As the Credibility and Integrity of Money Fails… So Will Society

Porter:

We’re back.

Aaron:

We’re back, baby.

Porter:

And I got to tell you, Aaron, I’m super happy and excited. I thought I was retired. Sail away into the sunset? Boy, was I wrong.

Aaron:

I actually thought I was retired as well.

Porter:

But the benefit of not being retired? Being here with you. Being here with our loyal listeners. The alligator arms are back…

Aaron:

That’s right.

Porter:

The T-Rex arms.

Aaron:

Hopefully there are a few long armers out there.

Porter:

Yeah. You got to reach for your wallet. Those of you who have no idea what we’re talking about, about… Geez, 15 years ago, we started this podcast originally with another publishing company whose name shall not be mentioned.

Aaron:

That’s right.

Porter:

… due to certain legal and contractual obligations. But at our previous employer, we did this podcast and we had an episode of the podcast that was for paid members only, for the people who didn’t have the alligator arms who could reach their wallets.

Aaron:

That’s right. The non T-Rexers…

Porter:

Yeah. I forget what we charged. It wasn’t very much.

Aaron:

It was 10 bucks a month.

Porter:

Ten dollars a month to see this thing called the Black Label Podcast.

Aaron:

Yes.

Porter:

And for those of you who are the long armers who remember this, it was, without a doubt, the most politically incorrect podcast that was broadcast ever at the beginning of the podcast time.

Aaron:

There might’ve been some ramifications of that.

Porter:

There were some big problems with that. First of all, at the time, we were still drinking gin.

Aaron:

They were probably triple gin and tonics.

Porter:

So by the end of the show, we would get pretty loose.

Aaron:

Yeah, that’s an understatement.

Porter:

And we said certain things perhaps in a way that wasn’t appropriate.

Aaron:

Maybe too transparent. Maybe… I don’t know. Hey, imagine saying any of that today.

Porter:

You can’t say any of that today.

Aaron:

None of that.

Porter:

So among the things we said back then was that we didn’t believe in structural racism. And that led to a conversation that eventually led me to being kicked out of that company. Eight years later, a bank called UBS wouldn’t participate in our IPO unless I left, all related to the things I said on a Black Label Podcast eight years earlier. Me getting kicked out of the company has cost me so far $800 million in losses, as the company that will not be mentioned has now performed well since I exited.

Aaron:

I think you were a billionaire for three weeks?

Porter:

I was a billionaire for a week. That’s right.

Aaron:

How did that feel?

Porter:

It felt great. I had four yachts and a plane.

Aaron:

Yeah, I remember those days.

Porter:

Oh, it was great. But now I’m back on the podcast.

Aaron:

Right. We’re back in the office. We’re back working.

Porter:

So what would we do now that I have to go back to work because I’ve lost all my money? What would I do first? How about another Black Label Podcast?

Aaron:

Why not start here?

Porter:

It worked out so well the first time for me. Let’s double down.

Aaron:

That’s it.

Porter:

That’s why we’re here. And no matter what it costs me – fame, money, reputation – we’re going to say things as we see them, because we can’t help ourselves.

Aaron:

Yeah. Look–

Porter:

But no gin.

Aaron:

Look, we might do some wine one day.

Porter:

There might be some wine.

Aaron:

We’ve grown up a little bit.

Porter:

Right. We’ve moved on. We’ve gotten older, as you can tell.

Aaron:

Eight and a half years. You’ve got a new bride.

Porter:

I did. I got remarried in Italy last month.

Aaron:

It was fantastic. Sicily.

Porter:

It was very beautiful.

Aaron:

Very beautiful wedding. Beautiful, gorgeous bride.

Porter:

Yep. And just for those folks out there who may have gone through a divorce, it’s very tough. I spent four years in the wilderness, and I’m very happy to be married again. But I can tell you, there’s a big difference between the first wife and the second wife. And the difference is the first wife is for better or worse, but the second wife is only for better. So it was a very happy occasion.

Aaron:

Well, I’m hoping to do the same thing. I’m engaged, and it’ll be my second marriage as well. So you got to meet Valentina. She’s lovely.

Porter:

Second time’s a lot better.

Aaron:

I’m very excited about this. So Porter, let’s talk a little bit about Porter & Co. Obviously we’re here to serve our customers.

Porter:

Absolutely.

Aaron:

And what’s different this time in this iteration than you had before at Stansberry Research?

Porter:

Well, I’ll tell you the most obvious difference is I’m now 50 years old, and I have spent more than 25 years as a professional analyst and financial writer. So there isn’t as much of a learning curve for me. I kind of knew exactly how to build the portfolio, and I knew what kind of companies that we wanted to write about. And it won’t surprise you – for any of you who know my work from before – we’re looking for highly capital efficient companies. We’re looking for great businesses that time is on their side, that you can hold truly forever. And all the macro ups and downs are fine when we write about them, but really the key to remember is it’s only during the hard times that you have an opportunity to buy these great businesses. So among the things that we have written about and talked about… last year, for example, Facebook was the number one ranked stock on the app that I built, the Kings of Capitalism app.

And of course, this year it’s one of the highest-performing stocks on the market. The other thing we talked about, of course, is Berkshire Hathaway. A great business, especially since it made its investment in Apple. And we came out with a model that shows if you buy Berkshire at a 20% discount to its intrinsic value, you always make a lot of money within 12 months. That model signaled last year. We recommended it. It’s done very well. We also have a lot of expertise in a couple of areas. Biotech, oil and gas, and in particular, property and casualty insurance. We just recently got our first big industry study of property and casualty published under Porter & Co. I hired the leading property and casualty insurance analyst from Morgan Stanley. He helped us put together a fantastic report. It’s all there for subscribers. So our model as investors hasn’t changed. What has changed, of course, is our platform. We are now a group of a dozen writers and analysts, not 600. I don’t have any partners in this business, so I get to say whatever I want and publish whatever I want, which is great. And as you can see, we have some very downtown corporate offices. This is a barn on my farm. So you’re getting the real version of me. And is it more authentic? Is it more fun? Yes and yes. Are the results great? Of course.

Aaron:

Well, Porter, the world has changed a lot in eight and a half years, and especially with COVID, the scamdemic. Now, one of, I think, the most prescient pieces you ever wrote was “The Big Lie, COVID-19.” And you wrote it in April of 2020?

Porter:

April 19th, 2020, I wrote a very controversial essay that the former employer, whose name we shall not mention for contractual and legal reasons, almost refused to publish and did refuse to publish in its original form.

Aaron:

Really?

Porter:

Yeah, I had to, of course, make some changes because they knew better than I did.

Aaron:

Right, of course.

Porter:

But what I predicted in that essay, which I hope that we can reprint – or sections of it, at least–

Aaron:

Yes, we will certainly do that.

Porter:

We may not have the copyright to do the whole thing, but sections of it we’d like to put on the podcast website. Very importantly was I explained there was plenty of good scientific evidence in April of 2020 that showed that the lockdowns would not work. Why? Well, because the virus was already widely circulating in the population, and at least 20% of Americans had already been infected with it, most of whom never had any symptoms. And you knew that from wastewater studies, and you knew it from the Diamond Princess cruise ship incident where the entire population could be surveyed. The other thing we knew was that only about 1% of people who were infected with the virus would or were likely to die from it. That is a high fatality rate – more so than the flu, which is about half that – but it is nowhere near what they were talking about, President Trump saying there would be dead bodies all over the subway.

Aaron:

Subway. Dropping dead like Ebola hit.

Porter:

All this nonsense. The other thing we also knew at that time was that virtually no one under the age of 80 was dying from this. Virtually no one. And we already knew all that at the time. What was so fascinating was that none of these facts were being made public. And in fact, the media was doing the exact opposite. They were running articles about why it was dangerous to go to the beach. The cops were arresting surfers.

Aaron:

Surfers. They put sand to cover up the skate parks.

Porter:

Yes. And this all led to the closure of schools. It all led to two years of lockdowns and shutdowns and forced mask wearing. And all of the relevant facts were already known as soon as April 2020, but no one was willing to write about them or comment about them except for a little newsletter writer in Baltimore that no one’s paying any attention to. Why is that? Why is that, in our society, the people who write with facts… Because by the way, everything is in this essay. All the facts, all my sources cited. All actual facts. And what did we get in reply? We got a whole bunch of hate mail. A lot of them from doctors, by the way, who said I didn’t know what I was talking about. But now we know, looking back now three years later… what was the actual – not the case fatality rate – but the infectious fatality rate?

Aaron:

The flu.

Porter:

It was about 1.1%. It was about what we said it was going to be. It’s about twice as bad as the regular flu. And how many people under the age of 50 died?

Aaron:

Hardly any.

Porter:

Almost nobody.

Aaron:

The ones that would’ve died because they have four or more comorbidities.

Porter:

The only people who died were people who were already in the hospital or were very sick. That’s it.

