PBD Podcast - Rand Paul on The Real Cost of Intervention & Regime Change | PBD Podcast #730

Episode Date: January 31, 2026

Patrick Bet-David sits down with Senator Rand Paul for a wide-ranging conversation on Fauci and COVID, individual liberty, ICE and Minnesota, immigration and welfare reform, non-interventionism, Venezuela, tariffs, and why limited government still matters.------👞 THE NEW FLB 1'S: https://bit.ly/4mXV9gd🎙️ FOLLOW THE PODCAST ON SPOTIFY: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://bit.ly/4g57zR2⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Ⓜ️ CONNECT ON MINNECT: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://bit.ly/4kSVkso ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Ⓜ️ PBD PODCAST CIRCLES: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://bit.ly/4mAWQAP⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠👔 BET-DAVID CONSULTING: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://bit.ly/4lzQph2 ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠🥃 BOARDROOM CIGAR LOUNGE: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://bit.ly/4pzLEXj⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠💬 TEXT US: Text “PODCAST” to 310-340-1132 to get the latest updates in real-time!ABOUT US:Patrick Bet-David is the founder and CEO of Valuetainment Media. He is the author of the #1 Wall Street Journal Bestseller “Your Next Five Moves” (Simon & Schuster) and a father of 2 boys and 2 girls. He currently resides in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida.

When I think about Rand Paul, I think about the tough guy, the guy that spoke on behalf of the American people. I think I naturally inherited the DNA, the sort of the leave me alone DNA. You were fearless during COVID at a time that nobody wanted to confront Fauci. That's why you're ignoring previous infection because it doesn't involve any of the guidelines. So it assaults our sense of justice and our sense of any kind of right or wrong to say something that's not true. You cannot say anything to him because you have to trust science. God forbid if you do, you became a hero to millions of people around the world. But there isn't necessarily always a governmental answer. The way the world works is if you keep talking about what you believe in, the right people will find you and learn how to use you.

Individualism somewhat naturally accrues to certain people. We don't necessarily need a wall. What we need is a wall around the welfare system. And so you do. You have to have rules. What is your opinion on what's happened in Minnesota? But we have to cooperate. The local officials have to cooperate with the national officials. Would that not be considered war? How would we react to it? I don't like war. I think war is the last resort. I'll vote to declare war. When someone comes it, snatches our president attacks us. So it is an act of war.

The special interests that are more concerned with their personal welfare and the general welfare. Did you ever think you would make it? I said I'm so much like it takes sweet. I know this life's meant for me Adam, what's your point? The future looks bright. My handshake is better than anything I ever signs, right here.

You are a one-of-one? My son's right there. I don't think I've ever said this before. Senator Rand Paul, how you doing? Very good. Thanks for having me. Yeah, you know, it's funny. One of my favorite conversations of all the time was with your father.

Yeah, and I looked at that just to preview to see how tough you were going to be. And I thought you were pretty fair with him, I thought you had a good conversation. No, it was phenomenal. We were in Houston and we went to, I don't know what it was, an office. We sat down, we talked, the stuff that he said was absolutely amazing. But how much influence did he have on you?

Of course he did. I mean, philosophy, all that stuff. But how big of an influence did have on your life? You know, people always have this debate on what you become. Is it nature or is it nurture kind of thing? And in my case, probably a little bit of both. I think I naturally inherited the DNA, that's sort of the leave me alone DNA. You know, I don't need big brother.

I can make my own decisions. Individualism is somewhat naturally accrues to certain people. But I think also nurture. I mean, I was around it as a young kid. I can remember laying on the floor, the old shag rugs of 1970s and listening to MD Radio in Missoula, Montana, Idaho, you know, all these different radio stations. In those days, there wasn't the Internet and podcasts, but there were, there wasn't under, there was sort of a network under the, under the undercurrent network of small AM radio. And he'd do these talk radios all over the country.

And I would listen to at least half of those and probably lots, hundreds and hundreds of his speeches. And then I read a lot of the books that had influenced him as well. Yeah, you know, the one thing that was most profound thing, he told me, he says, you know, he was going to listen to this economist that's talking about capitalism or, you know,

and then he says, eventually I came back, I'm like, what am I doing? I'm a doctor. What do I do with this information? So he said, I went back to the government. guy and I said, I'm obsessed. I can't stop consuming this information about economy, all this stuff. He says, what do I do with it? He says, the way the world works is if you keep talking about what you believe in, the right people will find you and learn how to use you.

Profound. He says, don't just keep your head down, keep talking about the right people will find you. It was fascinating. Do you remember when your dad was on Morton Downey Jr.? Do you remember that one clip? I don't even think people remember Morton Downey Jr. Yeah, that one's kind of hard to forget. It's sort of cringy because you don't like to see your dad or one of your family in a, and some of us don't like that sort of, that kind, you know, that back and forth, that yelling and stuff. But he gave what he could and he talked basically about all these people want to, you know, we don't want to let you smoke marijuana, but he said, yeah, you can eat all the donuts you want, right? So I mean, which is killing more people, marijuana or obesity?

I think to this day probably sugar drinks are more dangerous than marijuana. And by the way, you know, the guy telling him about marijuana smoked three packs a day. And I don't know what age he died. He died from that. I think from that. Yeah. So it's interesting. But coming back to you, when I think about Rand Paul, I think about the tough guy, the guy that spoke on behalf of the American people.

You were fearless during COVID at a time that nobody wanted to confront Fauci. That was like the, you cannot say anything to him because you have to trust science, God forbid. If you do, you became a hero to millions of people around the world. And then the more and more you look into the story, you're like, let me find out a little bit more about this guy. Is it true as a senator you would do pro bono surgery on people's eyes while you're in the Senate? Yeah, I've made a couple different trips. I went down to Guatemala and we did about 200, 250 cataract surgeries. I would go with a group from the University of Utah.

