Sorry, I'm late.
I had to stop by the Whites Museum again and give the finger to 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.
We ain't killing their army, but we killing them.
We be on CNN like, say our name, and say it, say it three times.
The meeting of the largest armies in the history of the world.
Then there's going to be an invasion.
Aren't you guys on the line?
I got the great Dan McAdams.
He is the director of the Ron Paul Institute for Peace and Prosperity and the co-host of the Daily Liberty Report with Ron Paul at LibertyReport.com.
Welcome back to the show.
How you doing, Dan?
Hey, Scott.
Thanks for having me back.
Happy to have you here.
And hey, what a perfect time to announce the new book.
It's finally out.
The Great Ron Paul, The Scott Horton Show Interviews, 2004-19.
It was a lot harder than I thought it was going to be to put this thing together.
Transcripts of 38 interviews of Ron, and then y'all's interview of me when I was on the Liberty Report with you guys about Fool's Aaron.
And then the speech I gave last November about the greatness of Ron at y'all's Mises event down there in Lake Jackson.
And it's out.
And I got copies coming to me and coming to you and all over the place in the mail.
They're getting out and people are buying them.
And I just know that everyone is going to love it.
It's the Great Ron Paul.
It really is.
And he's just good on everything for 15 years, man.
And you know, it's funny because I talked with Kyle last night.
He interviewed me about it.
And I had showed him kind of in advance of the book to look through.
And he was saying, man, it's just incredible.
All of Ron Paul's predictions coming true essentially throughout that whole thing.
And just how ahead of the curve he is on every single thing.
And just anyway, I have to convince you, I know you know, you're his right hand man up there all these years, his foreign policy advisor for how many years in his congressional office there, Dan?
Oh, got to be at least 12 years, something like that.
And then running the Institute and co-hosting the show with him every day.
I know you know, but it's absolutely clear this is the greatest American hero ever.
And the book surely reflects that.
So I'm really excited about it and proud of it.
And it's right there on Amazon.com and at Libertarian Institute.org for people who want it.
Kindle and paperback, of course, there.
Yeah, we were we were talking about it yesterday after the show.
You know, Dr. Paul is really excited about it.
Great.
So he's wary of the title.
So it makes him a little uncomfortable.
But he's really excited about it, you know, just for the sake of history.
You know, we put together a collection of his foreign policy speeches, but only went up to, you know, the mid 2000s.
So it's it's it's I think such a great service you've done to history, you know, my view.
And I think it's a great testament to the incredible work that you've done all of these years with all of your thousands of interviews.
So we are really looking forward to it and we're looking forward to promoting it to our people, too.
Cool.
And you know what?
I know he's so humble.
He hates that kind of praise and that kind of thing.
What was I supposed to call it?
There's nothing else to call it.
It's at the great Ron Paul.
Right.
It's just as simple as that.
The name.
I didn't even make up the name.
The name just announced itself to me.
This is going to be the title of the book.
I was supposed to deny that.
Come on.
That's just how it is.
Poor guy.
I feel bad for making him uncomfortable.
But those are the breaks when you're the world's greatest hero ever.
I mean, what's going to happen?
People are going to appreciate you.
Yeah.
Well, anyway, speaking of you guys show, you do such a great job on that show, The Liberty Report.
And I watch as much as I possibly can, which is pretty much five days a week, including the Friday shows with Chris Rossini about economics and all this stuff.
But RonPaulLibertyReport.com, that's where you keep them.
We blog them at Antiwar.com all the time.
It's just a half hour every day.
And see, this is what I mean about the greatness of Ron Paul.
And of course, you know, this is you get credit, too.
But the point is, here's Mr. Goldbug.
Here's, you know, according to TV in 2008 and 2012, here's Jesse Helms, the mean old right winger or some kind of thing.
And yet every day, it's all he cares about is debunking the lies around the wars and advocating against the wars in for peace and non-interventionist foreign policy at the exclusion of essentially every other topic, including guns and including the economy.
I mean, he talks about the economy on Fridays.
But so tell me about that.
