Hey guys, Scott here.
I got some speeches and events and things to tell you guys about.
First of all, on the evening of February the 7th, I'm hosting another Renegade University at ThaddeusRussell.com.
On February the 24th, I'm giving a talk here in Austin at Austin Anarchy in Action.
On March 2nd, I'll be in DC tabling, selling books, hopefully, at the Israel Lobby Conference.
But then on March 3rd, I'm flying up to Philadelphia to give a speech to the Pennsylvania Libertarian Party at their convention.
But then I'll be back in DC on March the 4th to give two speeches, one at the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs Bookstore and another at Tenleytown Library.
So that's the weekend of March 2nd through 4th there.
On March 20th, I'll be giving a speech at East Carolina University in Greenville, North Carolina.
On March 24th, I'll be speaking at the New Jersey Libertarian Party convention in New Brunswick, New Jersey.
On April 28th, I'll be up in Fort Worth giving a talk to the local Libertarian Party group there.
And in the first week of May, I'm not exactly sure, it's I think the 3rd through the 6th, one of those days, I will be in San Diego giving a speech for Libertopia.
Then on June 21st, the Michigan Midwest Peace and Liberty Fest is going on.
I'll be giving a talk there.
And October the 6th, planning a little bit ahead now, on October the 6th, I'll be giving a talk at Liberty Fest again in New York City.
Sorry I'm late.
I had to stop by the Wax 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, bitch, 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.
All right, you guys, on the line, I've got Daniel McAdams.
For many years, he was Ron Paul's foreign policy advisor in his congressional office.
And boy, you can tell the fruits of that.
Thank God.
And now he's Ron Paul's partner over there and runs the Ron Paul Institute for Peace and Prosperity.
Welcome back to the show.
How are you doing, Dan?
Hey, Scott, it's great to be back with you.
Uh, you know what?
It's great to have you on the show.
And it's just so great.
You guys do the Liberty Report.
Was it four days a week there?
I do it within four days a week.
And then on Friday, uh, Chris Rossini joins him and they do more of an economics oriented show for Fridays.
Oh, right on.
So listen, here's the thing about that.
I love that show and you guys do such a great job.
And you know, you always have done your homework better than me, uh, even and, and Ron too.
And of course all the principal and everything, but you know what I really like about it is just how much you guys hate the wars.
It's all, it's so important to me that, um, and I hope other people pick up on this.
That's where the thrill comes from for me.
It's a vicarious thing that people see, oh, that old gold bug, Ron Paul, that old right-wing conservative old gold bug.
And then you look at him and all he cares about is the wars.
That's all he cares about.
And you guys do such a great job, uh, on, you know, covering foreign policy on that show every single day.
It's just great.
So thanks for that.
Well, thanks Scott.
Yeah.
I mean, I think, um, if anything, I think, you know, Ron has become more radical on the war issue.
I mean, I think he's, he's always, of course, always been there, uh, completely, but I think he's, the more he sees, the more he realizes, you know, how central it is.
And that of course, doesn't, that doesn't negate the issue of the Fed's role because the Fed's role is in helping facilitate these wars.
But I think he's really, he's really honed in, honed in on it a lot more.
Right.
Well, and you know, one of the things about that is, and I know this cause I've interviewed him 30 something times, and that is he really knows what he's talking about on every one of these subjects far better than any of these warmongers, uh, far better than, far better than most of us, you know, he really, uh, is so good at this.
So how could he not be outraged?
I mean, when you really understand what's going on here, it's pretty outrageous, you know, so I guess that's our segue into Syria.
Um, uh, which ally are we at war with that you want to talk about first here, Dan?
I tell you what, this is some of the most fascinating, uh, and not in a good way.
Some of the most fascinating things that I've seen, you know, it's, uh, it's, it's right now.
I mean, it's on pins and needles.
I mean, you have the, uh, what is it?
The, the deputy prime minister of Turkey saying, Hey, if the Americans, uh, are over in the East, when we finished with Afrin on Manbij, uh, if their proxies or the Americans are there, uh, we're going to hit them, you know?
And this is pretty serious stuff.