Aaron:

Yes. Or the ones that were treated very poorly at the hospitals because they were financially incentivized for everybody to be COVID-positive –

Porter:

And anyone they put on a ventilator died.

Aaron:

…ventilate and remdesivir.

Porter:

But that wasn’t killed by COVID; that was killed by the hospital.

Aaron:

Exactly right. That’s right.

Porter:

Anyways, and what I still can’t believe, is how many people just rolled over like dogs and pissed themselves, trying to obey all the different COVID mandates.

Aaron:

The whole masking, the social distancing.

Porter:

By the way, even today if you go on the Johns Hopkins website and read about COVID, even today it says, “Wash your hands.”

Aaron:

Oh, absolutely.

Porter:

But they know for a fact that COVID is not spread by surface.

Aaron:

No, it’s not.

Porter:

It’s an airborne virus only. So there’s still, even today, nothing but misinformation and fear about it.

Aaron:

Yeah. And how every single country and every single government got behind this in lockstep. It was just so odd. Early on, I went deep down some conspiracy rabbit holes while I was on break from you.

Porter:

You do love conspiracies.

Aaron:

I do love them. And actually I’ve run out of my conspiracy theories, and it’s just conspiracy facts, most of them. But I’ll tell you. Early on, there were just certain things that don’t resonate well with you, and I remember we were on pretty hard lockdown in Medellín in Columbia where we couldn’t leave the house at all for two weeks, and then it turned to a month or whatever. But yet–

Porter:

Two weeks to flatten the curve.

Aaron:

Flatten the curve. To flatten the curve. Because viruses know that after two weeks, they just die out if no humans touch them. Right? That happens a lot. But food delivery could happen, and I remember–

Porter:

Oh, right. Well, there’s all kinds of crazy things. Remember you had to wear a mask when you went to the restaurant, but as soon as you sat down, you could take it off.

Aaron:

Because down here, COVID doesn’t affect you.

Porter:

Right. Or you had to wear a mask on a plane, but you can take it off if you’re having a drink. It makes no sense. By the way, I’ll give you another example of this. If it’s true that your cellphone can crash the plane, it wouldn’t let you take them on the plane.

Aaron:

No, not at all.

Porter:

None of these… It’s amazing how many people just say, “Oh, okay.” Well… It makes no sense. But where does all this lead us, Brabsy? Because I think it leads us somewhere important. The same people who told you to wear a mask, told you to get a vaccine. Was that smart?

Aaron:

Nope.

Porter:

How about this? The same people who told you to wear a mask also told you that we have to send troops to Ukraine. And the same people tell you you should put money in your 401(k) and invest in Treasuries. So this podcast, the Black Label Podcast, is all about telling you the facts as we find them and encouraging you to be deeply skeptical of every single authority figure you come into contact with, and to be skeptical of us as well. So we hope you’ll get involved with our mailbag. We hope you’ll question our facts. We hope you’ll call us idiots when you think that we’re wrong, and we look forward to all that banter with our listeners.

Aaron:

Yes, absolutely, Porter. And we have a great guest today because it is our inaugural podcast. We have the one and only Ron Paul coming up. So everybody’s going to want to stay tuned for that.

Porter:

I’m telling you, the things he says in his podcast lead me to fear for his life.

Aaron:

His son’s office just got burnt down. That’s a little skeptical right there. I’m a little sussed on that.

Porter:

That’s true. I forgot about that. Firebombing of an office.

Aaron:

I know. I didn’t want to bring that up because I don’t want Ron Paul to be thinking about these things.

Porter:

Well, before we get to Ron, let’s real quick talk about something that people can use to make money.

Aaron:

Sure.

Porter:

Where do you want to go in terms of the portfolio discussion?

Aaron:

Well, let’s talk about… We have major themes, as you covered earlier. One of them is ESG, environmental social governance – which by the way, Larry Fink now has said they’re banning the use of that word because it’s too inflammatory from the left and the right. It doesn’t mean they’re going to stop.

Porter:

These are the same assholes who put three directors on Exxon’s board and told Exxon to get out of the fossil fuel business.

Aaron:

Right.

Porter:

What in the hell are they thinking? Do you have any idea what the world would look like without fossil fuels? By the way, nothing in this room would exist without fossil fuels.

Aaron:

Not one single thing.

Porter:

No, because fossil fuels is what makes the roads. It’s what makes the plastic. It’s what makes the energy that drives everything.

Aaron:

Fertilizer. It’s what gives us food.

Porter:

All these numbers are fantastic. If you look at the amount of money that Germany, for example, has spent on alternatives, and then you look at what their base load power… the main provider of Germany’s base load power is still coal. So if you want to have clean energy – which by the way, you and I don’t want to be polluters.

Aaron:

Nope.

Porter:

But we also don’t want to see the whole world go back to the caveman era. So what’s the solution? And I think that we have really stood out in terms of our research and helping everyone understand how important both natural gas and nuclear power are going to be going forward to ensure continuity of the electrical grids and human progress.

Aaron:

Yeah. And by the way, Porter, you’re not new to this game. You’re not new to the idea that energy and technological innovation… so you started talking about shale oil in 2000 and…

Porter:

10.

Aaron:

2010 when a barrel of oil was well over $100. Maybe $132.

Porter:

Without a question, one of the greatest calls I made in my career was predicting that America would see an enormous energy renaissance and would become the leading producer of oil in the world. And you were there when I started writing that stuff. Everyone believed in peak oil and thought oil was going to go to nothing in America. And people actually built LNG import facilities because they were thinking we’d have to import natural gas to America.

Aaron:

Louisiana one. It was Cheniere.

Porter:

Cheniere, yeah. LNG. And I wrote an article, and I think it was in May of 2006. The headline of that issue was “Madness.” And I said, “This is the dumbest business idea I’ve ever seen in my entire life. America has more natural gas resources than any other country in the world, and we’re unlocking them in massive new quantities in places like the Barnett Shale, which is one of the very first shale fields that got unlocked with horizontal drilling and fracking.” And I predicted that that company would go to zero. Well, it didn’t. It went from $30 to $2. And then the guy, Charif Souki, who runs it, got smart and inverted it and turned it into an LNG export facility, at which point we recommended the stock. And it went from $5 to where it is now – $150, something like that. And there’s another company out there right now we’re recommending that’s basically taking that same playbook except for they’re going even further.

They’re not just going to take other people’s natural gas and convert it into LNG and ship it overseas. They’re actually buying up gas fields in Louisiana, building their own pipelines, building their own LNG export facility. And this is going to be the first truly integrated energy export business in the United States. I don’t want to tell you the name of that company. I want you to subscribe to Porter & Co. and learn all about it though. I will tell you about a large company called EQT. And EQT is just an incredible story of American entrepreneurship.

Aaron:

The Rice Brothers.

Porter:

The Rice Brothers. They started an energy company and a partnership with their father who was an energy private banker in Pittsburgh in 2007-ish timeframe. And they had a private oil and gas company, buying up these old shale assets in western Pennsylvania and then updating them with technology, getting them to produce again.

They went public in like 2013. Small business. And then all of a sudden in 2017, they pulled off this incredible merger with a very big Pittsburgh-based energy distribution company called EQT. They saw really quickly once they were board members that EQT was badly mismanaged. So they had a proxy fight. They ended up in control of the whole business, and then they pulled off the biggest energy coup in America in at least 50 years. They bought all of Chevron’s Marcellus shale assets at the bottom of the COVID oil debacle for $800 million. Meanwhile, Chevron wrote off $8 billion of assets. So they bought all of these, the best shale fields in the Marcellus, for 10 cents on the dollar. And that stock is still only trading for about four or five times cash flow. It’s still very cheap, but it’s the best-run energy company in America. And it has become the largest supplier of natural gas in America. How incredible is that?

Aaron:

That’s fantastic.

Porter:

And in a span of less than five years, really since they merged with EQT until now. They’ve just absolutely transformed the business. They’ve made it a world beater. And they too are looking into ways of building their own LNG export terminals so they can capture the higher price of natural gas that’s found in markets like Europe, especially as Russia withdraws from that market. These are great long-term investments and the only energy source that’s practical, and the reason why you can buy them so cheap… And by the way, this goes along with Warren Buffett’s moves into Chevron and Occidental Petroleum. Same exact ideas behind these things. It’s also why we recommended the royalty plays that we have. People forget about this, but I recommended Texas Pacific Land, which is a royalty play way back in 2011.

Aaron:

I wrote about it with you.

Porter:

Way back in 2011, just when the shale boom was starting. That stock’s gone from $25 to…

Aaron:

$1,200?

Porter:

Like $1,500 at the peak. Yeah. It’s incredible. You would’ve made hundreds of times your money. Incredible. So getting these royalty plays right is really a great way of playing this entire boom. So we have a couple of those. We’ve got EQT. We’ve got the company that’s building the new integrated LNG facility in Louisiana. These are very safe, very long-term bets, a place where I would put 5 or 10% of my portfolio and know that as the ESG madness recedes, the value of these companies’ earnings are going to really be transformed in the market.