And when I became interested in this, I said, while I'll just organize my own trip, and I looked into it. And there's a lot that goes into organizing. So I became part of this team from the University of Utah. And we went to Guatemala. We went to Haiti. We're in Guatemala.

What part of Guatemala? It was, we were, went up from Antigua. I'm trying to met Salama. Salama. Yeah, it was about an hour or two north of the Guatemala City and Antigua City and it was up in the mountains. I remember because when you drive these winding mountain roads, which sometimes had precipitous drops, the way they marked places in the road where the road had fallen away was stones. So they put stones around the arc where the road had fallen

away and you were supposed to drive around that. It scary. It is scary. We went to the Tikal, you know, I don't know if you had a chance to go to Tikal there or not one of the lost cities that have these big pyramids and the people are amazing. But yeah, it's always noble to see somebody that's doing the work and at the same time, still wanting to go out and help people out.

So I want to focus on a handful of things that's going on right now with current events. I want to get your thoughts on this. One with obviously, you know, what we've seen the last 30 days with Minnesota. At first, Nick Shirley's content goes viral. We've all seen it. The 42, 43-minute clip

with what's going on there with, you know, insurance and clinics and billions of dollars, millions of dollars, videos, no kids are in there. And then we hear what happens with the first shooting. I believe it's on January 6th, if I'm not going, it's January 7th with Renee Good. And then you have Alex Pretty that happens. Now that we've kind of seen everything for the most part,

we haven't had the hearing yet, we haven't done all of that. What is your impression? What is your opinion on what's happened with Minnesota? I think there are some things that bring all of us together. I think that even if you're a left-wing Democrat in Boston and there's a rapist, a murderer, some guy assaulting somebody with a hammer, bad people that are in the jails that've served their time, they need to be deported. Even in Boston, they're fine with that. But we have to cooperate. The local officials have to cooperate with the national officials. Some of that's happened in a lot of places, but there's been more resistance

in Minneapolis than just about any place in the United States. I think it changes, though, when all of a sudden the images aren't just arresting the bad guys. The images are, you know, the shooting of somebody who's filming. And then the explanation from DHS is, well, he assaulted these officers. And, you know, it snowed that week. And so everybody's at home watching these videos. You probably saw it 100 times on TV.

And they're like, well, gosh, it looks like he's retreating. He's in the middle of road filming. He's waving a car by, so he's not even obstructing traffic. They come towards him. He retreats. He retreats. I was guilty of multiple skin care crimes. Two counts of sleeping and makeup.

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it's something that I wouldn't have anybody working for me who did that. That just is unacceptable behavior. If he was in the local police department and a woman came up and said, you know, I hate the police or whatever, and I'm sure they were saying hateful things, and I'm sure they were instigating. But if I only throw her to the ground, as they do, Petty turns, Petri turns to help her up. and that's when they grab him from behind. At no point does he assault anybody.

So it assaults our sense of justice and our sense of any kind of right or wrong to say something that's not true. He did not assault anyone. Did he use bad language? Did he yell slurs at them? Probably. But he did not assault anybody.

And then they say he brandished a weapon. Well, that wasn't true either. And then we have Steve Miller saying, well, he's an assassin. He's a would-be assassin. None of these things are through. And so then people say, well, you know, I had this yesterday, a right-wing interviewer said, well, you're aiding and abetting the left. And I said, well, I believe that ICE has a function and I believe that ICE has to be respected. But the only way they can be respected is if they act in a just manner. So if you want ICE to continue and ICE to remove some of these bad people from our country, they have to behave and they can't tell us something that's not true. There has to be a code. There has to be a way that people are. treated and this was a this was a what they call a bad shooting this was a a terrible tragedy the man

never touched his weapon the gun apparently by the video is pulled out by another one who yells gun gun gun and the officers made a mistake does that mean the officers should go to prison no but it probably means they shouldn't be policemen anymore it shouldn't be law enforcement it's a mistake it's a terrible tragic mistake um and so i don't want to end ice but you have to have justice and you have to have a review. And I said, frankly, every local police department, even if it's a good shooting, in my town, a man came and shot a policeman eight times. The person riding along was a Marine looking to become a policeman. He then killed the person with his bare hands. Both all justified, bare hands, all justified, took the police a year and a half to investigate it, but even a good

shooting. And everybody thought that that was a justified killing gets investigated. And so the fact that there would be no investigation. We would just say nothing to see here. This guy's an assassin. It damages ice worse than anything else that's being done by the left. So I think we have to have an independent investigation at this point. I agree. I think we need to do it to see what happened there. Did you follow the story about knowing the weapon that he pulled that Alex Pretty had, the sick 320, you know, the hundred cases and allegations where it goes off because it's super sensitive? And then once it went off, the other, I heard the sound and then boom, he reacted to it. Yeah, and I thought that's what might have happened. It may still be what had happened,

and that would make a lot more sense. Uncommended discharge is what they call it. An accidental discharge. So as the police officers removing it, you hear a gunshot and they all fire, think it's coming from the person they're holding down. That would actually be a much easier to understand. It still would be a tragedy, and it still wouldn't be good, but it would be easier to understand. The report from DHS that came out most recently did not mention any other discharge. And you would think the police officers there, justifying their action, would say, we heard a shot. And they also would be able to look at a gun. I mean,

you can tell, I'm not a forensics guy, but you can look at a gun and tell, I think immediately if it's been fired. And so I don't know. I think that if that happened, that would sort of, you would understand why they opened fire. If that didn't happen, I think they're responding to gun, gun, gun, he's got a gun. And thinking that underneath him, him out. He has a gun instead of that there was a gun, you know, behind him and his waistband that actually had already been removed. I don't know. And like I say, there's a big difference. And I think what we don't differentiate in our country is we often think, all bad, all good. This isn't all bad, all good. These are people trying to do their job. They are being assaulted,

yelled at, spit upon. And it's a tough job. And I wish the people in Minnesota and the government were doing a better job cooperating. This shouldn't be happening. I have two police, that work for me. They say in my small town in Kentucky, the DEA comes in, the FBI, ATF, they come in and say, we have someone who needs to be arrested in your town. It's like one or two of them come in. The local sheriff of the police department sends 10 people with them, and most of the work's actually done by the local people and arresting the local person with the, you know, working together. Now, my understanding is Minneapolis hasn't been allowing that. If Minneapolis were allowing that, many of these things wouldn't happen.