Uh, you know, the Turkey is, uh, it's always been a little bit bombastic under Erdogan, but they look explicitly like they are loaded for bear.
Well, now here's the funny thing about that, right?
Is, okay.
It makes perfect sense.
They're at war against the Kurds that we're supporting.
We got our guys a bit of there, except here's the rub though.
There are NATO allies and you know, we got the most powerful military in the world and they couldn't possibly mean that.
Could they?
But then I think, Oh, maybe they could.
Well, you know, we're taking off in, you know, the irony, of course we talked about on the show a few times, you know, U S U S jets are taking off from Incirlik supporting the Kurds.
Turkish planes are taking off from Incirlik bombing the Kurds.
So, you know, if they pulled the plug on Incirlik, it would not necessarily knock us out of Syria, but it would, it would probably break one of our legs.
I would guess at the very least drinking together and laughing their asses off at night.
What is going on here?
You know, this is another example of the Trump administration, you know, absolute tenure.
He surrounds himself with generals, his generals, all three of them have been obsessed with the Middle East, obsessed with getting rid of Iran, obsessed with the talks with attacking Iran.
He listens to only these people and it's a bubble, Scott.
They believe their own rhetoric.
They believe that the Turks, Hey, they're just going to back down, you know, but there's a bunch of backwoods people, whatever.
And the Turks were like, we are deadly serious about this.
We are not going to let a statelet, a Kurdish statelet develop on our border.
This is a fundamental security issue for us, you know, and Trump and his team, they'll back off though.
The neocons always do this.
They always, they're so confident.
They're so confident.
And then when things completely screw up, Oh, Hey, it's not our fault.
Yeah.
Well, so, but answer me this though, haven't the YPG Kurds, the Syrian Kurds outlived their usefulness now that the Islamic state that of course the U S was instrumental in creating the situation at least in which it, uh, rose in the first place.
But now that they've been rousted out of Raqqa and now that, you know, their soul, their state is gone and their, their foot soldiers are scattered and on the run, wherever they go, isn't it high time to go ahead and stab them in the back?
Obviously I'm being cynical and sarcastic about it, but you understand.
Well, we've done it before with the Kurds, you know, there's no question about it, but I don't think quite yet because these are the YPG Kurds too.
They're not our friends.
Uh, the, the Northern Iraqi ruling regime there is not related to the PKK revolutionary types, the way these YPG guys are.
But I think, you know, well, I just, I think that they are our proxy boots on the ground right now in Syria.
Uh, and that's what we need because we want to carve, we, I mean the U S government, it's not, we, uh, they want to carve out this area.
They want to carve out these bases, uh, in Northeastern Syria.
They want to retain us force there and they need boots on the ground and the, and the Kurds are about the only thing they've got going right now.
So they still need them for a while, but, uh, the Turks have preempted them.
Uh, and, uh, if they continue to move on, uh, the Kurds, they will eliminate the, the American proxy army, uh, in, uh, in, in Syria.
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And now did I read it right?
That there's 10,000 FSA fighters that are now just under the control of the Turkish army troops.
That's the number that I saw to 10,000 strong force.
But you know, what's what's what's really interesting.
I was reading a piece today, you may have seen it.
That sounds inflated.
I mean, are there were there ever 10,000 FSA guys that weren't just al Nusra?
That's that?
Well, yeah.
Okay.
Well, in a broader sense, FSA guys, but I'm reading a piece now, that talks from the this group of FSA that had been trained by the US, saying that, hey, we're going to go in and we're not only going to attack the Kurds, we're going to attack the Americans.
So talk about a storm of feces that we've unearthed, or unleashed there, simply because Donald Trump didn't follow his own promises of, hey, we're going to get out of the business of, of occupying and overthrowing and nation building, you know, if he'd only followed what he said in the beginning, he'd only hired people to do what he said he would do.
We wouldn't be and we haven't seen the worst of this is going to get a lot worse.
And I predict that the US will come limping home at some point.
It's just sooner or later.
That's the only question.
