000 Or will it be the Epstein list that which has, for me, become a kind of synecdoke now rather than an actual list that means, are you any different from the former administration?

00:02:30.000 I think if we step back and we look at the Trump administration and Trump in history, the big debate will be over executive power.

00:02:38.000 And this isn't a new debate.

00:02:39.000 We had it with the kings of England.

00:02:41.000 We tried to form a republic where we limited the power of the executive.

00:02:45.000 But Donald Trump has grabbed up a lot of executive power and is operating through emergency.

00:02:51.000 So basically, one of the big items I think he will be remembered for is tariffs.

00:02:55.000 But it's not tariffs being done through Congress.

00:02:57.000 It's tariffs being done by a royal edict or executive edict.

00:03:01.000 And these edicts really aren't passed by Congress.

00:03:04.000 They're simply him taking up this power.

00:03:07.000 It's working its way through our courts.

00:03:10.000 And we've had one federal court already say that he can't do it.

00:03:13.000 And we'll see what happens when it gets to the Supreme Court.

00:03:15.000 He's using a law that was used to allow him to do sanctions on other countries.

00:03:20.000 He's using it to create tariffs.

00:03:23.000 But if you look at tariffs, they're simply a tax.

00:03:25.000 And in our Constitution, we have a very specific rule that says taxes must originate in the House of Representatives, go to the Senate, and then come back and be passed.

00:03:34.000 The tariffs are never being passed by Congress at all.

00:03:36.000 He's completely done an end run around Congress.

00:03:39.000 I think the debate over how much power the executive has will be what he's remembered for.

00:03:44.000 He's doing it in the hiring and firing, too.

00:03:47.000 So the Supreme Court and the other courts are upholding his ability to hire and fire.

00:03:52.000 And I think that's a good thing.

00:03:53.000 On the issue of tariffs, I think the court will ultimately rule against him.

00:03:57.000 So I think the entire regime of tariffs that is out there, there's a possibility that the legal rug is torn out from under them and that there will be a legal prohibition on what he's doing.

00:04:07.000 That would be extraordinary.

00:04:08.000 And I don't think many people are talking about it.

00:04:10.000 That is fascinating because I was unaware of the maneuvering that was required in order to execute these tariffs or that it wasn't explicit in legislation the way that it's currently being engendered.

00:04:24.000 But the kind of maneuvering that we're used to in Washington, you know, as observers, comparable to I was talking to Marjorie Taylor Greene yesterday and she explained how the legislation around cryptocurrency has no initial bill doesn't afford the ability to create centralized currencies, but there's another bill that ultimately won't get passed through the Senate.

00:04:48.000 And when I was listening to the sort of game of politics, as described by the Congresswoman, what you say now echoes it, that there is an ulterior and secondary politics that takes place.

00:05:02.000 And I suppose, in a way, when it comes to the obviously unique figure of Donald Trump, what we're experiencing now is what the limitations of his power and personality are.

00:05:12.000 And specifically on the subject of tariffs, do you regard that ultimately then as a tax on American people?

00:05:20.000 Or do you see it, as he appears to frame it, as an opportunity to cudgel foreign partners and control them and assert American authority in power and serve the American people?

00:05:31.000 Without question, tariffs are paid by the American consumer.

00:05:35.000 Even when the business is taxed, the tax of the person bringing it in, most of the time that's Americans.

00:05:40.000 So Americans make clothing in Vietnam. 0.97

00:05:42.000 They make it in China.

00:05:43.000 It comes over here.

00:05:44.000 They're largely American companies.

00:05:46.000 So if you want to tax cell phones being created in China that Apple makes, you're taxing an American company.

00:05:53.000 And the president wants it both ways.

00:05:55.000 He sometimes says we're going to punish China, but then he also says if Tim Cook doesn't listen to him, he's going to punish Apple.

00:06:01.000 If they take their phones to India instead of from China, they make them in India, he'll punish them also. 0.99

00:06:06.000 But then he's no longer talking about punishing China.

00:06:08.000 He's talking about punishing Tim Cook and Apple.

00:06:10.000 Ultimately, they're taxes on Americans, without question, they are revenue.

00:06:14.000 They're brought into the treasury.

00:06:16.000 And the vast majority of them are paid by American companies that are importing these goods into America.

00:06:22.000 And then the consumer pays this because if I am making coats, ski coats, and they were $55, They're now going to be $65 because they cost more to make.

00:06:33.000 I have to pass it on.

00:06:35.000 Everybody passes along taxes to the consumer.

00:06:38.000 So ultimately, the consumer will pay for these things.

00:06:40.000 It's interesting.

00:06:40.000 It seems like, in a way, it's very difficult to hack the system that, in a way, whether it's the Epson list or the imposition of tariffs, at least superficially, as a kind of a weapon against foreign trading partners or other powers, ultimately the system has methods for sustaining itself that mean that the forfeit is always paid by the consumer.

00:07:04.000 And do you think that alludes to a deeper crisis in America?

00:07:08.000 Because sometimes there's this level of conversation that seems to me like we're discussing sort of stratagems.

00:07:12.000 And I know it's not abstract.

00:07:14.000 I know it's sort of literal and legalistic, but do you sense concurrently there's a sort of crisis in the American psychic and spiritual life as people begin to recognize that the sort of populist MAGA promise can't really be delivered precisely because of what you've explained, even with this one example?

00:07:30.000 I think ultimately nationalism and populism is sold by having an enemy.

00:07:35.000 Some enemies are very easy to conjure.

00:07:37.000 Some enemies already have some bad attributes and we can play those up.

00:07:41.000 So China plays the perfect role. 1.00

00:07:44.000 They do things that aren't particularly savory.

00:07:47.000 They steal intellectual property.

00:07:49.000 They are protectionists themselves.

00:07:52.000 And so it's very easy to say, well, China, we must do something about China. 0.88

00:07:56.000 But then they extend it to others and they say, well, this is easy.

00:07:58.000 We must have this villain and these foreigners must pay. 1.00

00:08:02.000 But really, the Americans pay. 0.74

00:08:03.000 The average American goes to Walmart, shops at Walmart, saves about $1,500 to $2,000 a year because of international trade.

00:08:11.000 So they are richer.

00:08:12.000 So really, instead of saying, I'm going to get China, you need to say, oh, that guy that makes $30,000 a year that has a pickup truck and two kids and barely gets by and has no money left at the end of the month, no money after rent and gas and all of that, that's the guy that's paying $2,000 more because he has to shop at Walmart because they have the best prices.

00:08:31.000 But the prices are going to go up by $2,000.

00:08:33.000 That's the guy getting ripped off.

00:08:35.000 But it's built upon this whole sort of fallacy that if I buy something from you, that somehow someone's getting ripped off.

00:08:43.000 The truth of the matter is this.

00:08:45.000 There is no trade that is not mutually beneficial.

00:08:49.000 So if I want to buy advertising on your show, you can't force me to do it.

00:08:54.000 I only buy it because I like your product or I think I get to a lot of consumers.

00:08:57.000 So it's voluntary.

00:08:58.000 Nobody buys ads from you on your show is being ripped off.

00:09:03.000 But what if I do a big circle around them and they're all from China and I say, well, we have a trade deficit with China. 0.87

00:09:07.000 You're all getting ripped off by China. 1.00

00:09:09.000 But each individual trade was mutually beneficial.

00:09:12.000 So if let's say a million people buy a TV at Walmart and all the TVs are made in China, that's not true, but let's just say it's true. 1.00

00:09:21.000 Each person that went in there paid $600.

00:09:24.000 They gave $600 willingly because they wanted the TV more than their $600.

00:09:29.000 Walmart wanted the $600 more than their TV.

00:09:31.000 So it was a voluntary trade.

00:09:33.000 All voluntary trades are beneficial.

00:09:35.000 But how can a million people have a voluntary trade where they buy a TV from China and they're all happy because they gave up their money voluntarily?

00:09:43.000 And then you draw a circle around it and say, oh, well, they're all made in China.