Would you talk a little bit about, you know, why it is, you know, in your understanding that that Dr. Ron Paul puts foreign policy first to such a degree?
Well, I think, you know, he I think he realizes more and more that it's the key to everything.
You know, this is what remember the famous quote from Rothbard.
You know, this the whole war thing is a key to libertarianism.
And I think he realizes that and he understands it.
And we sort of look to look at the world through that through that prism on those four days a week.
You know, he does weave in talk about the Fed and talk about the economy.
And it's important that he does so.
But, you know, the war and peace issue is just is just front and center, I think.
Yeah.
Well, and, you know, that one day that you guys interviewed me, I got to sort of sit there and watch you guys prepare for the show.
You kind of recorded a show before you recorded mine.
And so we got to sit there and watch how you guys do it.
And, you know, talking about what are we going to talk about today and all that, going in there and doing it.
And it was a great little behind the scenes thing.
I should have whipped out my iPhone and made a little documentary for everybody about it.
Yeah, the thing the thing is really cool to see, though.
Yeah, it's the thing is, you know, he doesn't he doesn't need to do this.
You know, he's he's been there.
He's done that.
He's put in his time.
It's just pure passion on his part.
And he drags himself out there.
And there are days when there's not a lot of great topics out there.
But, you know, the one thing that people may not realize is how hard he works on each show.
And I do, too, of course.
But but, you know, it takes you know, the Scott, too.
You sound so casual when you talk to people, when you do your interviews.
But you know that behind that casual tone is tons and tons of prep work and all this sort of thing.
So it takes he takes a lot of time.
He reads so much every morning, you know, before we get to the studio.
And it's just it's incredible.
Yeah.
Well, and, you know, it's funny.
When I was writing the introduction to the book or the preface, I guess I was trying to find that quote.
I know it was from The Washington Post from the 1990s, where they say quite specific.
I couldn't find the quote.
But they said they talked about and there are a few other references to this.
But they just weren't quite as quotable.
But it was essentially the story about how the lobbyists learned a long time ago to not even bother him.
And they really don't even bother him on Capitol Hill.
You know, when he was in Congress, because they know that he's just going to tell them no about everything, no matter what.
Because nothing, none of this stuff is authorized by the Constitution.
And that's his rule book.
Simple as that.
Doctor, no, they don't even bother.
And I was trying to find that quote.
But one of the things I found, or I guess Jeff Deist had sent me, was the The Great Texas Monthly article from 2001 or something like that.
It was really good.
And they do talk about that in there, although without the great quote I was looking for.
But they talk about even back then about how he doesn't need the job.
I mean, this is a guy who at least the entire first time he was in Congress, I guess not after 97.
I'm not sure.
You could tell me.
But certainly the entire, from the 70s through the mid 80s or so when he was in Congress, he was still a doctor.
And he went home and he delivered babies on Mondays and Fridays, they say in there.
And, you know, I think the way they put it is, well, he's affluent.
He's a successful doctor and, of course, invested in gold all along because he knew better than all this stuff.
And so they say, what do you call it when you're a stage below wealthy, but you're, you know, he doesn't need the job.
He's got a nice place and he could be retired and out fishing and all this.
And that was their take on him back in 1999 or whatever it was, right?
That this guy could be with his giant family and just doing that.
And instead he's out there doing this purely for the cause.
And every time I interview him, and it's as redundant as the market and reprisal discussion in the book, but it's perfectly great, is over and over and over his focus on educating the masses.
What's the key to all of this?
Convincing the American people to agree with us.
That's it.
Teach liberty.
Spread the word.
That is always his highest priority.
So that was the reason he was in Congress, the same reason he's doing Liberty Report with you now.
Make sure somebody gets a chance to hear somebody get it right about this stuff.
Yeah.
And, you know, I'm sure there were things he liked about being on the Hill, but I can tell you for the most part, he hated a lot of it.
You know, he hated taking the airplane twice a week and getting treated so badly by the airlines as we all are.
You know, he hated leaving his family behind as he went off to do this, you know, four or five days a week.