But it did happen. And the only way you can restore confidence in ice, some of the people have to go. They've let go of one of the commanders. That's a step forward. They've sent somebody new in, home and in to look at the situation. They've promised they're going to be, I think, less confrontational. See, I don't understand while we're having these confrontations in the street, really. You know, and if you're going into someone's house, how sort of anybody is loitering around

streets and having these confrontations. Did you see the other clip of Alex Pretty what he did in the streets like a week prior to that or two weeks prior to that? See the challenge of what you're saying is which I agree with is on one end he came out he wanted to kill he was doing this on the other hand he's a nice man he would never do anything you know Elizabeth Warren I want to show you this clip I want to show you this clip by Elizabeth Warren so I'm sure you've seen this she's narrating it while you see him in the background caring for people was at the the core of who he was. He was incapable of causing harm. Alex carried patience, compassion, and calm as a steady light within him. Even at the very end, that light was there. I recognized

his familiar stillness and signature calm composure. So when you when you see these things, right, how do you react to it? You know, when I saw the second clip that was released, of a different day in a different situation. I think every situation has to be judged as it is. So I would have said he's guilty at the very least of vandalism. And there is a form of assault that's going on when he's kicking the car and breaking the taillight. And I was thinking, gosh, they should have arrested him that day and done it in a way where, you know, he wasn't killed but arrested. Maybe it has still been in jail and, you know, it wouldn't have happened.

First time around. Yeah, the first time around. He would have been alive, more importantly. It could have been in jail. That whole thing would have been avoided. But it's figuring it out, and a lot of us don't realize how tough the job is of a policeman. Local policemen are doing this every day. So local policemen have to figure out how to do it.

And like I say, it gets back to the second instance where the local, where the ice agent is violently pushing the woman to the ground. That's not the way it works. And really, you wouldn't be on a local police force. If you were on a street corner where people yelling at you and you push a woman to the ground, that just probably wouldn't be acceptable to be not. police department to do that. But when he kicks a car and breaks the headlight, he's now caused damage, it's vandalism. It may well be a form of assault. At that point, they would have been justified in arresting him. But police have to figure out how to arrest people without killing

him. And it's very difficult. I'm not saying it's an easy job. But it shows that he really probably wasn't an angel either, that he was a very angry man. And so, but nothing justifies what happened on the latter encounter. And really, I think on the ladder encounter, you have to figure out a way to de-escalate things. And de-escalating things is not, you know, pepper-spraying everybody and bombing people with pepper spray, basically. How much of this could have been prevented? And I'm talking about specifically from, because when you hear the stories, and I'm talking to friends, so some of the guys are like, I cannot believe this, Pat, how can you defend this? What is this about cooperating? They should have never done this. This guy should be with his family

right now. He's a good guy. And then you hear the other. argument. Why is the state not cooperating? All they have to do is cooperate for this to be prevented. When Obama was deporting the millions of people, how come the news wasn't as bad? Well, maybe because the local cities and states were cooperating with them by giving the report and they weren't. So to the average person, how would you unpack that message that they're not cooperating with D.C.? Some of that I want to get to the bottom of because I don't think I know because I'm hearing evidence on both sides. So I hear from the DHS Minneapolis, sanctuary city and they're not cooperating. But then I hear from the director of prisons there.

That's what I've seen on TV saying that the one guy, this sex offender that everybody agrees is terrible, is in prison. It's on a public website. They could have called us. And instead they're going around, breaking doors down everywhere looking for him and he's in prison. And he has what's called a detainer. We will turn him over to ICE once he has served his sentence. And so that's what you hear from the Minneapolis people. From the other side, you hear at Sanctuary. he said they're not doing. There has to be a truth. So like a jury, you know, I present you with both of those and you say, well, I need more information. So I think my job is to try to bring them in. I'm going to try to bring in not only the people from DHS, from ICE and others

to let us know what is the policy, what is what is an assault, what isn't an assault, what can people do and how can we try to figure out how not to have any more deadly killings, but I also want to know is Minneapolis cooperating or aren't they? And so we're going to have to hear from the Minneapolis people, and then we're going to have to hear from the Republicans or the DHS people. Give us examples of how they weren't. But also, if this guy is in prison, how come you didn't know it? Did you call Minneapolis and they told you no? Or are you at such odds that you aren't talking to Minneapolis? I don't know if it's not at odds, because Trump will talk to anybody, right? Even Elizabeth Warren doing what she did in this video, Trump called her to say, hey,

what do you think about the 10% interest rate, right, for credit cards? You know, he called, talk to Tim to apparently Jacob Frye on the call. He says the call was good, but then Fry comes out and, you know, says what he says. So there's politics also being played. And there's even some people saying that what story disappeared all of a sudden? The Somali Daycare Center no longer being talked about. So is this a good story that now got that to be gone? And then Tim Walts is now saying he doesn't plan on running for office at all again.

He just wants to go be a good citizen and do his thing. I think the fraud's not over. whether it's misdirection and they're trying to steer us away from that, possibly. But we're going to have a debate this week. We're having it on spending in Congress. And what I'm pointing out is something that Republicans don't want people to know their spending package has more refugee welfare in it. And my point is if you think they're stealing the refugee welfare, you need to not give them anymore until something's figured out. You've got to figure out a way. So there's $5 billion in the package again for refugee welfare.

