Scott Horton Show - Just the Interviews - 7/25/24 Tom Woods on This Crazy Presidential Election

Episode Date: July 27, 2024

Scott is joined by Tom Woods to talk about the 2024 election. They discuss Biden stepping down, all the weird details relating to the Trump assassination attempt, the disappointing priorities of so-called national conservatives and more. Discussed on the show: “The Secret History of the Shadow Campaign That Saved the 2020 Election” (Time) “Neoconservatism by Another Name” (The American Conservative) WoodsHistory.com Tom Woods is the host of the Tom Woods Show and the author of numerous books including Diary of a Psychosis: How Public Health Disgraced Itself During COVID Mania. Follow him on Twitter @ThomasEWoods. This episode of the Scott Horton Show is sponsored by: Roberts and Robers Brokerage Incorporated; Tom Woods’ Liberty Classroom; Libertas Bella; ExpandDesigns.com/Scott. Get Scott’s interviews before anyone else! Subscribe to the Substack. Shop Libertarian Institute merch or donate to the show through Patreon, PayPal or Bitcoin: 1DZBZNJrxUhQhEzgDh7k8JXHXRjY Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

All right, y'all, welcome to the Scott Horton Show. I'm the director of the Libertarian Institute, editorial director of anti-war.com, author of the book, Fool's Aaron, Time to End the War in Afghanistan, and The Brand New, Enough Already, Time to End the War on Terrorism. And I've recorded more than 5,500 interviews since 2004. almost all on foreign policy and all available for you at scothorton.4 you can sign up the podcast feed there and the full interview archive is also available at youtube.com slash scott horton show hey guys on the line i got tom woods hi tom hey scott i know you always wanted to be on my show i thought i'd enjoy being on the scott horton show i i make a financial contribution to the scott horton show

to see what's going on around here. That's true. I guess I owe you to come and give you a tour every once in a while. This is it. Welcome to it. Happy to talk to you again. Most people know you as being from the Mises Institute and writing 100 books, but you are a director of the Libertarian Institute, which is very nice. I appreciate that. And I had to do it. I always speak highly of the Libertarian Institute every opportunity I get. Appreciate that. And then, and also you host me, uh, ranting about things on your show, uh, regularly, including recently, which I appreciate a lot.

So it's all good. Um, but, so I wanted to have you on to talk about just, I don't know, kind of silly, what's going on in the world, particularly the Democrats. You had a line when you were interviewing me the other day, you said something, the Democrats, and I just started laughing because I can just barely contain myself. Um, and then I think the, The question ended up on Trump or I ended up answering about Trump, whatever the hell. But the Democrats right now on what they're doing and what they're going through is so hilarious.

And I just wanted to shoot the shit with you about it and see what you think about what's going on now. Well, you know, I'm listening to podcasts actually more now than ever. And I, because I listen to one or two, but I, you know, because maybe I want to do other things in the car like, you know, brush up on language or whatever like i don't want to get to i get enough current events in my day job you know what i mean like i don't need any more of that but to try to understand what's going on now i am curious about everybody's opinion and just the other day now i don't even remember because i'm listening to so many somebody said you know i've been in this business a long time and this is the first time where i've actually had to say i have no idea what's happening it seems like something is unfolding

but i don't know what the hell it is yeah well clearly there was an orchestrated move inside the Democratic Party against Biden. And I'm not sure if the New York Post is right that they set him up with that debate. I don't know either. But they were certainly ready to pounce. As soon as he showed his moment of weakness, they were ready to move to get rid of him. But, of course, their best backup plan is Kamala Harris. They don't really, sorry, was that racist of me?

Kamala Harris. but uh right you know they're like the libertarian party they just ain't got nobody on their bench this is what they've got after they're on biden overboard it's like shrug what are we going to do now yeah i i know but the thing is at first i thought well this will just be a terrible catastrophe for them and it may well turn out to be one but uh i i feel like you can never count the Democrats out. And because they have every possible advantage that for however many months we have left, the, uh, the media will cover for how cringe worthy Kamla is. And they'll cover for everything else. And, and some of the things that Republicans are thrown at are like her,

you know, her tenure as a prosecutor or her this or that, how she got to where she's, I mean, a lot of people just don't care about that. Like, where do you stand on the things that matter to me? Yeah. They just don't care about the other stuff. So we'll have to see. I'm not convinced that Trump necessarily runs away with it. I thought he would. I started to think he would after he took that bullet. But I don't know.

I don't know. We'll have to. Now, it could just be that Kamla's getting a boost right now because of the collective relief at Biden, no longer having to be defended because that was getting harder and harder to do. But I just don't know. And, you know, the interesting wild card in all this. And now I actually want to type it into the, to a search engine is, is Obama, isn't it? I think he's still, oh, nope, he is. He is about to endorse her.

Yeah, that's how it was just reading that they were saying that he waited because he didn't want to seem like he was coronating her. He wanted to kind of let everybody else take the lead first or something like that. Yeah, that sounds like something they would say. Right. You know, I wonder what the real story there is. But it's interesting. I mean, I guess I thought there was a chance that somebody else would say there's no way this can be the best person we're putting up. We've got to be able to do better than this.

And no one did. The whole situation just cracks me up. I mean, I know I'm repeating myself from years ago. We've been talking about this the whole time. I mean, the guy was completely senile out of his head in the election of 2016. I mean, in 2020, see, I got what Biden's got to. But see, I've been saying that for years. because that's a reference to how bananas he has been for so long.

Remember where he started poking that worker in the chest and going, I'm going to take your AR-14 away, pal. You don't need a machine gun. And the guy's like, what are you talking about? You're completely crazy. But so, you know, I've been saying, Tom, that, well, I mean, look, you don't have to know anything about politics, right? This is the kind of thing that's just, it's for everyone.

