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I had to stop by the wax museum again and give the finger at FDR.
We know Al-Qaeda, Zawahiri is supporting the opposition in Syria.
Are we supporting Al-Qaeda in Syria?
It's a proud day for America and by God we've kicked Vietnam syndrome once and for all.
Thank you very, very much.
I say it, I say it again, you've been had.
You've been took.
You've been hoodwinked.
These witnesses are trying to simply deny things that just about everybody else accepts as fact.
He came, he saw, he died.
But we ain't killing their army, but we killing them.
We be on CNN like Say Our Name been saying, say it three times.
The meeting of the largest armies in the history of the world.
Then there's going to be an invasion.
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Introducing our good friend Dan McAdams, why he runs the Ron Paul Institute for Peace and Prosperity.
And also he is the co-host of the Liberty Report with Dr. Ron Paul that comes out every day and is absolutely great.
Welcome back to the show.
How are you doing, Dan?
Hey, Scott.
Thanks for having me back on.
Did I mention that I reprint everything you write at antiwar.com, original.antiwar.com slash, which is it?
Daniel dash McAdams.
There you go.
Thank you, Scott.
That's great.
House passes new Russia sanctions.
Oh, and that's not all.
That's just all we could fit in the headline.
Pumps adrenaline into Cold War 2.0.
So, well, it's North Korea, Russia and Iran.
You can take them in whichever order you want or all three if you want to talk about D.C. politics first or whichever you think is the most important.
I guess.
Yeah, whatever you choose.
Well, you know, in an update, actually, the Senate last night voted on the on the bill.
So this would be final passage because, you know, the Senate voted a few weeks ago, but the bill was changed because the House just had to add North Korea in there, too.
And, you know, they played up the fact that there was disagreement.
But no, at the end of the day, the Senate voted last night with two no votes out of every one.
Bernie Sanders and Rand Paul, good for those two for standing up.
And it's probably a smart political move ultimately.
But so now basically it's sitting on Trump's desk.
And the big question is, you know, what's he going to do?
And, you know, for me at least, before we saw the vote, you know, what's he going to do means Trump, you better veto this.
But with this overwhelming, only three House members voted against it, with this overwhelming support, it's not even really an issue of what Trump's going to do.
It's totally irrelevant what he does.
He's completely in a box on this issue.
His hands are tied.
Even if we took him at the best possible Trump incarnation, it wouldn't matter.
I mean, it's just toast.
Yeah.
Although, you know, I don't know if he vetoed it, knowing obviously that they could override his veto, but then really gave a statement that said that I judge that this is not in the national security interests of the United States.
And I'm the commander in chief.
God dang it.
And I want you to back down.
And maybe, you know, some of the Republicans would back down.
I don't know.
I guess as long as you have the trifecta in there, it's pretty hard.
I like the way that sounded, Scott.
I think Scaramucci should call you up and ask you to write a statement for them.
I mean, that's my thing with all of these guys.
I mean, Obama could have done the same thing.
Obama could have whooped Petraeus.
Obama was afraid of Petraeus.
Why?
He was the president.
Petraeus is nothing but some general.
He could have slapped him down and instead he rolled right over for him.
It's the same thing with Trump.
Any place where he disagrees with these guys, for good or for ill, he can have his way.
And it seems like he always backs down when standing up to them would be the better option.
You know, he'll go along with them when what they want to do is worse.
Yeah.
I mean, he has an authoritarian streak and everything that's not important, you know, but the stuff that is important, he's afraid to flex his muscles.
It's pretty pathetic.
Okay.
Now, so, and I don't know what real difference that would make.
And I guess, although, I mean, if he, if part of his speech was, I'm not going to enforce him.
I mean, forget you guys.
Yeah.
You know, we're not doing this.
You can override my veto if you want, but how's the Senate going to boss the Treasury Department around?
They work for me.
And if he wanted to do it that way and really make a fight out of it, I think that would be enough to make the difference.
But so since that's not going to happen, they would override his veto either way, probably will go ahead and sign it.
But then what?
I mean, I guess Putin's got to understand that Trump's hands are tied by all this fake Russia scandal and all this demonization and that it didn't really his fault.
So, you know, hopefully he'll kind of take it in that context, you know, that, well, the Senate can pass sanctions.
They can't really start a war without the president anyway.
Yeah.
Yeah, exactly.
But, you know, it's like Dr. Paul says, you know, the problem that Trump has is that he never had an operating philosophy.
He never sat down and worked out like, okay, what's my view of the world?
What's our place in the world?
What should we be doing?