He didn't hate his colleagues, but there were a lot of boneheads around which around whom he served, you know, and that wasn't fun.
So it was it was not a great time for him personally.
But you're right.
He he had a calling and he had a mission and he did it and he didn't have to.
He loved being a doctor and he loves he loves it down here in Lake Jackson.
He enjoys it.
He doesn't like Washington.
But but he did it.
And I think we're all we're all a lot better off for it.
That's for sure.
You can get a QR code commodity disc as my gift to you.
It's a one ounce silver disc with a QR code on the back.
You take a picture of it with your phone and it gives you the instant spot price and lets you know what that silver that ounce of silver is worth on the market in Federal Reserve notes in real time.
It's the future of currency in the past to commodity discs dot com or just go to Scott Horton dot org slash donate.
Hey, guys, you know, you probably need a new Web site.
A lot of people do.
What you need to do then is go to expand designs dot com.
The great Harley Abbott and his team over at expand designs dot com.
They'll hook you up with a great new Web site for 2019.
And in fact, what you really should do is type in expand designs dot com slash Scott and you'll save five hundred dollars.
All right.
So let's talk about some of the stuff going on in the world that you guys have been covering on the show this week.
First of all, John Bolton's gone.
So give me a rap about that firsthand.
Yeah.
You know, you've got to give yourself a little bit of time to be happy, you know, and say, wow, this is great.
What a relief.
Yeah.
But then you kind of sober up a little bit and think, you know, there are good, good things and bad things about Trump.
And there's no guarantee that the replacement will be better.
In fact, you know, the ink wasn't yet dry on his pink slip when Trump said, you know, Bolton was holding me back from what I wanted to do in Cuba and Venezuela.
I know.
Did you see that?
And that may just be his his blustering is sort of tough guy thing, you know.
But that does make you sort of pull back from from your full throated sheer.
But, you know, we can hope I think especially with Trump, I think when it comes to foreign policy, I think the personnel is the policy.
And if he gets someone in there who, you know, I'm just reading this great piece by by Steve Walt, who you have on anti-war today, today on the front page about the Afghanistan war.
Right.
And someone with the sobriety of Professor Walt whispering in his ear, you know, good things could happen.
That's for sure.
Yeah.
Well, wait, is there some indication that Walt is talking to Trump?
No, no, no, no, no, no, no.
I'm just thinking, like, what kind of person would I want to be talking to Trump?
Oh, yeah.
Someone like him who, you know, who has a who has a good view of history, who understands the war in Afghanistan is lost.
Get over it.
Great title, you know.
So so someone like that, someone with that experience and perspective would be great.
Yeah.
Well, it's like we were talking about on is it Philip Kennedy's show?
Don't get that wrong.
Yeah.
On Philip Kennedy's show that we did together the other night on September 11th was, you know, there's one good bench worth of anti-war right wingers.
Very loosely defined.
That could do it.
You know, he just doesn't seem to be able to put it together that like, hey, I could really get together a team of guys that agree with me.
That it doesn't have to be John Bolton's runner up or, you know, Sheldon Adelson's second favorite choice or some kind of thing.
He's the president after all.
But what a pushover.
You know, I saw.
Did you see the headline there?
You said you looked at anti-war dot com today.
Yeah.
It says Trump reinstates arms sales to Ukraine.
Didn't you just call it off like a week and a half ago?
Yeah, it's crazy.
Someone with this guy over with a feather daily.
Yeah, it's you know, someone probably told him, hey, it's good for jobs.
OK, let's do it.
Yeah, yeah, exactly.
We get money, filthy, dripping blood money for killing people and endangering all of humanity with threatening war with Russia, escalating tensions with Russia in their next door neighbor state there.
But oh, well.
Yeah, well, the only the only relief we can get is is in knowing that the Ukrainian government, Ukrainian system is so corrupt that that money will just go in someone's pocket somewhere.
Yeah, that's it won't be threatening.
So, yeah, it's a boneheaded move.
Big time.
Yeah, man.
