Transcript
Wolf Blitzer: The Republican presidential candidates are focusing largely on two early primary states today, New Hampshire and South Carolina. Michelle Bachmann and Ron Paul are looking to build on their first and second place showings in the Iowa Straw Poll last weekend.
And joining us now from Manchester New Hampshire, the Republican Congressman Ron Paul, he’s a candidate for President of the United States, Congressman thanks very much for coming in.
Ron Paul: Thank you Wolf, good to be with you.
Wolf Blitzer: Thank you, at that last Republican debate, you really differentiated yourself from all the other Republican candidates, there I say the Democratic candidate, that will be the president of the United States, as well, when you made it clear that on national security and foreign policy, you want to bring American troops home immediately from Iraq, Afghanistan, Germany, South Korea. Is that right?
Ron Paul: That is correct and immediate of course can be qualified a little bit, you know it takes a few days to get over there and pick them up. No, as soon as possible, the American people are with me on that, the majority respond in that manner, I don’t think we can afford it anymore, I don’t believe it’s in our best interest to be there because I think it undermines our national security.
Wolf Blitzer: So including Germany and South Korea, bring those thousands of troops home?
Ron Paul: Yeah, you know, the immediate benefit before you reorganize and decide how big the Army and Navy should be is, just think of all those troops spending all that money back at home. A few years ago and they’re thinking about then, again to close down all the bases here at home. Well there are some bases in this country that probably shouldn’t be open, but the ones overseas are more important to be closed down than the ones here, so I’d bring the troops home and have them spend all their salaries here at home, ‘cause Germany actually likes us to be over there for economic reasons, that helps them, helps their economy as well as the other countries. So I would say the immediate effect would be even the psychological benefit of knowing, “Wow, things are changing, he’s bringing these troops home, this is going to help our economy.”
Wolf Blitzer: And I just want to clarify your position on Iran, do you believe Iran represents no real threat to the United States?
Ron Paul: No real threat, I think it’s a threat just like there’s a lot of threats around the world, but if you compare it to what? Compare [...] Soviets that we stood down, they had 30,000 nuclear weapons and that’s when I was in the military during the Cuban crisis, is when I was drafted. So yes, there’s always some threat but there’s not that much from a country like Iran, they can’t even produce enough of their own gasoline, they don’t have any intercontinental ballistic missile…
I see this so similar, Wolf, to what was happening to the lead up to the war in Iraq because remember they kept saying “Oh there are Al Qaeda over there, and there’s weapons of mass destruction, we have to go in there” and it turned out not to be true. Just think of the tragedies that have occurred since then.
So, no, I don’t think it’s a real threat and our CIA as well as United Nations does not argue the case that they’re on the verge of having a nuclear weapon, so the last thing in the world we should be talking about is a war, and remember just recently Bob Gates coming home, he says, “Anybody that’s thinking about another war needs their head examined” and I think that’s the way the American people feel.
Wolf Blitzer: Because the president and other top officials they express fear that the Iranians are working to try to build a bomb even though they may not be on the verge of having it, they’re in the process of trying to develop one, you don’t agree?
Ron Paul: Well I think they certainly would have an incentive but we haven’t been able to verify it, that’s what my argument has been. But I even extend it one step further, what if in one year from now they have one nuclear bomb, what are they going to do with it? They can’t deliver it, and if they try to, they’d be wiped off the face of the earth because there’d be retaliation.
So they aren’t that threat that people play them up to be. Matter of fact, Iran has a pretty good history of not invading other countries and looking for these kind of fights. The last time they were in a war is when we instigated Iraq’s invasion of the Iranians, so no, I just don’t see that as a major threat. I see the radicalization of Islam fundamentalism as a result of our foreign policy going back all the way to 1953.
Wolf Blitzer: For years, you’ve been an outspoken critic of the Federal Reserve, the Central Bank in effect here in the United States. Now Rick Perry, the governor of Texas, your opponent for the Republican presidential nomination, he’s going one step further and blasting Ben Bernanke, the chairman who was originally named by President Bush. Let me play the clip and then we’ll discuss.
Rick Perry: If this guy prints more money between now and the election, I don’t know what you all would do to him in Iowa but we would treat him pretty ugly down in Texas. I mean, printing more money to play politics at this particular time in American history is almost treacherous, uh treasonous in my opinion.
Wolf Blitzer: Alright Congressman, your fellow Texan, what would you do to Ben Bernanke if he came to your state?