This is for your auntie and mine and everybody's now. next-door neighbor, you just take one look at Biden, and you know he's too old for this. You know, like, I have an uncle who's like mid-80s, who he could be the president all day. But not Biden, though, you know what I mean? Like, I'm sorry. He just doesn't have it. There are different kinds of 80s. Yeah, totally, totally right.

Is Ron Paul 88 and there's Biden 81 or whatever. That's exactly right. That's a perfect comparison. You know what I mean? Ron, you can see Ron sometimes almost lose train of thought, and he's like, no, no, no, I got it. And then he's fine. You know what I mean? On the Liberty Report, he's better than me. I'll lose my train and thought worse than Ron Paul all. But also he's still informed about everything. Oh, yeah. He still knows who's doing what and who said what about whom, when. Oh, he's the best. It's on top of it all. Yeah, he is. All right. Let's not start just talking about how much we love Ron Paul because we can just spend the whole rest of the show doing that. Lord knows we've done it before and Lord knows we do love them but yeah so but it's just been so obvious

that like everybody's next door neighbor can tell that Biden is just not up to this but then so what are they going to do and clearly they recognize that same dilemma yeah but what are we going to do we can't run her so now but what happened was it came down to

that was going to be like the litmus test right was that debate and he just blew it so bad in the debate. The body language is worse than the actual language even. And so then they panic, but they still don't have anyone but her, because you go down the list, and it's a really short list. You got Gavin Newsom, who's like six feet tall and sort of has hair, but not exactly sort of got the Horton pattern baldness there, actually, if you look close. And of course, he ran California into the ground. Like, he's the worst. Everybody knows that you can't even

go to Santa Monica without carrying a gun. It's nuts out there, man. And so they're going to run him. Or they got Gretchen Whitmer, who's like Nurse Ratchet, who did the worst of all of the lockdowns and has resting bitchface, as they call as this horrible person with this fake kidnapping scheme and all of this stuff. And then, but who else do they have? They name, they start naming governors you've never heard of. Never heard of. Right. To run against the most famous guy in the world.

You know what I mean? And they just have no prayer. I don't know. Yeah, like the governor of Kentucky, you know, I mean, I like Kentucky as much as the next guy. But come on now, right? You need some star power and that certainly ain't it. Well, then they have the other problem of Biden actually still being the president. You know, he is still the president. So he's holding an office that everyone has just said he's unfit to run for. Okay, that's odd. But now that they've gotten what they wanted. And again, this they is a very mistake. serious shape-shifting they, and even I don't fully know who the they is. But they got what they wanted, which was Biden's withdrawal. So now they've shifted back to the, don't you dare criticize Biden, he's just fine. This just happened on CNN. Right. Whereas a guy was on a panel and he said, look, obviously Biden is not fit to serve if he's not fit to run for this

very office. And they're all saying, what are you talking about? And it's like two weeks ago never occurred. Right. Yeah. In fact, the new line is just, well, we think that, he may have trouble getting elected that's all we're not saying there's anything really wrong with him no one's saying that tom we're just saying that well he made kind of a bad impression in that one debate and had trouble overcoming it sometimes he has these verbal faux paws and slips and things you know and so we just want a stronger candidate that's all never mind that yeah no the guy's got dementia that's why he says the wrong thing all the time is because he's out of his mind well i they're definitely split on what the story is because some of them were starting to say oh yeah

we all know the very thing that we said you weren't allowed to know yeah so i i think some of them recognize it but their their their view is just look as long as we get what we want i don't care if it's a potted plant in the white house what difference does it make as long as i get what i want right yeah i mean in other words and this is the other thing about like i was saying everybody's auntie and next door neighbor knows that everybody's antea next door neighbor knows that if they could have just given him a bump of coke and he could have got through that debate that they'd have been perfectly happy to run this demented old coot to sit there like a zombie in the chair for the next four years while they get away with god knows what running the government under his nose they'd have

been perfectly happy to continue to lie to us and say that he's fine yeah yeah yeah no no kidding you know and then the other day or uh over the past couple of days i've been reading examples of, and I guess this happens all over the place at this point, but this problem of ghost donors where they take an elderly person who has made maybe one political contribution and under that person's name, they make a whole bunch of other contributions. And they do this with a whole bunch of elderly people as a way of evading campaign finance laws. And it's just bizarre. It's bizarre. And I don't know, I don't know how they're getting away with. it but i just found an example of somebody who i'm supposed to believe that there's a 79 year old

living in a in a basically middling level apartment who in five years donated to the democrats 22,619 times i don't believe that happen yeah so there's so there's so much corruption going on right in front of our faces and it's almost like they don't try to hide it because in part it's like it makes it even more of a it gets them off more you know that we're doing it right in front and it's not a damn thing you can do about it well and it is too like you know i hate to do this because they're all such damn liars but they also tell the truth while they're lying all the time about their motivations and like you can see how especially with a guy like joe biden is the worst of this kind of thing who i believe in his own lives they convince themselves that they're

heroes saving democracy from the forces of darkness and fascism. And that you know, I had people tell me with a straight face, Donald Trump's going to abolish the FBI and the Department of Justice and all the different Homeland Security and all the national police and replace them

with skinhead, white supremacist, you know, SS or SA gangs party, white supremacist gangs to just go out. Like, what world are these people living in? But that's the world that they're I want to start making money off these people. I want to say things like, all right, a thousand bucks.

A thousand bucks says that won't happen. And if it doesn't happen, and we'll find a neutral third party who will determine whether or not it happened. Because I don't want to hear, well, I consider this particular bureaucrat to be a SS. Come on. Well, they all are. Sure. We all agree about that.