So now let's talk about Iran, because, you know, one of the leaks was I mean, I guess the obvious narrative was that he had talked Trump out of that meeting at Camp David, but that whole thing sounded crazy anyway.
I'm not sure I believe that that was even really a thing until, you know, I saw one thing where they said normally whenever there's going to be a big deal at Camp David in in the local town there, there's a big clamp down, a bunch of helicopters and troops running around and this kind of thing.
There was nothing like that didn't seem like any preparations were being made for the president to come in any way.
Yeah, I saw that report.
That was interesting.
Yeah, that does make you wonder if that was something leaked to the press to make Trump look goofy or dumb or something.
Well, yeah, that's true, too, although.
You know, it didn't seem right to me that they would have done that in the first place, but anyways, so the one I mean, I guess the narrative was that Bolton and Trump had fought over this and this was the final straw that that he fired Bolton over.
And yet then there was another report that said, no, it was because Bolton was getting in the way on opening up talks with Iran.
And so it's funny, like you say, he says Bolton was holding me back on Venezuela.
God help us.
But but apparently Trump was trying to see his maximum pressure strategy through toward a better deal rather than just as, you know, another failure to cite on the march to war.
And so forget Venezuela, war with Persia, that's the worst one we want to avoid more than anything.
Right.
So what do you make of that story?
Yeah, I think, you know, well, you know, from what I have heard from people, you know, Bolton has been freelance and we know that's his that's his that's his style anyway.
He doesn't he doesn't kowtow to any authority.
He's been freelancing all along.
Apparently this naming of Javad Zarif in, you know, as a person under sanctions was his idea and did it without Trump's explicit, you know, permission, which supposedly infuriated him.
Because that basically, at that point, it closed the door to negotiations.
And that's what Trump was looking.
He wanted to pull this rabbit out of his hat.
He wanted, you know, I'm guessing he wants to do something like he did with Kim in North Korea to have this moment.
And we talked about this on yesterday's show a lot.
And like, how can he do this without the Democrats saying, oh, how stupid you are?
You just went back to Obama's deal after you blew it up and you should have just stayed there in the first place.
And my thought was, if he could sort of repackage some kind of an agreement with Rouhani, if he could repackage it as a bilateral and sell it that way, you know, it might it might be more palatable to people.
And it might, you know, blunt some of the anger.
Hey, this is it.
We don't need to deal with the EU.
They could do their own thing with Iran.
We don't care.
We want our own deal.
And here's what it is.
Right.
You know, I saw you make that point in your discussion with Ron on the show.
And I think that's a really good one, because essentially, they had a great deal.
And so, you know, there's not much more they can ask.
Maybe they want to extend some sunsets or just get rid of some sunsets or their daydream, of course, is to get some new restrictions on missile range and this kind of thing.
I doubt that's going to come true either way.
But I like what you say about, well, this would be a way for Trump to essentially give up his stupid quest here, while at the same time, not just going back under the Obama deal, but doing something else instead that amounts to the same thing.
Yeah, kind of a macho thing.
You know, the US agreement.
Yeah, who needs the French except to book a meeting?
So hopefully that's what it is.
You never know.
I mean, tomorrow he could wake up and say, those damn Iranians.
Let's bomb them.
Yeah.
I mean, look, if the Ayatollah is listening, here's the deal.
This guy's got to get reelected.
You're going to have to deal with him.
So bend a little.
Who cares about giving up some sunsets when we all know you weren't making H-bombs anyway.
So come on.
Yeah, yeah, exactly.
So hopefully that's where there's some flexibility.
Yeah.
Okay, now, oh, the Kupperman thing.
I'm sorry, when we were talking about Bolton, I want to ask you about, is it Kupperman or Cooperman?
Kupperman, yeah.
But now he's just the acting advisor to the president for national security affairs, as they're called.
Is there, what do you think is a hope of, or the chance of getting somebody a little bit less worse than, I mean, because, you know, as you say, you could have the same kind of policies in a less Bolton-esque personality, and that could be really detrimental.