I'm going to have an amendment that will strike that, that will remove that completely because, look, I'm not against refugees, but if you or your church want to sponsor refugee, you do it with your money. That's charity. If you're trying to take all the taxpayer money to do it for 100,000 Somalis, that's not charity. That is maybe a bad public policy decision, frankly, to do it. And so we need to look at all of this, and we need to look at who's coming, who's not coming. We need to have rules on our immigration, basically. That's common sense, too. You see, how is a common sense approach like that, not landing with people on both sides?

Meaning, when you look at who takes the most entitlement programs that we have, who gets the most wealth or who stays on at the longest? You know, back in the days during Obama, remember when unemployment was past six months, 12 months, even at one point people were getting it for 24, Oh, because I have a hard time getting a job. I have a hard time getting a job. We moved it to 90 days.

Everybody got a job all of a sudden. Yeah, economists have studied this over and over again. If unemployment lasts 28 weeks, almost everybody gets a job either between 27 weeks and 29 weeks. If unemployment is 52 weeks, everybody gets a job about 51 weeks to 53 weeks, right around there. And here's the other thing. And this is how if you look at public policy, you see the unintended consequences of things. So they've also done this study. So you and I go in for an interview.

You've been out of work for two years and I've been out of work for two months. Sure. Who do you think they hire? A month. Yeah. Because if you've been out of work two years, they think something's wrong with you. That's right. You've lost work ethic and you're not trying hard enough.

Because frankly, what would always happen is, and this is what still happens, people take jobs they don't want to get by until they can get another job they like better. But if you provide them with welfare or unemployment benefits, they don't get that other job. But it also scares off the amount. employer. And so really extending unemployment to a longer period is actually a disservice to the people you're doing it to because the longer they're out of work, the less likely anyone will ever employ them. That's the part to why allow somebody to be on entitlement program for 10 years? Why allow them to get welfare for 10 years? If it's for three, six, 12 months, get a job,

take care of yourself like everybody or some states allow that some don't. That to me is common sense. You have to have guardrails around everything. One of the things my dad used to say is we don't necessarily need a wall. What we need is a wall around the welfare system. And so you do, you have to have rules. So able-bodied people shouldn't be on food stamps. So if you were able-bodied and single, if you're a 21-year-old guy, 21-year-old woman, there's no reason to be on food stamps. And in fact, when food stamps started, they were for the single mom with four kids, whoever everybody says, well, she ought to work, but what can she do? She's got four kids. And so we acknowledge we'd take care of some people who couldn't take care of themselves so they wouldn't starve.

But a 21-year-old boy or girl, frankly, there are jobs everywhere, particularly for men. Because if you can lift stuff and you're physically able, there is a job for you. Sure, I agree. But with that policy also did. If you're talking about the Lyndon Johnson, 1964, when they came out with taking care of single mothers with four kids, At the time, the focus was to help the single mother with four kids. But it also inspired a lot of single women to become single mothers with four kids because they saw the benefit of relying on the government to give them income and without having to work. So not only was it a bad policy, it produced a lot of people that were relying on the government

to take care of them. It was a book written a while back and it separated the population into sort of two tracks and they said, well, these people are at the 90 percentile as far as income and everything else. These people are the 10 percentile. And they said, what are the differences between these two groups? And the difference was primarily education and having children before you're married. And I tell me with this all the time because I think it's incredibly important, but I can't make a law. I can't tell you you can't tell you. You can't have. Can we create incentives though? Where we're, like you create incentives to possibly. Possibly. What's the country that said? If you're

married, I don't know how many years and you have your third kid, you know. hungry. Hungry is who, okay. Yeah. I'm not opposed to things like, you know, reduction in taxes. I don't think we should give you money because we don't have any money, frankly. We're $2 trillion in the whole each year. We're $38 trillion in the whole overall. So I'm not for like saying, I'll give you $1,000 to not have kids. They were doing the opposite in Hungary. They're giving you $1,000 to have kids. How bad were their, how bad was a child birth rate? Well, because in Europe, all of Europe's underwater, you know, and U.S. is becoming that. 5.8 is pretty bad in the U.S.

Yeah, yeah. So we're becoming that. But I think the bottom line is there are things that need to change in society and problems we have, but there isn't necessarily always a governmental answer. So for example, having kids before you're married almost inevitably, if your parents are rich, you can do it.

But almost inevitably leads to a life of struggling economically and poverty. So what I would do is I would actually make that part of the curriculum, not from a moral standpoint. Not to say morally you're evil, you're having sex before you're married. I would say these are the statistics,

and in all likelihood you will be poor, so if you'll do things to try to prevent having children when you're 15, 16, 17, you have a chance. You have a much better chance of getting ahead. Yeah, it's a great conversation of... The thing is, we have the data to make better decisions. It's not like we don't have the data to see what produces and what doesn't.

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you and Marco Rubio had a good exchange. I think it was yesterday? Yeah. Yesterday, yeah. It's hard for us to conceive that an operation that lasted about four and a half hours and was a law enforcement operation to capture someone we don't recognize

as a head of state, indicted in the United States, wanted with a $50 million balance. My question would be if it only took four hours to take our president, it's very short, nobody dies on the other side, nobody dies on our side. It's perfect.

would it be an act of war? We just don't believe that this operation comes anywhere close to the constitutional definition of war. But would it be an act of war if someone did it to us? Nobody dies, few casualties, they're in and out, boom, it's a perfect military operation. Would that be an act of war? Of course it would be an act of war. I'm probably the most anti-war person in the Senate, and I would vote to declare war if someone invaded our country and took our president.

And you were talking to him about Venezuela, with, you know, going in and taking Maduro and, you know, if that were to happen to us, would that not be considered war? How would we react to it? Right? If you don't mind, kind of taking a minute and give your argument on that because I have some questions on that. So we had the debate during our constitutional convention over how war should begin. Should one person have the power of the president or should we give that power to the legislature? And it was pretty much unanimous from Hamilton to Jefferson. We're going to give the power to initiate or declare war to Congress.