Ron Paul: I’d try to educate him, I’d try to explain to him why he’s embarked on a terrible course of history and that he’s not going to be remembered well unless he changes his way. But hopefully, you’ve never heard and at least I try never to make it the individual as much as the philosophy, the Federal Reserve System. Sometimes they’ll ask me, “What would you do, would you immediately get rid of Bernanke, will that solve our problems?” And it really doesn’t, it’s the system, it’s the Federal Reserve System, it’s the fiat money, it’s no backing to the currency, the monetization of debt, the way they do it in secret, the $15 trillion that they worked with in the bailout, the way they bailed out foreign central banks and foreign governments during the crisis, and a third of that money went over there.
So I would say it’s the philosophy, it’s the monetary policy that we have to deal with, so he is not my target even though I hopefully address it in a different manner when he’s before the committee and try to ask him questions to expose what he’s doing in running the monetary system.
Wolf Blitzer: So did Rick Perry cross the line in talking about treason, talking about getting ugly, I mean you know your governor, tell me, is he temperamentally qualified to be president of the United States?
Ron Paul: Well, it may surprise you, I don’t know the governor; I don’t recall ever having met him.
Wolf Blitzer: Really?
Ron Paul: No, I haven’t met him, I didn’t know he had an interest and I don’t know exactly what he’s up to, so I just don’t use that language. I would think that he wasn’t being literal, I just don’t believe that he believes that but those words did come out of his mouth as you just revealed. But I think it’s different, in politics it’s very easy to target somebody thy name and target your opponents and talk about them specifically; in many ways I try not to do that.
Wolf Blitzer: It’s hard for me to believe, he’s been governor for 10 years and he doesn’t know one of the most distinguished members of the Congressional delegation, but let me move on because we’re almost out of time. Has the national news media been fair to you?
Ron Paul: Well a lot other people say they have not been…
Wolf Blitzer: What do you say?
Ron Paul: Well, I think candidates have this belief that they’re never treated really fairly, but generally speaking I would say it was really weird and in that sense I guess that verges on what people are saying, it was very unfair that I did pretty well in Ames and achieved a bit of a victory from our perspective, and then to have five networks not take any interviews, and then we had one major network on Monday morning that got cancelled at the last minute, so it was definitely different.
But I don’t dwell on the word fairness and what am I going to do about it, I just try to keep doing my job and presenting my case and I figure we’d probably sort of won that little argument because we did get many, many interviews and many, many things on the Internet where I think we benefited by showing, what are they afraid of? Why can’t they recognize what Ron Paul is doing? So I would…
Wolf Blitzer: I was wondering, sorry for interrupting. but I just want to ask you one final question, a Twitter follower asked me to ask you, if you don’t get the Republican nomination, would you consider running as an independent?
Ron Paul: I haven’t thought about that, right now I’m concentrating, I’m in a middle of a race, I described it today as like, I used to run track. I don’t think much about the end, I just run hard and see how things come out. but as far as contemplating third party, that has not given me any serious thought at all.
Wolf Blitzer: Congressman, I’ll see you September 12th when CNN hosts the Republican presidential debate in Tampa Florida. Good luck.
Ron Paul: Thank you, Wolf.
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Doesn’t matter.
Be objevtice and you’ll see that the US show all classic signs of fascism. Don’t refuse to accept it. Ron Paul is your only chance to come to reason, otherwise your fascist military empire will piss on the wrong tree and then for once it will be YOUR PEOPLE who get massacred, just so you know how it feels to be Vietnamese, Iraqi, Somali, Afghani, etc.
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If Americans are not going to elect Ron Paul for president, they will be considered most stupid people on earth.. Such a great leader to be wasted..
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Don’t vote until you understand United Nations Agenda 21 and ICELI
Here’s one source, a liberal lady talking to a Tea Party group about it:
/watch?v=CEHWsdimVO4
The difference between a neo-conservative and a conservative:
Definition and names of neo-cons:
/watch?v=nuefjIYKkjE
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Bring the troops home and send them into Mexico! They escaped their fate of becoming part of the United States but not this time. All it takes is a raid on a border town to ingnite the Second Mexican-American War.
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haha I love how Perry copies Paul but has NO IDEA what he is doing,
If i was a betting man, I would say if Perry were president, he wouldn’t even end the FED, he probably only touches on it to make people think it would really happen, in fact him being the “FOR SALE” candidate would accept money from the FED to hide a lot of their wrong doings, he admitted he accepted “$5,000″ from a lobbyist over vaccinating children, some of which died. Newer evidence is showing it could have been much more $
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haha I love how Perry copes Paul but has NO IDEA what he is doing,
If i was a betting man, I would say if Perry were president, he wouldn’t even end the FED, he probably only touches on it to make people think it would really happen, in fact him being the “FOR SALE” candidate would accept money from the FED to hide a lot of their wrong doings, he admitted he accepted “$5,000″ from a lobbyist over vaccinating children, some of which died. Newer evidence is showing it could have been much more $.