Yeah, right. But for the wrong reason. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I mean, that's the whole thing of it was. I mean, they just built up this whole mythology about Trump being that far outside of the lines when he never was, you know. No, no. And the thing is, yeah, because as I keep saying, the checks kept being cashed, you know, sent out, endorsed with people's names on them. And that's what they care about. Yeah. The, you know, the departments are all still there. There was no clean sweep of any of the three-letter agencies or anything like that. Any of the things. that we were told might happen or we're promised will happen in the future, none of that

happened. And I have my doubts that it'll happen even now. And the thing is, it makes you wonder, like, what the heck has to happen to this guy before he would do things like that? I mean, what has to happen to him before he said, you know, they've dragged him through the courts. He got shot in the head. I mean, you know, like at some point, you would think he would say, all right, that's it. I am burning it to the ground. I wasn't before. Before I was like, between Romney and Vivek, but now I'm like, I'm making Vivek look like Romney. You'd think he would get to that point, but he's actually not as excitable as you'd think he would be.

Yeah, I, you know, man, I think he just, I don't want to sell the guy too short, but I think he really doesn't understand the constitutional system that well, really. Like, he, you know, he knows it from TV. He doesn't really know. I mean, like, for example, during Russia Gate. There were so many times where, you know, it was so obvious, like even someone like Ray McGovern who obviously leans left, what was very much a Russian gate critic because it was such a bunch of lies, he would say, look, the obvious thing to do here is just give a speech and royally decree at the top of your lungs that you're here by declassifying everything. You can't call out obstruction. I don't care what you say, Department of Justice.

special prosecutors fired. Attorney General's fired. But I'm declassifying everything. And I'm turning everything over to the Washington Post and NPR News and the Wall Street Journal. You guys do your worst. But Russia Gate is over. It's a bunch of crap. And you're going to find in there.

You got nothing on page. You got nothing on Flynn. You got nothing on Papa. You got nothing on none of this. And we're calling a halt. And we're going back to business here. We're not doing this. And what do you do?

He just let them pummel him for. Three years. I had two years of his administration, really, you know, beginning a year before that. But after he was sworn in, they kept it going for two more years, and he'd let them. And he really just bowed down to them and let the blob, as Ben Rhodes called it, Obama's got called it, the foreign policy establishment, determined his policy. And, in fact, he would even want up them. And, you know, bomb Syria, when the others might have been more reluctant to or sell weapons to you, Ukraine that Obama was reluctant to. Obama's trying to sell him Humvees and night vision equipment.

And Trump's like, give him the missiles. What do we do it? You know what I mean? Because he's got to prove what a Russian stooge he's not. That's just the kind of guy he is. So that's the kind of president I expect him to be again. Because like, what are you going to do? It's not like he has a Rothbardian ideology to lean back on or even a Jeffersonian one of any kind, really. You know what I mean. He just believes in himself a lot, I think. Well, I think it's a case like, I forget which of the people I've talked to recently said this, but we were both saying that it's like whoever is the last person he talks to, that's where he's going to go. Right. So this is a very dangerous moment for somebody like that because it's possible that he could have a semi,

it's, I mean, it's not, it's not metaphysically inconceivable that he could have a semi-reasonable position on the Middle East. But if the only people talking to him are Netanyahu and, you know, and Laura Lumer, then that's going to be a problem. Yeah. So it's crazy. I mean, whereas with somebody like, you know, I'm not really sure how much confidence I have in J.D. Vance, but at least I know he's capable of going through arguments and thinking. Sure. And I, you know, and he's seems grounded in something. I don't have to worry that he reads one article and he, you know, flies off the handle. Yeah. You know, I read a thing in God help me, the New York Times where it was a big kind of running discussion of all their columnists. I guess it was basically Ross doubt that.

Is that how you say it? Do you know? Oh, yeah. Maybe. Yeah. So, and he's, I guess, reassuring Michelle Goldberg that, don't worry, this guy's a friend of mine. And he is not a Buchananite paleo. conservative he is a realist and that means he wants to make friends with russia so we can take it to china and be tough on iran and this kind of thing so in other words don't worry he's not a jeffersonian he's a jacksonian and they like to fight enough that if you just point him in the right direction they'll do your dirty work for him and it'll be no different than if you had w bush in there basically you know so yeah so we just don't know that that's the thing we just don't know till it happens by the way what it's what it's going to look like i got a

message today and i don't know the details here because i've been doing interviews all day but i got a message somebody said that the director of the fbi said that trumped that that was like some ricochet maybe he didn't elaborate whether it was they're saying what a piece of the teleprompter i know others had speculated it was like a flying piece of glass from the teleprompter but apparently well i don't know apparently the head apparently the head of the fbi is saying that the bullet didn't even hit him so which is good and i'm not saying that he was lying and faking it because he may very well have thought it was the bullet assuming that's even true um i did see where you know some uh kind of uh liberal truth through types were saying that he wouldn't

nothing happened at all it was a blood packet or this or that and somebody had footage that that they slowed down where you can see all of a sudden there's a hole in his ear. But I wouldn't say like, because I, and I really don't know nearly enough about bullets, like, man, if you shoot someone through the top of the ear with a 5-5-6 round, is that what it's going to do, is just leave a neat little hole? Maybe it would. I don't know. But it would also make sense that if it was a flying piece of something else that hit him there,

you know what I mean? Yeah, I mean, obviously, there would. wouldn't have been a flying piece of something else if there hadn't been a bullet striking or something else. So in a way, it's kind of like, you know, kind of, you know, the same thing. But of course, I want to have the details right. Right. And I don't think it's, you know, the whole pearl clutching over questions like this. It's totally legitimate to ask questions about anything. In 2024 America, you're going to tell me there are some things that are cast in stone you can't even ask about. Like, you know, I don't care people.

ask about that. Yeah. But I'm not one of these, I'm not one of these, I wish, I wish he aimed better any of that stupid stuff. But no, of course. Why not ask about it? Big deal. Yeah. And look, so speaking of which, I mean, what about the question of whether they let this happen? And I don't know, Tom, and I fall, I've fallen off. I usually try to read the New York post about stuff like this, because they'll keep track of all the most sensational stuff I'm interested in. But, uh, I don't think I have seen where they named, who was the commander on scene? They never say who was calling the shots there that day. They go, this happened and this happened.