Yeah, well, I mean, yeah, I wonder about that Madison McMaster, they've decided, I guess, so far, they're getting their way on this, that they really want to carve out this piece of Kurdistan and have permanent bases there.
But they don't want to try to rule any of the population of Eastern Syria there.
They just want to stay on their base, for what to attack the Syrian regime at some point, or to attack Iraqi or Iranians who drive across the the now redrawn border into Eastern Syria or what is their point?
I think it's all about Iran.
And I'm sure you saw Stephen Kinzer's great piece.
It was on antiwar.com today.
And he made the great point that you know, this whole thing being about protecting Israel from Syria, well, Syria hasn't attacked Israel.
And I think Stephen wrote 40 years.
And by the way, Israel is more than capable of defending itself against against the I'm sorry, Iran hasn't attacked in 40 years.
And, and the Israelis are certainly more than capable of dealing with any kind of Iran.
They've got the most sophisticated military anywhere in the region.
Yeah.
Well, and on that point, just look at the map, they'd have to go across all of Iraq and Jordan to get there and they have no land army to do so.
How many troops could they even ever try to get there?
And then of course, we know the answer is zero if you take into account Israeli airpower, right?
They couldn't ever get anywhere near crossing the Jordan River to threaten Israel with any kind of land force.
They have no name where they got one battleship and some speed boats.
And what the hell would they do if they did?
What would they possibly want?
You know, what would they what would be the end goal?
I mean, Iran is doing quite well, simply benefiting from all the US's mistakes in the region.
You know, they benefited in Iraq from the US intervention.
They've certainly benefited in Syria, from Hillary Clinton's idiotic idea of regime change.
All they have to do is sit back and keep doing what they're doing.
And they keep winning.
So why on earth would they want to launch a big war against Israel, which would result in the destruction of their country?
Undoubtedly, it doesn't make sense.
Well, you know what, I think we know that Donald Trump from his previous statements, he does at least he maybe he used to they may have confused him since then.
But he used to understand that defeating ISIS in Syria and then calling it quits and wrapping it up after that would mean that the Assad government and their Iranian Hezbollah, I don't know if he knows about Hezbollah, but their Iranian and Russian allies that they would recreate the Syrian state and establish monopoly control there.
And the idea was what the hell does he care?
Right?
But then so it makes sense to think that when they're in the not at a rally, but in the Oval Office talking about this, that the position as you said, of all his generals is what and leave Iran in the catbird seat, even though they're the ones who put them there, put them there.
Right?
We can't stop now.
Look at what we've done.
We created, you know, 50,000 al Qaeda and spread them to the winds ISIS slash al Qaeda, same difference.
And we've empowered Iran here, there and the other place and you want to quit now we've got some loose ends to tie up.
And yeah, and you can see how they could from their point of view, they're never get in.
They'd have I mean, give in and give up on that they'd have to be Ron Paul to say forget it.
You know, they're just never gonna do it.
It's because the neocon canard is like somehow been programmed into their DNA, which is an absolute false reading of history.
And it goes like this.
Al Qaeda and ISIS only, only emerged in Iraq because we left it was only that wimp George Bush who pulled out if he'd only stayed there forever with a couple 1000 troops, this never would have happened.
The same is true in every other intervention going back to Vietnam, you know, damn it, we should have stuck around.
And this is the canard we can never leave anywhere.
And that's what they're going to say about Syria.
So that's why one of the reasons why there's going to be a hesitation to do the right thing and just declare victory.
Hey, great, we killed ISIS.
We did it ourselves.
Those ruskies and Iranians didn't do anything, whatever narrative you want to tell the media is going to dutifully pick it up, just get out, right, but they won't allow that to happen.
I'd buy that.
Yeah, they couldn't pull the same thing in Afghanistan to look, we beat him.
We're only fighting local Afghans now.
And they were never the ones who threatened us.
It was these transnational terrorist types that did and so we're gonna go but then you know what he in his Afghan escalation speech and we know now from the book, I think, sort of kind of accurately portrays this fire and fury thing about it was Bannon was the only one who was trying to stop him on Afghanistan.
