Radio Show Hour 2 – 03/24/2025

[00:00:13] Broadcasting live from atop the Rocky Mountains, the crossroads of the West. You are listening to the Liberty Roundtable Radio Talk Show. All right. Happy to have you along, my fellow Americans. Sam Bushman live on your radio. Hard-hitting news the network refused to use. No doubt continues now. This, my fellow Americans, is the broadcast for March 24th in the year of our Lord 2025.

[00:00:40] Hard-hitting news the network refused to use always on your radio. Promoting God, family, and country. Protecting life, liberty, and property. Using the checks and balances in the supreme law of the land, the constitution for the United States of America. That is our guide. Rejecting revolution. Unless it's a peaceful revolution with Jesus in charge. Then we're in because we follow the Prince of Peace. Dr. Scott Bradley was with us last hour. freedomsrisingsun.com doing a phenomenal job. And Lowell Nelson with us this hour. A couple of quick headlines that I want to highlight really quick for Lowell's benefit.

[00:01:11] Huge. Barack Obama was using U.S. aid to pretend to send funding aid overseas. But it turns out he lied. He diverted the funds and he funded the ability. $1.2 billion to U.S. aid. And they sponsored these activist groups to create rent-a-riot projects all over the place. It's a disaster. People need to go to prison. But I bet nothing happens. That's number one on the docket.

[00:01:40] Number two, Trump seizes wartime powers. We'll get into that in a minute. Trump promises to pardon Hunter Biden's former business partner, Devin Archer. And, you know, there you have it. And then Trump just agreed to waive all taxes for people making less than $150,000 a year. But there's a huge catch. Got to balance the budget first. First, all I can tell you is I'm just starting to see clown show efforts as Trump sends a contingent to Greenland.

[00:02:08] And then Trump declares wartime powers. Constitutionally, Lowell Nelson, welcome back, sir. There are no such thing as wartime powers, my friend. Yeah, not in the Constitution. And that's the agreement the states had with each other when they formed this general government. And as you know, Sam, the general government has those powers specifically enumerated in that compact. And so if the states didn't agree to give the general government the power, then it doesn't exist.

[00:02:38] So you're exactly right, Sam. Now, they say that Trump's going to now have wartime powers. I've always asked if they're going to turn Trump into a wartime president. And I'm afraid they're going to get it done if he's not very, very alert and very careful. Because they do really well at kind of making you believe somehow that, you know, you're going to be OK or whatever else. But then instantly you're in a war. And it's like almost impossible to back out is kind of the problem.

[00:03:06] So, Lowell, he said, I'm going to give people a tax break with less than $150,000 a year. The problem that I have with that is, I mean, it might take $150,000 for minimum wage pretty soon. If it goes the way it's continuing, number one. But number two, you know, how do you just say I'm going to give people less than $150,000, this, quote, special privilege and pull the lever of government in their favor at the expense of everybody else? And I thought they were going to abolish the IRS in the first place and stop the stealing.

[00:03:33] Stop the steal everywhere from elections to taxes to I don't even know. But now if we're going to give people less than $150,000 a special privilege, we're not getting rid of the IRS, are we? No, we're not. We'll still have them around to make sure that people with more than $150,000 are paying their taxes, paying their so-called fair share. But this is a big, big problem, Sam, because the president doesn't have the authority to do that.

[00:03:59] I mean, he's acting like a king, like a monarch, like a dictator, you know, sweeping powers. And he's saying we can, okay, we'll let everybody who makes less than $150,000, we'll just waive their taxes. Well, that's not his place to say. His job is to execute the laws of the United States, those that Congress approves. Now, if Congress decided that, then great. But this is not the purview of the president.

[00:04:26] He has no authority whatsoever to waive taxes. You know, if the tax code is not written by Congress, he doesn't have the power to legislate. And that's what he's saying he's going to do. He doesn't have the power. And just like he doesn't have the war power, he doesn't have the power to waive taxes either, Sam. Well, and that's the problem is that everything he talks about, Congress is slow walking everything. Mike Johnson, I believe, is the deep state operative that's helping, you know, cause Trump wants to accomplish a lot of good things.

[00:04:56] But why are we even talking about less than $150,000 a year people if we balance the budget? Why don't we talk about abolishing the IRS? It's a criminal organization. It's been judged, jury, and executioner for a long time. It was started to, you know, provide money for the World War II efforts or whatever. It was supposed to go away. It never did. I mean, this is clown show 101 and now we're going, yeah, we're going to give 150,000 less people a deal. Okay, how's that going to work? And then all the next president's got to do by executive order is say, wow, 150 is too much. Make it 75 grand.

[00:05:25] And, you know, pretty soon it means nothing. Just like the tax cuts Trump's first go around. They're about to expire. Okay, when are we going to do something permanent, solid, and real? And the answer is I don't see it yet. Congress has already wasted 60 plus or 80 days so far. I don't see that they've done anything. Have they? Yeah, I don't think so. I mean, Trump's activities have dominated the news cycles.