00:09:45.000 We got ripped off.

00:09:46.000 How can a million voluntary, positive, mutually beneficial trades be summed up as being ripped off?

00:09:53.000 It's a fallacy.

00:09:54.000 No one's being ripped off in trade.

00:09:56.000 In fact, we've become extraordinarily rich through international trade from the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, but really even after World War II, if you look at prosperity, prosperity has been doing this, which leads to the other fallacy.

00:10:09.000 They say, oh, the middle class is being hollowed out.

00:10:11.000 The middle class is being ripped off by trade.

00:10:14.000 The middle class is worse. 1.00

00:10:15.000 We don't have manufacturing jobs.

00:10:18.000 If you look at household income from 1970 to the present, 50 some odd years, household income is being doing like this.

00:10:25.000 The lower class is getting richer.

00:10:27.000 The middle class is getting richer, and so is the upper class.

00:10:30.000 The middle class isn't being hollowed out.

00:10:32.000 If anything, they're moving up into the upper class.

00:10:35.000 The one group in America that's growing more rapidly than any other group is those making $100,000 and more in constant dollars.

00:10:43.000 So it's based on fallacy.

00:10:45.000 The whole notion that we need to protect ourselves and have impediments to trade, it's a fallacy and will make us poorer.

00:10:51.000 We can't make this content without the support of our partners is a message from one now. 0.60

00:10:57.000 The world is divided socially, politically, culturally, economically, maybe even in your own genitalia.

00:11:03.000 If you're Brujit de Macron, we need to understand the financial markets. 0.96

00:11:07.000 We've been lied to.

00:11:08.000 We've been distracted.

00:11:09.000 We've been controlled.

00:11:10.000 If you know me, you know I don't understand finance, Bitcoin.

00:11:13.000 I don't understand cryptocurrencies.

00:11:14.000 I don't understand the Federal Reserve.

00:11:16.000 I don't understand the deficit.

00:11:17.000 I didn't understand the 2008 global crash where they bundled together subprime mortgages to exploit the ordinary people of America.

00:11:24.000 A crime that has still not seen anybody arrested or charged.

00:11:28.000 What I do know, though, is that there are ways that Robin Hood organizations can get together to empower you to make sensible investments now.

00:11:36.000 And that's where Allio Capital comes in.

00:11:38.000 Wouldn't it be great if there was the investment app that was designed by people that understand a macro perspective and how global events affect your finances?

00:11:45.000 Yes, please.

00:11:46.000 Now you can have the power in the palm of your hand with the Allio Capital app powered by Altitude AI, which identifies shifts in inflation, interest rates, and global risk, then adapts portfolios in real time.

00:11:57.000 Alio is designed for hands-on or hands-off investors.

00:12:01.000 Macro investing for people who want to understand the big picture.

00:12:04.000 Download their app in the app store or at Google Play or text my name, Russell.

00:12:08.000 This is the simplest one.

00:12:09.000 If you're like me and you don't understand technology and you want to be stinking rich and you want to take advantage of Alio app, text my name, that's Russell, R-U-S-E-L-L.

00:12:16.000 See it now on the screen, to 511511.

00:12:20.000 Download the Alio app or text Russell to 511-511 today.

00:12:23.000 Investing involves risks.

00:12:24.000 Of course it does.

00:12:25.000 Everything involves risks, including the potential loss of principal.

00:12:28.000 What?

00:12:28.000 You won't catch me losing mine, baby.

00:12:30.000 Past performance does not guarantee results.

00:12:32.000 See, terms and conditions.

00:12:33.000 Tax fees may apply.

00:12:34.000 This is a paid advertisement for Alio Capital.

00:12:36.000 Alio Capital, making investment easy for people like me who just don't have the time to be a George Soros or a Warren Buffett or any of them guys, but would still like to be stinking rich.

00:12:47.000 So text my name to 511-511 and join the Alio Revolution.

00:12:53.000 If it's not true, then what is the advantage to doing it?

00:12:58.000 What is being concealed by the Propagation of this fallacy, even though I would say, when you describe that, which you obviously do really well, and thanks for making it simple and using examples that I would identify with from my own business life.

00:13:12.000 I'm what I would contest is about you know quite what might seem quite abstract and ontological ideas about the nature of freedom and why people are buying a TV in the first place and what America has become about and even the fact that the sort of nominal term has become consumer rather than citizen, which I guess is a step up from subject, which is, I guess, what you guys ultimately threw off when you departed from this particular accent.

00:13:39.000 But what I suppose is a more pertinent question before we get into how does America identify of itself?

00:13:46.000 What is this sense of looming crisis?

00:13:48.000 What is it?

00:13:48.000 We can't deny it just by sort of pointing to a graph and saying the average household's got more of this and more than that, because most people feel like, hey, in the 1980s, a firefighter could feed a family of four.

00:13:59.000 And people don't feel like that no more.

00:14:00.000 That's like, you know, none of us, all of us are, you know, operating in subjectivity, Senator.

00:14:06.000 So I guess first start with what is being obfuscated by Trump's claim that the common enemy is Chinese exploitation?

00:14:13.000 They have something, a fancy name is called the availability heuristic.

00:14:18.000 That means that things are more available or teachable.

00:14:20.000 So for example, if you turn on the news tonight on an old-fashioned television, which I don't really recommend, but if you do, you'll see mostly bad news.

00:14:28.000 And so you'll see violence and you'll see crime.

00:14:31.000 But really, if you say, how many of my fellow men are committing crimes, it's really 1 to 2%.

00:14:36.000 So 98% of your fellow men are actually good and living peaceably.

00:14:41.000 And yet we think crime is everywhere and we get inundated with its availability.

00:14:46.000 It's the same way with thinking we're not doing as well as our parents or grandparents.

00:14:49.000 Oh, the 1950s.

00:14:51.000 Oh, the halcyon days.

00:14:53.000 Everything was so great in the 1950s.

00:14:56.000 Well, you know, a lot of people didn't have air conditioning in the 1950s.

00:14:58.000 A lot of people didn't have central heat.

00:15:00.000 The houses were this big.

00:15:01.000 The houses are now this big.

00:15:03.000 The best way to look at it is in long-term trends.

00:15:06.000 There's a great website called humanprogress.org.

00:15:09.000 It's associated with Cato.

00:15:11.000 And in it, they look and compare us to times past.

00:15:14.000 So 1820, sort of the beginning of the Industrial Revolution.

00:15:18.000 For all of human history, as you come along the x-axis of time, and this is prosperity and this is time, you're going along time.

00:15:26.000 We lived on the bottom.

00:15:27.000 We lived on the x-axis.

00:15:28.000 All of mankind lived in utter and complete poverty.

00:15:32.000 98% of people in 1820 lived on less than $2 a day.

00:15:36.000 That's the definition of extreme poverty.

00:15:38.000 And it went on forever.

00:15:39.000 That's the story of human history until you get to 1820.

00:15:42.000 The Industrial Revolution hits and prosperity explodes.

00:15:47.000 So I was married in 1990.

00:15:49.000 98% of people in 1820 are in extreme poverty.

00:15:52.000 In 1990, only 34% of the people in the entire world, not just America, not England, Bangladesh, India, you mix the whole world, 30% lived in poverty, 1990.

00:16:04.000 Fast forward, 35 years, less than 10% of people live in extreme poverty, $2 a day, constant dollars.

00:16:12.000 This is an extraordinary story, and no one's hearing it because people will get on and prattle on about the middle class is being hollowed out and we're all going to hell in a handbasket.

00:16:21.000 The story of, and the optimism that should come about where we are in history, I tell the kids all the time, I speak to young people, I say, never been a better time to be alive.

00:16:31.000 Best time ever to be alive.

00:16:32.000 People are more tolerant.

00:16:33.000 People are more open to who you are.

00:16:35.000 You can be who you want to be.

00:16:36.000 People don't care for the most part.

00:16:38.000 Never been a better time to be alive.

00:16:40.000 People are more prosperous than they've ever been, but it's the opposite of what people believe.