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what happened in 2:12
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I’m always voting for the lesser of two evils and I would never vote for a Republican (that includes tea partiers and libertarians), as they are always the greater evil. That we even have a Republican party is a testament to the corruption of the US government. I’ve never seen a compassionate and creative person run for president. We are an imperialist nation with no ethics, at home or abroad.
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To: elizabethfaraone
Those crazy, insane, lunatic libertarians are going to get us all killed! Just look
at how they would have us going all over the globe invading sovereign countries!
And, I would imagine that they have anarchists in their midst. Oh! What terrible
people they are! I know what! Let’s elect Barack Obama again! I just know that he
would bring all the troops home! Let us keep electing the republicans and the
democrats over and over again! That’s it!!!!! That will fix all!!!!!
WTF?!?!?!?! Are you this out of it? It is because of people like you; that give me
no hope that we Americans are going to be able to turn the tide around on the
central banksters and the internationalists! If the United States of Fascism
keeps electing neo-cons like you yourself are doing; well then, you and your own
deserve the hell (and I mean total HELL) that is coming to a city near you and
your loved ones! If you think it will not be that bad; hang on to both of your cheeks
when it comes around in FULL force!
Louisiana Creole
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If you agree with nothing else Ron Paul has to say ( and I agree with about 90%), his call for immediate troop withdrawl is reason enough to vote for him ! NO OTHER candidate has any plan to get out of the Middle East in less than another decade ! We are bankrupt – our young soldiers’ lives forever altered ,many disabled ,amputees -these are real people ! Any they don’t even know why we are STILL there – another Vietnam . Why don’t people learn from history ? VOTE RON PAUL!
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If you agree with nothing else Ron Paul has to say ( and I agree with about 90%), his call for immediate troop withdrawl is reason enough to vote for him ! NO OTHER candidate has any plan to get out of the Middle East in less than another decade ! We are bankrupt – our young soldiers’ lives forever altered ,many disabled ,amputees -these are real people ! Any they don’t even know why we are STILL there – another Vietnam . Why don’t people learn from history ? VOTE RON PAUL!
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If you agree with nothing else Ron Paul has to say ( and I agree with about 90%), his call for immediate troop withdrawl is reason enough to vote for him ! NO OTHER candidate has any plan to get out of the Middle East in less than another decade ! We are bankrupt – our young soldiers’ lives forever altered ,many disabled ,amputees -these are real people ! Any they don’t even know why we are STILL there – another Vietnam . Why don’t people learn from history ? VOTE RON PAUL!
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yeah definitely. It’s like this 9/11 stuff now – I just can’t really relate to it. Instead of taking the sane approach of profiling muslims, ending muslim immigration, protecting the border, etc , the US has doubled down on the foolishness of pc multiculti and diversity.
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and then leaves us all broke due to these bullshit wars and we collapse, but its okay for Obama, hes not a citizen of the USA, hes a citizen of the World!!!!
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Ron Paul is also gonna stop thee 666 chips and the New world order and FEMA camps so RON PAUL
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isolationism- a policy of national isolation by abstention from alliances and other international political and economic relations.
Why would CNN show this if he doesn’t fit the definition? He says no troops on the ground, we can still have alliance, trade, communication ect…
He will get my vote in 2012, dispite how the media wants to portray him. YOUTH 4 RONPAUL!
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I just posted a vlog about this today. Why are our service men and women still over in Iraq and Afghanistan? Hussein is dead. Bin Laden is dead. Let’s bring our boys (and girls) home already! Check out my channel, watch my US troops video! thanks.
Ron Paul 2012
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“I was just doing my job” is not an excuse for murder.
You don’t kill another human being just because someone wearing a green costume with some chevrons on their shoulder tells you to.
A real man would stand up for virtue no matter what.
What fucking cowards.
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“I was just doing my job” is not an excuse for murder.
You don’t kill another human being just because someone wearing a green costume with some chevrons on their shoulder tells you to.
A real man would stand up for virtue no matter what.
What fucking cowards.
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“I was just doing my job” is not an excuse for murder.
You don’t kill another human being just because someone wearing a green costume with some chevrons on their shoulder tells you to.
A real man would stand up for virtue no matter what.
What fucking cowards.
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Obama “the first thing i will do is if our troops are not home before i am in office i will bring our troops home and end this war you can take that to the bank” check BOUNCED vote Ron Paul for this promise!
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WTF?? Why don’t these reporters and the average listener ever talk about the hypocrisy of US having a nuclear arsenol? We can have nuclear bombs but Iran can’t?