But what about getting, I don't know, what do you think of the chances of Douglas McGregor or someone along those lines, I don't know who else I'm even thinking of, who could really advise caution that is even in the running here?
I mean, I guess they do float McGregor's name sometimes.
Yeah, it's been floated that, I forget the name, but the aide who was involved in the North Korea negotiations, his name was- Oh, Biegun, is that it?
Yeah.
Uh-huh.
Yeah.
You know, I know that McGregor has his supporters, and, you know, this is the realist crowd.
As you pointed out on our discussion on September 11th, you know, just read the national interest.
You know, there are a lot of people there who are not, you know, bleeding heart lefties, who are, you know, conservatives, who have your vision.
So it would, what are the chances?
The problem is, you know, look at what happened with the defense secretary after Mattis left.
There was an acting for a while, and he was from Boeing, and then the guy he named was from Raytheon.
And so there's this kind of tendency of just kind of bending over and letting the military industrial complex take everything over.
Kupperman, you know, of course, was an executive in the war machine industry.
So there's a danger of that sort of thing, too.
But I think that Kupperman, I don't know him personally, but I'm familiar with his background.
In a way, could be more dangerous than a Bolton, because he's just sort of a mild-mannered bureaucrat with very, very dangerous views.
Yeah, well, personality has so much to do with it.
And it seems like the worst case would be someone kind of right in the middle of these two.
I'm not so much concerned about having a real weak guy in there, sort of like the last couple secretaries of defense.
They're not really, I mean, it's not, not that I'm saying it's fine to just hire a bunch of guys from Raytheon, but, you know, they don't, they apparently don't have that much stature and influence.
Compare them to Mattis or Gates or Rumsfeld or somebody like that, who is a boss.
You know, in their own realm.
And so, if the National Security Advisor is bad on everything, but it is essentially sort of a weak character, I mean, Bolton is just over the top, right?
Bolton is a self-sabotager, but you could be, you know, you could have Bolton's positions and be very persuasive.
And this guy doesn't seem like he probably is that, you know, I hope.
Yeah, I think the Boltons of DC are ideological.
You know, they have a particular ideological vision and they don't care about anything other than that, where you have people like these executives who really aren't all that ideological.
They buy into the whole line that we've got to, if we don't act, the bad guys will act.
So we have to be everywhere at all times, but they're not really ideological about it.
They just sort of accept it.
Yeah.
And the character, and I don't just mean like good or bad, but I mean the character, like in the TV character sense, the whole character of the person really matters a lot.
Like you think about a guy like Paul Wolfowitz, for whatever exact position he's in, he's a guy who can command the room.
You know what I mean?
He's not the kind of guy who, you know, not in all circumstances, but in his pond, he can be a very big fish and can speak in a very authoritative way.
And make people believe that he must be right about the crazy thing that he thinks and that kind of thing.
And so like you're saying, yeah, these business executive types, maybe in their realm of lobbyists, in their realm, they might be fine, but up here.
And of course that just means it's almost like Nouri al-Maliki is his own secretary of the interior and his own defense minister and all of these things where Trump is actually serving all his own cabinet positions because he has all these very weak guys in there and then he just flip flops around like crazy.
Nobody can count on him, you know, really any more than we can count on Bolton.
Yeah, it depends on who's had his ear that morning.
Or even what he thinks too.
He's really bad on stuff.
We shouldn't presume that his instinct is really anti-war.
His instinct is to be a macho tough guy.
He can be sick and tired of war or sick and tired of spending sometimes, but there's no real principle behind that, you know?
Yeah, you know, I mean, I think the same thing was true with Bush.
They really didn't spend a lot of time thinking about, you know, foreign affairs and, you know, you and me, Scott, we spend a lot of our lives thinking about it.
And sometimes it's sort of hard to understand or realize that a lot of people just don't and that's fine.
But when you jump into the office of the presidency, that's really the only area where you can actually do something, you know?
You actually have constitutional authority and you can do things and make things happen.
And so it's dangerous when you have someone that doesn't think a lot about it and they get into a position where they can do a lot, you know?