[00:05:52] Congress really hasn't done much of a substance yet. They've talked about it. You know, Sam, the thing about taxes, I learned from a gentleman named Bob Ray years and years ago, decades ago, that in fact the Federal Reserve published this in their literature at the time. We didn't have a web back then at the time I learned this. But, you know, taxes are designed to siphon excess currency,

[00:06:20] excess money out of the economy so that inflation doesn't look so bad, right? You and I both know that the government doesn't need taxes to run on, right? They could simply print the money and let the inflation tax do all the taxation they needed to do. They don't need the IRS. They don't need to – and we citizens don't need to pay taxes in this Keynesian model.

[00:06:47] And so it really – it's just another way for them to hide the true rate of tax and the true rate of inflation by siphoning this excess money out of the economy. You know, they tax it out, right? But they said that they need it to fund government. But, you know, they don't need to because they can counterfeit their own money. They just print more money over and over. Now, cities, towns, counties, and states can't do that because they cannot print their own money.

[00:07:15] And so the taxes you pay, you know, property taxes and sales taxes and so forth that you pay, those go to fund, you know, your local jurisdictions. But when it comes to the general government, they actually don't need our tax dollars, Sam. They don't need us taxpayers to give them their money back, their fiat creation back into their pockets, Sam. The only way back is the Constitution. Supreme law of the land calls for constitutional currency, which means honest money,

[00:07:43] honest weights and measures, as the Bible calls it, gold and silver. And when we move to that, then it'll chain down government with the Constitution as intended by our founders. It'll empower the American people with an asset-based economy, not a debt-based economy based on theft. And the way we do taxes is we do tariffs at the border. I'm fine with that. And we do apportionment among the states if there's any extra needed revenue.

[00:08:05] And if government can't live on that, then government isn't following its constitutional supreme law mandate in the first place. And so, I mean, I understand and I appreciate, hey, it's better that some people don't pay taxes. I'm not a let's tax the other guy guy. Okay? So any reduction in taxes we can get is a good thing. It's not a great thing, but it's a good thing, right? Because the more money out of the hands of government and in the hands of families, the better. The problem that I have with this is the way we're going about it.

[00:08:33] We're not accomplishing anything of substance. We're not accomplishing anything that can't be overturned by the next commander and thief. And taxes are theft, ladies and gentlemen. Let's be very clear. Let me say that again. Taxes are theft. And former Congressman Ron Paul writes an article with that very headline. Rightly so, Lowell. In fact, his headline is tariffs are theft. And because tariff is a tax, you know, tariff is theft.

[00:09:03] And, you know, this is very interesting. And I'm glad we get to discuss this, Sam, because I want your take on tariffs. As you know, our government funded itself for the first few decades of its existence. You know, when the Constitution was, after it was ratified and the state set in motion this general government that we now have, we call it the federal government, they funded it entirely on tariffs. Right.

[00:09:29] And so Ron Paul, when he talks about tariffs as theft, he, you know, he's rightly declaring that tariffs are taxes and therefore tariffs are theft. But we need to look at our history just a little bit and decide whether or not tariffs are okay or not. I mean, you and I both don't like taxes at all. We both agree that they're theft. But let's dig into this just a little bit.

[00:09:56] His column came on the heels of China's retaliatory tariffs in response to Trump's doubling the tariffs on China's exports to the United States. And so right away we see problems with this, right? Imposing a tariff is or should be a legislative function of Congress, not an executive function of the president. And we just got to be there, Lowell. And that really is the case in almost everything Trump has done that's good. I appreciate him doing it.

[00:10:23] But unless it's codified by Congress, it will have no real weight or merit or longevity. And that's the problem with this idea is you can temporarily manipulate this and it shows Trump's intention. But unless Congress throws him a bill that he can sign to put it into fact and put it into, you know, the appropriate checks and balances, in other words, constitutionally codified, anything else, really it doesn't mean much. And I'm going to be critical about that because I know he's trying, but he doesn't understand the proper rule of government with its checks and balances. He doesn't understand the supreme law of the land.

[00:10:52] And we'll get to that more in a minute. But the point is he doesn't have any real authority to do the things that are in the other branches of government. That's why when a governor or a mayor or, you know, the president starts just, you know, submitting these mandates or edicts from on high, we say they're not law. They're pretend legislation and we're constitutionally correct. That's the problem with this. And so where's Congress? They're missing in action, right? Yeah, they certainly are missing in action.

[00:11:21] See, President Trump's doubling of a tariff is akin to the Supreme Court declaring war on Iran, for example. Can the Supreme Court declare war on Iran or on North Korea or China or Russia? Constitutionally, no, but if you let them do it long enough, maybe, right? Yeah, yeah. And so it's analogous to that, right? The president does not have the authority to set tariff policy. That is the purview of Congress.

[00:11:49] And so every, well, you know, some of the good things that Trump did that he does have power to do was the pardoning of the J6 political prisoners, right? I mean, so, yes, he does have that power, and that was a good thing that he did. But he does not have the power to set tariff policy, even though he may say so. And he may say that he has the war-making power. But that is just pretend legislation. And he should be called out on it.

[00:12:18] Congress should be calling him out daily, right? Every day. The roundtable is, so we love when Trump does right. We reject when Trump does wrong. We're not haters or lovers of Donald at every second. We're realists, and we love the supreme law of the land. So here's my point on this tariff thing. You know, I think that you've got to look to Bastier's The Law. It's a great book. It articulates this very well. And, you know, when you say, hey, taxes are tariffs or tariffs are theft. In general, I agree with that point.