00:16:44.000 Everybody believes we're going to hell in a handbasket.

00:16:45.000 Well, of course, I can't speak for everybody.

00:16:48.000 And sometimes I contest whether or not I can accurately or at least articulately speak for myself.

00:16:52.000 But I must, in the strongest possible terms, afford you that I strongly believe the opposite.

00:17:01.000 Whilst I can't dispute the facts of material success generated by industrialization and mechanization and our ability to maneuver matter and create consumer markets, I sense and intuit, and forgive me for not having the data sets, but we are in a time of extraordinary crisis.

00:17:23.000 And I would describe the nature of the crisis thusly, that power is being centralised.

00:17:30.000 When I say power, I mean the ability to make decisions globally, whether it's through bureaucracies like the WHO, who thankfully have lost a little of their power due to Secretary Kennedy and Trump's relatively recent decision, or NATO or the UN or the EU, sort of bureaucracies that are largely unelected, although I recognise there is some democratic process amidst them.

00:17:51.000 In addition to peculiar NGOs about whom I know less, but I know that they are incredible resources and repositories for enormous wealth.

00:17:59.000 In addition to sort of deep state power, indeed, it's difficult by the, it seems that true power has an ability to obscure itself.

00:18:07.000 And I think people understand this and sense this.

00:18:10.000 I think people feel that power has migrated away from them, that we don't have sovereignty in our own lives, we don't have sovereignty in our communities, and that this trend, rather than the trend you described, which sounds like sort of a glorious carnival and a march towards utopia, is not what most people are experiencing.

00:18:26.000 They're experiencing a centralized authority that's obfuscating its own power.

00:18:30.000 I don't disagree.

00:18:31.000 And I would say that you can become materially more successful and spiritually poor.

00:18:36.000 Yes.

00:18:36.000 You can be richer in a material sense and poorer in that sense.

00:18:40.000 With the question of power, what I would say is you're absolutely right.

00:18:43.000 Power is more centralized and it is to be feared and should be feared, the centralization of power.

00:18:49.000 This has been the struggle of man, really probably from Roman times, but more specifically to us from the time of Magna Carta on.

00:18:57.000 It's all been about trying to restrict the power of one person.

00:19:02.000 It used to be a king.

00:19:03.000 We set up our constitution to make sure our president wasn't a king, but the president has grown in power in the last 100 years.

00:19:09.000 From Woodrow Wilson on, we've had extraordinary power go to our presidency.

00:19:14.000 So I'm not saying don't fear it.

00:19:15.000 What I would say is that is the battle.

00:19:17.000 That is the battle of politics that I engage in every day, trying to battle against the centralization of power.

00:19:23.000 Yes.

00:19:24.000 Remembering what Lord Acton said, that power corrupts, that absolute power corrupts absolutely.

00:19:29.000 But also Knowing that despite the ill effects of big government and of centralization of power, despite that, the power of freedom, what freedom we have left, it's so encouraging and so beautiful.

00:19:44.000 The individual spirit of creation.

00:19:47.000 I mean, look, when I think about the times we live in, I see that picture.

00:19:52.000 And I'm just the picture of the rocket coming back from space into the metallic arms and being caught by Elon Musk's ingenuity and incredible creativity.

00:20:03.000 That is the time we should be proud of.

00:20:06.000 Food.

00:20:07.000 We just grow so much food.

00:20:09.000 In fact, our problem is too much food now.

00:20:11.000 We got too much food and it isn't all good either, but we have so much food.

00:20:14.000 But our biggest problem is too much food now, not too little food.

00:20:18.000 We're going to have to interrupt that conversation now.

00:20:20.000 If you want to stay with us, click the link for the rest of this conversation.

00:20:23.000 I tried to edge Senator Rampaul towards an explicit condemnation of Donald Trump, and I think he sort of tacitly offers one.

00:20:30.000 He thinks that China's being used as a kind of bogeyman.

00:20:33.000 He says he would no longer arm Israel.

00:20:34.000 These seem to me to be the kind of things that people are interested in, or he sort of actually he was kind of, I would say, prevaricated somewhere.

00:20:42.000 But in general, it's a really brilliant conversation.

00:20:44.000 In fact, in full, it's an excellent conversation.

00:20:47.000 Click the link if you want to join us for it.

00:20:51.000 For all of human history, there was never enough food.

00:20:54.000 Obesity did not exist until almost 50 years ago, unless you were royal or of some sort of inherited money.

00:21:01.000 Obesity is a terrible problem.

00:21:03.000 And I think I'm beginning to understand the nature of this discourse.

00:21:06.000 We are using metrics that are deliberately designed to present a narrative of success and progress.

00:21:13.000 This narrative, by design, obfuscates a deep, deep crisis.

00:21:18.000 I'm not a person of the left or of the right anymore.

00:21:21.000 I disavow those redundant terms.

00:21:23.000 I believe we're in a spiritual crisis, that people have lost their connection to God at the level of the individual and perhaps at the level of the entire culture.

00:21:30.000 And if there is no God, then none of us have a true metric or trajectory by which to measure success anyway.

00:21:36.000 If a kind of opulence, pleasure, the accruing of fat cells is to be the graph by which we evaluate our glorious kind made in the image of the Creator himself, then of course we can all marvel at carpets and armchairs.

00:21:52.000 But it seems to me that America is becoming a nation where people are captivated by screens and sugar and stimulation and pornography and masturbation and false idolatry.

00:22:01.000 And it seems to me that the reason I admire you, in fact, so much is because you are one of the few people in politics that seem to have this sort of gift for pragmatism and to identify this is what the problem is.

00:22:13.000 I'm not saying we should all be sort of caught up in theology the whole time.

00:22:17.000 But what I am saying is that if we use metrics that seem designed to anoint material success rather than an evident decline, we're not going to have the conversation that we need to have.

00:22:27.000 So even if when we say why, when you say that Donald Trump is being disingenuous when targeting China as the problem, what is he doing that for?

00:22:37.000 Is he doing this because he's foolish or is he doing this because he's trying to draw attention from some more serious problem? 0.90

00:22:43.000 Right. 0.97

00:22:44.000 Going back just for a second to the material versus the spiritual, you know, in the 19th century, sort of the beginning of what became the existentialist, you know, there was a saying, if there is no God, all is permissible.

00:22:57.000 And that's kind of what you're saying.

00:22:58.000 It's the hedonism, all of this lack of spirituality, the lack of sort of oneness with God is a modern problem.

00:23:06.000 And it's been going on a while.

00:23:08.000 But they are different sort of problems.

00:23:11.000 And I think I don't deny that that problem exists.

00:23:15.000 I don't deny that there is a problem.

00:23:17.000 But I would say from the beginning of our republic, our republic was founded in a way with the understanding that you needed virtue, basically that democracy required virtue.

00:23:28.000 All of our founding fathers talked about it.

00:23:30.000 If you go through a list of 20 founding fathers, there's always the words virtue there.

00:23:35.000 And even now, people think about it.

00:23:37.000 And I often will ask young people this.

00:23:39.000 I'll say, well, how many of you would go out and steal if it were legal?

00:23:44.000 Nobody raises their hand.

00:23:45.000 It's sort of a tough question to ask, but really, most people wouldn't steal.

00:23:48.000 And you think about it.

00:23:49.000 Why don't you steal?

00:23:50.000 Why don't you go to the grocery store and steal?

00:23:52.000 Because you think it's wrong, not because you're afraid of being caught for most people.

00:23:56.000 Now, there may be a small number of people who don't steal because they might get caught and go to jail.

00:23:59.000 Most of us don't.

00:24:00.000 So a peaceful society, there isn't enough police to police us.

00:24:04.000 We have to be self-police.

00:24:05.000 So there has to be a regard for right and wrong, a regard for virtue.

00:24:09.000 And I think all those are important.

00:24:11.000 And I think the argument for whether or not we're in a crisis of losing that, of losing our mooring to any kind of virtue or right or wrong is very valid.