That's what the Constitution says. Now, executing the war, we have a president who's the commander-in-chief, and really most all of the decisions about how to execute or how to fight a war are the president's prerogative. And so we had this debate over what happened in Venezuela. They say, well, it's not a constitutional war. And we say, well, why? And their lawyers all get together.

And they say, well, because there weren't enough people who died. And so quick, they were in and out the war. already over. I say we're at war. And so my question is, well, if that wasn't a war, would it be a war if a country came in, bombed DC and the U.S. such that we couldn't respond with air defense missiles, flew in, and then took our president, and then they arranged their armada up and down the east coast to blockade our east coast. Would that be an act of war? And I said, look, I'm one of the most anti-war people you'll ever meet. I don't like war. I think war is the last resort. I'll vote to declare war. When someone

is it snatches our president attacks us. So it is an act of war. And logic doesn't work. And it's like, oh, you're saying moral equivalency to us in Maduro? No, I'm not. I think Maduro is a scoundrel. Socialism is bad. Authoritarian is bad. I wrote a whole book called The case against socialism against Maduro and against that the Venezuelan socialism. And yet, logic is what it is. If that's not a war, then why would it be a war, would not, you know, It would have to be not a war if someone attacked us. It's the same with the drug bust. We're like, well, you know, he's violated the laws against oil and drugs and stuff.

Those are our laws. We also accuse Maduro, who is a terrible person, but we accused him of having machine guns, violating a 1934 U.S. law. What's the dumbest thing I've ever heard? We can't arrest people from foreign countries for breaking American laws when they are not even here. Breaking the American laws. It's just really, really dumb. But they're saying it's a drug bust because at first it's not big enough to be a real war,

and then really it's not a war. It's a drug bust. So they're trying to convince people they don't have to come to us and ask. But there are threats now putting more troops in. If they don't behave, we've threatened to put more troops in. Do they have to ask for permission then? I think it's always better. It's what the Constitution intended.

And we have on very important occasions asked Congress. When we were attacked Pearl Harbor, when we were attacked at 9-11, Congress was virtually unanimous. And the people were behind the effort, at least in the first decade or so of the Afghan war. Do you think it was a right move? Taking out, yeah, I would have voted for Declaration of War after 9-11. You would have. Yeah. And virtually everybody did.

Even my father voted for that at the time. And I would have voted also with Pearl Harbor after we were attacked at Pearl Harbor. But I wouldn't have voted for the Iraq war. Iraq war, we didn't have the same consensus. And it also misdirected us and was done under misinformation. The misinformation was that, oh, Iraq, you know, has weapons of mass destruction, is threatening to attack us. Or that they're part of 9-11. There was actually the intimation by George W. Bush that really they were responsible for 9-11.

It just wasn't true. Well, we learned that 20 years later and what, $3 trillion? and how many amount of lives that we lost there. But do you think, would you, as a non-interventionist yourself, we haven't had a non-interventionist president since Calvin Coolidge. 30 is whatever you want to call it, right? Would you call President Trump the first non-interventionist president since Calvin Coolidge? I would have.

You know, one of the things that attracted me to Donald Trump, and really I have been close to him. You know, I know him well. I've known him for over a decade. He helped support my mission trip to Guatemala and to Haiti. He gave money so I could go down there. But the, he ran on a much different policy. I never really liked the Bush wing of the party.

The Bush wing of the party believed that they were going to spread freedom everywhere, the point of a gun, and by golly, we'll make these people like freedom, whether they like it or not. And it just doesn't work. I mean, people can get freedom. And it's even probably true in Venezuela. the people who want freedom are going to have to get it even now. They still have the socialist authoritarian regime

still in place. They have to get their own freedom. They have to fight for their own freedom ultimately. But I think that the philosophy of Trump was much different. Philosophy was for first term or would he campaign off or 24? Even when he campaigned for this last time, he probably mentioned 30 times

on the trail how much he was against regime change. But the people around him have very much had some influence. Lindsay Graham has a disproportionate amount of influences around him a lot, and so does Marco Rubio. And they both are believers in regime change. The Lindsey Graham relationship is tricky. It's kind of a, it doesn't make sense fully.

Rubio does. The Lindsay Graham one is a little bit confusing. But would you consider him? Because remember when he was getting elected the first time around, do you want him to have access to the button because World War III? And, you know, it's supposed he's going to start wars with everybody. Boom. Comes in.

ISIS, all this stuff, calm, relax, and then the protest start. Then COVID, we have to use it against them. Then Biden comes in. Then he got Russia, Ukraine, October 7th. Then he comes in, lowering the temperature. You know, he said he stopped eight and a half wars. I don't know what he said, eight or eight and a half wars the way he says it. Would you put him down as a non-interventionist?

No, but I would say that his instincts are more aligned with mine than any other Republican has been in my lifetime, really. I want to compliment that. I don't want to disparage that. Is he exactly where I am as far as a philosophy of non-intervention? You know, my philosophy really would be we go to war out of defense. You know, when we're being attacked, I don't really believe in offensive war. You know, as much as I want freedom for Venezuela, as much as I want freedom for Iran, I don't really want to get involved with wars over there unless we were attacked. They aren't, another one of them are a threat to our national security or in our national interest. but Trump has been less, I think more open to the idea, well, the Western Hemisphere is different.