[00:12:47] However, however, listen very closely. Bastier made the point of when government is in its defensive role. In other words, we've got to take enough money from the citizens to exist. Okay? I think that there's a moral principle of justification for that. Because I can't sit on my porch with my shotgun all day long to protect mine and what's mine. I need to be able to work and live a normal life. And so when you give up a little bit of liberty, you actually maximize liberty for the greater, you know, societal reality.

[00:13:17] And Bastier highlights that law very well. But then what he says is this. When the government leaves its defensive role, in other words, I have to have enough money to exist and carry out my documented contractual functions with the people. Whenever it does more than that, it goes into an offensive mode, not a defensive mode. And then every penny after that is theft. Whether it's build a swimming pool for the community, whether it's give food to the poor, whether it's, you know, make sure that everybody has a chicken in every pot or make sure everybody has a colored TV or whatever the case may be. It's fraud.

[00:13:47] It's criminal. And so I will say that taxes are tariffs. Tariffs are taxes. So they're theft. They're stealing. Except for this part that is eked out by the documentation in Bastier's The Law, which says when governments, you know, needs funding to appropriate its general purposes and it's constitutionally, you know, in a defensive mode. Hey, we need the money to carry out our mandated roles. The people have contracted with us to do this. Then I don't believe that it's stealing because I believe it's a contract with the people.

[00:14:15] And if they absolutely obey the guidelines they've been given and it's defensive in nature, not offensive, then I think there's a little bit of a gray area there that certainly, in my opinion, has some justification. Otherwise, government would have no money. Now, I love the founding fathers attempt to say we know that this has to happen. We don't like it. It's a necessary evil. But it is true that if you give away a little bit of liberty, you maximize liberty. Bastier is right.

[00:14:42] And so what we're going to do with that is we're going to say, all right, we'll take a little bit of money. And the way we're going to take the money is indirect. In other words, we're not going to harass the people. We're not going to check out their finances. We're not going to. So it's going to be apportionment among the states and it's going to be tariffs at the border. So let's have the foreign citizens primarily pay to play. Okay, let's make sure that we use them very judiciously, very carefully to not upset the markets and not create confusion in the marketplace. Government's purpose is to honor contracts and stabilize and create a level playing field.

[00:15:12] We're going to make sure that's done. The more these countries honor free market principles, the more we're going to lower the tariffs. The more they don't, the more we're going to raise the tariffs because they're unfairly using government subsidized dumping and such like that. So we want fair trade, not free trade. And we're going to go about this. And so we're going to raise money and we're going to live within the budget of the apportionment and the tariff taxes and say we're in a defensive mode now. Not an offensive, a defensive mode.

[00:15:37] And I would submit to you, Lowell, that that does have, in my opinion, the proper role of government in mind and theft is not the core. Anything other than that, though, Ron Paul's 100 percent right. Your thoughts? Oh, excellent. I appreciate you bring that out about Bastia's line of reasoning there. I'll add one more thing to the conversation, Sam. And that is something that Hugh Nibley talked about in some of his writing.

[00:16:04] This idea that the kings, you know, own the kingdom, right? And so people who sell their wares on the kingdom, on the king's land would pay him a tax. I think the name of his article is Tips, Tolling and Taxing, something like that. Tax, Tolls and Tips.

[00:16:25] And so the king, because he owned the land, if you wanted to sell your baskets or your earthen jars or the fish that you caught out of the ocean, you want to come sell on his land, you would actually pay him a fee in order to occupy a booth on his land. And so that was kind of the origin of taxes.

[00:16:50] And so, you know, if you think of the whole of the United States, it's similar. You know, all the states have basically agreed that we are going to form a union, a more perfect union. And we're going to have a common defense and we're going to have free trade among the states and a common defense, you know, for the states or around the states.

[00:17:13] And so to the extent that the businessmen and so forth of the United States want to import goods and, I'm sorry, to the extent that foreign countries want to export their goods and import them into the United States and sell them, you know, Hugh Nibley would probably argue that they do so at a price.

[00:17:36] And the price they pay is the tariffs, you know, in order to sell their goods in our country, they pay a certain tariffs. Now, as you know, and I know, that tariff, that tax is passed on to the consumer. Ultimately, it's the consumers that pay these tariffs. But, you know, it goes both ways. And so the exports from the United States to foreign countries, those get taxed a little bit when they go into those foreign countries. And so it's kind of fair in that respect.

[00:18:06] So I just thought I'd throw that in there, Sam. The Hugh Nibley, and I'm not saying this is what his position is on tariffs. That was not the intent of his essay. But it was his essay attempted to explain why kings should or could justify the taxes that they levied on the businessmen who sold wares on their, you know, in their kingdom or on their property. And I agree with it.