Also, if you believe like we do that printing lots of money and running trillion-dollar deficits every year is not the way to have low commodity prices, any kind of a big inflation spike, you could easily see natural gas prices go to $20 or $30 in MCF. And then that happens, in these cases, these stocks will go up 10- or 20-fold almost overnight. So lots of upside. And because of ESG, they’re trading at very low multiples of earnings. They have very high dividend yields in most cases like Occidental and Chevron, and it’s a space that we cover very well at Porter & Co. So if you’re interested in that stuff, please subscribe, read our work.

Aaron:

Yeah. Actually, go watch one of our fantastic videos on that. It’s the two men destroying America, and we uncover two men that are maybe almost anti-human in what they’re doing.

Porter:

They’re definitely anti-human. They’re…

PART 1 OF 4 ENDS [00:20:04]

Aaron:

…human and what they’re doing.

Porter:

They’re definitely anti-human. They’re very much trying to eliminate population by restricting energy supplies.

Aaron:

And it’s thetwomen.com, the, T-W-O, men.com. So check it out.

Porter:

Also, you’ll find that in all of our documentaries that we produce – there’s tons of editorial content, tons of great stuff. So even if you decide not to subscribe, no problem. You can still learn a lot by watching our documentaries.

Aaron:

Yeah. Absolutely.

Porter:

Well, should we go to Dr. Paul?

Aaron:

Absolutely. Let’s bring on the ultimate legend. Porter, by the way, you worked with him for about seven years when you did the original “End of America” documentary, which has been seen over 100 million times by viewers.

Porter:

He’s a great mentor and a long old friend of mine and we’re certainly welcome to have him. Should we have a G&T first?

Aaron:

No, we’re not going to do that in this show.

Porter:

No. Not this time. Not on this Black Label.

Aaron:

All right, guys. Stick with us for the Ron Paul interviews. Come–

Porter:

Let’s go talk to Ron.

Do you remember who our very first guest was in the earlier version of the Black Label Podcast?

Aaron:

It was Jim Rogers.

Porter:

It was Jim Rogers. And this time, we’re graced with Dr. Ron Paul, who, as you know, is a personal hero of mine. And as far as I can tell, the only ethical member of Congress for the past 100 years or so.

Aaron:

Well, his son’s doing a pretty good job as well.

Porter:

Well, he’s in the Senate.

Aaron:

Yeah. Okay. Good point.

Porter:

Yes, yes.

Aaron:

Very good point.

Porter:

I certainly wasn’t trying to insult Rand.

Aaron:

Yeah, no. Rand’s done a great job as well.

Porter:

He’s done a great job, and we’re very, very pleased and proud to have Dr. Ron Paul with us today. Dr. Paul, please give us an update. It’s been five or six years since we’ve spoken. How are things? How are you doing?

Dr. Ron Paul:

Doing well, having fun, staying busy, a lot of family activities going on. We have a large family, and just in the last few months, we had three weddings and some of them got married outdoors in our backyard, so we were very busy. But as far as my other activity goes, it’s the same as it was even before I ever went to Congress: Fascination and intense interest in the monetary issue. Because I became fascinated with it in 1971, as you remember, of course, when the breakdown of the Bretton Woods occurred and that the gold standard ended. And we’ve had repercussions ever since, because at that moment, it was an enlightenment to me to anticipate what would happen in the ’70s, even up to what is happening now and thinking about what the future will bring.

Porter:

Well, I have a couple of questions about those topics, and we might as well just get into them right now. The first question I have for you is broad, and I’m really interested in what you’ll say, and that is, were you surprised by the magnitude and the audacity of the Fed’s response to COVID?

Dr. Ron Paul:

No, I’m never surprised what they do. But I remember Y2K; they even printed out a lot of cash too. They’re always prepared. But their preparation is always… Their goal to is to have things done orderly. When I bring these subjects up, “What are you doing? They don’t look very good. Why are you doing this, this, and this?” And they say, “Well…” They would agree and they say, “Ron, you’re right. Yes, we should be concerned of that as long as it’s orderly.” So if they destroy money gradually, people don’t notice they’re doing that, people just roll over and go along with it, and what they want to avoid is the market correcting too fast.

And of course, what they do is they prolong the agony and make more people suffer because what we want to do is have order. There’s no panic. But the whole thing is, they can’t prevent the panic. The panic will come, and it always happens, and we’ve had bits and pieces of that. They come and they go, but I think the really big one hasn’t hit yet. But it will come because as they patch it together, they just enlarge the bubble. But there’s a lot of cracks in the seams of the bubble and there’s no way that they can have a soft landing yet; there’s a lot more people waking up. I actually encourage in the world of education that more and more people are starting to wake up. But there’s still… the average person out there doesn’t quite understand the business cycle and how difficult it is to invest in this day and age.

Porter:

It’s amazing to me that we have all become slaves to the bankers. That we have decided that no matter what the crisis or the problem is in the economy, the banks have to be saved first and everyone else gets to suffer as a result. One thing that I find so fascinating about history and economics is that the guys who are the econometrics kind of people, the kind of economists who work at the Fed, they know next to nothing about history.

And they always seem to think that their ideas are so original when, of course, lots of experiments with paper money have happened in the past, and we know how they always end up. You can read about John Law, or my favorite example is the way that the American colonist experimented with money. The very beginning of paper money in America started in about 1690 in the Massachusetts Bay Colony when the colonists went to go raid Montreal – or maybe it was Quebec, I can’t remember, one of the two, a Canadian city – and they got defeated.

And so, they all came back to Boston and it was November and they were all injured and hungry, and they didn’t get any money from raiding the Canadians. And so, the provincial authorities were very afraid of a rebellion. So they printed up $5,000 and they said, “We solemnly swear we will never print more. This is to be accepted as legal tender and we’re going to get on a boat and go get the specie, get the gold from the king, and we’ll be back in the spring.” And of course, the king said, “Go pound sand.” So when they got back, they printed $10,000 more. What proceeded, of course, was then a cycle of booms and busts, and the bad money would force out the good money, as you know, from Gresham’s Law. And so then, there would be a deflation and they would cure the deflation by yet another round of printing and solemn promises to not print more.

And what’s so interesting about all this is that in every cycle of printing, the next cycle has to be many times more than the last. So at first it was double, and then it was five times, and then it was 10 times. And it really does seem to me that America is in that exact same trap where they print a whole bunch of money and the inflation hits, the bad money forces out the good, the good money, of course, would be Bitcoin and gold and even actually other kinds of very safe securities. So you see equities trading at higher valuations because it’s better to hold a share of Apple than it is to hold a dollar of worthless paper money.

And so, you see the cycle again and again and again, and you see it throughout history, and it plays out exactly the same way. And so, Dr. Paul, since we have you here, we want to ask you the question that’s impossible to answer, and that is, how long can this go on before regular, everyday Americans start acting like the Argentines and we’ll have nothing to do with the money that their government prints?

Dr. Ron Paul:

Well, that’ll be when the streets are a lot more crowded with the homeless. I saw a hit the other day. They were showing a picture of this homeless person that was up in a tree in Seattle. I said, “Oh, it’s getting pretty bad.”

Aaron:

It’s getting close.

Dr. Ron Paul:

But no, it will be very definite, and it’s coming, but it’s the ignorance of what monetary policy is all about. Because we are conditioned – although I’m optimistic about the educational system going on – most people still, they depend on the government. So whether it’s COVID or whatever, they go to the government and they say, “Prices are going up. I can’t afford them and my salaries aren’t going up,” so what they demand is money and the government obliges. They give them more money, which is the inflation. That’s the cause.

Porter:

Of course. Yeah.

Dr. Ron Paul:

You’re supposed to have less money because the increase in the money creates the inflation, but it’s a system that will last. It’s unpredictable. I think you implied that. The one thing about Austrian economics, you know that if you endlessly print money and you don’t have a definition of the dollar as precisely being convertible into something of real value, there’s no way you can stop the inflation of the prices. And most people – and I’m always wanting to be very careful – never let people use the word “inflation” to imply the cost of living is going up. I want people to think about money. You inflate the money and prices go up. Because if you concede – and Mises talked about this in “Human Action” – he says, “If you get them convinced that it’s a price issue, wage and price controls is the answer. They do something, some type of policy–”

Porter:

And not like it works, of course.

Dr. Ron Paul:

“Oh, just hoard money,” and all these other things. So I think definitions are very, very important. But the people, actually, were on the verge of maybe one of those really big ones.

Porter:

Well, before we get off the topic–

Dr. Ron Paul:

The big problem there, of course, is the political crisis it’ll create.

Porter:

Yes. And before we get off the topic of money and gold and inflation, I know you’re working with a group to help people get gold into their IRAs–

Aaron:

Birch Gold.

Porter:

Birch Gold. And so, folks out there who want to know more about buying gold or replacing some of their dollars with gold should look up Birch Gold.

Aaron:

birchgold.com.

