Show: Squawk Box
Channel: CNBC
Date: 1/25/2010

Transcript

News Anchor: Welcome back, everybody. The White House expressing confidence about Ben Bernanke’s confirmation. But it is clear that Bernanke continues to face some opposition to his nomination to his second term. For more on this and the other many controversial topics that are being debated in Washington, we’re joined right by Congressman Ron Paul. Also, our guest co-host for the next hour and a half is Congressman Paul Kanjorski. He’s the chairman of the capital market sub-committee. And gentlemen, good morning to both of you and thank you for being here.

Paul Kanjorski: Good morning, Becky.

Ron Paul: Good to be with you.

News Anchor: Congressman Paul, why don’t we start off talking a little bit about Bernanke. The White House is, at this point, expressing confidence that he will be re-nominated. Obviously, that vote goes through the Senate, but the House will have something to say too, in terms of the regulations that they have put forward. What do you think about his nomination process? You think it will go through the Senate?

Ron Paul: Oh, probably. But it might be just wishful thinking. You know, they have to sort of put a spin on there and try to build up some momentum. But I don’t think they know for certain. But it looks like he may well be appointed.

But, you know, I don’t know whether that’s the whole issue, because I think it’s been tremendous that we in this country and in the Congress now have addressed the Federal Reserve for the first time in many, many years and say, “What responsibility does the Federal Reserve have in the creation of this bubble and the crisis that we have?”.

And Bernanke is symbolic of, of course, the Fed. So I think this is great stuff. And, besides, it puts more emphasis on us having more transparency of the Fed because, you know, the reason we’re going to have a filibuster or a potential filibuster in the Senate is because we’re going to hold until they have a vote.

I mean, the people are only asking for a vote. We had the vote in the House, and it’s been passed. We have 317 co-sponsors. In the Senate, the people who support this position, both left and right, are saying, “Why can’t we have a vote?” because they know it’s going to pass. Because the American people want to know who the close friends are of the Federal Reserve, who they bail out, and what is going on. So, I think this is tremendous and I don’t think Bernanke should be reappointed. But even if he is, he is wounded, the attention is on the Fed, the economy is going down, the bubble has not been … the correction has not occurred. So, the American people will pay a lot more attention to the Federal Reserve now than ever before. And I consider that very, very beneficial to all of us.

News Anchor: Congressman Kanjorski, what do think the odds are that Ben Bernanke gets re-appointed? And talk a little bit about this legislation; what it might mean for the Fed?

Paul Kanjorski: Well, I sure do hope that they re-appoint Mr. Bernanke. I had the occasion to work with him through the rescue period, and I found he was incredible. Now that’s not to say that everything he’s done during his tenure at the Federal Reserve, both as chairman or as governor, was what we would have liked. But we never get a 100% performance from anyone. I just think that he’s extremely able. I think he’s got an ability to take the crisis and manage it well at critical times.

And I think the Fed has done a magnificent job. I would have lot of respect for Ron Paul, but his legislation, I voted against it. I would have continued to oppose it because I think it compromises the whole idea of a central independent banker. And we’ve seen a history of a 175 years when there didn’t happen to be a central banker and the constant crisis that we had. At least now we haven’t had a crisis for 75 years and we’re managing it and we need a good management.

The chairman of the Federal Reserve stepped forward and did a lot of the important things, that without that the rescue would not have been accomplished.

You know, I just heard a little glee in Ron Paul’s Voice that he was almost happy that we haven’t fully recovered. Don’t be happy. This is the American economy, it is our economy, it doesn’t belong to any one party. If it belongs to any party, it belongs to the Republican Party; Mr. Bernanke was a Republican appointee. The crisis came out of a Republican administration.

But I would hope we’d leave all that aside, and recognize that we are in a recovery position now. Let’s concentrate on getting that done, let’s not rock the ship. If we do, we could cause untold difficulty for the American people, including the markets and for the American economy. Let’s go easy and gingerly on this.

News Anchor: Congressman Paul, was there a glee in your voice?

Ron Paul: Well, I think he is over reacting. I think he’s trying to play a little game there. But, I do want to challenge one thing Paul did say, and that was we haven’t had a crisis since 1913. I mean, we’ve lost 98% of our value of our dollar against gold since 1913. We had the inflation through World War I, we had a depression in 1921, we had the inflation of the 1920s, we had a crash in 1929. I guess that wasn’t a crisis. We had a 15 year depression due to the Federal Reserve. Then we had guns and butter in the 1960s and we financed that through the Federal Reserve. And then look at the 1970s. If the 1970s wasn’t a crisis, what was it?