He never, he never, he never thought that he was like, hey, it might be cool to be president someday or something, you know, so he's got himself in the right.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I mean, he got himself in a box by being so hawkish on Iran, so hawkish on North Korea that putting the three of them together in a package, it's going to make it difficult for him because he still feels the way that he's always felt about Iran.
You know, I mean, from, from what we've seen, and maybe you've seen it too, he was awfully angry with Tillerson for, for recertifying Iran.
So, you know, I mean, he's in a total box.
He's in a box of his own creation.
Yep.
And, you know, I mean, from the rest of them, it's a little bit puzzling, but yeah, from him, the inconsistency is consistent, right?
Because as you said, we know he doesn't really know anything and he doesn't even, he doesn't understand enough to even have a philosophy that he could even build around events that, well, considering the position that we're in, I think we should take this consistent line of policies one way or the other, right?
It's still all haphazard, even according, you know, it's all just reacting and in opposite ways all the time, you know, contradictory ways.
So.
And I think even, even worse, I mean, I think he lacks the intellectual curiosity to figure out what this is really all about.
You know, if some dude walks into the White House and says, oh, North Korea, you never guess what they did.
They just popped off a missile.
Oh my God, we got to do something.
You know?
I mean, it's just, it's not the context.
There's no interest in the context.
Right.
In fact, I just got a tweet like that.
Well, oh my God, the North Koreans, they just shot this missile towards Japan.
And I'm like, yeah, yeah, yeah.
They do that all the time.
But if you don't know that, yeah, yeah, yeah.
They do that all the time.
And that's really not a threat of aggressive war or anything like that.
They're just demonstrating the fact that they can retaliate is all that they have a retaliatory capability whatsoever is really all that's going on there.
And yeah, they like getting a lot of attention and changing the subject to themselves a lot, but don't freak out.
You might freak out, right?
If you don't already know that, then out of context, that looks like a real scary thing.
And the neocons know this game or something like this happens.
Of course they play it up.
Oh, Trump, look, they're doing it again.
They're doing it again.
They're doing it again.
You got to do something.
Don't be a wimp.
They know exactly how to do this.
It's really puts them in more of a box.
All right.
Hang on just one second.
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All right.
Well, so, and now how bad are these sanctions exactly anyway?
Cause sanctions on Russia could mean a few different things.
I think, you know, there's a psychological impact, which is important, you know, that, that, okay.
And we had this great meeting.
We sat down, we chatted a couple of hours, uh, made some agreements actually.
Strangely enough, the Syria thing seemed to work.
Okay.
Uh, so far, not so bad.
Um, there's at least the appearance that Trump has been going to back off with the CIA program.
Although I think it's played up to me more than it is, uh, you know, and you have all this psychological effect of that just being washed away.
But I think on a practical level, there's a, there's big implications for the energy, uh, sector in the U S and Europe.
I just put up a great article that, um, I'm sure, you know, her two giant Diana Johnstone, uh, who I've followed for years.
She wrote for counterpunch, uh, a great piece on the effect on the European industry and, uh, how essentially, I mean, this was sort of play into Trump's philosophy, I guess.
It's kind of a form of protectionism.
Okay.
Germans, you do not get gas from, from Russia just across the way we're going to, we're going to frack the heck out of our country and we're going to put some, some gas in a boat and send it all the way over to you.
It's going to be double, but you guys better do it or else, you know what I mean?
I don't know about this.
I mean, I don't think the Germans are too happy about it.
Yeah.
I mean, that sounds like the kind of thing that politicians in DC can dream up and maybe even get away with implementing for a while, but it ain't going to last over the longterm.
And in fact, you know, we saw this with Merkel and Holland both in, um, I guess it was in 2015, right?
That they came to DC and notified Obama that they were going to go end the war in Ukraine.
And then they did.
And I mean, I'm pretty sure that they obtained his blessing, but I think they more or less announced to him that, listen, we're going to go and make a deal.
And then they went over and did so the Americans, Obama, at least was on autopilot, if not, you know, happily directing the thing and the war was grinding on and on and on.
And Merkel went over there and said, that's it.
You know, Kiev, knock it off.
Russia.
We promise.
We mean it.
When we tell Kiev to knock it off, you have your guys chill too.
And the tension was ratcheted down.
I know there's still been some fighting, but it's been a hell of a lot better since then.
So yeah, at the end of the day, Hey, the Germans and the Russians, they fought a few times before and it never really worked out very well for anybody.
It didn't work out well.
Yeah, exactly.
They know what real war is like.
They can even remember that institutionally, even from that long ago, uh, 70 years ago now, 80 years ago now.