Yep.
And a lot like George W. Bush, just, yeah, I make decisions through my gut because I don't want to sit around reading the national interest.
So I just, you know, I just, you know, somebody says a thing to me and then I react.
That's how I, you know, all right.
Exactly, exactly.
This is good, yeah.
What a great plan.
No principles whatsoever to underline.
So, um, well, now let me ask you this.
Do you think it's really right that Bolton was holding them back on Venezuela or Trump is just talking smack and he doesn't even know which way he's going or what?
Things could get really bad there if America really intervened more than we've already failed to, you know?
I hope he's just talking smack because, I mean, what are they going to do now?
The whole, the whole, the only thing they can do now to Venezuela is to hurt more civilians because the whole Guaido thing has been exposed as a real joke.
The guy never had any authority, never had any abilities.
The chance of them incubating someone out of that ferment who can, who can take over and be the figurehead is virtually zero.
So what the hell are they going to do in Venezuela?
He's going to go in there and invade?
You know, it's, it's nuts.
So unless it's, if it's not bluster, then what is his plan?
You know, he has no room for action.
Even Pompeo, I don't know if this was deliberately leaked or not, but Pompeo was caught on tape saying the problem in Venezuela is among the opposition.
If we got rid of Maduro tomorrow, we'd have 20 different guys claiming to be a successor.
Exactly.
So yeah, I heard that.
Yeah.
Yeah.
There's, I mean, that just says it all right there.
20 different guys that can't get their act together to share power in the future from here on out, if we're going to hand them a coup.
Nope.
They're still going to fight about it down to the last man.
Yeah.
No coup for you then.
You know, I don't know.
You know, the ironic thing is the U S meddling is what's created a weak opposition.
They're all a bunch of corrupt suck ups waiting for the next NED dollar to land in their pockets.
So they don't really, don't really bother to develop a grassroots following.
You know, you want to talk about a coup, look at someone like Gaddafi who knew how to pull off a damn coup.
You know, look at Saddam Hussein.
He knew how to take over.
These guys are just, the U S has them in the back pocket.
And they just, they have no interest in developing a grassroots following.
Guado never had an interest.
He was popular in some of the rich neighborhoods of Caracas, full stop.
That's it.
You can't run a country like that.
Yep.
Yeah.
They, they sure tried.
It was funny watching them try that.
Those are kind of two of the most embarrassing failed coup attempts in the last little while there.
Right.
You could really make a funny, like maybe the Coen brothers or something could make a really funny movie.
Yeah.
Like the Taylor Panama kind of thing.
Yeah.
Or like, you know, what was the Woody Allen movie from the sixties where he was a revolutionary?
You know, I only saw one clip of that where I never watched the Woody Allen movie.
I don't think, but he's in the back of the plane and they're going, it's the guerrillas versus the right wing, a fascist government.
And he goes, which side are we on?
They're like in the back of the C one 30 or what it down, you know, or, you know, transport plane going down there.
Infantry like, which side are we on?
We're on both sides.
CIA wants to be real short this time.
It's great.
Bananas is the name.
Yeah.
That was, you can make a good film of the Guido thing.
You know, it's actually watch a Woody Allen film for the first time in my life.
Well, that's when he was.
Yeah.
I mean that the sixties, he did a lot of interesting social critique films, but anyway, that was just too young, man.
Anyways.
Well, thanks Dan very much for joining me back on the show again.
Well, thanks very much, Scott.
And we'll we'll, we'll get busy promoting that book.
Oh yeah.
Let's do that.
I, I got a giant box of them on its way to you right now.
All right, Joe, that's the great Dan McAdams.
He's at the Ron Paul Institute, ronpaulinstitute.com and a co-host of the Liberty Report.
Of course, you can find it on YouTube and at libertyreport.com.
All right, y'all.
Thanks.
Find me at libertarianinstitute.org at scotthorton.org, antiwar.com and reddit.com slash scott Horton show.
Oh yeah.
And read my book fool's errand timed and the war in Afghanistan at foolserrand.us.