Porter:

Now, I’d like to move on to another topic besides just money because money isn’t the only thing that government has found a way to completely corrupt and destroy and ruin. And it’s a complex question, but it’s one I’ve been wanting to ask you for a long time, and that is, did you see any correlation between the fact that the government just went completely overboard and broke all kinds of constitutional guarantees and claimed all kinds of scientific authority that they didn’t have when it came to COVID and what they’ve been trying to do to economies around the world in regards to global warming? What I see – and I want you to answer the question too – but what I see is in both cases, this fraudulent amount of scientific certainty, when in fact there isn’t any that leads to propaganda, all of which gives the government rights over you, your liberty, and your property that they don’t have.

Dr. Ron Paul:

Well, the whole problem is looking and seeking the truth. And when you have an empire and you’re working on a fiat currency, you have to lie a lot. So truth becomes treasonous under that system because the goal of those in authorities are maintaining their empire and they will use lies and cheating and stealing and all these things. That’s what’s going on. And as long as that happens, if the conditions are going to get a lot worse… but the COVID thing, as monstrous as this whole thing is, sometimes some people ask, “Well, what’s the difference between the lockdown on COVID and what they’re doing with the climate change?”

Well, they’re doing the same thing. … they have to stop science and truth, truth about money or truth about foreign policy, why we go to war, and truth about drugs and truth about COVID, because their cover is blown if that happened. So everything they do is to make sure that the people are fed all this hobgoblin stuff and that they go along with it.

But that’s where they’re running into a problem, because more and more people are starting to question… just think of how many people finally did resist a lot of the lockdown stuff. And people, what about right now? They’re resisting by boycotts. I love that stuff. I’m not even a beer drinker. I don’t know anything about it, but I thought it was pretty neat. They had some stupid ad out there and people were like, “You’ve insulted us. We’re not going to drink any more of your dumb beer.” That’s good stuff and that’s a libertarian answer, peaceful resistance to the nonsense that we have to live with. And they’re going to get worse, so we ought to get better at fighting back.

Porter:

And you’ve seen the same thing happen at Disney World. The lines apparently this summer at Disney World have been cut in half, and all their movies are bombing because I think all of us don’t like the woke dogma. We don’t like seeing our fairytales turned into tropes about equality or equity of races. It’s not the appropriate forum for that. We go to Disney for entertainment and there’s nothing wrong with these mythologies that are in the European historical tradition. There’s also, of course, nothing wrong with other cultures’ historical traditions, and Disney, of course, should be able to manufacture all those stories in the appropriate way. But that’s of course not what happens; they insert their own political objectives into the content, and nobody wants to pay to see that.

Dr. Ron Paul:

They work on the assumption, which is mostly correct, that their propaganda will appeal to the gullible and they can get away with it. But then, there is a limit to it, and the people do wake up. Tragically, it is so late. I was very much interested in foreign policy in the early 1960s when the Vietnam War was going on. We had the Cuban crisis and I was in my medical residency, and I was drafted out of the residency and I had an education there by being in the military.

And then, the disaster, the tragedy of the ’60s, and then the spending, the mixture of economic fallacies and foreign policy strategy led to the prediction that they can’t maintain the stupid system of Bretton Woods and it would collapse. It did, and then we had the ultimate consequence of that.

But the people will resist finally, but they resisted in the Congress saying, “We don’t like this war.” What did they have to do? They had to go to the streets. Back then, it was a lot more violent than what we’re having today. But then, the politicians woke up. So the people will wake up, they’re starting to wake up. I want to look at my Ron Paul Liberty Report as hoping that I could attach to some real truth about what’s going on and relay that to give the individuals incentives to resist.

But I think the first thing is we have to know and understand policy, and why? Because we have to challenge the people who give away everything. “Oh, you need money? Okay. Here’s… How many trillion do you need?” And look at it. It’s out of control now because just thinking this last year or two, trillions of dollars in a year, might go up over a trillion dollars – that is not going to last. The people will wake up, and all I can say is it’s getting closer, closer, and closer, but it’s always tough to know how to plan investments, I would think. That is the key – it’s timing.

Porter:

One thing is certain, the value of the dollar will continue to fall, and the value of gold and Bitcoin and other solid assets will continue to rise. That’s inevitable, because the dollar is going to end up worthless like all the other paper currencies. The timing, of course is uncertain. Dr. Paul, we don’t want to use too much of your time today, and I do have two other topics that I want to get to.

Dr. Ron Paul:

Okay.

Porter:

The first topic – and I haven’t heard your opinion on this, but I’m curious to know it – and that is, do you think that a serious insurrection or a serious crime took place on January the 6th following the election of Joe Biden?

Dr. Ron Paul:

Yes, I do, but I think they had things twisted. There was a demonstration. There was no insurrection, and the demonstration was encouraged by insiders at the FBI. The FBI has lost a lot of credibility. Department of Justice is a joke. And then, they took it and they switched it around and really undermined the Department of Justice and penalized, and they had a kangaroo court.

And people, “Oh. Well, this is a trial. You’ll trial this and you’re going to punish us. Well, we want to see the evidence. Show us the evidence. Show us the film.” 

“Oh no, you’re not allowed to look at it.” 

It was the biggest joke in the world. So there wasn’t insurrection, but that’s part of what I call… And I’ve written a little bit about the coup that is ongoing and that is one big step has happened is… And I think it all started way back in the ’60s with all the assassinations, where the Justice Department and our system of government has been changed a whole lot, and January 6th was a big one, but in exactly the opposite direction than most people have been told how it happened.

Porter:

That’s surprising. It’s surprising, isn’t it, Aaron? That the government line would be the exact opposite of what actually occurred.

Aaron:

Inversion. That’s their favorite thing these days.

Porter:

That is their favorite thing. The other question I have for you is what’s your opinion about what’s going on in Ukraine? I still can’t figure out what it is in our national interest that is in Ukraine. And I can only imagine that if Putin was arming the Mexicans and stirring up an insurrection against America, so they would want to go invade New Mexico or something, we wouldn’t look kindly on that, and I just wonder what your opinion is about Ukraine. Is Ukraine such a vital partner to the United States that we should be willing to risk our sons and daughters in a war with a nuclear power?

Dr. Ron Paul:

No. During the presidential campaign, the Middle East wars were going on, and I participated in trying to prevent them. And in the debates, I simplified my foreign policy about what we should do in a Middle East, and I applied that to Syria as well as Ukraine. Just come home. Just march on home. But we do it differently, we do it with the CIA and takeover of the system. We’ve participated in coup of 2014. We’ve been very much involved. We should not be involved. I think the truth should–

Porter:

I’m sorry to interrupt, but let me just make that clear. You’re saying that the CIA was directly involved in the Ukrainian revolution of 2014?

Dr. Ron Paul:

Absolutely. I think they’ve been involved in 90% of all coups in the last 30, 40, 50 years. I mean, the big one was around in 1953 under Eisenhower. One of the first things he did when he went in there, there was… Dr. Mossadegh was a leader, and he didn’t want the Americans and the British to totally control the oil, so he wanted it to be Iranian. And so, the British and Americans went in there and got him out, and that caused all the radicalism that eventually ended up with the breakdown of the system in 1979. So that definitely was us being involved. We don’t always send troops in; I think it’s the CIA stuff. Matter of fact, the whole thing on JFK’s assassination had to do with the federal or the CIA not running the invasion and the takeover of Castro when he ran–

PART 2 OF 4 ENDS [00:40:04]

Dr. Ron Paul:

… and to take over Castro when he ran into a conflict with JFK. That really brought that down, and that created the hatred that led to the assassination. CIA was involved, and they’re very, very much involved. They were involved as well as the FBI in Martin Luther King’s assassination. Ask Robert Kennedy Jr. – I think he’s telling the truth and he’s thought this through, and he has suffered a lot because he’s taken that position. Robert Kennedy Jr. said, “We ought to have all the facts out.” All Americans should say that. Why do all the presidents hide all the facts of these assassinations? Every one of them promises before like, “Oh, well, I’m going to release everything; the American people deserve to know.” They do. They pass the law, and they don’t even obey the law that says you have to tell us what happened.

Porter:

When they realize how bad it is, they’re like, “Oh, yeah, we can’t tell that, and also, I want to use that power myself. There’s some people I want to kill.” But geez, Dr. Paul, I hope you have a bodyguard or something. Do you have a food tester? I’m now a little worried for you. You’ve said the unspeakable.

Aaron:

Yes, you did. You’ve covered everything now.

Dr. Ron Paul:

Well, I think I said these things all along, and I did have some surprises. I reached more people than I ever thought. At one time I was preaching the gospel about, “We could solve this problem of money. Just look at the Constitution. Nothing but gold and silver can be legal tender.” A young man came up to me at one of the college programs afterwards and he says, “Boy, what I like is you telling the truth. It is so wonderful.” I said, “Yeah, but the guy that followed me in the debate said the same thing, that we should follow the Constitution.” I said, “Why don’t you go see him? He wasn’t telling the truth.”