Um, because of just how bad both societies were wrecked by both of the last times they went through this.
Yeah, exactly.
And you know, I mean, Europe is in a precarious position right now as well.
And, uh, you know, something like this will hit the economy, uh, this hard.
Uh, and, but you know, it also will hit American industry because, you know, they, the, the American companies that work on pipelines, they wanted a 50% threshold for participation.
And, uh, the, um, the, uh, they, they said, no, no, just keep it at 33.
So they're going to miss out on a lot of business, you know, and, uh, that's not going to make them happy either.
So it's, you know, it's, it's, it's a lose lose in that respect.
But I mean, I guess the silver lining really, uh, is that anything that drives the U S the drives that a wedge between the U S and EU on these kinds of matters, matters of the U S empire and the Europeans sort of following along blindly.
Anything that drives a wedge in that is good from our perspective, I think.
Yeah.
At least it's a silver lining in there for sure.
Um, yeah, the, the Trump world order, you know, I dunno, I guess if you have to be a flailing failing empire, could, could have Hillary Clinton in there.
I dunno.
But what's shocking is how absolutely clueless president Trump is when it comes to this stuff.
I mean, it's, I mean, you've probably been following this, but this, uh, appointment of West Mitchell, uh, to be assistant secretary of state for European and Eurasian affairs, you know, that's the Victoria Newland position.
Uh, and this guy, I think this guy makes Newland look like a biker.
You know, this guy's Newland on steroids.
You know, if you look at his background, hardcore neocon, um, he's involved with the center for European policy analysis out of Washington, DC.
Take a look at their funders, Lockheed Martin, national endowment for democracy, uh, the Pentagon, uh, Ukraine, Ukraine, and he's the president and CEO of this organization.
So this is the guy that's going to take over our, our European policy.
And then look at Kurt Volker, who's, who's Trump's point man on Ukraine.
This is the guy who was the head of the McCain Institute.
You know, I mean, and they, I, you probably saw this too on Twitter that, uh, there, there are whispers that, uh, to Tillerson is going to be out and Nikki Haley is going to, I mean, this is nuts.
I mean, I don't even know that Jeb Bush could get away with this kind of neocon infiltration, you know?
And just starting with all the military guys that he put in the cabinet.
Yeah, that as well.
And because the military guys are dependent on all these worst think tankers to justify what they're doing anyway.
So it's sort of like Donald Rumsfeld, he comes with neocons and it's the same thing with McMaster and Mattis too.
I mean, it's terrible to say, and I hate even thinking, but I could imagine if someone like Jeb had won his dad, calling him up and saying, Hey, listen, you know, give a call to James Baker.
I don't want all these neocons in there, you know, as bad as he would have been.
I don't think he would have been as bad as this.
These guys are absolute nightmares.
And trust me, these are not your usual lazy government employees.
When these guys get into this post, they work hard because they've got an agenda, you know, they are working 24 seven.
Yeah.
Well, and in fact, you think about how stupid George W. Bush was, at least he came with a little bit of institutional knowledge there being from that powerful a political family where Trump is just absolutely an amateur up here.
Um, probably as dumb as, and incurious as Bush.
And you know, there's that great anecdote from Andrew Coburn's book, Rumsfeld, where it wasn't until 2006 that Trump said, I mean, that W.
Bush said to his father, what's a neocon?
I was like, dude, you've been in power for how many years now?
You never asked Condoleezza Rice this yet.
What the hell a neocon is.
And then the father's answer was who or what?
And he said, what?
And then senior said, Israel.
And then that was it.
That was the whole conversation.
There was no, you dumb, dumb Pearl Wolfowitz, whatever the discussion, you know, there comes a time in every Bush's life where we have to talk about the guys from GINSA and AEI, but no, they didn't even bother.
And then Trump knows less than that by half or something, you know, he was thinking of all my sons.
Why did Fredo get elected president?
That was my favorite Bush senior quote was your real disappointment to me, junior.
Yeah.
To all of us, George, all of us.
Um, but gosh, he's, he's looking good in comparison.
That's what makes me crazy.
Well, that's the thing, right?
Is George H. W. Bush was also an absolute idiot.
And he only looked somewhat smart in comparison to his own vice president, Dan Quayle, who was the W.
Bush of his time.
But even Bush senior, there was a book back then of Bush isms, where everything that he said was complete nonsense.
And that kind of, you know, just like the boy he was, it's all we're grading on a steep curve here.
When we remember W.H.W. Bush is some kind of, you know, he might've been evil, but that doesn't mean he was competent, you know?