Paul Kanjorski: Ron Paul, we had 4, 5 major wars too.

Ron Paul: Why should you use the Fed to finance the wars? You don’t have a right to debase the currency just to fight a war, undeclared wars too.

Paul Kanjorski: Don’t you think your constituents are living a little better in Texas in 2010 than they were in 1932, 1950, 1975? Isn’t the American economy feeling the need for increasing the middle class?

Ron Paul: Now wait a minute. What makes you think that had anything to do with the Fed? Maybe it was in spite of the Fed. Maybe there wouldn’t be 17% unemployment right now if we don’t have the Fed. And we wouldn’t have 27% unemployment in Michigan. So this whole idea that we’re doing better…

Paul Kanjorski: 17% and 27% – those are really inflated; those are really inflated maximum approaches.

Ron Paul: No, Paul. You’re not quoting the right figures. The treasury says it’s 10%, but if you count everybody who quits looking for work, it’s 17%. And free market economists, who are more reliable than the government economists, say it’s 22%. To downplay the unemployment rate and say there is not a crisis and it is unrelated to the bubble that the Fed creates…

The problem is, is we’re always looking that what caused the crash. Even this new commission is looking for what caused the crash. And they never ask, “What caused the bubble?” The bubble causes the crash. But nobody asks, “Where do the bubbles come from?”

Paul Kanjorski: I think we had a couple of bubbles, didn’t we, Ron?

Ron Paul: The Federal Reserve creating too much money and interest rates of 0% and there’s nowhere for them to go today, because right now interest rates are 0% and if you have another down turn, what are they going to do? Make the interest rates -3%?

Paul Kanjorski: Well, I have this idea that rather than go back to the gold standard, I’d like to go back to the diamond standard.

Ron Paul: Well, I’m glad you brought that up, because I want to go forward to a gold standard. I want to just prevent the Federal Reserve from stealing from people and taxing people by doubling the money supply. It is cruel and unusual punishment to the economy to allow a secret organization like the Federal Reserve inflate the currency, deliberately destroy values, destroy the people who save.

Paul Kanjorski: So your theory is to have the Congress authorize the auditing of the Federal Reserve so the politicians in Congress can influence and effect and help decide what the Federal Reserve.

Ron Paul: No, you’re misinterpreting the bill. You should read it, because the bill says that the Congress has nothing to say about it for 6 months…

Paul Kanjorski: Now you know Ron…

Ron Paul: … wait a min, wait a minute, let me finish … then they can look at it. But what you’re arguing is the case for say this SEC finds out something about a bad company and then they say, “Well, let’s cover it up because it might hurt that company”. When the Fed knows something about a bank, you want secrecy because you say, “Well, it might hurt the company or the bank if people know it’s in trouble”. So you want the Federal Reserve to cover up so that we don’t know they can spend money, hurt the taxpayer, destroy our currency and give us a depression. And we’re not allowed to know about it. There no place in the Constitution that authorizes that kind of power.

Paul Kanjorski: Ron, I’ve been in congress long enough, and so have you. And we’ve used the General Accounting Office to put pressure on federal agencies, both independent agencies and non-independent agencies.

Ron Paul: That’s good.

Paul Kanjorski: When we call for audit of an agency, that sends a message that here comes the Congress; we’re going to take actions to curtail what you’re doing. That’s what we all worry about.

Ron Paul: No, that’s where you’re reading more into it, because I wrote a prohibition into the bill for that. But besides, I mean, morally speaking, don’t the people have a right to know what the Fed is doing? What kind of deals they make with foreign governments, foreign central banks, international financial organizations, private banks?

We have a right to know, we have an obligation, we have a moral obligation. And besides, we’re in this horrendous mess. It was the fault of the Federal Reserve and to say, “Oh, the Fed is wonderful, let them go, let them create all the money. Put Bernanke back in, he had nothing to do with it.” I mean, the American people are way ahead of you on this. And the American people have awakened. I’ll tell you that.

Paul Kanjorski: I was in a hearing the other day when your side proposed it wasn’t the Federal Reserve, it was GSEs (Government Sponsored Enterprises) that caused this. You got to take a decision. Do you know which one caused it? I don’t. That’s why I voted for the commission to do the study.