So will truth burst out when it’s necessary? Words can be the same, and I think that’s what the American people are sick and tired of, and they give them no credit for knowing when people are lying through their teeth. An empire has to lie in order to be maintained. That’s their business of maintaining that and money, the pharmaceutical industries, just billions and billions of dollars. I think what they’ve done to medicine personally offends me to no end. They’re out there teaching, and they want to put you… They had doctors lose their jobs because they believed in natural immunity. Natural immunity, we probably learned that in the first year of medical school.

Porter:

Right. [inaudible]

Dr. Ron Paul:

It’s very important. It’s amazing what they’re doing.

Porter:

It’s insane. The emergence of RFK is one of the most exciting things that has happened politically in America in a long time. I really have enjoyed the way the mainstream media continues to smear him. Then he goes immediately on Twitter, or now I think it’s called X.com, and then he just tweets what the truth is. He tweets the truth, and he links to the original video of the conversation so that everyone can see exactly how the newspaper, or whatever the propaganda outlet was, has mischaracterized exactly what happened. His testimony in front of Congress the other day was unlike anything I’ve ever seen in American history. It was absolutely incredible.

Dr. Ron Paul:

I agree.

Porter:

He was calling them liars to their faces.

Dr. Ron Paul:

No, I think it’s a wonderful thing because I think telling the truth is a stronger weapon. It’s like the people who do that, well, that gives us the opportunity to compete, because the opposition are totally inconsistent. They’re lying through their teeth. It does the opposite of what they promise. When I gave my talks during the campaign, I loved going to college campuses. They say, “Oh, young people, you can’t talk to them.” I found out young people are very excited about it. Let’s say I talked for an hour – I’d spend 45 minutes talking like we’ve been talking. “This is a mess. You need to wake up. You need to study about money. You need to know about non-intervention. You need all these kinds of things.” I said, “If you do this non-intervention, the problems can be solved.” But no, they just march on. They do the same thing over and over again.

I think young people are very, very open to the message of liberty because the few little things that I thought were important, like our sentences that were not even a full sentence, freedom is popular. Freedom brings people together. It doesn’t divide us. It’s when you rob from one group to give to another, and then it’s all divvied up by power and structure and law and shenanigans and all this nonsense – that’s what is so unfair. But there’s so much that could be… the biggest criticism I have of libertarians and conservative constitutionalists is, why don’t we do a better job? That is a wonderful message. The founders knew about it. We did well. We never perfectly fall, obviously, but it’s always so much better. So if you want peace and prosperity, one could start by looking at the Constitution and realizing that if everybody said, “It’s your life, you can do whatever you want with it as long as you don’t hurt anybody.”

Porter:

Right.

Dr. Ron Paul:

How complicated could it be?

Porter:

Well, that is a wonderful way to end. I think that we all agree, and I know virtually every listener of the podcast will agree with you. We hope that message becomes central to what it means to be an American again. I think there are some real rays of hope. I thought that the recent Supreme Court decision ending Affirmative Action and college admissions and making those kinds of corporate DEI policies illegal is very helpful. Obviously, everyone should be judged on the quality of their character, not the color of their skin, which is, ironically of course, MLK’s famous statement. I think that’s progress in America – that everyone’s going to be judged by what they do and who they are, not how they look. That’s very optimistic and a boon for freedom. I’m also optimistic that a lot of Americans have been surprisingly against the Ukrainian War, even people who are traditionally Republicans.

In the past, Republicans have been the party of war and the Democrats have been the party of welfare, so you had one side or the other, spending too much money. But I do think that at least the Republicans are getting wise to the idea that spending all this money on the military isn’t a good idea because it’s just not effective. You put troops in Syria, you’re just going to start a bigger war. You put troops in Ukraine, you’re just going to start a bigger war. People don’t want American troops in their country, and I don’t blame them. I wouldn’t want Syrian troops here or Ukrainian troops here. So we got to start leaving people alone and letting them be free, which is the message that you just gave and part of the reason–

Dr. Ron Paul:

One thing we can remember–

Porter:

[inaudible] for 20 years.

Dr. Ron Paul:

… is that the dollar is going to crash, and it’s going to get better because they will lose all their power and clout. But there will be a lot of chaos that we’ll have to work with.

Porter:

That is unfortunately true. But I really do think if you spend time in countries where that kind of monetary chaos is the norm, you’ll be amazed by how everybody roots around it. If you go and spend time in Argentina, even though the government’s broke, the people there live very, very well. They keep their money in Switzerland; they keep their money in Uruguay. They just deal with it. Americans will learn those same strategies, and they’re going to learn them from you and learn them from us here at Porter & Co., and everyone’s going to be okay. Actually, ironically, that is the thing that could lead to more freedom. If the government goes broke, then we all get to have more power ’cause there’ll be less government power.

Dr. Ron Paul:

Right.

Aaron:

Well, thank you so much, Dr. Paul. We really appreciate it. It’s great seeing you. You look fantastic as ever. Thank you for enlightening the audience on the CIA operatives. You’re dead on as always.

Dr. Ron Paul:

Thank you. It’s great being with you.

Porter:

Man, it’s great to see Dr. Paul again. It’s been so long since we worked closely together. I don’t know if you know this or not, but my connection with Ron Paul, it goes all the way back to the mid-1990s. So my mentor, Doug Casey, got me involved with the then libertarian presidential candidate, Harry Browne. Harry was a brilliant guy. If you’ve ever seen his book… what is it called? How I Found Freedom in an Unfree World. It’s a brilliant book that really will lead you to a lot of happiness if you, like us, suffer being trapped in this slave world. But anyways, through my friendship with Doug and with Harry, I eventually became a Ron Paul supporter. I met him I think for the first time, probably in 2002, 2004 timeframe, and he’s been a mentor and a friend forever. But I have never seen him quite be so specific about his allegations about the Justice Department. That was pretty startling.

Aaron:

Yeah. I had never seen that. He always stuck to sound money and fiscal responsibility and having a moral code for the government. That was a different side that maybe it’s RFK is bringing it out in people. Maybe he’s getting people wound up, but that was really refreshing.

Porter:

I would love to see his Audit the Fed movement come back-

Aaron:

Ah, that would be fantastic.

Porter:

… ’cause if you could audit the Fed, you would find so much corruption it would change the standing of the government in America forever.

Aaron:

I think my biggest takeaway that both of you talked about a few of them is I’ve been to Argentina many times. I really do enjoy Buenos Aires. I’ve been to Bariloche, and the food’s great. Yes, people can’t ever save. Their inflation, it’s constant. It’s 80% a year or whatever the case is, and the IMF bails them out or whatever. But people seem to… they just continue to live life.

Porter:

It’s helpful in a way because it just completely discredits the government, so then no one pays any attention to them.

Aaron:

Exactly.

Porter:

It’s just a very different kind of culture where people tend to exist on the basis of cultural norms, not because of what the law of the government says, but it’s also a very homogeneous culture.

Aaron:

It is. That is.

Porter:

They all agree on the same things that are important–

Aaron:

That’s very true.

Porter:

… and it would be a much more violent place if it was not for that.

Aaron:

That’s very true. Actually, that’s one of the things that I found living in Colombia. You know who lives in Colombia? Colombians.

Porter:

Yep, nobody else.

Aaron:

There’s very few other cultures, so they do get along. They’re homogeneous. They have the same thoughts. You get a little bit of left and right, but overall, Colombians look after Colombians. The government is not worshiped there.

Porter:

No, but what’s the only state in the Western Hemisphere that’s never defaulted on their sovereign debt?

Aaron:

I don’t know.

Porter:

Colombia.

Aaron:

What? Really?

Porter:

Yes.

Aaron:

I had no idea. That makes me proud.

Porter:

Yeah, there you go. Well, it was great seeing Dr. Paul–

Aaron:

Yes.

Porter:

… and if you want to invest in safe, foreign sovereign debt, check out the Colombian.

Aaron:

Yeah, for sure.

Porter:

But what else have we got?

Aaron:

All right, Porter. You’re not going to believe this, but I’m bringing back one of our favorite segments, so stay with us.

Porter:

Well, I hope that we’re not violating any contractual obligations.

Aaron:

No, no, no. You just can’t make this stuff up.

Porter:

I don’t think you can trademark, “You just can’t make this stuff up.” But it’s a hallmark of our podcast.

Aaron:

It is. In that last eight and a half years, the world has gone clown world.

Porter:

It’s gotten way worse.

Aaron:

I thought that digging up segments before was… I had to dig a little bit. Today, I probably get 15 pieces of “you just can’t make this stuff up” information every day, and they’re all lies.

Porter:

Twitter is an endless source of “you just can’t make this stuff up.”

Aaron:

I got to tell you, I’m not a social media addict, but I am for Twitter, or X.com as it is now.

Porter:

Yeah. I’m not sure where Elon is taking it, but–

Aaron:

I spend plenty of hours on there giggling all day.

