The following is a transcript from the Pro America Report.
Welcome, welcome, welcome. Ed Martin here on the Pro America Report. Hey, let’s get things going today. We’ve got some great stuff we’ll talk about. In fact, I did a little bit of a video earlier today. If you go to my Twitter feed or at Facebook or anywhere, you’ll see the title was Kim Kardashian. I don’t know, Kim Kardashian is leading us, why she matters or something.
So we’ll talk with Michael Volpe, my friend, about his StubStack, michaelvolpe.substack.com, where he does investigative journalism and particularly interesting on wrongfully convicted folks and how skewed the justice system is. He’s a very interesting man, interesting journalist. You’ll want to listen to that interview and check it out. And the video also, if you get a chance to do it. So please do.
We also will have a chance today to visit and catch up with a new guest, Pastor Brian Hawkins. Pastor Brian Hawkins is African American, conservative, an elected official for the San Jacinta City Council in California. And he’s for school choice for his kids and your kids, anybody else’s kids. Very interesting man. We’ll talk with him.
But first, what do you need to know today? What do you need to know? What you need to know, today’s WYNK, what you need to know. And what you need to know today is Rand Paul is doing it again. Rand Paul is doing it again. What’s he doing? Well, he’s just leading fearlessly in the face of basically all the power. He does this a lot. Now, Rand Paul was elected to the US Senate and you say, well, Rand Paul, Ron Paul, his dad was a famous congressman, really ignited a national movement, the Ron Paul movement.
Doctor Ron Paul, congressman from Texas. People don’t realize he term limited himself. Ron Paul did. Dr. Ron Paul, congressman from Texas. He left Congress because he said he was going to serve term limits. And then he was gone for a term or two. And he said, you know what? I could do more in office. And he went back in office. I know this pretty well. The late Phyllis Schlafly was a good friend of his and he was a great guy.
So people think, well, Rand Paul was running on his dad’s coattails. Not really. First of all, he didn’t run in Texas. He went up to Kentucky where he was practicing medicine, and he ran there and he ran against the entire establishment, Trey Grayson. I think that’s his name might be getting it wrong. He was the Secretary of State of Kentucky. And Rand Paul ran against him, had never served in public office, ran and won in 2010, and he’s been in office ever since. And when he needs to, he stands up for what he believes in against his own party, against the press, against everybody.
He’s really extraordinary. And I’ve said it before, I like him a lot. I know him really well. He’s really a neat guy. And of course, he actually stood up in the face of insanity, lunatics, violence. He was on the baseball field when it was shot up by that lunatic MSNBC watcher who actually almost killed Steve Scalise. Rand was there. He was on the field. And then Rand Paul was, of course, attacked by his neighbor who was a crazy and never-, anti- Trumper. Whatever. The guy’s ended up – I don’t know if he went to jail, but he was convicted of assault. He attacked Rand Paul viciously and nearly killed him, to be honest.
Anyway, Rand Paul is fearless. So what’s he doing now? Well, in the fever that is the Swamp, any chance you get a crisis, find a way to solidify power. In this case, all the powers that be that want to believe that the war in the Ukraine is an opportunity to do more damage and to hammer people. They are now taking away favored trade status from Russia. Well, fair enough. There’s a war on going. I guess fair enough. I think it should be debated and it is being debated, but they tucked into the bill an expansion of the power of what’s called the Magnitsky Act.
This was pushed by John McCain and it basically says that the President gets to put sanctions on other nations based on human rights violations. Well, you say that sounds pretty good, right? If you discover that a nation and its president or its dictator are slaughtering the innocents, I don’t know, like a concentration camp like the Chinese are doing to the Uighurs. I don’t know. Maybe. You’re allowed to put sanctions on them as President. It doesn’t sound bad except the expansion of that law, which is in the current omnibus bill on the Ukraine war, that everybody is supposed to just salute and say, yes, we must pass it.