As long as he had Bannon next to him, he was able to say, no way, General, screw you guys, right, Steve and Steve go, yeah, that's right, Mr. President.
And then as long as he had a little bit of backup to support him, he told them, at least, I don't think this was just posturing.
You know, I mean, the story at least seemed to be in bits and pieces as it came out out of the first half of last year was that he did not want to stay in Afghanistan, or at least only to the most limited degree.
And he hated what McMaster was bringing him on all this stuff.
And they finally isolated Bannon and got rid of Bannon.
Well, because Bannon's trick backfired trying to say that McMaster was anti-Semitic and all this stuff didn't work.
And so he lost attacking McMaster for the wrong things, of course.
And so they convinced Trump this very easy to memorize line, as you just said, it's the same thing that every TV show anchor, you know, cable news anchor can understand and repeat like a parrot.
And that is that, well, when Obama pulled out of Iraq, that's what allowed the rise of ISIS.
And so the lesson from that is, if we leave Afghanistan, geez, there's locals calling themselves ISIS now, so that counts somehow.
And so if we leave Afghanistan, then anything bad that happens in Afghanistan after the troops pull out will be blamed on Trump.
And then in fact, in the Fire and Fury book, they quote Dina Powell, who is the McMaster's deputy on the National Security Council, saying that, well, look, at the end of the day, if we leave, then the president has lost a war.
Is Donald Trump going to lose a war?
Are you going to let him lose a war?
And that was their argument to the political people.
Oh, and it says in there, too, that just as I said in the book is what he should do is he talked about it like this.
That's what says in the book that he said, this is all Bush and Obama's fault.
This is Bush and Obama's war.
Why is it my war?
It's the Bush Obama war.
And that's exactly what I said he could do was say, look, it's stupid Bush and, you know, evil enemy Obama, whoever he is, secret Muslim Kenyan Obama.
They're the ones who built this stupid government in Kabul that can't stand on its own.
So why is that my problem?
And they're the ones who picked a fight with the local Pashtun tribesmen who are not really the enemies of the American people.
So I'm not losing a war.
Bush and Obama lost the war.
I got here.
I'm just the one who's pulling the troops out and calling it quits on their stupid thing.
He could have completely spun it and made it their fault, not his.
And so that and completely canceled out that Dina Powell rationale that, oh, this would be Trump losing a war.
You know, how can Nixon lose LBJ's war?
It's LBJ's war.
He already lost a damn thing.
You know, that's all he had to do.
Not that that's what Nixon did.
But you understand what I mean?
Yeah, absolutely.
I mean, there's there's certainly a counter narrative that could easily have been constructed.
But can you imagine someone like Trump who, you know, I don't know him, but my guess is he doesn't he doesn't love to sit around and deal with details.
He's maybe a big picture type.
He has people around him like this.
You know, nobody.
Ninety nine point nine percent of Americans, myself included, had never heard of Dina Powell before.
But it's people like this at the second and third tier that have so much power, so much ability to shift things.
And they're completely out of sight and out of mind.
But they have such a huge influence.
So there are probably 500 Dina Powell's in the administration just pumping things up, pumping things up.
They've always been in D.C.
They're creatures of D.C.
There's no way in hell they're going to go against the military industrial complex, the neocons, because that's where their bread is buttered.
And like you say, they're all just obsessed with Iran and Israel and all of their point of view, you know, has a lot to do with this, the Likud and and really the neocons, who a lot of times are even to the right of Likud on Iran issues that just just the same as Mattis.
You got 10 million think tankers and pro Trumpers and never Trumpers and everybody always Iran, Iran, Iran, Iran, Iran.
And it's funny because no one ever really ever accuses them of doing anything that's not completely false and stupid, like making nuclear bombs when we all know it's not true.
Stop lying.
But other than that, they just go, ooh, look at that mean old Ayatollah and just leave it at that.
Well, the big thing now, I mean, the big bogus thing now is a whole issue of ballistic missiles, you know, and to his credit, Obama explicitly and I can't quote the number.
I have it somewhere.