Porter:

It’s hysterical.

Aaron:

Giggling and shaking my head. Actually, one of my favorite accounts is Clown World.

Porter:

Yes. By the way, if you guys are not on Twitter, I recommend you join. If not, just to follow Porter & Co.’s Twitter feed, my Twitter feed, Aaron’s Twitter feed. You can hear more from us every day and get lots of these “you can’t just make this stuff up” info.

Aaron:

Yeah, for sure. So Porter, one of the trends over time with these – I don’t know if you want to say it’s the George Soros DAs, I don’t know if you want to call it the woke-ism–

Porter:

It’s the i–

Aaron:

… the equality.

Porter:

Right, it’s the idea that we shouldn’t arrest people just because they happen to be poor or a minority.

Aaron:

Right. It’s like because the lies of the government with their money printing, they have to come up with more lies, just like Dr. Paul said. So one of the lies is, “Well, they should be allowed to go into Walgreens and steal up to $900,” or whatever. By the way, that’s insane in and of its–

Porter:

Of course.

Aaron:

From a moral code, that’s insane.

Porter:

From a moral code, it’s insane. But it also means it’s no longer possible to have retail outlets in these communities because if everyone walks in and steals $500, you’re out of business in about a week.

Aaron:

Yeah. Look at San Francisco.

Porter:

Exactly. So everyone should know based on the history of law enforcement in the United States, if you want to have a community that’s safe, you start by cracking down on all crime, because all these people are recidivists. The guy who attacks the guy on the street or the poor woman on the street – it’s not the first time he’s done it. So you crack down on all crime. It’s the broken windows theory of–

Aaron:

That’s right.

Porter:

… law enforcement where if somebody breaks a window, you put them in jail. You create an environment where the laws are being respected and then people don’t commit crimes ’cause they know there’s going to be consequences. Well, of course, we’ve done the opposite of that in America. This story that we found just left me absolutely shaking my head and appalled at how this could happen in America.

Aaron:

Twitter, of course, brought it to us. So this is a DA. His name is Eddie Jordan, and he was a DA from 2003 to 2007 in New Orleans. New Orleans, as you know, is a very–

Porter:

Very safe community.

Aaron:

… very safe community. If you’ve ever been there–

Porter:

A great place to live.

Aaron:

Look, I lived in Houston. I would go to New Orleans as a younger guy and participate in the Bourbon Street shenanigans. Man, it smells like urine, smells like vomit. It’s not fun.

Porter:

But that’s not the dangerous part of town.

Aaron:

No, no. That’s the safest, ’cause that’s the only part that you have police. Anything outside, like Baltimore, you go three blocks in either direction, you might be in the worst part than a Third World country.

Porter:

And New Orleans, of course, is notoriously corrupt. Louisiana is notoriously corrupt, but what this guy did took it to a different level.

Aaron:

Yeah, for sure. So he took over as being the AG, he immediately started to show some corruption by favoritism and who he was going to prosecute. But most important, he fired immediately–

Porter:

He fired every single person who was not African American in the DA office.

Aaron:

Yeah. He fired 45 out of 46 people – 45 out of 46 – and he went on to replace them with all African Americans.

Porter:

With all African Americans.

Aaron:

Right.

Porter:

That’s got to be illegal.

Aaron:

Well, it wasn’t. Now how do you think the office did? Because he wasn’t hiring on merit, he wasn’t hiring on how well your track record had been for any prosecutions.

Porter:

My prediction is that he promised the voters, the African American community that elected him, that he would appoint prosecutors who wouldn’t arrest people.

Aaron:

That sounds very familiar to what’s going on today, ’cause that’s exactly what happens.

Porter:

Marilyn Mosby in Baltimore, same thing. So then what happened to crime in New Orleans?

Aaron:

Yeah. What happens to the police? What do they do?

Porter:

Well, they keep arresting people, but they won’t keep them in jail ’cause–

Aaron:

Right.

Porter:

…they won’t prosecute them.

Aaron:

That’s right.

Porter:

That’s right. So what happened to crime in New Orleans?

Aaron:

Explodes.

Porter:

Explodes, and now it’s the most dangerous city in America.

Aaron:

Yes.

Porter:

Do they eventually vote him out of office? He resigned? There was some scandal.

Aaron:

So he did resign in disgrace, and the employees of his office described a lack of office supplies, paperclips. They cried about all this other stuff ’cause it wasn’t their fault that crime had exploded. They blamed the guy who hired them, and they didn’t look into the mirror to have accountability. That’s a theme in America. But Porter, so you brought something to me when we first started working together at Porter & Co., and I try to question… why the moral decay in America? You said, “Simple. When money doesn’t mean anything as far as anything backing it, and you have to speculate on everything, you have to gamble – savings go right through your hands. You start to do things that are morally bad.”

Porter:

Right. When the money itself has no credibility or integrity, the integrity and the credibility of society falls apart, starting with, of course, the government. When everyone sees the government as a sinecure or an employment opportunity or a chance to enrich their friends and neighbors by hiring them regardless of their skills or talents and refuses to do its job, particularly in law enforcement, you just have chaos. Unfortunately, I live in Baltimore County. This farm is in Baltimore County, and Baltimore City is an absolute no-go zone. Recently, I think it was about a year ago, this guy was driving through town and this young kid accosted his car wanting to clean his windshield.

Aaron:

Yeah, they’re aggressive here.

Porter:

They call these guys “the squeegee boys,” and they’ve started doing things like grabbing people’s phones and stealing money from Venmo and things like that. Well, this guy, the guy hit his car or something. So the guy stopped, and he got out with a baseball bat. Not a good choice.

Aaron:

No, don’t do that. Don’t get out of the car.

Porter:

No.

Aaron:

Don’t grab a baseball bat.

Porter:

And the kid shot and killed him. But the point of it all is, in my opinion, the interaction and the violence is inevitable when you have people who are allowed to run like a gang on the most important street corners in your city, and nothing ever is done to stop them.

Aaron:

Yeah. Well, you look no further than… was it the Freddie Gray case back in the day here in Baltimore where the riots popped up? His rap sheet was miles long.

Porter:

He had been arrested 26 times. He had been arrested for serious heroin distribution charges. I’m sorry, but the kid is not a hero to a community. He’s selling heroin in his own community.

Aaron:

Then obviously our DA here, she went after the cops. So what message does that send to the cops? Are they going to go out and do their job?

Porter:

All of whom were acquitted.

Aaron:

But they became fearful, because if you’re going to be the one accused of the crime and you’re going to be prosecuted, you’re not going to go do your job.

Porter:

Well, while they were burning down all of the liquor stores, all of the drug stores and their own communities, the mayor came out and said they needed to be given space to express themselves.

Aaron:

Yes.

Porter:

So just again, just absolute zero law enforcement. How are you going to get people to come and invest in building better real estate? How are you going to get people to move their businesses downtown? How are you going to save any of that corporate space down there? The old Alex Brown building in downtown Baltimore was recently sold at auction. You guys may not recall, but a friend of ours was very involved in the investment banking world in Baltimore. We call him “the country club guy” because he supposedly was a trader.

Aaron:

Right.

Porter:

But really, every time I went to the country club, I saw him–

Aaron:

Yes.

Porter:

… and he knows everybody in town.

Aaron:

Well, now he’s got two country clubs, by the way.

Porter:

Oh, yeah, now he has two. Yeah, I see him at both–

Aaron:

One wasn’t enough.

Porter:

…both of the clubs. He’s at Caves and he’s at Baltimore Country Club.

Aaron:

At BCC, yeah.

Porter:

Yeah. By the way, I’m a lowly BCC guy.

Aaron:

Yeah. I don’t even know if they’re going to let you in Caves.

Porter:

I don’t rate Caves. Anyways, country club guy, any idea what that Alex Brown building recently sold for?

Aaron:

$24 million.

Porter:

$24 million. So a $100-million-plus building sells for $24 million.

Aaron:

I don’t even know if that’s a steal for the person that bought it for $24 million.

Porter:

No, it’s–

Aaron:

I think that’s going to go down.

Porter:

It’s 25 cents on the dollar, call it?

Aaron:

I think that’s going to be too much.

Porter:

And why? Well, because the very first thing you need for a functioning society is law and order. I don’t know how this will get resolved across America, but someday there has to be–

PART 3 OF 4 ENDS [01:00:04]

Porter:

It’s America. But someday there has to be a black leader who comes out and says, the black community needs law enforcement. We have to put criminals in jail; the statistics around black on black violent crime is astounding.

Aaron:

Yeah. I mean look, if you go door to door… and I know I’ve seen it on these kind of, like, not MSM reporters, but reporters that give the truth. They go to these neighborhoods that are rougher, and they ask the residents – you know what the residents say? “Yeah, we want more police.”

Porter:

How about this for something you can’t make up. Did you see the story about the school system in Stanford, Connecticut? So there was a school board member who looked at the students who had been expelled, and what she found was that one out of 10 African-American students had been expelled.

