 Welcome to the Ron Paul Libertary Report. This report is coming from Angleton, Texas at the Mises Symposium. I welcome everybody to the Libertary Report. And for our viewers, our co-host surprisingly enough is Daniel McAdams. How are you this morning, Dr. Paul? Yeah, and Daniel has all kinds of surprises because he hasn't told me what our program is about yet. Didn't you hear your phone ringing during our break? I kept calling you. But you know, there's a lot of days when we do our report that we don't know a whole lot before. He's getting so professional. Now he keeps his computer open. He says, oh, there's a news flash here right in the middle of the program. So he does keep up. There wouldn't be much of a report there if it didn't have Daniel. They're keeping it going. But of course it wouldn't exist if we didn't have viewers tuning in. And I might ask Daniel to do a little bit of reporting on numbers. But you know, our numbers are very, very good. In a way, it's sort of a mixed blessing. The numbers have skyrocketed recently because of the corruption in the country. And they want to hear something about how we're going to get rid of it. But we do have a larger audience right now than ever before. And something that we didn't have at the beginning is we didn't have live streaming. Those were some of the terms I had no idea what they were talking about. But I know what it is now when it started off. I think Daniel, it might be something like, we had 100 or so people tuning in for live streaming. And now Daniel will update us on that because I think our numbers are growing. And I haven't found out that if you live stream, you can communicate with other people who are live streaming. And sometimes they go back and forth. Then there's a little bit of excitement. And we pay attention to it. It's pretty neat that we can get feedback like that. But Daniel, why don't you give us a little update on how long we've been doing this and what are the numbers doing? And how many do we have now? And how many are we going to have next year? Well, we got really excited early on. This was in 2015 in the spring when we had 60 live viewers. And it was amazing. And one of the things, Dr. Paul, as you know, the real measure of success, the main thing we wanted to achieve with the show is that when something happens, people want to turn to us and turn to you for your take on it. And we find that happens over and over again. When President Trump fired a few missiles into Syria, well, we had a big day because people wanted to know what did Ron Paul think about it? What did the Ron Paul Institute think about it? And we've learned from this past week, well, certainly these past few months, our numbers on the coronavirus have skyrocketed. People want to know that they're hungry for an alternative view. But as Professor Rectonwald pointed out, and we should make no, we should make no bones about it. We have had a show yanked temporarily. There was a little bit of an uproar. And we don't know why, but they put it back up. But we operate under the assumption that any show can be canceled by the mainstream media, by the YouTube, by Google, by the CIA, as we now know. And so it does constrain. And we just had a conversation on Thursday, Dr. Paul, when we put out a title and we were looking at it. And we thought, you know, it could get us a lot of viewers, but we might want to soften it. And it's terrible doing this because this is what they did in communism. This is what they did in communist countries, self-censorship. So it's a problem we face because we want to grow our viewership. We want to do it with snappy titles. We don't want to have, you know, some boring title. But we also realize that there are risks involved with trying to do that. You know, many people know the story that I got interested in politics, not because I was interested in being in politics or in office, but mainly to have a forum talking about things that I thought were important. And that was in the early 1970s. And of course, there was a big issue of money, monetary policy, and the gold standard in Bretton Woods. And that got me motivated. And I spent a lot of time on that issue and continued to spend a lot of time on that issue. And I got on the financial services banking committee very early on and was always on the banking committee. And yet, as time went on, foreign policy became a bigger issue, too, and a big issue. So I think probably my time is split. But we are also directed by current events. And right now, you know, we talk about monetary policy. We talk about the budget. We spend more time on a liberty report on Fridays on economic events. But I remember early on in the debates, presidential debates, it was announced that this week, we were, you know, going to do economics. And then the next week, they said, well, we did economics last week. This week, we're going to talk about foreign policy. And I always thought that's a dumb statement. You know, how do you separate the two? Can you talk about foreign policy over here and talk about sanctions and protectionism and interference and more profiteering and all these things and say it has no economic impact? It has a tremendous amount of impact. Well, current events have driven us here in the last several months, obviously, to talk about our problem with getting people to understand what coronavirus isn't. And we've been