But the U.N. Security Council resolution in 2010 that forbade them from from doing ballistic missiles, he explicitly softened that language in 2015 that said and I forget the exact word, but it is an important word, calls on them to refrain from developing, which is not a restriction on it.
But of course, Nikki Haley and the rest of the neocons say, well, Iran is in violation of the Security Council resolution because it's working on ballistic missiles.
This is the canard that continues and continues.
This is their this is their ace in the hole to get out of the nuclear deal in Iran.
And it's a total, total lie.
It's complete lie.
Yeah.
Well, and yeah, again, and this is the shame of this.
And I know you saw this coming just the same as me that even when Trump has the slightest good instinct without the knowledge, he'll never be able to stand up against these guys.
And that's absolutely true.
You know, and Bannon is horrible on Iran, too.
You know what I mean?
He was only good on Afghanistan and good means he wanted to hire Merck's to do it instead or something.
I mean, he's he's no libertarian, right?
He was a particular kind of right winger who sometimes is against some interventions.
But that was certainly not enough to rely on.
And he certainly didn't put that first.
He didn't say, all right, the first thing we're going to do is we're going to end all the terror wars and then we're going to blame all the failures of it on Bush and Obama.
We're going to make a clean break from that.
We can have peace and we're going to tell the army we're going to pay you guys to sit at your bases and not get shot.
OK, and that's going to be our compromise.
And let's do that.
That wasn't him.
And that's what it would have taken.
And even then it would have taken Trump.
You know, it would have taken, you know what, not Bannon and Trump, you and Ron in there.
You know, that's what it would have taken.
I think he needs Horton in there as the replace McMaster.
The thing is, we really could have had Ron Paul and Dan McAdams as Deputy National Security Advisor up there writing the studies and and putting the platforms in.
Man, oh man, what could have been.
Think of all the peace and all the all the people who would not have been shot, you know, in the last 10 years since Ron Paul did not become the president.
And what's funny about Ron Paul running for president, too, is that on one hand, come on, he could have never won.
This is America.
It's the empire.
He's no Donald Trump.
They never let a guy like him in there as convicted as he is against this kind of thing.
And yet at the same time, actually, that's not true.
In fact, there are 300 million Americans.
And if only some substantial minority of them had been determined to elect this guy, what happened?
It could have happened.
They could have bumrushed the primaries.
They could have made him unstealable by giving him a 10 point margin all over every caucus and primary.
And then they could have done the same thing in the fall.
And it just they had their chance.
You know, there's that famous Garrett quote where he says that, yeah, but the American people have never been given an opportunity to choose between Republican empire.
It's always Wendell Willkie versus FDR.
You know, this kind of thing is like, yeah, but now finally we did have our chance to 2008, 2012.
Two chances had our chance to completely abolish the empire and not not because the dollar breaks and our economy is completely ruined and our soldiers have to hitchhike home.
Yeah.
I mean, I would love to see the book really written on that because there's so much, of course, I didn't know because I wasn't involved.
I was in the congressional office.
So I was just watching it on TV, really.
But, you know, I would love to see someone with a lot of skill write the book.
There are so many people out there that were involved in the campaign.
And I've run into people that tell me horror stories of what the party did to them as delegates.
Well, there is there actually is a book about how they stole 2012.
I have it.
Oh, really?
OK.
Yeah.
But I mean, I think, you know, just to do the whole picture in that not just about the Ron Paul president's presidential race, which is important, but about the difficulty in changing the system and challenging the system.
And, you know, you talk about a Trump.
I mean, he was elected, I think, in large part because he promised to be the peace candidate, just like just like President, just like Obama did, just like George W. Bush did humble foreign policy.
People do want that choice.
But once they get in, something weird happens, something in the water.
I don't know.
Yeah.
Money.
Money.
Yeah.
No, the book is swindled.
I admit I haven't read it, but I know of at least a few of these occasions from 2012 where the things that happened in Nevada and Iowa, et cetera.
And the book is called Swindled, How the GOP Cheated Ron Paul and Lost Themselves the Elections, the Election by Michael S. Alford, A.L.F.O.R.D.
Oh, well, I'll have to look that up.
Wow.
I'll look that up.