These things, this is my, the New Donald's. Bono Doctrine. Yeah, the version of the Monroe Doctrine. Oh, I don't know. I think that the ideas of non-intervention really apply no matter where you're thinking about in the world. They might apply less so if it's, you know, there's an army along the border of Mexico. thinking about invading. I think our border is much more important, but there's nothing about Venezuela. In fact, many of the things that were argued about Venezuela, frankly,

weren't true. I was on a program not too long ago, and the broadcaster said to me, oh yeah, but at least we've stopped the fentanyl. And I was like, well, you know there's no fentanyl ever came. Yeah. And even the cocaine, most of it's going to Europe or to other islands on the way. It's still some of it makes it here, though. Probably some, but even the boats we've been blowing up. These are boats with four outboard motor. They probably go about 100 miles and then they have to refuel.

They're 2,000 miles from our coast. Most of these boats aren't coming to America. And we always have stopped them in the past. We have always interdicted, and we still actually do interdict boats, even all the way down off Venezuela. But when we stop them, about one and four don't have any drugs on them. We've

stopped a boat that we were suspicious of it didn't have any drugs. It was more of a leading, because they were building into a, I think Delta 4 started working on this in August. So they've known for four months that they're going to attack to get Maduro. So you were saying this is all optics? Yeah, it's a ruse in a way.

The whole idea that he's being, you know, it's a drug bust. That way it's not a war, so we don't have to tell Congress. So drug busts we can do anytime we want, anywhere we want, we're justified. What do you think, thought about that strategy? Well, it's an elaborate strategy. I mean, they spent months blowing up these boats, not because they really thought they were going to do anything. What do you think came up with that idea?

Who do I think came up with it? I'm not positive exactly who came up with it. If you were to speculate, would it be a Rubio, would it be a Lindsay? I don't know if it's going to be. I don't know specifically who came up with a boat strategy. I guess what I can tell you is that I'm disappointed that almost nobody else in my caucus pointed out the fact or is concerned with are these people armed in the boats. you know, if this is a war, typically you shoot people are armed. Occasionally people aren't armed get killed, but usually when you're trying to kill people

are armed. They say, oh, they're attacking us. The war on drugs, their weapon is the drugs. And I say, well, not unless they're going to hit you on the head with a package of cocaine. I mean, selling drugs isn't a war. It's a terrible thing. People ought to be, you know, told how, you know, the scourge of what happens being addicted. But you're not being attacked with these drugs.

you're making a foolish decision to buy their drugs and to use them. But think about this boat. Think about the boat. It gets to Miami. If it ever could get to Miami, it offloads it into a U-Haul truck. Now they're going up by 95. Do we take out a grenade launcher and blow up the truck? Well, nobody would be for that.

Well, why would we be for that on the open seas? We have always had rules on the open seas that actually mirror ours. Not exactly the same. But the rules of the Coast Guard engagement are Bullhorn, halt. we are going to board you to search, we suspect you of having drugs. If they stop, they're boarded and it proceeds. If they don't stop, they can try to disable the boat with shots.

And that's what they usually do. Then they either stop or it escalates. If they shoot back at you, then you can kill them. And that escalation of force is what we've always had. And mainly because if you're out there fishing and it looks like you're in the similar boat, but you are fishing, then you say, we'll come aboard.

there's no drugs you don't get killed. Here we're not taking any of those steps. And the Coast Guard statistics say about one and four times they're wrong. But I think the callousness on the part really of a lot of my colleagues on my side is like, oh, we don't care of their drug dealers. What's an allegation? You know, that's why we don't blow up a truck. You know, when we do, let's say we go into someone's house in D.C. We have a warrant. We do all the appropriate things. Sometimes a number gets transposed with the wrong house. That's why we don't take a grenade. launcher and just blow up the drug house, we actually, and it's hard work. But the policeman actually has to knock on the door and go into the house because sometimes we get the wrong house and we've had

tragedies in our country, getting the wrong house. But you can't just blow people up and say that that is in any way just or justice. Yeah, the community that's the happiest is Venezuelans. Venezuela's celebrating that he's no longer there. Even some of the, you know, TV folks who cannot stand the president coming out and saying, look, you guys know I don't like him, you guys don't like what he stands for, but this is a celebration for our community, et cetera, et cetera. To me, I get the Monroe-Dongru doctrine to take care of the Western Hemisphere and make sure we're safe. But maybe let me ask the one question that's separate.

Why do you think? Because I think the reason why I think you're a very necessary voice is, you know, if everybody agreed, even from the conservative side, and within a conservative side, that's the conservative side, there are in debates, then we have certain blind spots. And you're always the guy that kind of comes in and says, what's he saying? Oh, okay, good point. What's he saying? Okay, we should consider that. Why do you think non-interventionist presidents don't get elected? Why do you think presidents that get elected are typically the ones that are interventionists if somebody crosses the line with us? I think that's a really good question because I think people, and this is a generalization

about the public. But I think they want things to be done. They want somebody to do something. So in some ways, Trump does something. He's been aggressive, so was President Obama, frankly, in using the executive order. He's impatient now that Congress won't do things. They want to get rid of the filibus. They want to make it easier to do, do, do. And I guess from the non-interventionist point, what you're advocating for is sort of peace and prosperity. And people like that, they also want to do her and they're convinced that someone is evil. We must do something about this. It's the same with the economy. You know, if you look at our wealth and our prosperity over the last 200 years worldwide, but particularly in the U.S., it is just beyond belief.

And yet people can't come to grips with this. I've been on a speaking tour to colleges, and I start out with asking them, is it the best of times or the worst of times? You know, the tale of two cities, Charles Dickens, you know. Is it an age of wisdom or an age of foolishness? What are you doing? him mixed, but mostly Democrats are very, very pessimistic if they're Democrats, if they're Republicans, they're mixed. But really nobody is as joyful or elated as they should be. The statistics, there's a group called Human Progress.org out of Cato, and they look at this

kind of stuff. In 1820, at the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, 98% of people lived in abject poverty. This is defined as less than $2 a day. And they do this in constant dollars and they measure it. So when I was married in 1990, it had gone from 98% in absolute poverty to 33%. Just an amazing thing. But from when I was married in 1990 to today, it's less than 10%. Wow. Less than 10% of the world lives on $2 a day.