Aaron:

Yes.

Porter:

One out of–

Aaron:

50.

Porter:

One out of 25 Hispanic students had been expelled.

Aaron:

And then one out of 50 Caucasian.

Porter:

One out of 50 Caucasian, then it was like one out of 100 Asian students.

Aaron:

Yes.

Porter:

Okay. So if anyone listening has gone to public high school ever in their lives…

Aaron:

We did.

Porter:

Is it a surprise to you that less Asian students were expelled from misbehaving than Hispanic students or African-American students?

Aaron:

No.

Porter:

Not a surprise to me at all.

Aaron:

At all.

Porter:

Why? Well, generally speaking they came from different socioeconomic backgrounds. They were less interested in school, they’re more likely to drop out, they’re more likely to be a behavioral problem. Is that because of their race?

Aaron:

No, it’s the way they were raised.

Porter:

Are there plenty of African-American kids who are great students?

Aaron:

Absolutely.

Porter:

Sure, same thing with Hispanic students.

Aaron:

Right.

Porter:

Same thing with white kids. But the reality is they come unfortunately from disadvantaged backgrounds in a way that’s disproportionate with Asian kids or white kids. Okay, so they’re going to be more of a behavioral problem. Does that mean we should ignore their behavioral problem?

Aaron:

Absolutely not.

Porter:

What she said was she wanted to launch an investigation to determine why there was bias in the application of the school rules.

Aaron:

It’s just this equality thing – this equality equity thing, it’s madness.

Porter:

There’s a difference between equality and equity, and that’s what one of the tenets of this show is and one of the tenets that we think America should be about. It doesn’t matter where you came from, it doesn’t matter what you had – everyone in this country has the same opportunity. You get to go to school for free; you can take advantage of it if you want to.

Aaron:

Yep.

Porter:

Your employer is not allowed to discriminate against you in the basis of race, whether you’re white or black. So there’s equal opportunity for everybody, and the talk that I hear all the time is, “Well, that can’t be true because of X, Y, Z, P, D, and Q.” But I think about my own upbringing, my so-called white privilege. My dad was sent to the Vietnam War; he didn’t come back. My mom was a poorly paid bank teller… she had two children… the only reason why we weren’t on welfare is because my grandparents would help out my mom. But she couldn’t afford to pay any of the bills.

Aaron:

No.

Porter:

I didn’t get to go to private schools.

Aaron:

Nope.

Porter:

I didn’t have any of those advantages – the advantage that I had was I had two loving parents. My mom of course remarried eventually, my stepfather adopted me, I had two loving parents – that’s a huge advantage. But it has nothing to do with race, and I’m hopeful that we can finally put this issue behind us as a country, that it’s a great thing to have two loving parents and to be advantaged as a child. That’s great, but if you didn’t have that, it doesn’t mean you get to commit crime. It doesn’t mean you get to disrupt school, it doesn’t mean that you’re owed other taxpayer monies. You’ve got to find a way to make it on your own in America.

Aaron:

Yeah. You know, Porter, a little fact that a lot of your audience doesn’t know – and we actually had this come out with one of the interviews that you had with Grant, and he did a great job – was when you have a superhero, it’s like what’s their origin stories? What was it that carved them into the superhero? One of the things – I had a stepdad that had a lot of PTSD from serving two tours in Vietnam. As we know, they’ve come out and admitted the Gulf of Tonkin was a complete false flag. So Vietnam should have never happened, just like everything the government does. Well, you lost your dad literally, he disappeared from that, and in the interview I found it fascinating that you were talking about… it’s kind of one of your vendetta things as to why you help investors get to where they need to be to have freedom from government. It’s because if you’re a slave to the government and you don’t have money, you’re going to get tricked and lied to all the time.

Porter:

Yeah. My dad and your stepdad were among the many people who believed the government when they said outrageously that if we didn’t stop communism in South Vietnam–

Aaron:

Yeah, South Vietnam–

Porter:

It’d show up on the shores of America.

Aaron:

Yep.

Porter:

Hardly a more outrageous lie’s ever been told. Except for that wearing a mask helps… the vaccine is safe… all the other things government does.

Aaron:

And the fact that actually communism has showed up on our shores.

Porter:

All you had to do to cure communism was leave it alone.

Aaron:

That’s it – it always destructs.

Porter:

The empty store shelves and the corruption of that system will always destroy itself; all you have to do is leave it alone. The reality is, if the government had not insisted on making war in Vietnam, nine out of 10 Americans would’ve never known where Vietnam was on a map or who Ho Chi Minh was, and they would’ve never cared.

Aaron:

Never.

Porter:

So it was completely a situation that was created to the benefit of defense contractors and the government people that that empowered. The result was a loss of 55,000 American lives, a decade or more of productivity in our economy, and how many hundreds of thousands of people who suffered, and then their families suffered. These are enormous tragedies, and it all starts with simply not knowing anything remotely truthful.

Aaron:

Yep.

Porter:

Anyone who went to Vietnam for three days could have told you way more about it than CBS News ever would.

Aaron:

Yeah, absolutely. Another “you just can’t make this stuff up,” Porter. So you remember during the COVID lockdowns we couldn’t go to church, they were closed, liquor stores were open, strip clubs were open, right?

Porter:

Strip clubs were open?

Aaron:

Allegedly, I never went to any but they were allegedly open. Now, do you remember when early on you had George Floyd and you had the BLM riots and the media was like, “Yeah. But COVID is not going to get anyone out there protesting because COVID knows right and wrong.” Right? It knows that, right? So you remember how much chaos and destruction BLM had across the country? How many buildings, how many deaths?

Porter:

Now let me guess, the people who run BLM were only in it for their own financial gain? Let me guess.

Aaron:

Well, that actually did happen. So many of them bought mansions; the money was never actually transferred to any good cause, and by the way most of the money came from Democratic donors.

Porter:

Yeah.

Aaron:

That’s not a surprise either.

Porter:

Right.

Aaron:

So are you ready for this?

Porter:

Yeah.

Aaron:

New York City agrees to pay $13 million or nearly $10,000–

Porter:

$13 billion?

Aaron:

$13 million.

Porter:

$13 mill.

Aaron:

$13 million, or nearly $10,000 each to protestors beaten, arrested, in 2020 BLM demonstrations in New York.

Porter:

Yeah.

Aaron:

So now people are getting rewarded to go out and riot. What kind of message does that send?

Porter:

Have you ever been around an abusive cop?

Aaron:

Yeah.

Porter:

In public?

Aaron:

Yeah, I’ve seen some. Yeah.

Porter:

Me too.

Aaron:

I’ve run across some.

Porter:

Exactly – you think you ever had your civil rights violated?

Aaron:

Absolutely.

Porter:

Yeah, me too.

Aaron:

Yeah.

Porter:

Yeah. I don’t think it was because I was white and they were black.

Aaron:

No, it’s a power trip.

Porter:

Yeah. So when you get around a really mean, abusive cop, what do you do?

Aaron:

You don’t push back.

Porter:

At all.

Aaron:

At all.

Porter:

You say, “Yes, sir.” You take the ticket or the arrest or whatever the thing is.

Aaron:

Or you get out of there.

Porter:

And then you tell the judge.

Aaron:

That’s right.

Porter:

You don’t tell the cop.

Aaron:

No.

Porter:

A cop’s not going to listen.

Aaron:

Nope.

Porter:

You might remember that the comedian… what’s his name? Chris Rock.

Aaron:

Yep.

Porter:

He made a really funny video maybe 20 years ago called, “How Not to Get Your Ass Kicked by the Police,” and if you watch that video today, I promise you he would be canceled for it. Because it’s full of racial tropes, but it’s also some pretty wise advice.

Aaron:

Yes.

Porter:

If your girlfriend is high on cocaine, don’t give her a ride somewhere.

Aaron:

Exactly right.

Porter:

She’s going to get your ass beat by the cops.

Aaron:

That’s right.

Porter:

And a lot of other things that are funny in that video. But look, the reality is there are good cops and bad cops, just like any other profession, and there are some cops who are abusive. When you encounter them, fighting back is a sure way to get your ass kicked.

Aaron:

Yeah, absolutely.

Porter:

That guy who died in Minnesota – I thought it was tragic and terrible, and of course I saw the video and was horrified by it. But the reality is, if he had just sat quietly in the back of the police car, he’d still be alive today.

Aaron:

Yeah. I mean–

Porter:

Trying to fight the cops when you’re handcuffed – not smart.

Aaron:

No, it’s never a good idea, and we’re seeing more and more of that. But of course, the whole “defund police” thing and just this divisiveness that politicians put out there… and of course it’s to separate us. Of course, it’s to make us point the finger at each other and blame each other because then we don’t look up, we don’t see who’s actually causing the problems, and that’s one of their tricks. It’s one of their classic tricks, and they’ve been pretty good at it, but I think a lot of people are waking up, and you see it a lot. Let’s talk about RFK Jr. for one second; he’s been fascinating to me, and we talked a little bit about it with Ron Paul, and here is a guy that I believe speaks absolute truth. Right? He had his father murdered and his uncle murdered by the CIA.