00:24:18.000 And I agree with you completely.

00:24:20.000 But I don't think that part of that argument has to be that materialism is all bad or that everything is going on is wrong.

00:24:28.000 Because the thing is, is that young people need hope and they should be given hope and the hope of that my future will be brighter than the others.

00:24:36.000 So I'm not a pessimist in that sense.

00:24:39.000 Do they need to understand that where there is a crisis?

00:24:42.000 I think a lot of young people do.

00:24:44.000 If you look at the statistics, particularly young males, you have more of them going and finding religion, more of them going to church.

00:24:50.000 So there is more of that, more people looking for a way.

00:24:53.000 But I don't think it's one or the other, that we can't admit that there is material success.

00:24:58.000 And maybe the material success has gone to our head, which is part of the spiritual problem that we're having.

00:25:03.000 And I forgot what the other question was.

00:25:04.000 It was something about Trump on tariffs again.

00:25:07.000 Yes, it was to sort of conclude the idea that if he's setting up this false notion of exploitation via Chinese economic mastery, then if that isn't true, what is it that he is obscuring us from and why is he?

00:25:24.000 I think he believes it.

00:25:26.000 I think he is sincere.

00:25:27.000 I think he is honest in that.

00:25:28.000 But when I was a kid, high school, early college, there was much fear of the Japanese.

00:25:34.000 Everybody's like, oh, the Japanese bought 30 Rock. 1.00

00:25:37.000 You know, Rockefeller Center was owned by the Japanese.

00:25:40.000 They're everywhere.

00:25:41.000 They're going to buy our houses, our farms.

00:25:43.000 And it's completely changed now.

00:25:45.000 They invest in our country.

00:25:46.000 They're one of the biggest investors in our country.

00:25:48.000 Nobody's harping about the Japanese.

00:25:51.000 In Georgetown, Kentucky, the Japanese have a plant, Toyota.

00:25:54.000 14,000 Kentuckians work there.

00:25:57.000 They make between $70,000 and $120,000 a year on an assembly line.

00:26:01.000 They all have health insurance.

00:26:02.000 They're all pretty materially happy with that.

00:26:05.000 And nobody's like wanting to kick the Japanese out.

00:26:07.000 So we go through these waves. 0.94

00:26:08.000 And right now, it's the Chinese are the villains. 1.00

00:26:10.000 The Japanese were for a while, but now we've kind of decided: look, they own bourbon.

00:26:14.000 They own one of the biggest bourbon companies in Kentucky, too.

00:26:17.000 There are people now that we coexist with, and it's good.

00:26:20.000 But they didn't get rich at our expense.

00:26:22.000 We're both getting rich.

00:26:23.000 Everybody's getting richer because of trade.

00:26:25.000 Nobody goes to Walmart and makes a trade that is a bad trade.

00:26:30.000 All trades are, by definition, if they are free, are mutually beneficial.

00:26:34.000 So trade's not a bad thing.

00:26:35.000 And that's, I'm fighting this thing, and it's an uphill battle.

00:26:38.000 If you look at my Twitter account, I get a lot of hate on my Twitter account every time I talk about trade because everybody says, oh, you're wrong. 1.00

00:26:44.000 We got those damn Chinese. 1.00

00:26:47.000 We got to prevent them and do all this. 1.00

00:26:49.000 And they believe in this fallacy that we're getting poor.

00:26:52.000 The Chinese got richer over the last 50 years, but so did we.

00:26:56.000 It was more noticeable because they started out at the peasant level.

00:27:00.000 They started out with no money 50 years ago and they've grown tenfold.

00:27:04.000 We've grown maybe one and a half times, but we all got richer through trade.

00:27:07.000 And it's this abstract but important notion, is trade a good or a bad thing?

00:27:13.000 We used to all think it was a good thing.

00:27:14.000 And now people are thinking, oh, let's become insular and not trade.

00:27:19.000 Well, like America, as always, I think, and you mentioned Woodrow Wilson earlier, and perhaps that was a sort of a pivotal moment in America's entry into that conflict, which again, I suppose, defined the industrialization of war itself.

00:27:30.000 I suppose that America has always had this conversation regarding isolation and the emergence of making America great again is ultimately, would you agree, about putting America first.

00:27:41.000 And when you talk to people about whether it's USAID or the ongoing support of wars, it seems that one of the common refrains is not solely about trade, but about putting the priorities of American people first.

00:27:53.000 Now, even when dealing with the sort of giddying tangle of bureaucratic language, it seems to me evident that at the forefront of the political process, the peculiar machinations of DC, it's very difficult to put the life of ordinary Americans of what their quality of life is.

00:28:12.000 And to the point where almost we have to sort of spin to them, no, no, no, look, you've got dishwashers now or whatever it is that we're sort of for whatever palliative we're offering to the American people.

00:28:24.000 It seems to me that what Americans want at the moment is a kind of isolationism.

00:28:28.000 Isn't that what America first means?

00:28:32.000 Americans don't want to be involved in wars.

00:28:33.000 They don't want to be in a trade deficit.

00:28:36.000 They don't want to be in debt either personally or nationally.

00:28:39.000 I'm all for staying out of foreign wars. 1.00

00:28:41.000 You'll not find any more person more anti-war than I am.

00:28:45.000 But it's not because I think we need to be isolated.

00:28:48.000 I would still trade with everyone.

00:28:50.000 And in fact, there are times when I don't think we should be selling arms to people.

00:28:53.000 I voted against selling arms to Saudi Arabia, to Bahrain, to Qatar. 0.97

00:28:58.000 We're involved in too many damn wars and too many arms. 0.54

00:29:01.000 We're just, we're the arms merchant of the entire world. 0.97

00:29:04.000 I'm against that.

00:29:05.000 But that doesn't mean I don't want interaction.

00:29:07.000 So I wouldn't sell arms to Saudi Arabia, but I wouldn't stop trading with Saudi Arabia.

00:29:11.000 I wouldn't sell arms to Qatar, but I would not stop trading with Qatar.

00:29:15.000 And in fact, I think, yeah, I'd still trade with Israel.

00:29:19.000 But no arms.

00:29:20.000 Well, I have introduced legislation to reduce how much we give to them.

00:29:27.000 We give them, we signed a 10-year agreement to give them like 33 billion.

00:29:30.000 And then on top of that, we give them another 10 or 15 billion.

00:29:33.000 We don't have that money.

00:29:34.000 It's fiscally irresponsible.

00:29:36.000 It makes us weaker.

00:29:36.000 So we shouldn't be doing that.

00:29:38.000 I've been against that.

00:29:39.000 On arms, I've been a little bit more open to it, but I'm not happy that the war goes on and on and on forever in Gaza.

00:29:46.000 The war needs to end at some point.

00:29:48.000 And there is a point, and Israel has to figure this out probably on their own to a certain degree.

00:29:53.000 There is a point at which so many people die that you create more terrorists from their aggrieved relatives than actually exist.

00:30:00.000 But I'm not saying they didn't have a right to respond.

00:30:02.000 October 7th was a horrific, you know, bloody massacre, and they had a right to respond to that.

00:30:08.000 But it is at the point where Gaza has still got 2 million people. 0.91

00:30:13.000 It's an utter freaking disaster.

00:30:15.000 Somebody's got to say, it's time to rebuild. 0.63

00:30:18.000 It's time to stop.

00:30:20.000 And I think the only possible practical outcome to Gaza is Arab, there needs to be an Arab police force there. 0.99

00:30:27.000 Israelis can't stay. 1.00

00:30:29.000 I'm not for putting the Americans in the middle of that mess.

00:30:32.000 But I would say to the Arab League, when you're over there talking to Saudi Arabia, I would say Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Qatar, all these countries, you guys send 10,000 soldiers and be the police and y'all start helping to rebuild it.

00:30:44.000 And the new government needs to agree to live in peace with Israel.

00:30:53.000 Dozens of people have been arrested around the UK at protests in support of prescribed group Palestine action.