The miracle of the Industrial Revolution, the miracle of technology is just beyond belief. How many hours it takes you to buy a refrigerator? The average workmen worked like 160 hours to buy refrigerator in 1950s when it was supposedly so good. They work like 10 hours or something to buy a refrigerator or less now. Electricity, you know, originally the candlestick makers hated Edison and they worried so much in all the candlestick makers. And they did all go out of business. But it used to cost, I think it was a thousand working hours to have enough electricity to read at night for a year. Now it's 10 seconds of the average men's working.

to have a light bulb for a whole year. This gives me the vibes of future looks bright. This gives me optimism. Yeah, there's incredible optimism, but there's whole books written on this. Stephen Pinker's written a book on this, Marion Toopi, that people just can't handle good news. They want to hear bad news because, and some people say we revolve that way. So let's say our village is doing very well, but one day out of the year the line comes, we talk about the line every day after that.

line, eats one of our kids, eats one of our wives. And so we're very fearful of the bad news, but we're not really willing to incorporate the good news so much. You know, it's interesting on going back to the question, why don't non-interventionists become presidents, right? You know, Pat Buchanan was one of the favorites. You know, a lot of people talk about William Jennings, I think William Jennings, Brian, back in the days, you know, he campaigned Christian guy, good guy. I think he was a Democrat, but he campaigned on running for office. He ran three times failed. In my company, like this week, something happened. And it's funny because even in my insurance company now,

we would have somebody that would do a compliance thing or somebody would do something to us. And we'd sit there and we say, how do we react to this? Do we sue? Do we sue? And to me, the non-interventionist executive will always say what? Why would we sue? It's just noise. No need to do it.

Then the other guy's going to be like, if the market believes they can keep doing this to us, We have to sue. Let's make it public, right? So this is Rand Paul, and this is going to be, you know, somebody else that. I think there is that. And just on the lawsuit thing, I always love the Wall Street, the Walmart approach. Walmart takes everybody. You steal from Walmart. You take something off shelf. Everybody's prosecuted. What do you think about that? They fight everything. And what they do is they deter lawsuits. And in some ways in business, it is good. If people are going to rip you off, you have to push back on it. But going back, but going back, to the non-interventionism and, you know, what sells and doesn't sell. The bigger, broader part of it, not just with foreign policy, is the idea of the message of, let's say, I'm a Democrat, and what do Democrats offer you for an election? They'll give you free car, free education. They'll give me some of your money. If you make more money than me, we'll take some of your money and give it to me.

If you have three cars, they'll give me one of your cars, that kind of stuff. So they're big on giving you material things. Their message is pretty easy to sell. I mean, if you're, if you're, you're working stiff and you don't have much money and I say, I'll give you a free car. Well, damn, or a chicken in every pot, the Huey Long, chicken in every pot. But then along comes the other side. And the other side is somewhat non-interventionist in the economy as well as overseas. So we're the libertarians, the free market. What do I offer you?

I say, look, the system of capitalism, of freedom, of exchange, where I don't tell you what you can charge or what you can make and what you can sell has created more prosperity than any other economic system in the world has created phenomenal prosperity. And I can show you over the last 200 years what's happened in America and people are dying to get into America, which is going to sell, which is easier to sell.

I think mine is a harder sell because I'm not offering you something. So inherently, the ideas of freedom, liberty, and limited government, less intervention in the marketplace, your personal life, or even if it's your personal life, I say, well, you know, I don't think we ought to regulate what your kids can do the internet, you regulate the kids doing the internet and people, oh, no, we need to intervene.

And it's like, so one of the laws they passed and I oppose this was, we're going to tell your kid that he's 13, he cannot see gambling ads or beer on Hulu or some streaming service. And I said, well, when you turn on the broadcast TV and you watch golf, they're sponsored by fan doing all these companies. That's all you see is gambling. And if you watch the Super Bowl and broadcast TV, all you see is beer. But you're going to regulate the internet. And a 13-year-old is going to have to say, I'm 13.

and then we're going to turn off the beer commercials and the gambling commercials. It's like, give me a break. Right. So there is an interventionist in Rand Paul. That's interesting. So there's an element there. Last question before we wrap up. I know we got a heart out.

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intervening in California for the LA fires, the wildfires, for permitting. Your thoughts? If the permits are federal, we should make it easier to get permitting. And, you know, I always think of what I would do. Like, I saw the fire and saw how horrible the fires were. And I was like, why don't they pump seawater up into cisterns on the hills and have hills? I guarantee it's because I think salt's going to hurt some animal or hurt the grass. And it probably would, but it's like, you want your house to burn down or you're worried about some

bowl weevil who runs around on the grass. Also, like if I had one of those $15, $20 million houses in Malibu, I'd have a hose about this big and I'd have four pumps ready for a fire were coming. And there were people who did, who drenched their house and the fire did skip them. But there's ways to do it. There's also management in the forest. I mean, you've got to cut some of your undergrowth, you know, and there are ways to try to manage fires.

But Californians are the epitome of people who do nothing, then complain and then want the rest of the country to pay for it. But the intersection with the federal government with us would just be there are federal things that require our permission. But this is how bad it, I'll give you an example how bad it is. We had these two bridges, twin bridges on Kentucky Lake. A tugboat hit them and knocked out the bridge. And I said, well, we should rebuild the bridges as soon as possible. Why don't we skip the permitting process, the NEPA and all the EPA stuff where we measure how many pocketbook muscles there are and whether the bridges are going to build the dam. Build a damn bridge. We're going to do it anyway. Why do you waste millions of dollars in two years doing

this stupid permitting process? Just skip it when you have an emergency and when you're going to rebuild a bridge in the same place. Democrats voted me down. Half the Republicans voted against me. All I wanted was an emergency exception for bridges to be rebuilt in the same place where they had already been approved, but when they're knocked down, you know, by a calamity and I couldn't get it passed. That's the problem with this government. I mean, the challenge with California, is 2,500 permits given so far. That's 13% of the homes that have burned. Permits are taking, God knows how long.