Porter:

I think he is desperately in search of the truth, and like people who do that, he will make mistakes.

Aaron:

Sure.

Porter:

But what I like about him so much is that when the facts change, he changes his mind.

Aaron:

He does, and he always comes with the receipts.

Porter:

Right. So people have called him anti-vax – that’s not true.

Aaron:

No, not at all.

Porter:

He’s a vaccine skeptic.

Aaron:

Yes.

Porter:

He wants to know what the facts are before we stuff our children full of vaccines; he’s got a great point. When he was growing up, there was four vaccines you’re supposed to take; now there’s something like 17.

Aaron:

72.

Porter:

72, geez.

Aaron:

72. With immunity, by the way.

Porter:

What’s the cumulative effect of that on your immune system? Could there be a connection between that and the stunning rise of type 2 diabetes in otherwise healthy children?

Aaron:

And a stunning rise of autism?

Porter:

I don’t know, but I wouldn’t say–

Aaron:

He asked the questions.

Porter:

But I wouldn’t say those are bad questions to ask.

Aaron:

Not at all.

Porter:

The other thing that I would like to point out is I do believe that parents should have an exclusive right to decide what’s appropriate for their own children in healthcare or anything else.

Aaron:

Yeah. Well, California’s gotten mad with “you just can’t make this stuff up” anymore. If you have a child that’s 12 years old and they are at school, and they decide that they’re a different gender and you as a parent disagree, they have the legal right to take the kid now for the state… that’s gone way too far.

Porter:

So it used to be if you called your son a pussy they would put you in jail for abuse, but if your state wants to give him a pussy that’s fine.

Aaron:

Totally fine, and you’ll go to jail.

Porter:

Seems very normal to me.

Aaron:

Yeah. So that’s one of the wild things, so to go back to the–

Porter:

It makes complete sense.

Aaron:

To the RFK thing… so I don’t know if you saw the other day, but he was at a censorship hearing at Congress.

Porter:

Did I see it? I loved it.

Aaron:

Loved it.

Porter:

It was the most incredible thing I’ve seen in American politics in my entire life.

Aaron:

Yes. So immediately–

Porter:

He’s accusing the censorship board of censoring him.

Aaron:

Yep, they had a vote. 102 of them voted immediately while he was there to censor him and remove him and not hear anything that he had to say.

Porter:

I love it.

Aaron:

And he delivered an incredible speech to them.

Porter:

It was the best political speech I’ve seen in my entire life.

Aaron:

Absolutely.

Porter:

I would’ve never suspected that I would get behind any kind of Kennedy presidential candidate.

Aaron:

I wouldn’t either.

Porter:

I’m a libertarian, and I see the Kennedys as being from the Big Government school of things. But man, this guy really captured my imagination with his impassioned plea for the First Amendment, and you know how I feel about the First Amendment.

Aaron:

Yeah.

Porter:

When COVID came out, I made these fantastic T-shirts – a country club guy helped me. It says, “Fuck your mask” on the front, and on the back there’s an American flag and a copy of the First Amendment written out. “Ain’t nobody has the right to tell me what I can and can’t say.”

Aaron:

Right.

Porter:

By the way, that’s also made me a fan of Elon Musk. I’ve been very critical of Elon Musk as a business person over the years. But he came out and said, “I’m going to say what I want, and if it costs me money so be it.” That’s the way I’ve always lived my life.

Aaron:

He’s done a pretty good job on X, Twitter right now. He’s opened up free speech, and a lot of taboo topics are being talked about, and a lot of really good conversations are happening that weren’t happening before.

Porter:

Yeah. He’s done the right things on Twitter in terms of shutting down all the child porn aspects of it, which the other people were tolerating and also making it a very open forum for actual legitimate speech.

Aaron:

Yeah. Another “you just can’t make this stuff up”: I know one of our favorite people to watch on Twitter – she gets a lot of airtime – is Karine Jean-Pierre. She’s the–

Porter:

Without a doubt the worst White House press secretary of all time.

Aaron:

I still today don’t think she’s ever answered one question, ever.

Porter:

No.

Aaron:

It’s really unreal.

Porter:

But she’s a lesbian.

Aaron:

She talks about that all the time. She’s the first lesbian LGBTQ press secretary, and that’s all that matters.

Porter:

What I can’t figure out is why does anybody care what she does in her bedroom?

Aaron:

Nobody should care.

Porter:

I don’t.

Aaron:

Like we always say, just don’t hurt children. Do whatever you want, just don’t hurt children.

Porter:

Don’t hurt children.

Aaron:

Unfortunately they’re bringing children into it too much. So KJP the other day–

Porter:

KJP.

Aaron:

She’s getting bombarded with questions, not around the Hunter Biden stuff. Of course, that’s just all too insane for me to even get on. But around one of our themes Porter, this–

Porter:

Wait, so hold on.

Aaron:

Yeah.

Porter:

Whose cocaine was it?

Aaron:

It had to be Donald Trump’s.

Porter:

The FBI can’t figure it out.

Aaron:

No, they dropped the case.

Porter:

I think it was Donald Trump’s.

Aaron:

It had to be for sure.

Porter:

Sorry to interrupt, but that stuff is hysterical.

Aaron:

So one of our major themes that we talked about, which is energy and the insane policies that they have coming out for the Biden administration is this idea that… And AOC talks about it. You got to get rid of gas stoves, right? So it started with the gas stoves. Now it’s gone to AC units, refrigerators, washing machines, dishwashers, now water heaters. So basically every home appliance is now off the table for anything that can have any type of effect on climate change. Even–

Porter:

I guess they like tent cities so much in their cities that they want everyone to live in a tent.

Aaron:

Well, even the other day the Biden administration said they’re going after gas generators. Well, that’s convenient, so when they cut the power grid down or it goes off, there’s nothing you can do.

Porter:

Yeah.

Aaron:

You’re completely reliant upon the government.

Porter:

By the way, for all the listeners who don’t know, when there is a Republican president in power, we will be just as critical of their administration.

Aaron:

Absolutely.

Porter:

We think the government should leave everyone alone, both sides.

Aaron:

And they’re not going to.

Porter:

No, of course not.

Aaron:

At all.

Porter:

All they do is raise taxes, write more rules, take more of your liberty away, and then condemn you if you try to say anything about it.

Aaron:

Yeah. So the other day she was asked about, “Hey. So one day are we just not going to have any appliances?” She said, “If it’s enacted, it would not take into effect until 2029, so let’s not forget that.” That’s her answer.

Porter:

Oh, okay.

Aaron:

That’s the way that she handles business.

Porter:

It’s a terrible policy, but it’s okay because it’s not going to happen for a while.

Aaron:

Right, Biden won’t be there, so it’s okay. So anyways, it’s a clown world, like I said. Every single day I get on Twitter, I laugh, I cry, I shake my head, I go through all the range of emotions because I’m just shocked by what’s going on. But one thing that Ron Paul did talk about… he kept bringing up the word “education.” What I think he was really talking about, because when I think about education I think about the university, I think about government… He’s talking about the awakening.

Porter:

Yeah.

Aaron:

Right?

Porter:

Good ideas.

Aaron:

He’s talking about how people – they’re not getting fooled anymore, we’re not getting scammed.

Porter:

Well, there’s a lot of people that are still fooled. So the Biden administration is definitely going to have the largest budget deficit in history. I expect it’ll be something around $4 trillion after four years. But one of the things that we’d like to draw attention to in this podcast is that the government shouldn’t have so much power, and it definitely should not have the right to tax us without our explicit consent. Running budget deficits is simply a tax on unborn taxpayers, which they should not be able to do. The government, like households, should have to run a balanced budget. There are many states by the way where the state constitution requires they run a balanced budget. It seems like a very small concession to our views that we should have more freedom and more liberty in our country, that at the very least, the government should have to run a balanced budget.

Aaron:

Yeah. I agree with that, and all feedback please send to [email protected]. [email protected] – we’d love to hear from you all your thoughts, any ideas, because they’re always fun.

Porter:

Well, it’s great to be back. Thank you guys very much for listening, I hope we’ve entertained and informed. We would love to have your questions; we’ll of course address them in our next episode, and we’re going to do this once a month. So look for a new Black Label Podcast from us just once a month; we’ll always have a great guest. We’ll try to say something that’s both hysterical, educational, and controversial.

Aaron:

Yep. You can guarantee the controversial.

Porter:

For sure.

Aaron:

All right, Port. It’s great to be back, man.

Porter:

Bye everybody.

Aaron:

See ya.

Speaker 1:

Thank you for listening to the Porter & Co. Black Label Podcast, with your hosts Porter Stansberry and Aaron Brabham. We’ll see you soon.

PART 4 OF 4 ENDS [01:18:02]