00:31:00.000 The Metropolitan Police said 55 people were arrested under the Terrorism Act at the demonstration in Parliament Square and eight were arrested at another demo nearby.

00:31:11.000 Those detained are alleged to have been displaying placards in favour of the group which was designated as a prescribed terrorist organisation earlier this month.

00:31:20.000 There were also arrests in Bristol, Truro and Manchester.

00:31:24.000 In Britain, pick a cause that people are getting arrested for.

00:31:27.000 People are protesting in Eppin, near where I'm from, because of migration-related issues.

00:31:31.000 People are getting arrested in London because of Palestine-related issues.

00:31:35.000 And people are getting arrested everywhere for free speech.

00:31:43.000 It seems like the majority of Americans are against war, funding war and arms, trading, the machinery and bureaucracy of war.

00:31:50.000 And yet it seems near impossible, regardless of what administration with whatever mandate enters office to curtail and to cease that.

00:31:59.000 And I think that what that makes a lot of people feel is that there is no meaningful mandate derived from the electorate, that the sort of the inertia of power continues uninterrupted, no matter who's in office.

00:32:12.000 I think the closest to anyone who was going to interrupt the military-industrial complex and the monetary gain of all these arms merchants making money was Donald Trump and still is.

00:32:24.000 But the Bushes weren't.

00:32:25.000 The Bushes were part of the military-industrial complex.

00:32:28.000 He got us involved in the Iraq War.

00:32:30.000 Huge mistake.

00:32:32.000 Trump has actually talked about a lot of things that libertarians believe: less war, less intervention.

00:32:38.000 He hasn't always fulfilled it because he sometimes made mistakes in who he appointed.

00:32:42.000 John Bolton is the king of the neocons.

00:32:44.000 He's the king of the interventionists.

00:32:46.000 There's never been a war he never wasn't interested in getting involved with.

00:32:50.000 And that was a huge mistake.

00:32:52.000 I told Trump not to appoint him. 0.93

00:32:54.000 Bolton writes in his autobiography, he says, oh, Rand Paul, God damn it, Rand Paul, he kept me from being Secretary of State.

00:33:02.000 And I did everything I could, but Trump still appointed him to be head of the National Security Council.

00:33:07.000 And he advocated.

00:33:09.000 I don't understand it.

00:33:10.000 It doesn't make sense.

00:33:11.000 It's inconsistent with what Trump says he believes and what I support in Trump, is that Trump's been the best Republican in my lifetime as far as advocating for the least amount of intervention in war.

00:33:22.000 What he says oftenly is as much as I could have written it, or my father could have said it many times in his speeches.

00:33:29.000 But then in the application of it, he's allowed people to infiltrate around him who aren't necessarily advocates of less war or less intervention.

00:33:38.000 Do you think that the Epstein list is hoopla, or do you think, as many Americans do, that it's a kind of indicator of a sort of deep, what do I want to say, rhizome of subterranean connections and corruption that transcends different administrations?

00:33:56.000 I can't profess to have inside information about the Epstein tapes.

00:34:00.000 What I can tell you is that the distrust of government is well deserved.

00:34:05.000 That I've been poring through and trying to get records about why we funded the research in Wuhan, China that I think became the pandemic.

00:34:16.000 I've been advocating for four years.

00:34:17.000 I've gotten nothing.

00:34:18.000 Almost everything I know, I've started to get something now, but everything we know, and I wrote a book about this, Deception, the Great COVID cover-up.

00:34:26.000 But in the book, almost all the information I got was through freedom of information from outside sources.

00:34:31.000 Outside sources were better at getting information by suing the government than I was as chairman of a committee now.

00:34:37.000 Oh my God.

00:34:38.000 So coming January this year with the new administration, I gave subpoenas to 14 agencies.

00:34:44.000 And these are now friendly people.

00:34:45.000 I know most of the people at these agencies.

00:34:47.000 And yet six months in, it's taken me six months and I'm still trying to get information.

00:34:51.000 I've recently gotten some and I think I'm going to have a breakthrough in the next couple of months.

00:34:56.000 I do think that there was a cover-up. 0.99

00:34:58.000 And I love the way, or a conspiracy, I love my favorite is, you know, people think, oh, if you believe in a conspiracy, you're an absolute nut and a fool. 0.99

00:35:06.000 And I said, well, George Carlin described this the best. 0.96

00:35:09.000 George Carlin said, it's not necessary to believe in a conspiracy, only to believe in a convergence of interest.

00:35:17.000 So the way I imagine the COVID conspiracy is, you might have 250 people involved in the COVID conspiracy, all worked in government, and maybe they never met each other. 0.97

00:35:26.000 But their convergence of interest is, holy shit, we don't need a, we funded this.

00:35:31.000 If word was out that I reviewed this and I funded it, so it's like, I'm putting this at the bottom of the stack or I'm erasing this. 0.80

00:35:38.000 And that's what happened.

00:35:39.000 So it was a conspiracy where some of them knew each other and some of them were involved in a cabal, but most of them had a common interest of cover up because 15 million people died and they made the foolish decision to fund this.

00:35:51.000 And it's extraordinary what we have found.

00:35:54.000 Almost everything is from whistleblowers and from freedom of information.

00:35:58.000 There was a major Murphy who worked in DARPA, which is part of our defense industry research.

00:36:04.000 He revealed that the research that led to this was applied for in 2018 by the people in Wuhan, China.

00:36:14.000 They didn't get it in 2018, but it was almost exactly what COVID began.

00:36:19.000 What it became was what they had applied for in 2018, but nobody came forward.

00:36:24.000 So there were other people on this 2018 project.

00:36:26.000 There was a professor in North Carolina.

00:36:28.000 When he saw that COVID had this special furin cleavage site to let it enter into cells, why wasn't he ringing up Fauci and saying, holy crap, they did it. 0.63

00:36:38.000 They did it.

00:36:39.000 They finally did what we asked for the money.

00:36:42.000 We got denied the money because it was too dangerous.

00:36:44.000 They did it anyway.

00:36:45.000 This mirrors what our research proposal was going to do.

00:36:49.000 And yet he met with Fauci in February of 2020.

00:36:52.000 He's been at the White House.

00:36:54.000 How come he never mentioned anything?

00:36:56.000 15 different agencies heard this proposal.

00:36:59.000 And when they found out that the virus had this special cleavage site, they should have been going, holy cow, last year I heard a presentation from the same people in China wanting to do this. 0.76

00:37:10.000 And now the virus just coincidentally starts in Wuhan, China, and has the special cleavage site in that they were proposing doing in an experiment in 2018. 0.86

00:37:19.000 Nobody did that because there was a conspiracy of cover-up from people all had a convergence of interest that said, we don't want anybody to know that we were forewarned and we still made a stupid decision to fund this research.

00:37:32.000 Yes, if you met Lee Harvey Oswald at a shooting range and he was practicing shooting from a shop window via branches and trees at a grassy knoll.

00:37:41.000 It's just a coincidence.

00:37:44.000 Although ironically, he was likely not working alone.

00:37:48.000 So this convergence of interests, I wonder, it seems to me that one can stimulate environments where interests converge near continually.

00:37:58.000 And I suppose that what the again, I'm not particularly interested in the licentious aspect of the Epstein list.

00:38:08.000 I'm more interested in what external forces might generate the convergence that you're describing around COVID, which this convergence again became rather broad when one examines the subsequent wealth transfer, the ability of governments to regulate.

00:38:23.000 That must have irked you some as a libertarian to see this authority legitimized at such an extraordinary scale.

00:38:30.000 And I wonder if really what COVID provided was a window into the ordinary mechanations of power rather than an anomalous event, i.e.

00:38:38.000 it was just a concentration of what happens more broadly, continually.

00:38:42.000 Yeah, and but I think it's evidence of where the distrust of government comes from and I think has built up over time.

00:38:50.000 As a libertarian, do you believe that in a sense, given that the systems themselves are not really geared towards individual freedom, but towards centralized freedom and the legitimization of centralized Freedom through increasing crisis, whether that's a pandemic or war, which is sort of in a sense a self-generated crisis between human tribes.