Only 10 homes have been rebuilt from the fires. Imagine he's sitting there saying, if you're not going to do it, I've got to come overlapping into reen and expedited. Well, and that's the question. And I don't know enough about the permitting process on homes to know which is state and which is federal. There are things that require federal,

and they're usually across waterways along the ocean, things like that. Building a house is probably all completely local. And I guess one of the ways ultimately California is punished is people just leave. I mean, they're leaving by the hundreds of thousands. It doesn't seem like Newsom cares, though. Yeah. It seems like it bothers them.

Well, and the thing is, they're going, you know, Sweden finally learned their lesson when Sweden imposed wealth tax. So not a tax on your income, but a tax on how much you have had and saved. And all the rich people left. Bjorn Borg left, the founder of IKEA left. They all left. And Sweden finally said, well, will you come back? And they got rid of the well tax. California is now entertaining this wealth tax. And it's a terrible idea. And I can't imagine any rich people will remain in California. But the rich people pay a lot of taxes. This is the whole mantra of the left, which is absolutely a lie. Rich people are not paying their fair share. It's actually the opposite. Rich people pay all the taxes. And I said this once on the view, and I don't recommend going on the view. I said, you realize people making 50,000 or less don't pay any income tax. I'm like, no, no, you're lying. And it's like, no,

husband and wife, two kids, the deductions 12,500 times four is 50,000. If you make $50,000 a year, husband and wife, and you have two kids, you don't pay income tax. But you know who pays the income tax? The top 1% pays about 40% to 50% of the income tax. That's 1%. So they're paying half of the income tax for the whole country. That's not popular, though. If you say that on CNN or MSNBC, God forbid, that truth comes out. top 10%, which is about 200,000 and up, pays 90% of the income tax. So really, the rich are paying the income tax. The other taxes are more evenly distributed, sales tax and things like that, although rich people buy more stuff than poor people buy. So they're paying more in sales

taxes, too. But the bottom line is it used to differentiate Republicans from Democrats. We always said it's not a revenue problem. We don't need more revenue. We don't need to punish rich more. We need to cut spending. But now it's become muddled because Donald Trump has now become a big believer in taxes. He loves tariffs, which is simply a tax. And so you have many Republicans. So I hate taxes and I'm not for raising taxes. So for tariffs. I'm for raising tariffs. But the problem is, it's muddled the message of Republicans. We're no longer a party of low taxes. We're a party that is now bragging about, oh, we're going to use the tariff revenue here. We're going to give rebates here. It's a weapon for the president to use, though, right? Because if the enemy uses it against us,

I want him to have it. My concern is if Supreme Court takes that away from him, that power away from it, which he keeps bringing it up, which means they may do it. They may say no, and then we lose the revenue that we're getting. Well, it's not a matter of taking it away from. The Constitution is pretty explicit. Taxes originate in the House have to go to the Senate. It specifically even mentions duties and levies.

It mentions tariffs in the Constitution, says that they are in the prerogative of the House. Even the Senate can't. We're not supposed to initiate tariffs. Only the House does. comes to the Senate, goes to the president. It is a tax. A tariff is a tax, and it never was the prerogative of the president. Now, some legislation has tried to give him that power,

but what he's using is something called AEPA, which is an emergency legislation, and it doesn't mention anything about tariffs. Do you think the Supreme Court's going to rule against them? If they follow the law, they absolutely will rule against him. You've got to be kidding me. Yeah, because the law is explicit. And so he will try to use other reasons for how he can use tariffs.

But it's also very chaotic. chaotic. I mean, you know, one week he says to Canada, he says, oh, Canada, yeah, go and whatever, do whatever, make a deal with China. We don't care. The next week he says, if you make a deal with China, I'm giving you 100% tariff. That's very chaotic. You see the personality. Well, I know, but it's his personality. But we didn't set up a government to be run by one person. It's back to the intervention or not venture. People kind of want an actor, but then again, do we want an actor that's acting erratically with regard to tariff, such of the market goes down a thousand points when he says he's going to look canada's our biggest

trading partner there is no reason why we wouldn't shouldn't want more trade with canada they should want we have the best customers don't know like we are the best customers they need us more than we need them trade is mutually beneficial and so both sides of the trade there is no you know and this is the the thing that is a fallacy that trump doesn't get trade isn't china doesn't rip us off we only trade with people because we get a benefit and so if i want to say sell you this water and it's $2. You have to want my water more than you want your $2. And I want your $2 more than the water.

We actually both have to mutually benefit or it doesn't encounter. Somebody is more important. Somebody is, if you have a product to get into Walmart with a ton of customers and you're selling shoes or you're selling a jacket, Walmart wants your business, but you want to be in Walmart more than Walmart needs you. They're both the same. It's always equal because all trades have to be. mutually beneficial. Walmart has to believe what they sold you that they made money and they have

to measure it for their stockholders. Bigger opportunity lies with getting into Walmart because there's 50 people that have your product. I'm giving you the opportunity. Well, the thing is, is the opportunity and the reason Walmart was successful is, is I save money by going to Walmart versus Joe Smith's hardware store. It was always great to have it in a small town, but they charged 20% more than Walmart. So Walmart put them out of business. But you know what? The average. average Walmart shopper saves $1,000 a year, maybe $1,500 a year because they're able to buy imported products from other countries. I would still go to the PX over Walmart, just so you know that.

Anyways, I got to get you out of here. Senator, great talking to you. This was fantastic. Appreciate your time. All the best. Take care. Bye-bye. When we set out to create a shoe that blends comfort, function, and luxury, we had the

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