[00:18:33] So the same principle works true in the United States where, again, it's the American people's property. Right? Yeah. And we, the people, have every right to say if you're going to play in our economic engine, then we're going to control how you play in that engine. Now, if you want to deal with your own customers, your own people, your own sovereignty, by all means, do whatever you want to. If you see the need to put tariffs on us, fine. That's okay, too. You have every right, sovereign right that we have. But we're going to make sure that tariffs are used responsibly. You don't just run around and willy-nilly toss tariffs on there as a bargaining chip or an arguing chip.

[00:19:03] You use tariffs to appropriately create a level playing field if you're honorable. Okay? And to make sure contracts are honored and to pay for the legitimate, proper rule of government. If we don't pay for the proper rule of government, we don't even have a system by which you can buy and sell and trade within our land sphere or our sovereign territories, et cetera, nation. So that's why I say that there's this defensive government, this special limited amount that is not really theft. Now, the libertarians and the anarchists would say it's theft no matter what. You know how many right.

[00:19:33] The problem with that is then society completely breaks down. The bad guys start to fill the void, the vacuum, and then no one has any liberty at all. And so you've got to have enough force to prevent tyranny. And then really the founding father's challenge was how do I create that force strong enough to hold things together but not so strong that it continually grows out of control? And the answer they came up with is all the checks and balances that if we would honor, we could reduce the size and scope of government.

[00:20:00] But as long as we sit on the sidelines as the American people, the founders said you have a republic if you can keep it. So as long as we sit on the sidelines and as long as we let people vote largesque from the treasury, we're never going to make it. Okay? It's going to take a fundamental moral stand by we the people. Nothing short of that will accomplish the goal. And the only way the people can have a moral stand is to turn to God Almighty, Lowell. Boy, spot on, Sam. And I might point to a historical point of fact, too.

[00:20:28] You know, when Congress did exercise the tariff policy, the tariff making policy, they in 1828 passed what the people called the tariff of abominations because it was so stinking high. I mean, they had tariffs that were like 70, 80 percent and it caused a ton of problems. In fact, I think it helped to precipitate the war between the states.

[00:20:55] Just like the Revolutionary War was precipitated by the economic pressures, I think these tariffs, these ungodly tariffs, you might call them, precipitate the civil war. And so even when Congress exercises its rightful authority, you can still have mischief. You can still have problems.

[00:21:14] But if Congress would go back to this idea that Sam explained from Bastille that the only exercise of government that can be justified is just the bare minimum to keep government running, then we would have small tariffs. And it's important to know that small tariffs are okay. If you have tariffs that are too high, then the consumers aren't able to pay for that product.

[00:21:42] And so they have to find alternatives or go without. Well, in the church, God sets forth a pretty good guideline of how much is too much, Lowell. Yeah. If you look at the Bible and the founders looked at the Bible and understood that. That's where 90 percent of our checks and balances and the branches of government comes from and everything else is this biblical idea of promoting freedom. But in the Bible, it basically says, hey, you know what? You're ripping off God if you don't give him 10 percent. So if God gets 10 percent, nothing should get more. Yeah.

[00:22:11] That's what I kept telling people when I first entered the adult world. I mean, if I'm giving God back his 10 percent, how in the world can government ask for more than that? Now, government should be at nine and say we're subservient to God. Therefore, we can only take nine at the most. And so then my whole tax burden through apportionment and tariffs should never be more than 9 percent in my humble opinion. Now, some could say, well, that's not constitutionally documented. You're right. I understand.

[00:22:35] But if we're looking at God's law, which we in America say that God's above government and we give God 10 percent by our free agency, by our choice. Then if somebody is going to take something by force, even if it's the defensive role that I spoke of, it should never be again. When it crosses that line, it goes from offensive. I'm sorry, from defensive to offensive. And that's where the crimes are committed, Lowell, in my personal view. And that's the Constitution. That's Bastille's the law. That's the Declaration of Independence.

[00:23:03] I mean, there does need to be a general government. There does need to be some governmental organization. Otherwise, the bad guys take all the all the marbles off the table and then rule with an iron fist. So how do you create a force to stop a greater force from taking over, but yet not let that force get out of control? It's the age old question about liberty versus tyranny, Lowell. And we find ourselves in between. The more we turn to God, the more we obey the checks and balances and fundamental principles, the freer we'll be. The more we ignore those things, the more peril and the more tyranny we'll see.

[00:23:33] And that pendulum continues to swing societies throughout the ages. And it's no different for us. The only difference for us in my mind is that we have all the history to look at with incredible detail. And then we also have the Savior and His return to look forward to. We've got something no one else has ever had, Lowell. Absolutely right, Tim.

[00:23:56] And we're so grateful for this perspective that we do have because it will enable us to actually overcome the evil that is approaching from around the edges of our world, Tim. I pray they're going to take us to war. We'll talk about it, ladies and gentlemen. I'm Sam Bushman. I've got my buddy Lowell Nelson with me doing a phenomenal job. CampaignforLiberty.org. RonPaulInstitute.org. They're doing a phenomenal job over there at Campaign for Liberty.

[00:24:21] One of my favorite organizations because they're real and serious about not only putting out the problems in a candid way, but then providing solutions. That is what we need more of in our Grand Old Republic. I want to be part of them and hope you do too. More in seconds. Lowell and Sam break it down on Liberty Roundtable Live.