And somebody said this. The Secret Service said that. But like, who is Commander Jenkins? And where was he? And was he the one telling the sniper, hold your fire or go ahead or do this or do that? I don't know if you saw where they're admitting now they were stationed. in the two-story building next to the building that the guy was on the roof of and they were actually looking out those windows and took a picture of him on the roof out the window and then instead of killing him or keeping track of him from the window they walked away and it was said supposedly to go and walk around and find him but why not send one cop to go find him and the other one to look at him from the window i don't know anyway they just let that roof open. It just seems crazy that they did. Yeah, there are so many weird things about

this. And, you know, there are some people who out there, I don't want to name names, who can be sensationalistic, and they immediately grab the most suspicious thing before it's been verified, and then they wind up looking stupid when it turns out it was false. But in this case, even those people have been really good listing all the things that are curious about this. And I was writing in my newsletter the other day that there's something a little fishy about the fact that we get that interrogation of the head of the Secret Service. Then boom, she resigns. And it's like, boy, all of a sudden, we can be really bipartisan and rapid when we just want to pin something on somebody and move on. But I still have questions. You know, her resignation is not enough. I still have questions. And what I fear is that this will be. just like every other damn thing, which is there are a million reasonable things that a normal person would want to ask, but it's been declared that anybody who wants to ask them is crazy

because we've already answered it. It was this one kid, and that's the end. Yeah. But okay, but why didn't the Secret Service do X, Y, or Z? Well, nobody knows, so we'll go on to the next thing. I mean, how many times this have to happen in American history? Yeah, seriously. And, you know, I think there are a lot of times where people think that stuff is suspicious.

because it is the internet, and especially in the age of social media, everybody gets to say, no matter how dumb. So you can have things where people are suspicious of stuff that is not necessarily suspicious. Like, for example, just because a guy gets on a roof doesn't mean that you can just blow him away. We're still talking about an American citizen here. And there are like court decisions that are pretty loose, but still, you can't just, you know, Randy Weaver rules of engagement murder a guy or his wife or whoever who you've designated a target like they're an enemy when they're a suspect at worst right unless they're presenting an immediate threat so if they didn't see his rifle they didn't know they could see his head but not his gun or whatever

there could be a situation there where it's iffy and permission to fire denied let me know if there's a further development and then you can shoot something like that but i'm just making that up Because they're not saying that. There's no real, you know, explanation about what went on there, the chain of command or the questions being asked. Well, you see where the second sniper team changes which side of the roof they're on to also face that same way. I don't know if you saw it at the New York Times.

Was it the Times of the Post? I forget. Did it a recreate? I think it was the Times. They did a recreation where they said the kid was basically pretty smart and put a tree between himself and the nearest sniper team. So they would not have been able to see him. But the second team would have, but they would have been further away.

But at least they wouldn't have had a tree obscuring their line of sight there. But so that may be, you know, a partial explanation for why they didn't just immediately snip him. And I've seen people say, well, once he's on the roof, they should have just killed him. And which after all, Tom, if he was, you know, running away from a cop and he reached to pull up his pants, they would shoot him in the back and say, well, he reached for his waistband, which they did. what every day, you know, by 3.30? So it's reasonable somewhat to say, like, this guy's clearly posing a threat to a presidential candidate or something. Somebody should have done something, and it just seems... But you know what, too? Like, I just don't have faith in cops, so you can even see where a guy says to a cop, man, there he is. He's up there. You've got to do

something, some, something. And what's the cop do? He just mows, he's his fat ass on over there. And, in fact, he goes around the building to the right. He goes the wrong way. and you know to the other side of the building and he's too close to the building to see up there and he's walking at one mile an hour because he's a cop you know what i mean that's just how they are he's not in a hurry to swoop into action like it's a movie and he knows what to do he doesn't and in fact even you know i'm not trying to apologize for these guys but still like even the crowd you got 10 people standing there going, oh, my God, he's got a gun. But none of them swoop into action either.

When they can see that the cops aren't doing anything, you know, the one guy's wearing a Semper-Fi shirt. I think he must be a Marine. You don't wear a Semper-Fi shirt if you're not a Marine. But does he go, all right, follow me, boys, and go up there and try to do something himself either? No, I mean, not that he's armed, but still, like, you're talking about Donald Trump's life is in immediate danger.

You're not going to do anything, and what do they do? do. They don't do anything. They diffuse responsibility onto the proper authorities, who I'm sure will take care of it, even though, obviously, the clock is ticking, right? It's going on right now. But nobody swoops into action, nobody. Everybody stands around waiting for somebody else to do something. You know? You know, just the other day, I was, well, actually, it was this, it was this afternoon. I was over on the Guardian website, you know, over in the UK. God help you. And it just, Yeah, I just, you know, I have a million and one things that make me crazy about Trump.