Interesting.
So, yeah.
And I mean, I give this guy the benefit of the doubt just based on the fact that I remember how it was.
And you know what?
Politics is supposed to be hard.
You know what I mean?
But they did cheat.
They really did cheat and break the rules in a lot of places in order to prevent him from winning.
And I think that's what we saw.
I think that's what we saw with Trump in the whole Russiagate thing.
You know, I think the military establishment just completely freaked out with what he was saying.
This is the bread and butter.
This is not a joke.
You're talking about billions of dollars.
If you're Lockheed Martin, you're talking about hundreds of billions of dollars.
If you're a general looking to get a great job with Lockheed Martin, you're talking about millions of dollars.
And, you know, and these people are not about to sit by and let this game show host destroy the gravy train.
And, you know, I think we're seeing more and more.
That's the origin of it.
Just the threat of this guy doing what he said he'd do has really taken us to a constitutional crisis or some kind of crisis.
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Read my book, Fool's Errand, Time to End the War in Afghanistan, and also The War State by the great Michael Swanson.
This is such a great and important book.
It's about the rise of the military industrial complex in the Truman, Eisenhower, and Kennedy years and goes to show what those three presidents did to build it up and also try to fight to limit its power as well.
Very interesting book, The War State.
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Well, and that's the thing of it, too, because he really, and they should have known this.
It's funny to me that for every David Frum, there was a libertarian-leaning type, one at my own organization over there at amwar.com, who just fell for this stuff, that this was really going to happen.
Yet, as I was just talking about with Andrew Bacevich, out of all of the power factions in New York and D.C., etc., there was only one that backed this guy and said, okay, no, he's all right.
It'll be all right.
And that was the Army and the Marine Corps.
It was so clear that they were going to be given the orders.
I mean, I said on this show for a year and a half before he was elected or whatever, or at least a year, that once he's in office, it's going to be, you guys go ahead and do whatever you want.
Just let me know.
And that's it.
CIA, Admiral, General, you guys do your thing.
I'll be here.
That's it.
And that was what he owed them.
They were the only ones who said that he was legit and that they would back him in power.
So I don't know why David Frum didn't see that and think, well, it'll be fine.
You know what I mean?
And I don't know why Romano didn't see that and think, oh, God, here we go again.
Yeah, here we go again.
But the neocons, I think there was just that much of a question as to whether he might do what he says.
They were afraid he didn't understand enough to be completely corrupt enough to be consistent on their party line.
And two or three key appointments could have changed things radically.
And sadly enough, the quote, you know, pool of talent, unquote, in D.C. skews 99 percent toward interventionists and neocons.
But there are some people of stature that while you and I may not jump up and down, cheering would have been a heck of a lot better.
It would have just taken a few decent appointments like that to have absolutely blown the neocons' minds even worse.
So I think that's why they were hedging their bets.
And that's why they, you know, they did so much, even though they're getting what they want with Trump's foreign policy.
You know, they're still not persuaded.
Yeah.
Hey, man, talk to me a little bit about what's going on on Twitter where every I got an email.
I think I'm sure you probably did.
A lot of people did saying, oh, we noticed that you've been following some Russian secret spies and retweeting their things.
But when they didn't provide any evidence of that, they showed some examples and it was all like right wing memes that I never retweeted.
I don't know what they're talking about.
But I wonder, you know, what all you have to say about what's going on there.
Yeah, I got the same thing, too.
And I think, you know, certainly the effect on me was was intimidation.
You know, you felt intimidated, like, hey, we found out you've been doing some things you shouldn't, you know, and even though it was couched in terms of, hey, we're here to help, just want to let you know that we've, you know, we've we've nuked a couple of accounts that you were following, you know, and and and this sort of thing.
But the sense that I had was that, you know, you've done something wrong.
And it's it's disturbing because we don't know the methodology that they use.
We don't know what outside organizations I mean, are they relying on something like Hamilton 68, which is an absolute joke.
You know, this is the what is it the coalition to defend democracy or some idiotic thing that's behind it.