[00:24:50] Corruption. Informing citizens. Pursuing liberty. You're listening to Liberty News Radio. News this hour from townhall.com. I'm Rich Thomason. While insisting the Trump administration will not defy a judge's order on deportation flights, a high-ranking Trump administration official says that his team is committed to making America safe again.

[00:25:16] President Trump's border czar Tom Homan says the administration won't defy a court order on its use of an 18th century wartime law to deport Venezuelan immigrants. We'll abide by the court order as litigated, but my point was, despite what he thinks, we're going to keep targeting the worst of the worst of the worst. Homan insists Title 8 covers them and says deportees were members of the Tranda Aragua gang. He spoke on ABC this week.

[00:25:46] Meanwhile, Homeland Security says it will revoke legal protections for more than half a million Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans and Venezuelans, setting them up for potential deportation. I'm Julie Walker. American and Russian negotiators meeting in Saudi Arabia discussing a proposed partial ceasefire for Ukraine. You get more from the BBC's Frank Gardner. Trying to fresh out the technical details of what they can salvage from these ceasefire talks.

[00:26:13] The Russians are most interested in the Black Sea, the shipping lanes and their ability to export their own products through the Black Sea. The Ukrainians are so far fairly upbeat about this. Once the talks with the Russians are finished, they're going to have another meeting with the Americans and then they will return to Ukraine. These won't be the last talks. It's just a beginning, so delegates have told us.

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[00:30:12] Casting live from atop the Rocky Mountains, the crossroads of the West, you are listening to the Liberty Roundtable radio talk show. Welcome back, ladies and gentlemen. This is Lowell Nelson writing Shotgun this morning with your host Sam Bushman here on Liberty Roundtable Live. We've been talking about these excellent columns by Ron Paul.

[00:30:36] His next one he tackles is all about what President Trump did over the weekend, not this past weekend, but the previous weekend, weekend of March 16 and 17. Ron Paul writes this. He says,

[00:31:12] End of quote. And so here we have hypocrisy in action. Trump criticized the Biden administration last year for dropping bombs instead of picking up the telephone. But right now, now that he's in office, Trump did what Biden did. He did what Biden did. He dropped bombs instead of picking up the telephone. He turned to military might as his first option. It's simply not good, folks.

[00:31:41] And Ron Paul, he explained the cause of this flex of military muscle. He says, he writes that since the Israel Hamas ceasefire plan negotiated by President Trump's special envoy, Steve Witkoff, Yemen has left Red Sea shipping alone. However, after Israel implemented a total blockade of humanitarian relief to citizens of Gaza last week, Houthi leaders threatened to again begin blocking Israel's Red Sea shipping activities.

[00:32:11] End of quote. And so Trump's special envoy, Steve Witkoff, negotiated the ceasefire between Israel and Hamas. And so Yemen stopped bothering ships in the Red Sea. Then Israel implemented this total blockade of humanitarian relief to the citizens of Gaza. And so the Houthi leaders there in Yemen threatened to block Israel's Red Sea shipping.

[00:32:33] And that is why Trump bombed Yemen, telling several dozen Yemeni civilians, including women and children, in the process. And so, Sam, I think Trump should have withdrawn support of Israel and all countries for that matter, because Israel, without U.S. support, would not be decimating Gaza the way it is. And after the attack on Yemen, Trump even threatened to bomb Iranian ships in the area as well. That's not good either.

[00:33:03] Ron Paul observes that there are many Republicans who are pro-peace. In fact, there are many more Republicans who are turning to peace. But there are hawks in the party. They're not going to go quietly into the night. They want as much war as they can get. Ron Paul writes, many of these dead-enders have found their way to senior positions in Trump's administration with voices of restraint and non-intervention nearly nowhere in sight among his top-tier advisors.

[00:33:32] And so he goes on, he says, to solve the problem in Yemen, we must understand it. Russian and Chinese ships, for example, are not being threatened because they are not enabling the Israeli demolition of Gaza. The slaughter there has been facilitated with U.S. money and with U.S. weapons. It is the U.S. doing Israel's bidding in Gaza and in the Red Sea that is painting a target on us and unnecessarily putting our troops at risk of retaliation.

[00:34:02] End of quote. Sam, he concludes his column in this way, very much worth repeating. He says this, in a real America first foreign policy, we would be following the Russia and Chinese lead and staying out of the conflict. It's not our war. End U.S. military involvement in the Middle East and our troubles disappear. It really is that simple. End of quote. Your thoughts, Sam? Sam?

[00:34:30] So my first thought, Lowell, and I could talk about this for hours because I'm a pro-peace guy and I reject unconstitutional wars. And I'm a no-war guy. I'm an anti-war guy. Whatever term you want to use, I'm a pro-peace guy. I don't like the anti-war term as much as I like the pro-peace term. But the point is the same. And the reason I don't is because I believe life is so precious. And any time we have governments taking life, nine times out of ten, it's armchair quarterbacks putting innocents in the field who don't want to be there in the first place.