And they pick none of them to talk about. Right. So they're running a headline that says, Trump monetizes assassination attempt by using photo as book cover. Well, first of all, if I had that photo taken to me, you better believe I would use that. I'd be out of my mind not to use that as a book cover. Are you an idiot? The most iconic photo of the year. year and you wouldn't use it. Now, could you imagine if the situation were reversed and Biden

used that at a book? They would praise him for making, you know, lemonade out of lemons or something. Or so, like, whatever it is, they'd figure something out. And it's so tiresome that I feel almost dumb pointing out the double standard. Because it's not like they don't know as a double standard. And they don't even view it as a double standard. The standard is we're going to screw people we hate and we're going to support people we like. So they're not really hypocrites. people say to me scott how do you get so much work done all the time coffee it helps keep me from falling asleep and it tastes really good because i get it from moondose artisan coffee at moondose artisan coffee dot com moon doze is kind of the anti-starbucks in that their coffee tastes real good they have lots of great choices

representing all kinds of regions blends and flavors i'm drinking the ethiopian presently hey wait also do you like saving money on good tasting coffee right now you can get 10% off and help support this show if you just go to Moondoseartisancoffee.com slash Horton. Find the link and the QR code in the margin at Scott Horton.org. That's Moondoseartisan coffee.com slash Horton. Hey guys, I had some wasps in my house. So I shot them to death with my trusty bug assault 3.0 model with the improved salt reservoir and bar safety.

I don't have a deal with them, but the show does earn a kickback every time you get a bug of salt or anything else you buy from Amazon. dot com by way of the link in the right-hand margin on the front page at scott horton dot org so keep that in mind and don't worry about the mess your wife will clean it up well folks sad to say they lied us into war all of them world war one world war two korea vietnam iraq war one syria afghanistan iraq war two libya syria yemen all of them but now you can get the e-book all the war lies by me for free. Just sign up the email list at the bottom of the page at Scott Horton.org or go to Scotthorton.org slash subscribe. Get all the war lies by me for free. And then you'll never have

to believe them again. Searchlight Pictures presents The Roses, only in theaters August 29th. From the director of Meet the Parents and the writer of Poor Things comes The Roses, starring Academy Award winner Olivia Coleman, Academy Award nominee, Benedict Cumberbatch, Andy Sandberg, Kate McKinnon and Allison Janney, a hilarious new comedy filled with drama, excitement, and a little bit of hatred, proving that marriage isn't always a bed of roses. See The Roses, only in theaters, August 29th. Get tickets now. I think it was even an article in the New York Times. That was a whole article about how reasonable people or historians or some source fears that Trump will use this photo for propaganda. It was like, well, look, it's a real photo.

you know what I mean? Hey like they faked the thing and it wasn't his guy that took it it was a legit independent journalist for what it's worth who put his camera up and got a great pick Dave's had a great joke about like you got the camera you got the flag in frame there okay great go ahead you know what I mean like it's just perfect um which by the way he was in town and and uh I was hanging out with him at the mothership and within two hours of the hit Dave is on stage with a 20 minute routine about the whole thing about him and he's like

Trump has a presence of mind to like stop wait wait and throw a black power fist and like all of this stuff is just great it's so funny he says Trump he's just the luckiest guy in the world he's inspector gadgets his way through life like I want to go into business

here's some skyscrapers with your name all over them oh I want to go on TV here's the 14 year series you know, I think I'd like a little bit of trim. Here, have an endless supply of supermodels coming your way, nonstop. I'd like to go into politics. You're the president now. Some guy just shot me.

He hit you in the ear in the best place on your entire body to possibly get shot, your ear. Where literally teenage girls put a hole in that same part of their ear to put jewelry through, you know. I couldn't give a damn. It doesn't even hurt. It was so funny. I'm the luckiest guy who ever lived. That is good, man. Yeah, it was good stuff, dude.

Anyways. So, yeah, what a year. I like how you alluded to this. I saw you talk about this in an earlier interview I was watching that you did to about how, I'm just roughly paraphrasing here, that like, boy, if there's a skull and bones conspiracy in charge, They've taken the month off here, right? We're like, it's just chaos up there. No one who knows who's running the empire.

Nobody knows if it's the Clinton faction or the Obama faction or which faction of the Obama faction is up there doing what. People legitimately, not cooks, but just regular folks, legitimately suspect that the Secret Service left the former president and current frontrunner's ass hanging out where somebody could reach out and touch him. In a place where anyone could tell you he should have been protected from anyone being on those roofs. In fact, I saw someone say, there's a water tower right there.

How do you not have a sniper on the water tower who's got overwatch over every single roof there? Who could have got the sniper no problem from up there? They didn't have a guy on the water tower. Somebody else could have been on the water tower. And then they'd have been shooting up at his ass. seems kind of deliberate maybe or something. It's pretty crazy. It really is.

Well, at this point, it seems like anybody who's thinking has to be asking questions about not just that, but the whole weird Biden exit. I mean, who is really buying this story that Joe Biden is today's George Washington who nobly relinquishes power for the good of his country because he's such a patriot? I mean really he was clinging to that office to the last possible second right with the whole world telling him to leave and George Clooney writing an op-ed against him and all I mean his his campaign sent out a donation solicitation not 30 minutes before he made the announcement he's he's leaving he waited to the last this is not a man who sat down and said you know upon further reflection the best patriotic thing for me to do is that is that is whatever happened it wasn't that I mean, and that's the thing is like, on the last day, yeah, it did find come down to Pelosi and Obama and Jeffrey Katzenberg, who we find out is some Hollywood mogul and major Democratic Party donor. And, yeah, they just keep talking about it like this, the donors. Well, what happened was they had a call with the donors, and the donors said that they're not going to donate and without the donors. And it's like, well, like, which donors are we talking about? You can't tell us the names of these people?

How many people? Is it one big committee? Or it's all different people spread throughout the country and you had to make 10 different calls to reach them all? Or like, how does this work? We have the right to know, like, what is this donors that you're talking about here? They make it sound like it's the name of a company or something, you know? And what other decisions are they making?