00:39:08.000 Do you feel that the systems themselves have to markedly and radically change?

00:39:13.000 And do you sense that, in fact, the technologies that are emerging now could either legitimize further centralization through surveillance and forms of monitoring or could actually legitimize a sort of a libertarian paradise where there was maximal democratic control?

00:39:28.000 And do you see the potential of a convergence between ideas that come from libertarianism, individual freedom, and anarchism, which are sort of, I don't mean chaos anarchism, I mean maximal democracy localized where possible?

00:39:39.000 That's 16 different questions from that.

00:39:42.000 I'm sorry I did that because I think we were coming to the end of the interview.

00:39:44.000 I can't really remember the last four.

00:39:46.000 But anyway, as far as libertarianism underlying things, if you go to the Epstein tapes and you say, is there any principle other than the licentiousness that intrigues people about who was on the island, how rich they were, and justice.

00:39:59.000 Well, the one thing underlying this that libertarians have complained about for a long time is they use the RICO statute and conspiracies to gin up penalties.

00:40:07.000 So what they do is they say, it's sort of like what they did to Trump.

00:40:11.000 Libertarians hate.

00:40:12.000 They went to Trump and said, oh, you committed a lot of bookkeeping errors, 43 bookkeeping errors.

00:40:16.000 They were misdemeanors.

00:40:18.000 Oh, the statue of libertations went out.

00:40:19.000 So we're going to change the statue of libertations, but then we're going to bundle them all together and call it a felony and give you 40 years in prison.

00:40:26.000 So I don't know all the details of what Gislaine Maxwell was charged with, but ultimately it's a grouping of things.

00:40:35.000 And it's sort of this conspiracy to do sexual trafficking.

00:40:39.000 Well, if it did exist, there has to be a lot of evidence of who are the people purchasing this.

00:40:44.000 And the only other one is Jeffrey Epstein.

00:40:46.000 So it doesn't sound like much of a conspiracy.

00:40:48.000 It's still bad and wrong if she was doing this for one man, but it sounds like there were other people.

00:40:52.000 Why were none of them charged?

00:40:53.000 And I think people have a sense, they may not understand the law, but they have a sense of justice.

00:40:58.000 Well, shouldn't these other people, did they escape justice because there was some special treatment going on?

00:41:03.000 And I think that's what people dislike most about the law.

00:41:06.000 They like the unfairness of the law fare against Trump, but then they also like the unfairness of, well, if I did this, I'd be in jail for 20 years.

00:41:14.000 And now all these rich people got off because they were rich and they had a connection.

00:41:18.000 So I think the unfairness of that resonates with people.

00:41:21.000 But there is a libertarian principle underlying it that we don't like RICO.

00:41:25.000 We would repeal RICO because we see people with minor drug offenses all get stacked up.

00:41:29.000 And all of a sudden, the guy's got 20 or 30 years in prison.

00:41:32.000 And four other people are selling drugs testify against this one guy and he gets 20 years in prison.

00:41:38.000 You know, this has happened with a lot of different cases that libertarians get upset about.

00:41:42.000 Sorry to interrupt this conversation with Senator Ram Paul.

00:41:45.000 We have to include these messages from our partners.

00:41:47.000 It's a fundamental part of our business model is the truth of the matter.

00:41:49.000 I mean, what can I tell you?

00:41:52.000 Whoever you are, you might consider yourself a businessman or woman or person, or I don't know, maybe you don't have a gender or don't want one.

00:42:00.000 That's not the key issue here, though.

00:42:02.000 The key issue is 1775, a delicious coffee. 0.89

00:42:05.000 Let's be honest, most coffee, all it does is it helps you to organize a stool in that inward back pocket you call the butt.

00:42:13.000 What does it also do?

00:42:14.000 It leaves you feeling all down, jittery, foggy, and needing another cup of coffee.

00:42:19.000 You can only trust 1775, the one true coffee of revolution.

00:42:23.000 Rejuvenate coffee is science-backed coffee.

00:42:26.000 Coffee backed by science.

00:42:28.000 And not Anthony Fauci science.

00:42:29.000 Oh, I made up some science coffee.

00:42:34.000 I was giving people aids.

00:42:35.000 Oh, I've got a beagle in a cage. 0.99

00:42:37.000 I put my fingers up their butt. 1.00

00:42:38.000 That is something Anthony Fauci has admitted to. 0.98

00:42:41.000 Have you read The Real Anthony Fauci by Bobby Kennedy?

00:42:44.000 Yeah, it's understood that Anthony Fauci. 0.99

00:42:47.000 He keeps beagles in his yard and he puts stuff up their butt, makes shit all over the cage. 1.00

00:42:52.000 Fauci doesn't care. 1.00

00:42:53.000 He makes them wallow in it.

00:42:54.000 Anthony Fauci cannot be trusted, but rejuvenate science-backed coffee can.

00:42:58.000 It's real Arabica beads.

00:43:00.000 Araba cadabra, I say, because it makes me feel absolutely magic.

00:43:04.000 It's infused with C-A-A-K-G, which is a kind of like a rifle, you know, like an assault rifle, but it's assault in your central nervous system with delicious beans, Bebe.

00:43:13.000 A compound shown to support cellular energy, metabolism, and even healthy aging.

00:43:17.000 You don't want to sit deteriorating in a chair, shitting yourself, drinking Starbucks.

00:43:22.000 You need rejuvenation.

00:43:24.000 It's built for people who take their health seriously, who want to show up with focus and strength every single day, like me.

00:43:30.000 If you care about how you feel now and how you'll feel 10 years from now, this is your coffee.

00:43:35.000 Go to 7cenafaCoffee.com forward slash me probably and order rejuvenate coffee today. 0.99

00:43:41.000 Fuel your body, protect your future, rejuvenate you sick perverts.

00:43:49.000 Yes, because in that way, I suppose, Senator, the example you gave of a scientist that would have awareness that this research had been applied for, recognise the hallmark and signature of the research in the COVID virus, then not be able to testify because of his own shame and culpability.

00:44:08.000 It seems that the generation of shame and culpability is an accompaniment to the explicit systems of government, that there is an occult or at least clandestine aspect to power that ensures that people in positions of power can be leveraged.

00:44:28.000 I suppose that might happen plainly through lobbying and through PACs and even through relationship.

00:44:34.000 But it seems that when it comes to true power, global power, there's a set of systems that are used to almost sort of spiritually manage people through shame.

00:44:43.000 So there's an inherent aspect to power that is involved with corruption and abuse of power, because I think the natural tendency of men and women is to accumulate power, but along with that comes corruptibility and also becomes the abuse of power. 0.51

00:44:59.000 And then sometimes react to that abuse instead of reacting to the power.

00:45:03.000 So for example, in our country, for a long time, people said money rules politics.

00:45:07.000 We need to regulate how much money you're giving to politicians because rich people are giving money and they're buying the elections. 0.51

00:45:13.000 My father and other libertarians would put it this way.

00:45:16.000 They said, it's not so much the giving that is the problem.

00:45:19.000 It's that they have the power.

00:45:21.000 Rich people wouldn't give them any money if it was a small constitutional government. 0.76

00:45:25.000 Our government in the 19th century wasn't worth buying.

00:45:27.000 In fact, most of the action was at the state legislative level because that's where power was.

00:45:32.000 It was dispersed.

00:45:33.000 So there are many regions to disperse power and to make it more locally.

00:45:37.000 One, because the less centralized, the less abuse.

00:45:40.000 But the other thing is, is purely a fiscal reason.

00:45:44.000 The only government that seems to have no limits to how much they spend is the federal government.

00:45:49.000 The state governments are salsa.

00:45:52.000 They don't have a central bank.

00:45:53.000 So they have limits to their borrowing power.

00:45:56.000 And most states, even the worst of them, other than maybe California and Illinois, tend to have balance between what comes in and what goes out.

00:46:04.000 But if you want to see governments that exactly balance their books, city council, county government, they all balance their books.