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Does anyone know what he said at 2:12?
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Wars financially benefit the ultra rich in a society and exploit the regular people who die, pay taxes or suffer inflation. Since this is the case doesn’t it just make sense to charge the ultra rich for the costs of War?
This would most likely (cough) cut down on the number of wars that get created.
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There are now strong rumors that we are going to EXPAND the wars in the middle east, not contract them. I say that since WE are the agressor we can cease at any point without causing further harm. We also need to dismantle this homeland security BIG BROTHER machine and truly restore Freedoom to the land.
“He who trades freedom for security gets neither.” -Ben Franklin
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I’m from Australia, and I just don’t understand why this guy isn’t the top contender. I see the other candidates talking bullshit, just like that perry guy talking like a hillbilly rather than a person who has a sound understanding in economics. It just the way Ron Paul uses logic and reason to put forth his arguments against the current state of United States. Do yourself a favour America and vote this guy it, or at least get him up for nomination.
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Ron Paul’s humility bring tears to my eyes sometimes. What a privilege to be alive to witness such a person and to vote for him in 2012.
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Ron Paul — Thank you for the logic and common sense! You make all other candidates sound stupid!
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Fuck War!
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Ron Paul stands out with good sportsmanship. I loved the debates, because I recall him only mentioning O’s name one time. He’s focused on educating the sheep and saving our sovereignty. Even if he does not make president, the movement shall not die, but rather, grow exponentially! A great man he is.. Ron Paul 2012!
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2012 needs to come quicker so ron can win!
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Ron Paul 2012!!!
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I LOVE YOU RON PAUL! You are such a inspiration to me! Such a inspiration to a new generation of patriots. FORGET PHONY PERRY! HES AS FAKE AS A 3 DOLLAR BILL! He’s a politician who will say one thing to get peoples attention, and not do what he said, but us Ron Paul supporters know better! He won’t take his voters away because we can see exactly what hes trying to do and we can see right through him!
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Google: Get Ron Paul on 60 Minutes petition. Sign it! Go Ron Paul 2012!
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wow wolf, thanks for letting ron speak!
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Yeah its true that they signed up to help our country but in all honesty we don’t need to be a mediator in a childish fight over something that is based on beliefs. As soon as we are out of there you will see how much of an impact it has on boosting the economy. Although we may be helping them with terrorists we are also not giving them the power they need to be a strong enough nation on its own. Freedom is what its about sir, and If you don’t want to live free then by all means don’t vote Paul!
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The only thing Paul has a handle on is the Federal Reserve and related issues. His foreign policy would make George McGovern proud. Wake up, people. Isolationism does not work. It’s been tried before. Read your history books.
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Perry is a nasty little piece of filth.
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He talks good . Commen sense. Really? think he may be a little too soft to run this country. To hopeful, trying to see the good side. there is evil in the world. He dont seem to believe it. The reason we dont need to be in Iraq is because we are —-already there. Dont people get it. If we werent there, what the fuck you think would be going on? Dictators criminals running countries. Ok bring them home let them sort it out. A couple years go by. People be saying. look at america doing nothing
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He talks good . Commen sense. Really? think he may be a little too soft to run this country. To hopeful, trying to see the good side. there is evil in the world. He dont seem to believe it. The reason we dont need to be in Iraq is because we are —-already there. Dont people get it. If we werent there, what the fuck you think would be going on? Dictators criminals running countries. Ok bring them home let them sort it out. A couple years go by. People be saying. look at america doing nothing
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“Perry warns Bernanke might commit treason”
Lololololololol.
Gee, Perry, I think you might be onto something!
RON PAUL 2012
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My friend went to Iraq and said that they had no reason to be there.
It is Israel’s (zionist) war…not America’s!!
Vote Ron Paul for the sake of the rest of the world if not America as well.
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Ron Paul speaks the truth. I as well as so many others want to see him win for the country and the world. He needs to toughen up and get serious with the news media now to get his views across to the american people.
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wisdom radiates from that man
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he can possibly become the greatest president of the u.s. history….
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Who are the 7 douchbags who disliked this video?
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I was waiting for Wolf Blitzer to ask Ron Paul why he’s so anti-Semitic for being against wars that benefit Israel while costing US blood and treasure.
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If the Red Phone in the White House rang at 2 o’clock in the morning, I sure as heck would want Ron Paul answering it. AND I VOTE!!!
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Ron Paul scares everyone who stands to make a profit from things such as war. Sadly these are the people who also control the media and evidently leads to controlling the people…
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MONEYBOMB is on ronpaul 2012 . com !
Help spreading the message !!
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This man’s message is the reason I started to use the “Like” button
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