If they're making this one, what else are they involved with? Why don't we just drop the pretense and make these people collectively the president? Yeah, exactly. That was what Woodrow Wilson said, right? He's like, why don't we just take a committee of wise men like J.P. Morgan and John Rockefeller, let them decide. They clearly know what to do. Remember, it's in the WikiLeaks, thanks to Manning and Assange, that there was an executive vice president from Citigroup in Chicago who wrote an email to John Podesta saying, okay, here's who we'd like the cabinet to be. And then that's it.

You're going to keep George Bush's man, Gates, a defense, Hillary for State, Geithner for Treasury, and on down the list. Didn't they do something similar in Ukraine? Yeah, same deal. Like this is how we'd like it to look? Right. And this is how they do it here? No shit. Isn't that funny?

That's really a great parallel, isn't it? That city group email is like a great kind of metaphor for the Newland phone call, right? That like, here's how we want the new cabinet to shake out. Yeah. And they've tried so pathetically to explain away that call. Yeah. But, like, how? Well, not well.

I mean, what they said was that they were just referring to a deal being offered by Yanukovych to bring the opposition into the government. But they had already rejected that deal. And it's at least just as likely that they were talking about, no, after we're done holding out until we get everything we want, this is who we want to make up the new government. You could read it either way, but there's plenty of circumstantial evidence that they're not really referring to his offer because specifically in the call, he offered, they're talking about, she's saying, I don't want. tanny bach or klitsko to be in the government i want them to stay on the outside but he hadn't offered either them a post in the deal that they were talking about negotiating yonakovich hadn't so it seemed more like they were just talking about who they want to be in the government after yonikovych is gone and they set up a whole new regime but either way once he was gone guess who became the prime minister

arsini yatsyni yats and yuk the same guy that she was saying this is the one she does want to be in there Yats is the guy that we want to be prime minister. And then there he was just a couple weeks later. Yeah. So there is that. Yep, there is. Well, and there's also that great article by Ball is her name. I believe it's Molly Ball in Time magazine about how, yeah, we did rig it against Trump in 2020,

but it was just to save democracy, and it was wonderful and great. And it was, she describes like this shadowy, I guess, email list, a network of powerful, as she puts it business leaders, NGOs and Democrats and activists and and people from all these, you know, liberal civil society groups across the country who work very hard to get the loosened rules for the mail-in ballots to get, you know, to coordinate all the social media censorship of pro-Trump voices and to boost, you know, pro-Biden people and on and on. I should reread that article. It's been a little while, but it's clearly a nationwide concerted effort to do this. Well, we have foresworn to turn this into a discussion of Ron Paul, but I think we go ahead, go ahead. Because because we can now imagine if they're this hysterical about Donald Trump, who's basically going to leave 95 plus percent of the apparatus exactly the way he finds it,

if he makes them this hysterical, what would they have done with Ron? What would they have done to make sure that he couldn't win? I mean, we saw where they basically unpersoned him and censored him and cheated him. And there's a whole book. I always forget the name of it. But there's a book that these guys wrote documenting how they absolutely ripped him off in Iowa and Nevada and a couple of other places in 2012 where he at least very well could have been the nominee. I'm not sure if it's like a clear cut case. But it's clear that they ripped him off in some states.

and what would they have done if it had if he was the kind of superstar that Donald Trump is this unstoppable force like Donald Trump as arrogant and as wealthy and and as determined as Trump to get in there I mean I don't know run his car off the road you know something horrible it's hard to dig up dirt on him character assassinate him you know like it I don't think he's been having affairs I think that would have come out No, of course not. I mean, Ron's a saint. The problem is

Ron, the thing is with Ron was when he announced for president, there was one guy in every neighborhood who knew him. You know what I mean? So he was really starting from, not really nowhere, but he was starting from like a good 10% or 15% name recognition or something.

A lot of real dedicated supporters from those of us who already knew him. But Donald Trump is a mega-sum. star right i mean he's a when i knew for sure he was going to win was when i read that the apprentice had been on for 14 seasons and i'm like oh that's it he's going to win i don't watch primetime tv but americans do 14 seasons are you kidding me that's yeah that it just makes him such and and i've known who he was my whole life right like i must have seen him on robin leach

lifestyles of the rich and famous in like 1983 or something with the fake tits girlfriend and the Ferrari Testarosa and whatever, whatever. Like, he always was this huge personality. The giant eyebrows and the weird hair and all the money. And the 80s Reaganite yuppie arrogance. You know what I mean? Like, he's this huge character. He was in home alone and all that kind of thing.

You know what I mean? So for them to... I mean, I don't know. First of all, they can't challenge him. But it also makes it kind of hard to smear him. you want me to believe now that he's a Russian agent or something? Like Donald Trump? Like you know Donald Trump.

He might as well be your second cousin or something. Like you know Donald Trump. You're telling me he like secretly works for foreign powers, some kind of thing like that. Like Ron Paul just didn't have that level of familiarity among the population. So if he had been able, like if the activist, the dedicated activist had been able to break him through to that level where like, oh, he's sure to be the nominee,

then they would have brought out every gun. and they would have just smeared him and characters assassinated him and called him a Chinese spy or whatever instead. They would have done whatever it would have taken to call him an Iranian agent, I guess, to get rid of him. But you're right. I mean, they would have had real reason to worry that he was just going to veto their spending bills, right?

Like, no way. I'm just bringing this thing to a screeching halt. We're just not doing this. And by the way, you're fired and you're fired and you're fired. And, you know, Ron is a pretty gentle character. I don't think he would have brought massive upheaval to the government. He would have tried to get legislation passed and roll things back in the proper way. You know, he's a constitutional guy first and foremost there when it comes to government.

He's a liberty guy first and foremost. But when it comes to government, he's a George Washington guy. So, again, just like with Trump, they would have overly feared him. But, yeah, I mean, they would have had a lot to lose. There would have been a lot of corporate welfare, a lot of militarism, a lot of people on the, very wealthy people on the dull who would have had a lot to lose ultimately under Ron Paul government. So yeah, I'm sure that they would have done everything they could have to stop him. And I'm glad it didn't come to that ultimately.