[00:35:00] And so it's problematic by nature. But I will say this, and this is not a very popular thing to say, so people are going to just hate this, but I'm not an always-Trumper guy. I'm not a never-Trumper guy. I'm a realist. And in my opinion, for Trump to bomb Yemen without any provocation and without any authority to do so from Congress, he literally becomes a war criminal. Lowell? And I don't think anybody can back away from that factual statement. I don't like to say it because I like Trump.

[00:35:29] But I'm telling you, you can't do that. Where do you get authority around the world to bomb a sovereign nation without any provocation on their part, without any authority from the proper constitutional authority in your country? Where do you do this? So I believe it's turned literally Trump into a war criminal. Am I going too far, Lowell? No, I don't think you are, Sam. Caitlin Johnstone makes the same observation in this next column we'll discuss. She says- Well, Caitlin's right. Yeah.

[00:35:59] She says, she writes this. Because we may be sure that these statements by Katz and Trump, and we'll talk about these statements in a second, have been added to files held by those who hope to successfully prosecute these monsters for war crimes one day. We may also be sure that they will be recorded in what will eventually be seen as one of the darker chapters in our civilization's history.

[00:36:51] So you're right. These are war crimes, Sam. And I just- Let's get into this article by Caitlin Johnstone and read what this defense minister, Israeli defense minister, his name is Israel Katz. And he published an explicit statement of genocidal intent toward the people of Gaza, threatening civilians in the enclave with collective punishment in the form of what he called total devastation.

[00:37:20] If they don't find a way to overthrow Hamas and free Israeli hostages. Here's what he said, Sam. Quote, Residents of Gaza, this is your final warning. The first sign war destroyed Gaza, and the second sign war will bring upon it total ruin. The Israeli air force's attack against Hamas's terrorists was only the first step. What follows will be far harsher, and you will bear the full cast. Evacuation of the population from combat zones will soon resume.

[00:37:49] If all Israeli hostages are not released, and Hamas is not kicked out of Gaza, Israel will act with force you have not known before. Take the advice. I'm still quoting here. I'm quoting this Israel Katz. He finishes his statement this way. He says, Take the advice of the U.S. president, return the hostages, and kick out Hamas, and new options will open up for you, including relocation to other parts of the world for those who choose.

[00:38:17] The alternative is destruction and total devastation. End of quote. So he's referring to the U.S. president. He's referring to Trump. Well, then you have to ask yourself, what did Trump say about this? Here's what Trump said to those left in Gaza, Sam. This just chills your blood. Chills mine anyway. Quote, Release all of the hostages now, not later,

[00:38:42] and immediately return all of the dead bodies of the people you murdered, or it is over for you. Over is in all caps. I am sending Israel everything it needs to finish the job. Not a single Hamas member will be safe if you don't do as I say. I have just met with your former hostages whose lives you have destroyed. This is your last warning. For the leadership, now is the time to leave Gaza while you still have a chance.

[00:39:09] And to the people of Gaza, a beautiful future awaits, but not if you hold hostages. If you do, you are dead. End of quote. Wow. You know, I agree with Johnstone here, Caitlin Johnstone, who said, this is about as explicit an admission of genocidal intent as you can possibly come up with. I've been warning that they're going to turn Donald Trump into a wartime president.

[00:39:37] I've been warning it since he took office. And so I'm just telling you, I hope I'm not right. So I don't want to be right. I want to be wrong. But I'm telling you that I believe the hawkish folks around Donald Trump and the hawkish folks in the deep state and the Republican Party, they are giving Trump bad advice. Trump believes that somehow if he takes the side of Israel, turns Gaza into an entertainment kind of fun zone or whatever, that somehow he's going to gain ground.

[00:40:05] And all he's going to do is he's going to anger every country on the planet. They're going to say, hey, America's out of control. They're a belligerent, hegemonist nation. They're akin to King George of old. They griped about it then. We gripe about it on the same principle now. He's out of control. He's a war criminal. So I'm just telling you, the repercussions of this, we don't have any idea how bad it's going to be. But if we're not very careful, they're going to put Trump into a box and force him to be the wartime president of our time.

[00:40:32] I pray that it doesn't happen, but I'm fearful and predict that it very well could. And I pray that I'm wrong, Lowell. Well, and Trump could come to his defense and say, look, you don't have the authority to do what you're doing. And they could actually get him out of the box or keep him out of the box if they would. But see, some of the people, well, I guess a lot of the people in Congress,

[00:40:57] because they are funded, their campaign coffers are funded by the big war machine, the military industrial congressional complex. And so they're not going to keep him out of the box. They want more war so they get more money so they can stay in office. I mean, it's a power play. This is what these guys are thinking. They will do anything to maintain their position of power in the U.S. Congress, whether they're a senator or a representative, most of them, right?

[00:41:24] Most of them are in it for the power, the trip that it is, for the ego trip, and for the money. You know, they go to Congress, you know, earning, you know, in maybe $100,000 a year or $200,000. They come back millionaires, Sam. They're in it for the money and they're in it for the power. And so I'm not crossing my fingers. What happens is Israel makes a deal where, hey, all congressmen and senators literally need to swear

[00:41:51] a pledge of allegiance to Israel because of their massive lobby, because of the, you know, biblical realms and everything else. I mean, the only one that I know that stands up to it against it is Thomas Massey. Nobody else even has the guts to stand up. Yeah. Yeah. And I chewed up my or had a conversation with my house rep, Michael Kennedy, about this. And I said, Mike, you voted for that bill, that big continuing resolution. And he said, well, yes.