Yeah.
Yeah, that's true.
That's a good point.
But, you know, I think these, you know, the Iran sanctions is another good, important point, I think.
And, and here again, I think that the issue is of the Europeans, because, you know, we did a show last week about it and European trade, the EU trade with Iran has increased 77, 78% in 2016 when the deal was done.
Oh, really?
Yeah.
That's really chomping at the bit for, they were waiting for that opportunity bad.
And it was really only Obama that was able to tell them, wait, wait, wait, we're going to get this deal.
They wanted to go ahead anyway.
The most important achievement of his presidency, I think, no question.
But, but are the Europeans going to back off now?
They're selling left hand over foot, they're selling to the Iranians, they're trading.
You know, things are going well.
Are they going to all of a sudden say, oh, well, Washington told us we can't do this anymore.
Sorry, guys.
I just don't see it happening.
Yeah.
I wonder about that.
I mean, they clearly will not be able to get the Europeans to reinstitute sanctions and go back and all that when clearly it's a manufactured, you know, a bunch of claims that they're going to attempt to make here, apparently about Iran being in violation of the deal.
And I was just asking Con Hallinan about that too, that, well, I mean, if America abrogates the deal, hell, even if Iran said, fine, and they quit the deal too, they're still within the nonproliferation treaty.
And they still, as we both know, and hopefully the audience all knows that this Ayatollah and the one before him said it was against God to make nukes.
And that is absolutely forbidden.
The government is absolutely forbidden from making chemical or nuclear weapons or germ weapons or anything like that.
And I, you know, that policy could change, but probably only after the next war, not before it.
So, you know, I just wonder like how bad it could really get when their policy is that they really don't want nukes anyway.
The only, and that's the only excuse that anybody can come up with for attacking them is that they're in nuclear danger.
Anything short of that, what do you got?
They back Hezbollah, I don't care.
You know?
Yeah.
But they're going to, you know, they can jit all kinds of things up.
And, you know, if the U.S. was really concerned about Iran getting nukes, then why don't they remove the reasons why it would seek nukes anyway?
You know, I mean, the Libya example, the, you know, I mean, everything, the example, why don't they, why don't, you know, why doesn't Trump thump Israel and Saudi Arabia on the head and say, just chill out a little bit?
You know, you guys are making the Iranians nervous.
Stop threatening them so much.
I mean, there are so many things that could be done that, you know, if, if the U.S. actually didn't want a war that they could do, it makes me think they actually do want a war.
Yeah.
I wondered too.
And depending on who you ask, but, and then, but so now as far as what you were saying there about the Europeans and their trade, I mean, the treasury department, this is another thing that Con was saying was the U.S. treasury department, it's a SOB man, and they can make you do what they want.
And if the deal is we're putting new sanctions on Iran, and that applies to you, European banks and firms, if you want to keep doing business with Iran and we make them choose, then they might hate us for it, but they'll have to choose us and not Iran, right?
Or not.
Yeah.
And that's why I highly recommend the Johnstone article I was talking about.
It's on our site and it's on counterpunch because she really details how the treasury is able to define someone as a quote U.S. person.
And, you know, the U.S. has spent the last couple, couple of decades essentially spreading its tentacles far and wide.
So if, if France does business with Iran and they have to use the dollar for the exchange, all of a sudden that's subject to the treasury regulations, you know, it's the U.S. has been forcing the rest of the world to enforce U.S. law, even when it, even when it's, you know, violates their own country's law.
And okay, that's going to go for a while and it's gone for a while, but at some point there's going to be a breaking point.
And that's the big question.
Yeah.
All right.
Now, so it's kind of just a ritual thing, these sanctions that they pass on North Korea and yet what else is there left to sanction about North Korea at this point, Dan?
I mean, we have no trade with them whatsoever.
Who else can we threaten?
Yeah.
I mean, if like, if having no trade doesn't work, maybe having tons of trade would work, you know?
I mean, the rest of us, the rest of us in our lives, we kind of figure that out.
If doing X is producing the opposite results and maybe I should do the opposite of X, but, but they don't think that way, of course, because there's always the same solution sanctions.
But, you know, you have, you have this new president of South Korea, Moon, who was elected on the promise of revisiting the sunshine policy, opening up contacts.
He's already, he's already invited the North Korean Taekwondo team to come down and have a championship down there.
And that's a good, easy way to start things, you know?
And he's mentioned having military talks with North on the DMZ to see if they can diffuse the tensions.
So he's making the right moves, but every time he does that, the U.S. freaks out and says, you know, don't you dare, you know, and, and ramps it up.