I remember always kind of thinking that I would have felt bad for him if he'd become the president. Poor Ron up there just surround. He's such a wonderful guy. Just surrounded by such horrible people attacking him and lying to him and cheating and just being horrible all day for four or eight years. or some kind of thing, you know, just be a terrible fate for such a wonderful guy to have to go through that, you know? At least he would have known how to get briefed by the right people. Yeah.

But it would have been a nonstop effort to undermine him at every possible turn. His phone would have been tapped by whoever the hell we're talking about here would have been rough. But, yeah, I didn't think that. far ahead. I just thought right now, this unlikely candidate is surprising everybody and saying all kinds of not allowed things. And that makes me happy. We'll take it one day at a time. Right. And it was huge. I mean, we'll never forget, 08 especially, but 12-2. The Ron Paul Revolution was not nothing. I mean, there was so many millions of people who got turned on to

libertarianism that way. In fact, I know I already kept you too long, but let me ask you about this because I think it's real important. And I'll let you go after this. But we've been talking about this all day today about this national conservatism and this sort of Trumpianism. It's kind of a fake Buchananism is what I take it as. But you know, we love Pat because he's

such a wonderful guy and of course such a great anti-war guy and a great historian and all that. Not that we ever really favored his international trade policies. And so these guys seem to have a touch of that. They have a lot of

propaganda about nationalism, but they seem to really just be a bunch of Israel first or types at the end of the day, the national conservatives. But I just wonder, you know, and I know you lean a bit right, and we all have a lot of friends on the right. And of course, we're all agreed, right? I don't think anyone could argue. Certainly the commies agree with us, but everybody on the right and a lot of ex-liberals and everybody agrees. The liberals are just the worst people in the world. There's certainly the worst people in our society. And yet, at the end of the day, like the libertarian, that we're fighting for is like pure liberalism, right, distill, like real free markets

are going to lead to a rapidly evolving society in a lot of ways to, you know what I mean, it's not altogether a conservative force to have a real free market. But so I just wonder, like, how badly discredited is the most basically defined liberalism by modern American liberals and they're evil corrupt crony capitalism, neoliberals, I guess. They're corrupt crony capitalism and their imperialism and they're non-stop lying.

I mean, this is the they that we've been talking about here, right? Is our current center left liberal establishment? And I just wonder, like, what's left? We're still holding it down for real libertarianism, right?

Like, we haven't given up on freedom is the answer. this new right wing populist stuff we might prefer it to bidenism but this ain't where it's at is it tom yeah there are a lot of problems with it uh and and it's like a horton's law isn't your law something like a politician will generally keep all the bad promises he makes but none of the good ones yeah and break all the and i feel like the the things they actually act on in in right wing populism, so called, are all the bad things. And then the good things that I think we might get, we don't get. So, you know, like I would, I would like somebody to have a populist message

about the federal bureaucracy and how it's sucking resources away from you for the sake of turning around and rubbing your face in things you hate and all that. Like, that would be a great message. You know, we have to shut these things down. But instead, the message we get is China. You know, we have to send some weapons of Taiwan like that how is that aimed at the average American the average American has had Taiwan has nothing to do with his concerns at all he's living under a regime that has been weaponized against him that is his immediate concern and what's happening in Taiwan may be wonderful maybe tragic but it is not even on his top thousand concerns so unfortunately yeah though it's the bad things that wind up actually getting implemented yeah well you know

I was just reading this thing by James Cardin today. I actually talked with him and Kelly Vlahos a bit about this. They've been writing about this for TAC and for, that's the American conservative folks, and for Quincy about this, that there's a guy named Yoram Hazzoni, who's the founder of something called the Edmund Burke Foundation. Are you familiar with that? I am, because he's like the, I don't know, like the intellectual head of this. quote unquote, national conservatism. Oh, okay. That I thought, by the way, I thought this national conservatism thing when I first

heard about it was some kind of very self-consciously organized opposition to the neocons. And yeah, they have their differences with the neocons, but. Well, this guy's a settler. Yeah, so on the Israel thing, which is kind of a big thing in American politics, they're indistinguishable. Yeah. Well, and that's just the core of the neoconservative doctrine as well. whatever Lecoode wants, whatever Benjamin Netanyahu wants.

And so it totally makes sense, Tom, that even if it's not deliberate, maybe this guy has his pure, honest beliefs, and he's just pursuing them or whatever. But it certainly makes sense in the scheme of things, right, that when W. Bush and Romneyism and John McCainianism is out of style, and there's this new right-wing populism and patriotism, and nationalism, you just jump on that. Make sure that that stays a very pro-Wolfozyan pro-Lakud-type doctrine as well.

Oh, you like nationalism? Well, the Lekud is a nationalist party too. We're just like you, Israel first. And so America first stays Israel first. It doesn't matter if it's compassionate conservatism or whether it's Donald Trump and his son-in-law. Same damn thing on the, at the end of the day, Tom, no matter who you vote for, you always get John McCain. Speaking of laws, each other coined here. You know.

That one hasn't failed me yet. Yeah. I mean, may it soon somehow. Yeah. Yeah, let's hope. Wasn't it interesting that Biden used it as a bragging point that the U.S. was not at war? I mean, of course, you know, we know that it depends on how you define war. Yeah, he's like bombing Yemen right now.

But anyway. Yeah, no, I, but I did think that was interesting that he felt like that was something that was something to boast about. because it's almost like we've taken pride in not being at peace. Yeah, I know. And, of course, he is the leader of the world's superpower backing two absolutely horrible proxy wars taking place right now. And they're the centerpieces of his entire administration. These are his greatest achievements supposedly protecting Israel and Ukraine by backing them in these horrible wars. And so, and of course, yes, he's.