[00:42:21] Yeah. Yeah. And he said, well, that's the only one that I'm if we don't get the budget in order by September. He says, I am. I'm a definite no on any continuing continuing resolution beyond that. That's been the lie. That's been the lie for literally 30 years. Yeah, I know. Oh, just one more. Oh, just one more. And we will get a handle on it. I promise. And they don't tell me why you couldn't have got it done, Mike Kennedy, by this March or whatever it was when they voted or end of February or whatever. March. Why couldn't you have got it done then?

[00:42:52] You had literally several months. And you knew from the time President Trump was elected and the Congress was elected this last time back in November, you knew this was coming. Yeah. Why can't you reduce that spending? Even Donald Trump said we can reduce our military spending from a trillion to a half a trillion dollars. What part of that don't you get, Kennedy? Yeah. And in fact, David Stockman wrote a great article. I can't remember if we discussed it on our show here or not.

[00:43:20] But he said we could run the essential defense elements of our military for 7% of our current military budget. We wouldn't give up any essential defense. That's why 7% is a no-brainer. Could be done in five seconds, right? Yeah. But in that continuing resolution, they're funding it even, what did they say, $7 billion or something? $6 billion more. Yeah. And so it is a clown show, as you call it, Sam. But I just want to mention antiwar.com.

[00:43:49] I know you don't like the name antiwar, and neither do I. I'm a pro-peace guy just like you. I'm not fond of the term. Just so you know, I'm not fond of the term because they always pitch us as anti-everything and we're the bad guys. So I don't like the term. But I agree with the pros and the website and the people that supported 1,000%, Lowell. Let's be clear. Yeah, absolutely right. And I go to antiwar.com, particularly during these times.

[00:44:12] When I came back from, I was off the grid last week, Sam, but when looking at the headlines last night, and when I saw that Trump had done what he did, started dropping bombs on Yemen, it just sickened me. And that's when I went to antiwar.com and caught up, read all the articles there. The inhumanity of man against the civilians in Gaza is horrific, Sam.

[00:44:39] Over 50,000 Gazans have been killed in the last year. We're talking women and children. They've got pictures and photos. I mean, it is so sad. These are our brothers and sisters over there, Sam. And they have every right to live just like you and I believe we have a right to live, to exercise our agency that God gave us. He put us here on earth to learn how to get along. And he sent the Prince of Peace, his own son, Jesus Christ, to set the example.

[00:45:08] And what are we doing? Well, we're being inhumane to each other. We're hurting each other. We're destroying families. And we're killing people. We're maiming people. And it's horrific what's happening over there. All under the banner of peace, right? And the U.S. Congress, they're the ones who cheered Netanyahu like 60 times or something when he came to visit two or three months ago. And it's just the wrong signal to be sending. We should not be supporting Israel.

[00:45:38] In fact, the United States should not be supporting any foreign countries. Who gave Congress the power, the authority to send money to other countries? Yeah, nobody. And to steal from the American people to do just that. Yeah. Yeah, you're exactly right, Sam. So, I mean, Caitlin Johnstone. Netanyahu is a war criminal as well, Lull. Let's be very clear. Absolutely right. And Trump is a war criminal for bombing Yemen with no provocation, no declaration of war from Congress.

[00:46:08] And he just up and bombs and kills people. I mean, is that not a crime? You know what I say about Yemen? You know what I say about Yemen? What? No, man. No. No, man. Don't do it. Get out of it. Leave them alone. Let them deal with their own sovereign internal squabbles and their own sovereign issues with other countries. Stay out of it. Set the example. Offer to send them a copy of the Constitution. If they want to come to America and take constitutional classes, by all means.

[00:46:37] Other than that, hey, we love you. We hope you have peace in your country as well. And we'll do all we can to set the stage around the world to lead by peace, right? Yes. Lead with peace. You cannot force a country into prosperity and freedom with a barrel of a gun. It just doesn't work that way. You've got to set the example. Be friends with all. Trade with everybody. But don't force and coerce anybody to do anything.

[00:47:07] That's the plan of the adversary. And if you listen closely to the way Trump was speaking to those left in Gaza, it was like he was speaking like, I'm going to force you to do this. If you don't do what I say, I'm going to kill you. That is the language of coercion. That's the language of force. That's the language of the adversary, Sam. It's not appropriate. You've got to ask the question, if that's how we're going to treat people internationally, how are we going to eventually treat people domestically, Lowell? Yeah.

[00:47:37] That's the – yeah. And you hit the nail on the head because Judge Andrew Napolitano talks about freedom of expression again in his column last week. Such an important freedom, an important right. But the Trump regime is trampling on this liberty too. Napolitano summarizes it this way, quote, The history of human freedom is long, tortuous, and not gratifying. It consists essentially in governments trampling the laws enacted to restrain them.

[00:48:06] It is the profound clash of natural personal freedom and the commands of the state backed by force. The constitutions of totalitarian countries are papered over with restraints on the state, but the restraints are toothless. The state does what it wants. It doesn't take rights seriously. Thomas Jefferson argued that in the long march of history, personal liberty shrinks and state power grows.