Ron Paul: The Federal Reserve causes the bubble. But you put kerosene on the fire by allocating credit and say you have to put money into a certain group. If the Fed creates money, we don’t know where it’s going to go. But because we say, “Put it into housing”, the housing bubble occurred. “Put it into medicine”, medical prices go up. “Put it into education”, education prices go up.

News Anchor: Wait a second, you think the Fed is responsible for the high education cost, and the higher cost for healthcare?

Ron Paul: Yes. Because the value of the dollar goes down and you don’t know where the money is going to go. But if you have a free market in distributing cellphones and computers, the market overwhelms the inflation. Prices actually go down. But the money is out there, it has to be put into something. Quality does not go up, and this is why the cost of medicine goes up without the quality going up. Education: everybody gets a college education, but the quality of education goes down. And it’s a fact that when you allocate credit, and if you do it in housing, it just puts fuel on the fire of the bubble. But you cannot have a bubble without easy money and easy credit. And if 0% interest rates isn’t easy money, then what is?

Paul Kanjorski: You know Ron, I just want to point out and just say stop. And I’m not going to argue that there aren’t causes and effects out there that we should be studying and looking at and taking sometimes corrective action. And that’s what we’re attempting to do now as we do regulatory reform. As you well know, we spent the last year intensely studying what could be done to try and prevent and project what may happen in the future and what actions could be taken to prevent those actions to stop these crises. But let me say it isn’t all bad. We had the creation of the SEC and the strong regulatory acts of the 1930s and we prevented a financial crisis in this country for 75 years. Even though every 25 years…

Ron Paul: Are you saying there was no crisis in the 1970s?

Paul Kanjorski: What crisis?

Ron Paul: Ask Paul Volcker if we had a crisis in the 1970s.

Paul Kanjorski: No, we had inflation and we were able to bring Volcker in and his policies and correct that inflation, and that’s what the system should do.

Ron Paul: So what do you call that, a minor correction but not a crisis?

Paul Kanjorski: Well, yeah. We didn’t have a total collapse this time. Maybe what we should have done is let that happen. And then all of you in the free market system would have been perfect, we would have been wiped out for decades and everybody would have been in a collapsed situation. Then you’d be happy. What Volcker did was act with responsible leadership with the security of treasury and the president, your president, your security of treasury, a Republican, not a Democrat, and they did a pretty good job of rescue. But all of fellows want to label this as a failure because you really don’t want to see it succeed. I think it you have a negative attitude towards the American economy.

Ron Paul: If regulations are so good, and I know we’re piling on the market for regulations. The SEC would have prevented this crisis, the SEC would have prevented the ENRON scandal. Sarbanes Oxley could have.. every time you put on regulations you chase our businesses overseas. That’s why the businessmen are leaving. And you’re going to do a lot more of that because the burden will be so great. And that’s why we’re not having a good recovery. We need to see taxes coming down and regulations coming down..

Paul Kanjorski: According to your theory, Ron, we should allow business to go uninterrupted, do anything at any time with anything, because they can’t possibly make mistakes.

Ron Paul: No, come on Paul. No, you allow them to go bankrupt, you don’t bail them out. Yes, we wouldn’t allow General Motors to do what they want. When they screw up and go bankrupt. Let them go bankrupt. You don’t take good people’s money and bail them out.

Paul Kanjorski: Do you accept the proposition that if we hadn’t gone into the rescue program a year ago, almost every large bank in the United States and in the world would have collapsed within 72 hours?

Ron Paul: No, some would. But we would be over it by now. In 1921, Paul, that’s exactly what we did; we still didn’t accept all your Keynesian economics. In 1921 the recession/depression was severe after the inflation of World War I. They had hands off, and it was over in a year. That’s what always happened before when they inflated, they caused the bubble, there was a correction. But in the 1930s, Hoover was the culprit and Roosevelt followed up, and they prolonged the agony for 15 years. That depression didn’t end until after World War II, believe me. People weren’t doing well until after then. So yes, you want hands off, but you want to enforce the laws against fraud and enforce the law of bankruptcy; that’s a federal regulation. But what we do is we don’t allow the bankruptcy, we take the good people’s money and bail out the bad investments, prop up all the mistakes and that is what you’re doing. You’re just pouring out the money hoping to patch up the hole in the bubble. And it’s not going to work, believe me. I’m not happy about it no matter what you say.