He still bombs Iraq and bombs Syria and bombs Yemen whenever he feels like it. But just providing an endless amount of weapons to Ukraine and Israel, that's got to count for something. Yeah. It's just nuts. But you're right, though, that. And this is also true with Trump. And this may be the best thing about him is just that he says that he started no more wars. And he says that this is the height of valor.

That's what you're supposed to do is not start a war. not look at me i'm so tough i started a war you know what i mean in fact yeah in one of these things the other day i guess it was in an interview or something oh it was in his big speech it was in his acceptance speech of the nomination i guess where he's talking about what a peace nick he is and then he goes well of course we did defeat isis but i inherited that war i came into office and i had to finish that war and we finished it good but then we called it off no more war after that i'm so peaceful, which ain't exactly true either. He bombed Afghanistan for four years straight and helped the Saudis in UAE bomb Yemen for four years straight. But it's truly says he puts it that he didn't

start any new wars. And at least he did negotiate our way out of Afghanistan, even if he didn't get us out. But it is important that nobody wants to be W. Bush, right? No one wants to say, I'm the toughest hawk in the whole place, and that's what's so great about me. They would rather, at least, be faux men of peace so I don't know who knows what that means yeah in a way it's worse right it just means that they get to be dishonest about what they're doing

but maybe it means really that that kind of sentiment is in fashion they know that they must cling to it and tell that lie at least and maybe that is something yeah anyway all right well man it's been fun talking with you about all this crazy stuff I can't wait to see what happens with Kamala Harris after just a few weeks of running. Oh, let me say this, because I thought it was so great. Yesterday's, I was watching the

internet there, YouTube, and they go, here, watch Kamala Harris's 17-minute speech. It's her first big campaign speech. And I'm like, all right, bet. That sounds fair that I should watch that. And I just couldn't watch it. I, like, scanned through just a couple of minutes of it in random places. She is just so horrible. I think I know everything I need to know about how bad she still is, right? Like, what's to learn? you know i definitely hear that seriously like her her voice and just her fake smile and her unearned overconfidence and what just all of it is just so off-putting i just i can't the new york times says she's tied with trump but i don't think that's going to last but i guess we'll

see how it goes should be fun well if if i may just uh close with a link yeah i put you know you know but I specialize in, you know, I overturned things that are false. So when, during, when Ron was running in 2008, Slate would write some article or Salon would write some article. And I would make some video answering all their points. Right. And so then I kind of realized, I kind of got a taste for it at that point. So then I, you know, I've applied it to U.S. history, which is my field. So I'm giving away my two U.S. history courses. I used to, that used to have to pay for them. But you can get them at Woodshistory.com. And it's like, you know, stuff. that you know you're not going to know no one's going to teach it to you that they're not going to tell you the truth now they're not going to tell you the truth 100 years ago either yeah that's great woods history dot com is a website okay that's great we'll make sure and put that in the show notes and and by the way i was thinking of you the other day because i'm trying to figure out how to cut things out of my book uh it's cut it down to some kind of reasonable length and i had to fess up and realize and i went ahead and i cut out the entire nuclear war chapter

out of the book. But so that's going to be my Tom Woodsian scheme to get people to sign up for my email list is they will get the e-book of the nuclear war excise chapter separate once the book comes out. So following your model there. And it may come down to more than just nuclear war sections getting cut out of this thing by the time I'm done. But I'm trying hard to keep it all. But we'll see.

I submitted an article I was asked to contribute to a symposium over at the Law and Liberty blog and they said we wanted to be X number of words. They said a thousand to fifteen hundred words will pay you X to do it. So okay, but when I saw what I was responding to, I couldn't keep myself limited to that. Oh, what was it? It's a it's a nullification symposium. So you know that sets me off. And I was not impressed with their article. So I wrote 2,300 words. And I said, look, I know, I said, can I write more than 1,500? And they said, we don't like the response to be that long. So you could go to 2,000, but no more than that. And I said, well, I've written 2,300, and I'll take 300 out if you really want me to, but it's going to be like sacrificing

one of my children. So I thought saying that would make me charming, and maybe they would just, they said, oh, ha, ha, ha, well, good luck cutting it down. And we'll say, pardon it. Yeah, I know. seriously, Tom Woods, I feel your pain to quote James Bovar, quoting Bill Clinton. I know what that's like, man. Well, I'm sitting there thinking, look, I'm telling Scott Horton to cut whole chapters here. Surely I can cut 300 words. Well, you know, I sent you that message a couple weeks ago. Like, hey, good news, Tom.

I got it down to 1,200 pages. Oh, God. So, but, you know, it's down to. Well, if you exclude the URLs, because we're going to cut the URLs out, it's now down to 1,000. So I'm going to try real hard to just cut another 200 pages out and get it down to 8. And then I'll just insist that everyone read it anyway, because actually half of that's footnotes. It's really going to be only 400 pages.

Oh, well, okay. Well, then you've got to say that. I have so many footnotes. I have 5,600 and something footnotes now. When I take the URLs out, I have my buddy. run the algorithm thing of a jig to take all the URLs out. And that saved 90 pages of just URLs from the footnotes. Wow. That's a big deal. It's a lot. So that's how I'm going to convince people to read the gigantic book. Half of it is just citations. So you can read the other half and

be happy and it'll be okay. So working on it sometime soon. Good luck. Absolutely. All right, thank you, Tom, for being part of my institute and for all of the great work that you do. And for coming on my show. It's been great. My pleasure. Thanks, Scott. How you going. The Scott Horton show, Anti-War Radio, can be heard on KPFK, 90.7 FM in L.A. APSRadio.com, anti-war.com, ScottHorton.org, and Libertarian Institute.org.