[00:48:31] He famously believed that only a revolution can bring about a proper reset, end of quote. Well, my hope, Sam, my prayer is that we can have a civil restoration, not a civil revolution. And so why are we talking about this?

[00:48:47] Well, Napolitano is talking about this because of what happened two weeks ago when the feds arrested a Syrian graduate student in his student housing at Columbia University in New York City and shipped him to an immigration jail in Louisiana. And then they also, the week after that, arrested a Lebanese physician at Logan Airport in Boston. She is a professor of medicine at Brown University, and she, too, is a permanent resident alien.

[00:49:16] She was charged with immigration violations and summarily deported to Paris and then to her native Lebanon. Now, Sam, the interesting thing about these two cases is that the charging documents filed against the student allege no crime. They point to no statutory violations. They offer no evidence of the student's danger to persons or property or to the government.

[00:49:38] What they do is they claim that his outspoken support for a Palestinian state, the existence of which has been the public policy of the United States for decades, that is a material impediment to the execution of U.S. foreign policy. Ha! Boy, you keep saying make this stuff up. Well, and that's the problem with Israel here, Lowell, is that if you don't unequivocally support Israel without any reservations, you are considered anti-Semitic. And that's the problem with that definition, and it violates 100% all five guarantees in the First Amendment.

[00:50:08] Absolutely right, Sam. And this also tramples on the Fifth Amendment, right to due process, right? I mean, the Fifth Amendment guarantees your right to due process. And so Napolitano writes this, due process requires a fair hearing before a neutral arbiter before the government may interfere with life-liberative property, at which the government must prove personal fault. Well, they didn't do that in either case. They shipped the physician off back to Lebanon without a hearing.

[00:50:38] In fact, there was a federal judge that ordered her to have a hearing before she could be deported. Well, guess what? The government ignored that order of a federal judge, and they just deported her prior to the hearing. And so, I don't know, Sam. Let me give you a little nuanced difference here. Let me give you a little nuanced difference here. When somebody's here illegally, I agree with Trump, because they've broken the law to be here. When these people, though, have proper documentation to be here, I know they're not citizens, but they still have proper documentation and came on a legal principle.

[00:51:08] Agree or disagree with that. Then they deserve all the due process in the world. And people don't realize this nuanced difference. The difference is, if you don't stand with Israel, you're in trouble. It's gone. See, that's the problem here, people. Understand the difference. Yeah, and that's because of their definition of anti-Semitism.

[00:51:27] They now, and we talked about this on the show like two or three months ago, but they defined anti-Semitism as taking a position against the Israelis' government, you know, Israel's government. If you take a position opposite what their government is doing, right, I mean, so if you take a position that you don't like they're bombing Gaza, that's anti-Semitic, right, under their definition.

[00:51:53] And if you're anti-Semitic, then you can be prosecuted under their new law, right? It violates the First Amendment to the Constitution. It violates the Fifth Amendment. It violates a whole bunch of rights that you have as a citizen of this country or as a legal resident of this country, but they're doing it anyway. And that's a big, big problem. These federal agents are violating their oath to uphold the Constitution.

[00:52:19] They are breaking the laws we hired them to enforce, Sam. And if they can come for them, then they're going to come for us next, Sam. I mean, are they going to listen to this broadcast, Sam, and deport you because, you know, you are anti-Semitic, Sam? Are they going to deport me because I'm anti-Semitic?

[00:52:41] I mean, that's the lunacy of the federal government right now defining anti-Semitism the way they do. It's not anti-Semitic to work toward peace and to criticize the government for breaking their own laws. It's the opposite of anti-Semitic, well, wanting peace for all God's children. That's as kind and as gentle and as loving and as patient and as respectful as you can possibly get. Respecting the sovereignty of other nations, ditto, right?

[00:53:12] Yeah, absolutely right, Sam. And not only is your First Amendment right under attack by this definition of anti-Semitism, but it's under attack from the Health and Human Services. This newly appointed, you know, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., you know, I'm excited for him in some ways, but I'm not excited for him in other ways because what he said is that the Health and Human Services is helping lead the Trump administration's efforts to expand U.S. government threats to First Amendment rights.

[00:53:42] Medicalization to restrict free speech. Assembly and petition is on the ascendancy at Health and Human Services. Right? And so typically, well, in the past, they passed red flag laws in order to take your guns away, right? Well, that hasn't worked very well. And so now they're saying, look, if you are anti-Semitic, then we're going to crack down on your rights.

[00:54:07] And in order to make America healthy again, you are mentally ill if you are anti-Semitic, Sam. That's where this is going. Just so you know. The mentally ill drive a truck through will be the greatest violator of your liberty if we fall for that lie. Less security, more liberty, or more liberty, less security. You can't trade one for the other. You'll lose every time, ladies and gentlemen. We're alone now. So thank you so much. Campaign for Liberty.org. Ron Paul Institute.org.

[00:54:34] And yours truly, I'm telling you right now, it's all about God, family, and country and the protection of life, liberty, and property. Thanks to all of you for listening. God save the republic.