News Anchor: Congressman Paul, we want to thank you very much for your time. We appreciate you joining us today.

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The debate should have ended right there. But Larry had two more guests…

First, there was President Obama’s former physician, Dr. David Scheiner, who loves Medicare and continues to lose patients due to private insurance companies interfering with health choices. Unfortunately, he draws the wrong conclusions; instead of calling for the free market to dissolve government-mandated healthcare monopolies and giving patients true freedom of choice, he pushes for a single payer system where everything is run by the government.

Next came Dr. Nancy H. Nielsen, the president of the American Medical Association, an organization that works to keep healthcare prices artificially high by limiting and restricting non-physician competition. Dr. Nielsen says that she wants Americans to “share the risk”; in other words, she is in favor of forcing a large number of individuals to hand over their hard earned money for the benefit of people they don’t even know.

Why don’t these two doctors go out there and personally help unfortunate individuals who are “suffering in this country” through no fault of their own? Instead of limiting healthcare competition and trying to influence what happens with other people’s money, couldn’t Dr. Nielsen start a private charity that raises funds from willing contributors and helps the poor obtain the medical care they need? And couldn’t Dr. Scheiner volunteer his services to treat uninsured patients at no cost in his spare time, and motivate other doctors to do the same?

Wouldn’t such individualized efforts, which we can all engage in if we so choose out of our own volition, have a much more positive effect on the country than trying to push incremental socialism and forced redistribution of wealth on the rest of us?

Show: Larry King Live
Channel: CNN
Date: 9/9/2009

Larry King: Congressman Paul, did the president change your mind in anyway tonight?

Ron Paul: No, not quite. He firmed up my belief that there is no way this will be paid for. At the end of his speech he said, “We’re not going to have one dollar of debt coming from this.” But there has never been a medical program by government that wasn’t 2 or 3 times more expensive than they claimed it would be. So he said it was a little under a trillion. I predict when this is all over it will cost 2 or 3 trillion dollars, and believe me – he said of course he wasn’t going to take any money out of Medicare. Well he couldn’t, it’s practically broke itself. I mean all these government programs are essentially bankrupt. So I don’t see any practical outcome from all these proposals. This is just going to move the bankruptcy of this country rapidly along.

Larry King: Dr. Scheiner, you’re a strong proponent of a national health program involving the government. Do you think you’re going to get it?

David Scheiner: I think it’s still possible, but I think physicians are going to have to organize to get it. 400 billion dollars a year spent on private health insurance administration. Under his program this will probably increase. It is going to be a third of every dollar spent in healthcare. The other thing he dismissed single payer very quickly saying “If we shifted to single payer this will disrupt healthcare.” When a patient who’s 64 and is on private health insurance turns 65, there is no disruption in healthcare. Private healthcare interferes with the practice of medicine constantly. I had an example in my office today which was a disaster. Medicare never interferes. The health lobby has spent a quarter of a billion dollars in lobbying over the past 6 months. And I think they’re getting their money’s worth if you watch the Republicans tonight. I’m just ashamed.

Larry King: Dr. Nielsen, where do you stand in all of this?

Nancy H. Nielsen: Well, we think he set the stage for significant healthcare reform and we think it’s time to seize the opportunity. People are suffering in this country. It would be fine if people didn’t need insurance and we went back to the old way where patients just paid their doctor. But that doesn’t work when your daughter gets leukemia. We really have to share the risk and so he set the stage. We’re hoping that people of good will on both sides of the aisle will really get down to work and recognize that we need to get something done. Come together, compromise, and get some meaningful reform.

Larry King: Are you saying that the AMA generally approves basically of his ideas?

Nancy H. Nielsen: Well, if you think about it, Larry, what he did is he set out 3 major goals. One of them was to stabilize those who have insurance right now. That’s a laudable goal. He said the second goal was to provide affordable healthcare, health insurance for those who don’t have it. There aren’t many people who would disagree with that. And the third was to stem the rising healthcare cost. Again, as a country we have to do that. But if you remember the one area where he got this laughter in the [...] that got a reaction.

Larry King: Thank you all very much, we’re out of time but we’ll have lot more on this tomorrow. We’ll hope to have all of them back.

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Poll: Who won the debate on ending the War on Drugs?