And the German Marshall Fund, you know, with Bill Kristol and Mike Morrell and Chertoff and these people, you know, these are the people that are going to be the ones to determine what's a Russian bot and what isn't, you know, and of course, Isn't that amazing?
Bill Kristol himself, the guy that at least equal with Paul Wolfowitz for responsibility for getting us into Iraq war two.
And for being wrong on every single thing.
Now, he all of a sudden is going to determine what's a bot and what isn't.
And it's not just Hamilton 68.
There are other organizations like it.
And the problem is, once again, Washington, because, you know, all of these members of Congress who are so gutless and spineless, you know, freaking out about the Russian scare.
Oh, my God, we got to go appropriate a few hundred million dollars because the Russians are coming.
And so where does all this money go?
It goes to well-connected think tanks, like the German Marshall Fund, which is funded by the US government and by NATO, you know, and of course, they're going to follow the neocon policy because that's their gravy train.
So it's an endless loop.
Our money goes to organizations like that to propagandize us and terrify us into giving them more money.
And on and on and on it goes.
And we've already seen how they are, you know, that Alliance for Securing Democracy at one point said that antiwar.com was Russian propaganda.
Give me a break.
You can look up Eric Garrison, Justin Raimondo and myself.
And I don't know about Jason, but at least the three of us, we all have our own Wikipedia entries.
It's not like it's a mystery who we are, where we come from and what we hate and why we do what we do here.
It has nothing to do with Russia.
It's very, very simple.
The neocons do not want anyone to challenge their interventionist foreign policy.
And as they rack up failure after failure after failure, they're getting more desperate and they're turning to more authoritarian and I would say Soviet kinds of tactics.
And this is absolutely a Soviet tactic.
Comrade, we're following 600 Twitter accounts to find out what the Russians are trying to get you to think about, you know, this sort of thing.
It really is a sign of desperation, but it's also a very chilling authoritarian sign, too, because, you know, these social media companies, you say, oh, it's a free market and private.
No, no, it's not.
Because as soon as Capitol Hill calls, they come running, you know, like a dog whistle.
Oh, what can we do?
What can we do?
Oh, members of Congress, how can we placate you?
You know, what account should we get rid of?
How can we prevent people from reading fake news?
How can we prevent them from listening to Scott Horton?
It's destroying their minds.
You know, I mean, so they're in bed with government, you know, they really are.
Well, and the thing is, too, I mean, for me, I don't care.
I got that email and I thought, oh, that's kind of funny.
You know, I'll put that on Twitter and say, hey, look, everybody, you know, tell me another one about the giant Russian conspiracy to get me, you know, I kind of have fun with this whole Russia story.
It's such nonsense.
It really bothers me that all the biggest conspiracy theories are wrong.
You know, I like conspiracy theories, but I want some good ones for a change.
This is ridiculous.
But I just want to say, though, it does cast a shadow on us.
Yeah, no, because the message is, you know what, we know who you follow and who you retweet and whatever, and not just it's in our data bank, but we're checking it on you, you know, and as you say, it is almost a quasi-governmental organization in that sense.
And hell, I mean, for that matter, as the Snowden documents prove, what we already knew since the 90s, which is that what we've all known since James Bamford wrote what you call it back in the 80s, Puzzle Palace, is that the entire telecommunications infrastructure of Earth is nationalized by the U.S. government.
Every packet goes through Fort Meade.
We all know that.
So the whole thing is their property.
The whole thing is really taking place.
But they're just kind of reminding you that like, yeah, no, we're specifically watching who and what you're retweeting, what you're looking at.
We can go back and check on you.
Yeah.
Because the goal is not necessarily to use force on you.
And this was, you know, certainly toward, you know, mid to late stage communism and certainly still true in Cuba in places like that to a degree.
The idea is not to have a cop on every corner.
The idea is for you to exercise self-censorship.
And that's the triumph.
And it works.
You know, I can speak for myself.
I do think twice before I say anything that's not, you know, negative about Russia.
In fact, I don't talk about Russia.
I talk about U.S. policy.
But you do feel intimidated.