If we would just leave them alone, they would find a way to resolve this problem.
But then again, that would take away all of the, you know, all of the think tanks in Washington that thrive on creating threats.
You know, what are these guys going to do?
How are they going to make an honest living if they're not there writing papers about all these threats?
Yeah.
Well, good question.
And, you know, that's the real thing of it, right?
Is that all you have is a bunch of narrow self-interest, a whole lot of not good enough reasons for all of these policies, and yet no organized force to stop it either.
It's the whole thing, no matter which country we're talking about, whatever the horrible policy is, it's all still going on and nobody's trying to stop it, doesn't seem like.
And there's the, you know, and they use propaganda, the false patriotism.
Hey, if you're against these wars, you're not tough.
You're not American, you know, what are you, a wimp?
Are you a commie?
And sadly, it works in middle America, and they're the ones that are getting really literally getting screwed.
The economy's going in the toilet, you know, real wages are stagnant.
And meanwhile, you sort of hand them a flag and wave it.
But, you know, as Dr. Paul says, and you say, and so many say, the real patriotism is not having our country on its knees because we keep spending over a trillion dollars a year on phantom threats.
Yeah, that's the whole thing of it, too, man.
I remember, this is sort of the short-term version of the same morning.
Boy, the economy is headed for some real trouble.
That's Ron Paul in the beginning of, you know, well, all through, obviously, his campaign in 2007 and 2008.
But even that September, the beginning of that month, he was going, boy, you listen to me, I'm telling you, things are about to change.
Stock market bubble comes crashing down, brings the world economy with it three weeks later, you know.
And I'll never get over the fact that that was in 2008 and not 2007.
Because can you imagine if that had been at the end of 2007 and the real start of the campaign season, you had had Mr. Austrian School Boom Bus Cycle Theory himself running for office, explaining why there was a boom and why there was a bust.
Not just warning this is what is about to happen, but the same guy is the one who has said, hey, over the long term, we're jeopardizing the status of the dollar itself.
Because any society, no matter how powerful a world empire you are, at the end of the day, there are limits of how much debt you can monetize and just how hard you can push these kinds of policies.
And that's the direction that our policymakers are driving us in.
And now, he never did say it's going to be this month or next month or next year.
But he has warned that, yeah, no, this is how empires fall completely apart, is when nobody accepts their currency anymore.
And that's something that, you know, it probably is not something that we're going to deal with in the next couple of years.
But it is going to be, I mean, short of nuclear holocaust, it'll be how the empire ends.
As Ron Paul's warnings will finally come due, you know.
I remember years ago, he said, well, they'll still pay the Social Security checks.
It's just they'll be worthless.
You know, you'll still get your money.
It just won't buy you anything.
Yeah.
And the hidden inflation already makes it almost that case.
But you know, but the thing is, if you, I mean, if you really were worried about Russia, take a look at money.
The U.S. is, well, I don't know, 20 trillion in overt debt and however, maybe 200 trillion in hidden debt.
But the Russians have paid off their external debt.
You know, so if you're really worried in the long term about the Russians, maybe we should think a little bit about this part too.
Right.
Yeah.
We need gold money now.
It's too late.
Speaking my language, man.
All right.
Well, listen, I just think it's great that you and Ron do this show every day.
It's so good.
The Liberty Report.
And well, you just, of course, the two of you always setting the example that this is what's most important.
You can tell by what we prioritize to talk about.
And it's always the empire.
Always, always the empire.
Best in the country on it.
So thank you for doing your great show.
Thank you for running all the great articles and stuff that you run at the Ron Paul Institute, RonPaulInstitute.org.
Yeah, exactly.
Exactly.
RonPaulInstitute.org.
And then we reprint all your stuff again at original.antiwar.com slash Daniel dash McAdams as well.
Thanks again, man.
Hey, Scott, can I get one plug in before you hang up?
Yeah, sure.
Our conference coming up in September in Washington, D.C.
Oh, cool.
All the details, RonPaulInstitute.org slash conference.
Oh, cool.
Doing it again this year.
I'm sorry to ask you that, but I certainly appreciate that.
And I'd love to see all your listeners there.
Yeah, no, I'm happy to promote that.
Absolutely.
Thank you, Scott.
All right, you guys, you heard it.
So RonPaulInstitute.org slash conference there.
Thanks again, Dan.
Thank you, Scott.
All right, you guys, I'm Scott Horton.
Check out all this stuff.
Forty five hundred interviews at Scott Horton.org, Libertarian Institute.org for my institute and follow me on Twitter at Scott Horton Show.
Thanks.