Ron Paul: 1,540 votes (95%)
Stephen Baldwin: 30 votes (2%)
It was a draw: 55 votes (3%)

Total Votes: 1,625

The poll was open from March 14, 2009 – May 20, 2009

Show: Larry King Live
Host: Joy Behar
Date: 3/13/2009

Transcript:

Joy Behar: Michael Phelps finally spoke out publically about the bong photo seen around the world. Here’s what he told Matt Lauer on The Today Show.

Michael Phelps: We were just celebrating honestly. It was just a small group and we were sitting around and celebrating.

Matt Lowler: You know, I have to ask you: Were you smoking pot?

Michael Phelps: It was a bad mistake. I mean, we all know what you and I are talking about. It was a stupid mistake and a bad judgment.

Joy Behar: Should Marijuana be legalized? We’ll debate the pros and cons right now. In the anti-legalization camp is actor Stephen Baldwin and on the pro side is Congressman from Texas, Ron Paul. He was a presidential candidate and Paul has sponsored hemp related legislation. Gentlemen, round one. Okay, what’s your reaction to the hoo-hah over the Phelps photo? Ron?

Ron Paul: I’m sorry, over the what?

Joy Behar: Over the photo, the Michael Phelps photo. What was your reaction to all of that what happened with Michael Phelps? I mean he basically lost a lot of his endorsements.

Ron Paul: Oh, Michael Phelps, well the whole thing I think is a mess. It’s outrageous. I think we’re getting carried away with the whole War on Drugs. That’s how silly the whole thing gets. Drugs are very dangerous, but there are a lot of things that are very dangerous. The question here is, who should regulate danger? Should we assume responsibility for ourselves, or should the government take care of us. And I don’t believe in the nanny state. If we do have regulations and laws they should be at the state level, not at the federal level. We didn’t even have a federal law up until 1937, and here we are, we have spent hundreds of billions of dollars in a very unsuccessful attempt to regulate drugs and you have all these weird examples.

That’s one example you mentioned, but what about a sick person dying with cancer who goes out and uses marijuana when it is legalized in a particular state like California, and the feds come in and arrest him. I mean there’s so much violation there of common decency and the constitution. It makes no sense. The drug is a total failure and the federal drug war ought to be revisited and, for the most part, gotten rid of.

Joy Behar: Ok, Stephen Baldwin, hi. You’re against legalizing marijuana. Why?

Stephen Baldwin: Well, it’s a little bit ironic. I can see why Jimmy wanted to rush out of there so quickly. Here you’re looking at an actor that has starred in two very popular marijuana films; Half Baked and Biodome, and here I am bringing a faith-based conservative perspective to this issue.

Obviously Joy, there’s a lot of common sense that needs to be included in this conservation. It’s a very simple reality: marijuana leads to doing worse things. That’s just a fact. I don’t care what anybody says or what the debate is. When you smoke marijuana at a young age it will usually lead to alcohol abuse and harder drugs. So right there, I mean, that’s one reason why it should not be legalized.

Joy Behar: We’ve heard that for years that it’s a gateway drug. What do you say to that, Congressman Paul?

Ron Paul: Well, I think it’s silly. Probably the most addictive drug in the country, in the world, is nicotine and nobody talks about nicotine being a gateway drug, so there’s no sense to that. And besides it’s not nearly as addictive as alcohol. So if you’re a consistent person and you think the government should be regulating personal behavior, you have to be for prohibition of alcohol.

And when you look back throughout history and what happened to that, it was a total disaster. It created the Al Capones. And right now today there is so much violence today, not because people use drugs, but because they are illegal. You know the people who benefit the most by all these laws, these are the drug cartels. They lobby to keep these laws in place because they can’t exist without them. You don’t have the Al Capones now because you don’t have prohibition of alcohol.

Prohibition is what is bad, and this does not mean that we endorse personal behavior that is not beneficial, it just means who regulates personal behavior. And it shouldn’t be the state. There’s no benefits to it. It’s like regulating church behavior or religious behavior of any sorts, so I see no purpose in doing this.

Joy Behar: Okay, Stephen we’ll get back to you when we return, Okay. More Baldwin vs. Paul.

Okay, we’re back. Stephen, let me ask you a question. Congressman Paul brought up the whole idea of medical marijuana. What is your response to that? People have glaucoma, they’re nauseous from anti-cancer drugs. What do you say to that?