Rand said, wait a second. Why are we expanding the power of the presidency to declare what they think is human rights violations? Because this President has been pretty clear: Transgender sports = human right, abortion = human right. So are you going to have a President who is able to slap sanctions on other nations for reasons that are kind of far afield in many people’s opinion? In fact, it’s the opposite. I might want to put sanctions on a nation that has abortion. What if a nation had abortion up until nine months of pregnancy? Or what if they had infanticide? Would we be able to slap…
Anyway, my point here is Rand Paul has used his power. And what you need to know is in Washington, in the swamp, a single House member has very little power. If he or she is very senior in seniority been around for decades. They may have authority because they are ahead of a committee. But really your only power when you’re a House member is to vote for speaker and then get the heck out of the way. That’s what happens because you can vote against the bill.
Tom Massie voted against some of the big spending, you know, Congressman from Kentucky, but you can’t really change it. And the Speaker of the House is the only dictator in American political life. But in the Senate, every Senator is a dictator. Every Senator can really slow things down. He or she can stop appointments. He or she can muck up the calendar. And the only thing that actually gets them to move the calendar sometimes is that they’re all pals with each other and they go and kind of lean on each other.
And that’s what they’re trying to do now because Rand Paul has said, hey, separate the bill, make it about Russian trade and about the Human Rights Magnitsky Act. Separate them, make it two different bills. And I don’t mind, we can pass the Russian bill. Let me clarify, if you’re a Senator, you’re expected to sign on to unanimous consent and then things can pass through in an hour or two or 5 hours. But if you want to, you can be king and you could say (or Queen) I’m going to stop that. And you object. And if you object to unanimous consent, everything slows down. There’s actually a calendar. You’ve got to do this, you’ve got to do that. You’ve got to wait this many things.
And so what the pressure becomes from your colleagues is don’t slow things down. We really want things to move ahead. Don’t ever slow things down, we want them to plow ahead on our schedule. And Rand said, yeah, I don’t think so. And he’s getting grief in the article that I put up on social media in Politico, he’s getting grief, more grief from Republicans. John Thune, who is in the leadership, I forget who the second one was. Republicans said, oh, man, I mean, I don’t know, Senator Crapo or is it Crapo? It’s written Crapo. I think it’s Crapo. I don’t know. Anyway, whatever the name is from out west, he’s complaining.
But those are Republicans and they’re complaining because Rand Paul is standing up and saying, wait a second, more power for the executive branch? More power for the President? I don’t know about that. And here’s the thing with Rand, what you need to know is he’s consistent on this stuff. It doesn’t mean I always agree with him. He’s a little soft on some of the things like I think he’s for more of the drug legalization, that’s kind of a libertarian leaning position. He’s a little bit more lenient on some of the immigration stuff than I am.
But that’s a preference on a scale, on a sort of sliding scale. I can see that. But he’s fearless when he decides that something’s wrong and he stands up for it. It’s extraordinary. First of all, it’s really cool to see. And second of all, I find myself persuaded a lot that he’s right. By the way, there is a corollary let me say this. I mentioned Tom Massie, Congressman Massey actually drove from Kentucky to the House and forced a vote on the budget in a similar way. That’s sort of similar.
And if you hate these people… they say, “oh, Massie’s grandstanding, Rand’s grandstanding, they’re eventually going to be the votes.” But Rand’s point is he’s making a point and Massie’s point is he’s making a point. And the point is the Constitution. And the point is that there’s a reason to discuss this and here’s what you need to know.
I’ll finish with this. What the swamp loves…. What the swamp loves, whether it’s a crisis of war, a crisis of the economy (2008), a crisis of the pandemic (2019 and 20, 20-21), or the current war situation. They love to use it as a way to consolidate the power and put the power in places where it’s unchecked by We the People too often. That’s what you need to know. Alright, we’ve got to run.
Ed Martin here on a Pro America Report. Go to promericareport.com – I’ll put up that article about Rand Paul and what’s going on and we’ll have a lot more after the break. Be right back.