00:46:11.000 So when we're talking about where it should be done, so let's say you want to help people and you think the government should give them food stamps so they can eat.

00:46:18.000 Well, you know where food stamps should be paid for?

00:46:20.000 At your county level and it should be a county tax.

00:46:23.000 We pay for it at the federal level.

00:46:25.000 And so what we have is just something that's wildly the wrong kinds of food, too much food, able-bodied people getting it. 0.99

00:46:32.000 At the county level, someone would make people come in.

00:46:35.000 And if they walked in and they were healthy, they'd say, you're done.

00:46:38.000 Go out and get a job.

00:46:39.000 You don't get food stamps.

00:46:40.000 Would that mean that the county would have the ability to leverage taxes?

00:46:45.000 How would they generate this revenue?

00:46:48.000 Counties have taxes.

00:46:49.000 So do you think, so in a sense- Thank you.

00:46:53.000 Part of the libertarian creed then is the maximal devolution of power.

00:46:59.000 Absolutely.

00:47:00.000 And that government's a necessary evil.

00:47:03.000 That's what Thomas Paine said.

00:47:05.000 And the reason he said that is that you have to give up liberty to form government.

00:47:09.000 Without any government, I'm completely free, but I also might be free to hurt you physically or steal from you.

00:47:15.000 So we set up a government to stop some physical violence.

00:47:18.000 We set up a government to stop fraud.

00:47:21.000 But the more government we get, the more you have to take of my labor.

00:47:24.000 So what I earn is, if I make shoes and I sell shoes, what I earn is mine.

00:47:30.000 I give up a certain amount of it to government, but I'm giving up some of my liberty when I give to government through taxation.

00:47:35.000 So every bit of taxation is a loss of my liberty.

00:47:38.000 So government is a necessary evil.

00:47:40.000 And in knowing that, I want to give up a smaller portion of my income because I want to have a smaller government.

00:47:45.000 So if they tax me at 70%, I'm 30% free.

00:47:49.000 If they tax me at 5%, I'm 95% free.

00:47:52.000 So for us, the level of taxation is the level of freedom and being left alone from government.

00:47:58.000 I like that metric.

00:47:59.000 Feudalism offers the same pledge, by the way, of course, you know, in order that you don't get attacked by barbarians, you have a king and barons, and you are taxed and you are a serf.

00:48:11.000 And I wonder if there's just sort of almost a semantic maneuvering that takes place when you change it to government rather than tyrant.

00:48:18.000 I also agree with you with the principle of minimal impact, minimal government.

00:48:25.000 But in a sense, do you concur that if we pulled that thread, you would ultimately unweave the flag herself that you can't have nation without centralization?

00:48:39.000 Perhaps some.

00:48:40.000 So I'm not against a central government and not against having one.

00:48:43.000 I just want a very small central government.

00:48:44.000 I want the least we can possibly have.

00:48:47.000 I want it so small you can barely see it.

00:48:50.000 And if I have to be governed and if I have to give up taxes, I'd rather give it to the local government.

00:48:54.000 So would I. And I would rather have them do it.

00:48:56.000 It used to be this way, even in our country.

00:48:59.000 Well, I started my medical practice in 1993 in Bowling Green, Kentucky.

00:49:04.000 When I showed up and I opened my office and showed up, one of my patients was a woman. 0.99

00:49:10.000 I was probably 30 and she was probably 70.

00:49:13.000 And she was in charge of the Bowling Green Welfare Office.

00:49:15.000 And it's funny, you think, well, someone in charge of the Bowling Green Welfare Office, she must have just been a huge liberal and thought nobody should work. 0.99

00:49:22.000 She was a hard ass. 1.00

00:49:23.000 She believed everybody should work and she patrolled it. 0.99

00:49:26.000 But if your son was a quadriplegic from an accident and the people didn't have any money, she knew that we were going to take care of them.

00:49:33.000 She wasn't hounding you that your quadriplegic son needed to go out and work. 0.75

00:49:37.000 What she was is, if your son was a football player and he just finished high school and he's not going to college and he's sitting around on his butt all day, she would make him work. 0.97

00:49:45.000 So there was a hardness to it.

00:49:48.000 We did welfare and it was community level.

00:49:50.000 Even before there was government welfare, people took care of people in the community.

00:49:53.000 Communities always sort of took care of their own.

00:49:55.000 People think, oh, we have to.

00:49:56.000 Well, what would happen if the government weren't involved in health insurance?

00:49:59.000 Well, they weren't until like the 1960s.

00:50:02.000 And do you know what?

00:50:03.000 People were always treated in the hospital.

00:50:05.000 My dad practiced medicine at some point in time with no government insurance.

00:50:09.000 And it was part of a responsibility.

00:50:11.000 In fact, we call it a privilege to be, I have hospital privileges.

00:50:15.000 It's not a right for me to practice there.

00:50:16.000 I get the privilege.

00:50:17.000 But in order to do it, I agree to work in the emergency room for free.

00:50:21.000 Now, usually you don't work the hours anymore, but what you do, it used to be you'd actually work a shift.

00:50:26.000 Now what you do is if you come in and you don't have any insurance and money and you got a stick in your eye, they send, they call me and I come in and see you whether you have money or not.

00:50:34.000 But that happened before there was government insurance, before there were any laws.

00:50:37.000 It was an obligation of the community.

00:50:39.000 But it was better when it was local and then it got worse the more and more federalized it became.

00:50:43.000 And now, literally, when food stamps started, it was for unwed mothers with four kids.

00:50:48.000 You can understand how an unwed mother, four kids, she can't work. 1.00

00:50:51.000 She's got to take care of the four kids. 1.00

00:50:54.000 And now you've got healthy young males getting food stamps and it just shouldn't happen.

00:50:58.000 There are plenty of jobs.

00:50:59.000 There are jobs everywhere for young men who will work in the hot sun and willing to work hard.

00:51:05.000 Now, it seems like that the principle that motivates government centralization is without this central authority, we cannot serve the people.

00:51:11.000 That's the explicit claim, but it ultimately seems like the sort of accruing of power for power's sake.

00:51:17.000 If there were to be sort of a true radical proposition would be to localize power wherever possible.

00:51:22.000 That's like the guiding principle to that the government should sort of dismantle itself.

00:51:27.000 I suppose the counterclaim is, no, the tendency of the government to accrue power is shared by corporations and commerce.

00:51:35.000 They would be the ones that would accrue this power.

00:51:36.000 So what regulation is required and what would become the cohesion that even ensures that there is such a thing as nation?

00:51:43.000 And where are those principles derived from?

00:51:45.000 So there are people who want power for power's sakes because it's a tendency of mankind.

00:51:50.000 It's a failure of mankind.

00:51:54.000 Then there are people who want it, that corporations want it to use the government for their own power.

00:51:58.000 Woodrow Wilson was an ideologue.

00:52:00.000 He was a person who used, and many of the ideologues who want power use war as an example.

00:52:07.000 So he ran on in 1912 of staying out of the war.

00:52:12.000 He wins again again in 1916, gets us in the war, and then immediately starts arresting people.

00:52:17.000 Eugene Debs is arrested and thrown into prison for 20 years, probably gets TB while he's in prison.

00:52:23.000 The Republicans finally let him out.

00:52:25.000 I think either Coolidge or Harding lets him out.

00:52:27.000 Was he a conscientious objector?

00:52:29.000 20 years for encouraging people not to sign up for the draft, basically, and giving speech in support of some socialists who were for this.

00:52:36.000 But we did terrible things.

00:52:38.000 One of the worst eras in our history for freedom of speech and freedom of association, freedom to be able to dissent and criticize the government was right after World War I and right after World War I. World War II wasn't so great either. 0.60

00:52:50.000 We imprisoned the Japanese. 1.00

00:52:52.000 We had concentration internment camps for the Japanese.

00:52:56.000 So war has been the health of the state, but it hasn't been to the health of the individual or the individual freedom.

00:53:03.000 But it's gotten worse over time.