Stephen Baldwin: Well, again there is, you know, not a whole lot of research to back up the fact that there are’nt alternatives even to that. There are lots of pain-relieving practices that people can study. So, I must say that to be honest with you Joy, when in fact there are people for those reasons that do have success with it, then, if prescribed under a controlled situation, then yes, obviously that makes a lot of sense.

But back to Mr. Paul’s statement about the addictive aspects of smoking cigarettes, obviously, if I smoke a cigarette I’m not going to go in my vehicle and be impaired potentially to damage somebody else’s life. If we legalize marijuana there’s no question that the number of deaths related to people being impaired under the influence of marijuana is going to increase. The question is, just to be able to tax it, is it worth it? That’s the question.

Joy Behar: Okay. Ron, what do you say to that?

Ron Paul: Well, I understand there’s a few people who smoke marijuana already, and how many times have you seen somebody arrested for driving under the influence of marijuana? I mean, I’ve never even heard of it. Driving under the influence of alcohol… that is dangerous, butpeople shouldn’t do that and they should be responsible. But you can’t get more people smoking marijuana, it’s just that, what is so bad is the war on marijuana, putting people in prison. They can be caught using drugs for the third time, never committing a violent act, and putting them in prison for life, and yet rapists and murderers can get out.

And if you think of all that expenses you’re talking about hundreds of billions of dollars that get been spent on this and people usually who get sent to prison for non-violent drug use come out as violent criminals. So it makes no sense at all to pursue this method because marijuana is not going to increase car accidents. Let me tell you that is not the case.

Joy Behar: I would think that it’s hard to detect if you’re high on marijuana when you’re pulled over by the police. There’s no breathalyzer test, so how would we know what effect it has?

Ron Paul: Well, that’s a possibility but even under today’s circumstances nobody gets arrested for it and the alcohol is the real culprit and the real problem. And yet we have people in Washington D.C. who drink a lot of alcohol, let me tell you. Because of political reasons they’re scared to death even to vote to legalize the growing of hemp. Hemp has nothing to do with smoking marijuana. And because of this obsession on the drug war we can’t grow hemp in this country. We send the hemp growing up to Canada, then we buy the products that we make from hemp. So we export our jobs to Canada. Hemp is a good product that we prohibit from being used, and it was legal up unto even after World War II. We were allowed to raise hemp in this country. This is how hysterical this War on Drugs has gotten.

So the soon as we come to this realization, someday, actually I’m optimistic about this. Someday this country is going to wake up like they did in the 1930s and say, “Hey, you know, prohibition didn’t work”. Alcohol is a horror, it has made things worse and it has caused a lot of crime and a lot of violence. It’s about time we just do this. Get rid of the prohibition. Let the regulation go back to the state. Regulate it like alcohol and where the real regulation comes from the individual and also from the family and the parents and the community. That’s what prevents drug use. Not some federal thug coming in with guns and arresting some kid and throwing him in prison for life. That makes no sense whatsoever.

Joy Behar: Are you saying that there are a lot of alcoholics in Congress? Is that what I heard you say?

Ron Paul: No, I didn’t say that. I said there’s a lot of people in Congress who drink a lot of alcohol and they won’t vote to legalize hemp. They won’t even let us raise hemp because they’re afraid of the political consequence.

Joy Behar: Let me ask you something. Is there any drug you would not legalize? Do you want to legalize all drugs? Heroine included.

Ron Paul: Well, I want to go back to a previous time prior to 1937 when the states did the regulating. I don’t advocate giving marijuana to ten year olds walking into a store. But the kids now can get more marijuana with all these laws easier than they can get alcohol. So the states have every right to regulate and legalize and allow people to use these things.

Joy Behar: We’re running out of time. Stephen, I’m going to give you the last word before we go.

Stephen Baldwin: I’m just curious, Joy, do you think there’s a lot of marijuana smoking Ron Paul supporters? I’m just wondering.

Joy Behar: Yeah, have you ever smoked a joint, Ron? Congressman Paul, have you ever smoked a joint?

Ron Paul: Well, this is the truth and most people believe what I say. I have never seen anybody smoke marijuana and I have never been in the same room with it. To me it’s an issue of freedom of choice.

Joy Behar: I got to go. Okay, thank you very much, you guys. Go to CNN.com/LarryKing to comment about this show or any other. Larry, thanks for letting me sit in for you, I had a great time.

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