working on that. And, of course, that invites other things, that invites, you know, civil liberties. That is a big, big deal because it's a violation. But so does foreign policy involve the violations of civil liberties. So it's a show that we put on and people are interested. I'm delighted that we have some people interested. But when some people say, well, you add $250,000, well, we have 2 million people watching our station. Yeah, I know, but they don't even know what they're talking about. So I argue that we have good numbers and we go for quality. I'm glad to be here today with all of you. Dr. Paul, one of the things that we've been following, and I noticed when I got to your house last night before our dinner that the TV was on and you were watching the numbers come in and you were watching what happened. I know in your talk, you're going to talk about does voting matter isn't even a point. But we haven't talked about this before. But I was going to ask you, I know you were watching the news this morning. I know you were following things this morning. What are the things you're seeing about the election and what are your thoughts at the moment? Same old stuff. Nothing dramatic. The lying continues. And this is all about lying and who are the best liars? Who's the biggest demagogue? But that's been around for a long time. But it's also it's constantly reinforcing this concern. Who are the police? Who's supposed to police solve this stuff? And the police, I remember as a kid, it would be brought to our attention, boy, you don't want a crooked cop, crooked police. They're terrible. They're evil people. But we have a crooked police force in this country. When you think about, you know, how powerful has the mafia been along? They have their police connection and there's bribery. How much abuse of the police departments have occurred with the drug war? And it goes on. And so you have a system now that's very, very much involved like never before involved in our elections. And we have the Justice Department, the CIA, the FBI, and they've been involved in a long time. But it's still there. It's always who are the corruptors and how much power that they have. I want to take a short story about when I first went to Congress, I told somebody that I was interested. And some of you may remember the name of the name of Dan Smoot. And he belonged to the old right, which were very, very libertarian. And I can't remember exactly why I called, but we had a conversation in the subject of the CIA and the FBI came up. And he was, I believed him to be a very honest person. He was pro FBI in the good sense of the word. So after World War II, he was picked to be in charge of finding individuals to be recommended to go to the CIA and start this new CIA out. So he did. He took his job seriously. He had two stacks, went through all the people. Back then, the scare was, is he a communist and what his views were? So he had two stacks of people that he recommended. So he finally turned them over. And the people who were moving along to establish the CIA, they took the wrong list on purpose. All the people who were corrupt and untrustworthy and security, that's how we got started. So we shouldn't be totally shocked about what we hear and we've heard it today. The CIA is not our friend. And one other thing that Dan Smoot told me at that time we were talking, he says, the point is, if you want to have a republic, you cannot have a CIA. It's impossible to have a republic. You know, Dr. Paul, speaking of the CIA and also speaking of how the U.S. metals in elections overseas and has done so for a lot of our troubles go back to CIA involvement in Iran and 53 as you point out many times. But, you know, trying to look for a silver lining in the fiasco, the worldwide sort of embarrassment of the U.S. elections over the past week, I found a silver, you know, I'm always trying to find a good news story. And sometimes we have to dig deep. But I actually found a good news story about this whole thing. And this is just simply this, Dr. Paul. After this election, the U.S. will never ever again be able to lecture another country on how to hold elections. And listen to this. Some of you may have followed the election in Belarus in August. Of course, the U.S. roundly condemned that election. Terrible, terrible election. In fact, I observed an election in Belarus in 2007, I think it was. It's one of the cleanest elections I've ever seen. But listen to this. This is Mike Pompeo, the great champion of democracy. Here's a statement that Mike Pompeo made about the Belarus elections. The United States is deeply concerned about the conduct of the August 9 presidential election in Belarus, which was not free and fair. So a few restrictions on ballot access for candidates. Now, get this. Prohibition of local independent observers at polling stations. Intimidation tactics employed against opposition candidates. They did, we regret that observers did not receive a timely invitation to monitor the vote. And we've all seen the observers in Pennsylvania were about a half a mile away with binoculars. And get this one. We strongly condemn internet shutdowns to hinder the ability of the Belarusian people to share information about the election and the demonstrations. You can't make this up. They keep reusing the same speeches of the other people. That's exactly what's been happening