You do feel you need to self-censor because you don't want to feed this completely bogus, bogus accusation that if you're not on board with, you know, with the neocons, you're somehow in the pay of Putin.
See, I'm the other way, man.
You know, I used to do RT a little bit because, you know, I don't know, let me be on TV.
And then I thought, you know, and I always understood this about RT.
They have their own agenda, making America's policy look bad.
But my thing is, what a coincidence.
I hate America's policy, too.
And so it's fine.
What do I care?
But then on the other hand, you know, I don't like being useful to anyone else, any other government or any government, this, that or any government.
So I kind of I quit doing RT.
Last time I did it was 2012 or something like that, I guess.
There's a few YouTube's up there.
But then now that I've been labeled a Russian agent and all this crap by, you know, Bill Kristol's group, you know, go ahead and call me back, RT.
I'll do your shows now.
I kind of quit answering the phone on them and whatever.
I guess they gave up on me.
But I go back on there now because screw that.
I will not be pushed around in that way.
You know, I've known since the 90s that the Internet is one big wiretap of us all and we participate in it.
But the game is, as you play the game very well, Dan, is using their own instrument back against them and using it as a form of mass communication to get around the way that they would have it, which is not exactly what their plan for the Internet was at the outset.
But that's what the people have turned it into.
We're trying to.
But it is what it is.
You know what I mean?
Yeah.
I mean, it's one big cut in wiretap.
Yeah.
I mean, I've always followed Ron Paul's view on this.
You know, he doesn't choose the media that he goes on within reason.
He doesn't change his message.
So anyone that will allow him to amplify his message, again, within reason, he's not going to go on some crazed white power thing, of course.
But anyone within reason who will allow him to put out his message, he's happy to get it.
He doesn't agree with Alex Jones on everything, but he'll go on Alex Jones' show and he'll talk about non-interventionism and how we shouldn't have war with North Korea.
And certainly when he's on the mainstream media, they don't agree with him on anything for the most part.
But he's able to do that.
And that's how I feel about RT.
I love going on there and talking about libertarian ideas, about the fact that the U.S. government shouldn't be having a partnership with Russia to fight terrorism because we should just get the hell out of the region.
And that's not what they want to hear.
And I've even told them, look, if I come on, I'm going to say something that goes against what you want to hear.
And they say, that's fine.
That doesn't bother us.
That's certainly better than any mainstream station that I've been on where I have to sit for a half an hour and answer a thousand questions and then them saying, well, you're not really right for this segment.
So I'll take it.
If I can talk about non-interventionism, I will take any opportunity to do it.
Yeah.
Well, and listen, the fact of the matter is RT is filling a big void in the market there, where as you say, CNN won't have you.
The only time I ever got anything close to that was Judge Napolitano, who was a rogue.
He had a very special situation over there where he had a show at Fox Business Channel for a little while there.
And even then, he was a little too anti for them and they eventually got rid of him.
I don't know exactly what was the final straw, but- It was a great show.
It was legendary.
Yeah, yeah.
But that was certainly the exception that proves the rule, which is more like what you say, half an hour interview and then yeah, no, we're going to go ahead and go with from again.
Yeah, exactly.
Thanks for playing.
Yeah.
Thanks for coming down and wasting your afternoon.
All right, Dan.
Well, I guess I'll let you go, man.
Thanks very much for coming back on the show and talking about the wars and the war at home too.
Thank you for having me, Scott.
It's always great talking to you.
Really appreciate it.
Everybody, that is the great Dan McAdams.
He's at RonPaulInstitute.org.
RonPaulInstitute.org.
He runs the Ron Paul Institute for Peace and Prosperity.
And also check out RonPaulLibertyReport.com and their channel on YouTube for Dan's show with Ron there and Chris Rossini's too, as he said, show there with Ron Paul, the RonPaulLibertyReport.com.
And I'm Scott Horton.
You know me, ScottHorton.org for the show.
FoolsErrand.us for my book, Fools Errand, Time Down the War in Afghanistan.
AntiWar.com and LibertarianInstitute.org for things I want you to read.
And follow me on Twitter at Scott Horton Show.
Thanks, guys.