00:53:06.000 And it used to be after the war, maybe we get some freedoms back.

00:53:09.000 Same with borrowing.

00:53:10.000 Borrowing got great during World War II, but then government got a little bit smaller and we went back to a different curve.

00:53:15.000 The pandemic is like another war.

00:53:17.000 War on the pandemic or on the virus.

00:53:20.000 Spending went through the roof.

00:53:21.000 The economy was shut down.

00:53:23.000 But really, it became, and this is the thing I blame Fauci mostly for, it became about submission.

00:53:29.000 It wasn't the science.

00:53:30.000 The left would say, follow the science, follow the science.

00:53:32.000 But it turns out virtually everything he told us wasn't true.

00:53:36.000 The masks didn't work at all, particularly the cloth masks.

00:53:40.000 So when they told, if you were 75 years old and your spouse has COVID and they tell you to wear a cloth mask and go into feeder, they've told you the wrong thing to do.

00:53:48.000 They've told you something unhealthy to do.

00:53:50.000 Now you're going to get COVID. 0.93

00:53:51.000 Maybe you die. 0.83

00:53:52.000 It's the wrong thing to do.

00:53:54.000 When they told you to stay six feet apart from people, it turns out the virus can spread 30 feet.

00:53:59.000 If you're in a choir practice and it's a room a little bigger than this and there's 30 people singing, you can get it without touching the person 30 feet across.

00:54:07.000 So it was actually more infectious than they said.

00:54:10.000 And so they gave you bad advice there.

00:54:12.000 But it should have been, if you're 100 pounds overweight and you're 55 years old, don't go to choir practice.

00:54:17.000 But if you're six years old or 16 years old or 26 years old and healthy, you can go.

00:54:23.000 And most of you have already had COVID.

00:54:25.000 And the other thing they lied about or didn't tell the truth was once you've had COVID, you're not going to die from it.

00:54:30.000 You may get it again, but even a lot of people who got it naturally never got it again.

00:54:34.000 People who got vaccinated got it again and again and again.

00:54:38.000 But the thing is, is that they didn't tell us that we had protection, that we wouldn't die.

00:54:43.000 To this day, the government has never admitted, if you've had it, can you get it again and die?

00:54:49.000 I think it's virtually zero.

00:54:50.000 People got it again and died.

00:54:51.000 Now, very elderly or people with a lot of other diseases, maybe.

00:54:55.000 But really, most of the country over 65 got two vaccines, got COVID two or three times.

00:54:59.000 They're not going to die from it now.

00:55:01.000 And they should tell us the truth so you know what to do.

00:55:03.000 Fauci subsequently acknowledged that the six feet was an arbitrary figure, of course.

00:55:08.000 And I can't, this tendency to mask a bad motivation.

00:55:12.000 you just leave when you need to, of course, don't be, you know, on my account.

00:55:15.000 You'll have to vote pretty soon.

00:55:16.000 How are we doing on the vote?

00:55:17.000 This tendency to mask a...

00:55:23.000 This tendency to mask.

00:55:24.000 This is a single-part question.

00:55:26.000 You can answer, but I'll try and do a one-part question.

00:55:28.000 I don't know why I taught you.

00:55:29.000 You never asked one of those.

00:55:30.000 That would be an anomaly. 0.96

00:55:32.000 would be a ridiculous anomaly.

00:55:34.000 What I'm trying to understand is why Crisis is, When you were talking about war and when you were talking about the pandemic, crisis is a subjective position.

00:55:42.000 It wasn't a crisis for everyone.

00:55:43.000 It wasn't, well, as the Chinese saying outlines, it was an opportunity.

00:55:49.000 But people for whom it was not a crisis have no motivation not to generate a permanent state of crisis.

00:55:55.000 And I think that what we're entering into and perhaps have been in since 9-11 is a successive crises used to legitimize opportunity.

00:56:03.000 And the problem is, of course, big government is what's able to legislate and create the conditions, the framing for this opportunity.

00:56:09.000 But the main beneficiaries, and I would say outside of government, they're corporate and commercial.

00:56:12.000 And as Mussolini said, it's this terrible alliance that we have to most fear.

00:56:16.000 So how do we then manage, Senator Paul, the tension that clearly exists, that there is a requirement for some sort of organization, but that when that organization is centralized in the way that it has become, it has become almost demonically corrupt.

00:56:32.000 Well, the Chinese may have first said it, but then Rah Emmanuel famously repeated it, let no crisis go to waste.

00:56:37.000 A crisis is a time when government can consolidate power.

00:56:41.000 The Patriot Act, which reminds me of how when something is named something, you get the opposite.

00:56:46.000 So almost every name of legislation, you have to look beneath the surface to find out that the Patriot Act is the most unpatriotic of acts, that it took our freedom, that it invaded our privacy.

00:56:57.000 But you're right, ginning this up.

00:56:59.000 So for example, the COVID vaccine.

00:57:01.000 Do we need it now?

00:57:02.000 Does anybody need it?

00:57:03.000 I think probably no one needs it.

00:57:05.000 Now, I don't want to say no one because there might be some debilitated people who are very sick who it might be recommended.

00:57:11.000 But I will say, is there a self-interest in the vaccine manufacturers to have it on a list and to require it for children?

00:57:18.000 In Europe, they finally decided virtually all of Europe, they don't recommend it under age 12, the COVID vaccine.

00:57:24.000 I would go further.

00:57:25.000 I think probably you're healthy in under 40 or 50.

00:57:27.000 And then I'd also ask you if you had COVID.

00:57:29.000 You've had COVID.

00:57:30.000 It may be that you don't even need anything else, anymore vaccines at all, probably if you've had COVID, because they need to show what are the statistics.

00:57:37.000 But what do you think Moderna's position is?

00:57:39.000 What do you think Pfizer's position is?

00:57:41.000 They are self-interested.

00:57:42.000 So one reform I've offered, and it's been steadfastly opposed by people, is that if you're a scientist and you're on the vaccine committee, you should have to reveal whether you get royalties from Pfizer or Moderna.

00:57:53.000 Oh, my God.

00:57:55.000 That's something really simple.

00:57:56.000 Yeah.

00:57:56.000 And I haven't got it passed yet because people will object to it, mostly on the Democrat side.

00:58:01.000 But I continue to try to get there.

00:58:02.000 Oh, it is a reporting request.

00:58:04.000 Tell us if you work for these companies.

00:58:06.000 Tell us if you gain money.

00:58:07.000 And Anthony Fauci's response was, the law says we don't have to.

00:58:12.000 Oh, my God.

00:58:12.000 And my response to him is, I will change the law.

00:58:15.000 And by golly, I'm continuing to fight.

00:58:18.000 And I will eventually get the law changed.

00:58:20.000 Thank you, Senator.

00:58:21.000 Thanks for coming here today.

00:58:22.000 I hope that the vote goes well.

00:58:23.000 Thanks for your transparency and clarity and expertise, wisdom.

00:58:27.000 And thanks for the endeavor of conversation.

00:58:30.000 I appreciate it.

00:58:31.000 Thank you.

00:58:31.000 Thanks, man.

00:58:34.000 Well, thank you very much for joining us today for Stay Free with Russell Brand.

00:58:39.000 We will be back tomorrow, not with more of the same, but with more of the different.

00:58:43.000 If you want to stay watching for free, you can see the quarter in now.

00:58:47.000 Thank you for your comments and your participation.

00:58:48.000 If you don't have Rumble Premium yet, get Rumble Premium now.

00:58:51.000 It helps me financially and also sort of spiritually.

00:58:54.000 I don't only judge myself by the metrics of consumerism, but when I think about it, I am rather fond of luxury in a variety of areas, but I'm working on it spiritually as best I can.

00:59:02.000 And I hope you are too.

00:59:03.000 See you tomorrow.

Stay Free - Russel Brand - July 30, 2025

Rand Paul: Trump, Tariffs & The Tyranny of Centralized Power - SF623

Episode Stats

Summary

Transcript