here over the past week. Yes, and it is true. Daniel and I work real hard at this. And sometimes the hardest job is to find that optimistic point of view, at least to mention it. Because obviously there are points and I'm always amazed and sometimes surprised that with my concentration on trying to warn the people, that has to be a little scary. You know what's coming economically. And all the weaponry buildups and all the crisis that we have that still, it's pretty rough living if you have no thought of a conceivable silver linings on place. Because that's the way the world has worked. And of course, my point has been that in the 20th century, which I remember pretty well, a lot of problems happen. But horrible problem. If you added up, okay, we are 20 years into this century, but I could pick out almost any 20-year period in the 20th century. Our first 20 years here is not as bad as what was going on there when they were killing millions and millions of people. Just think that when the election of 1968 came, which was controversial and had some similarities to what was going on here, but we elected the peace candidate to stop the war. 34,000 Americans died in Vietnam after they elected and said that Johnson, Johnson was run out of town. So we still have a long way to go, but it's been pretty bad. And of course, that's why we have an institute called the Institute for Peace and Prosperity because that's what the people deserve, and that's what you support. And we know that there's a lot more people like you out there that not only would support this program, but those principles as well. So Dr. Paul, one of the things we've touched on here today as well is the rise of the independent media and the travails and the difficulties that we have with one foot in the sort of, I would call the social media, the mainstream media and the alternative, the independent media, looking ahead for shows like ours and others who are trying to challenge the narratives. Are you bullish or bearish on the ability to get a message out in an increasingly restrictive world? I have to remain optimistic because in one way, it's probably my lack of unknowledge and understanding of exactly how the internet works. When I first, they told me when I was running and or announced I was going to run in 0708, they talked about this viral thing and I was like, was that, is that a real virus or is that a medical term or what? No, it's, I believe that there's a lot of smart people out there. There's a lot of smart people in this room that know a whole lot about the internet and spreading out messages. Just think, if our revolution could be carried by just scraps of paper passed around and you know, written paper and they were able to achieve it, word of mouth is still very powerful. It's what the ideas that they have makes the big difference. But if you have an idea whose time is coming, you have people who are ready to repeat it, I remain optimistic. I think the answer to the trash that we get from the social media because that's nothing but an arm of the government. So if we do that, we have to use every tool possible and I think that's available and you know, I read about them, but I don't understand that, you know, how all those computers work. But I believe that the answer has to be in the competition and there's no reason why this should be permanent. You know, they come and go and politicians come and go and they lose credibility and I think hopefully very soon the social media loses this dictatorship that they have. They have total control. But I know a lot of people are sick and tired of it and a lot of people are recognizing it and the numbers keep going up. We're up to probably about 68% of the people now don't believe what the government tells them and that I think is encouraging. Well, Dr. Paul, if you're about ready, I'll close it out as normal. Yes, go ahead. Give him your statement and then I'll tell people come back tomorrow. Well, I think the message, the real message and it's the message to all of you is that despite the restrictions, human ingenuity will ultimately prevail. There'll be a way to get around restrictions. We always try to highlight good news stories, as we said, small victories. Dictator Newsom has gotten smacked down a little bit this past week. There have been small other court cases and things. So regardless, and this is the lesson from the Soviet world, the regardless of what they do, the human spirit will never die, will never give up. We just have to remember that when we feel down in the dumps as I felt a lot this past six months. We have to remember that and reignite. I'll tell you what, Dr. Paul, for me visiting with people today and yesterday has really reignited my human spirit. So I'm thankful to all of you. And I'll close our program for today by saying that ideas whose time have come cannot be stopped. And it's our job to do it. And that is why I'm here. That is why I helped to a degree to get the Mises Institute started and encouraging it very much. And that is why people like you deserve a lot of credit. And the numbers, besides, we have a full room here. If we didn't have the clowns in Washington and tell us where we can go and what we can do, we'd have a beer room. We'd have twice as many people here. But I want to thank, I want to thank everybody for tuning in today to the Liberty Report. Please come back soon.