Ron Paul: I’m Trying to Change the Course of History

Transcript

Megyn Kelly: With strong grassroots support and a second-place showing in the Iowa straw-poll, you would think that Congressman Ron Paul would be getting a lot more media attention this week. But instead, all of the focus appears to be on Mitt Romney and Rick Perry, and, to some extent, Michele Bachmann. So, Congressman Paul is taking action. He is out now with a new political ad. One that goes after Romney, Perry and Bachmann by name. Take a listen.

TV Ad: …a story of a lost city, lost opportunity, lost hope. A story of failed policies, failed leadership, a story of smooth-talking politicians, games of “He Said, She Said,” rhetoric, and division. One man has stood apart, stood strong and true, voting against every tax increase, every unbalanced budget, every time. Standing up to the Washington machine, guided by principle, Ron Paul, the one who will stop the spending…

Megyn Kelly: There we have it. My guest now: Congressman Ron Paul. Congressman, thank you so much for being here. Let me start with this, because it’s starting to make some more and more headlines. Not your campaign and your candidacy, but the fact that the media is ignoring you. Are they?

Ron Paul: Sure. Yeah, they are and we need to ask them why. What are they afraid of? We’re doing well. We’re certainly in the top tier. We showed we did well in Iowa. And we have a good organization. We can raise money. But they don’t want to discuss my views because I think they’re frightened by us challenging the status quo and the establishment when it comes to foreign policy, monetary policy, the entitlement system, because my views are quite different than the other candidates. So, they would just as soon us not get the coverage that the others are getting and they will concentrate on establishment-type politicians.

Megyn Kelly: There seems to be a narrative emerging that you can’t win and therefore they’re giving you back-of-the hand treatment. There was an editorial in the Wall Street Journal that said: “He has no chance to win”. This despite the fact that you were 152 votes within the top spot in the Iowa straw poll. In fact, out of almost 17,000 votes cast, you were 150 or so away from number one. But the Wall Street Journal and others say you can’t win. Why? Why do they believe that?

Ron Paul: Well, they want to believe it. And they want to promote an idea. They don’t want to promote information. Because there have been a couple of polls where I either came in first or second when you match my name up against Obama. Because my views really compete, and this would be a reason the Democrats don’t want me to win either. Because I can compete against Obama because his base is very unhappy with his expansion of the war and his lack of interest in protecting civil liberties. And therefore, they don’t want to hear from me either. But I have done quite well. I’m quite willing to match my name up against Obama any time of the day.

Megyn Kelly: It’s got to be somewhat frustrating for you to come in second and be as close as you were to winning in Iowa. Not to mention the polling that you’ve been doing, which is fairly good. To have this kind of treatment in the media, does it disturb you?

Ron Paul: Not that it disturbs me… I don’t use the word frustrating because I think I anticipate it. I know how the system works. And I know what I’m trying to do because it’s not like I’m just trying to win and get elected. I’m trying to change the course of history. And our history in this country hasn’t been good for the last 100 years. Whether it’s our drift into manage an empire, the destruction of our currency, the deficits that have been run up, the climax of the dollar-reserve standard. This is big stuff. And nobody else is addressing this.

So, in spite of all the shortcomings of the reporting on this, I write it off a bit because they don’t have any idea about the significance of the monetary system and what’s going on with the Federal Reserve. But the people – grassroots America – are starting to wake up. Millions of people are reading about the Federal Reserve and understanding how they bail out their friends, create trillions of dollars, give a third of all that money they used in the bailout and give it to foreign banks. People are realizing this. Even though the media, generally speaking, they don’t understand it. They don’t ask me the right questions. And, if they do understand it, they don’t want to get the secret out on how the system that we have protects the special interests, the big corporations, the corporatism that runs our society.

Megyn Kelly: If I can, I want to ask you about your initial point which is they don’t like your views on foreign policy. And they are controversial. You made headlines in the debate by saying you don’t think we should be interfering with Iran and it would be okay if Iran got a nuke. You also described the Osama Bin Laden raid that took his life as unnecessary. That has critics saying Ron Paul is outside the mainstream.

Ron Paul: Well, I’m virtually running on George Bush’s foreign policy of the year 2000. He was very critical of Clinton, the intervention, the nation building. He said we don’t need to be in nation building. We don’t need to be intervening. We don’t need to be the policeman of the world. That’s George Bush. I’m just running on his foreign policy. So, why is it so strange now? You know why? Because I’m serious about it. I’m just not pandering to the people. The peace candidate is always a very strong candidate. Obama was the peace candidate in the last go-around because he was going to start bringing our troops home and ending these wars. And here we’re in more wars than ever.

Megyn Kelly: But even he had some tough talk when it came to Iran, which is considered a state sponsor of terror and has reportedly been helping kill our troops in two battlefields. You know, there’s a question: if you’re going to let them get a nuke, who’s next? Would you let Al Qaeda get a nuke? You got to draw the line somewhere.

Ron Paul: Yeah, our foreign policy has led to the death of a million Iraqis. You can’t ignore that. As far as Iran getting a nuke, no, I don’t want them have a nuke. I don’t want anybody to have nukes. But I understand it. And I understand that Ronald Reagan could talk to the Soviet Union and Nixon talked to the Chinese. And they had murdered millions of their own people. But we didn’t say the solution was to invade those countries and take their nukes away from them.

Iran doesn’t even have a nuke. And our CIA says they’re not even on the verge of having a nuke. They don’t have enough gasoline to provide for the people and they have all that oil. And we want to believe they’re on the verge of nuking somebody? Believe me, this is all war propaganda. They just want number-six war. We have essentially five going on now. And we’re broke. And the American people know we can’t afford any more wars.

Megyn Kelly: I got to go soon, Congressman, but I want to squeeze this in before we go. If you were President Paul and it turned out you were wrong. That Iran did have the bomb and attacked Israel. Would you step in?

Ron Paul: No, I’d let Israel take care of them. Why should we interfere with Israel? We’re always interfering with Israel when they want to deal with their neighbors. We undermine their national sovereignty. We shouldn’t tell them how to manage their borders. I defended Israel when they took out the nukes in Iraq many, many years ago. Israel has 300 of these.

Do you think – there’s a lot of problems in Iran, there’s no doubt about it. But I’ll tell you what: they’re not suicidal. What has been happening since 1953, we have interfered. They had a pretty good democracy going in 1953 and we kicked it out. Our CIA kicked it out for oil and put in the Shah. He was a ruthless dictator. Then you wonder why there’s blowback?

No, history is on my side of this argument and the founders were right. Non-interventions, friends and trade with people, more prosperity and peace.

Megyn Kelly: Congressman Ron Paul, come back any time, Sir. Thanks so much for being here.

Ron Paul: Thanks for having me.

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