Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
Hello and welcome. This is The Michelle Hussein Show. I'm Michelle Hussein. I speak with people like Elon Musk. I think I've done enough. And Shonda Rhimes. That's so cute. This will be a place where every weekend you can count on one essential conversation to help make sense of the world.
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You certainly ask interesting questions. Bloomberg Audio Studios. Podcasts. Radio. News. We spoke with Republican Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky, who chairs the Senate Homeland Security Committee and also serves on the Foreign Relations Committee. Tried to pursue some of these questions we discussed with Wendy.
Asked him about the legality of the Pentagon's actions in Venezuela and whether he thinks they amount to a prelude to war.
I'm very fearful that these boat strikes and the positioning of our ships and our troops right off the coast of Venezuela is a prelude to war. I think that there is a real question of legality. Under the military justice, under the Code of Military Justice, it says that when someone has been incapacitated or shipwrecked,
or they're clinging to the wreckage of a boat, that they're out of combat and they're no longer subject to be killed. And so there is a real question, who gave the order and why would they give the order to kill someone who is out of combat? Now, over the weekend, the Secretary of Defense was saying, well, I don't know anything about it. I don't know anything about a second attack.
But today, when he was interviewed, he said, well, yes, I left the room for a while. The second attack occurred, and I learned about it when he came back. But what was he telling us this weekend? He didn't know anything about a second attack, and he had never authorized it. But now that it's come to light, he says, oh, I didn't do it. Somebody else did it. The admiral did it.
So they're all pinning blame on the military guy. But I'm one who tends to give a lot of ā leeway to the military guy and not so much leeway to the person who gave him the orders. These orders came from the Secretary of Defense, and ultimately he's gonna have to accept responsibility.
But to my mind, there's a question about whether or not killing people in the first place, who you have no proof that they're armed, you have presented no proof that they're carrying drugs, and that you simply kill them. I think that's outrageous. But now not only do we kill them,
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Chapter 2: What concerns does Senator Rand Paul express about US strikes on drug boats?
Our government is following up by killing them when they're wounded and stranded and of no threat whatsoever, which is, according to our own laws, illegal.
Well, you've illustrated that carefully, Senator. It's Admiral Frank Bradley we're talking about. He's been named by the administration. I don't know if you think it's appropriate that his name is made public before he testifies before the Armed Services Committee on Thursday. But I guess the question now is raised, where does the buck stop?
Is it with the admiral, the defense secretary or the commander in chief?
I think it's, to me, amazing that anybody in the public accepts this. The idea that we would make an accusation, we will simply accuse someone and then they are found guilty without any kind of process. We asked the Coast Guard for specific statistics off the coast of Venezuela.
And they said of boats that have been interseeded off of the coast before we came up with this blow them to smithereens policy, we used to interdict them.
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Chapter 3: What questions about legality arise from the Pentagon's actions in Venezuela?
And of the boats that we interdicted off the coast of Venezuela, about one in four, 21% to be exact, were not carrying drugs. That would mean if you're going to blow up all of the boats off the coast that look like drug boats or that you're suspicious for, 21% of the time you'd be killing innocent people. So I think it's outrageous that anybody would countenance this kind of activity.
And I'm surprised that I seem to be one of the few people who seem to be alarmed at this. But I think it's unconscionable. It's wrong on any level to kill people with no proof that they are engaged in combat at all with your country.
Well, so should Pete Hegseth be fired?
There has to be an investigation, and I am glad that for a change there is a bipartisan push from the Armed Services Committee to get to the bottom of this. So there'll be an investigation. I think he needs to be asked under oath, did you give the order to kill any survivors? And if you didn't give the order, what was the order?
Why did the admiral think that he was supposed to kill people clinging to wreckage? And the idea that these people were still a threat, It's a debate whether they were ever a threat. They're on a motorboat 2,000 miles from our coast. If you want to take that motorboat to the closest point of entry in Miami, you'd probably have to fill it up 20 times.
These motorboats can't go 2,000 miles on a tank of gas. If there was drugs on board, they may be going to other countries, but probably not to the U.S. So the whole thing is just remarkable that in our country we would allow this to happen.
Senator Schumer has asked for footage of these strikes to be released. Is that something that you would support?
Yes. We need to see the footage. We need to hear the audio. The Secretary of Defense has now said that he left the room. That's fine. But the whole idea is the Admiral is not just making these decisions without an order. The order came from the Secretary of Defense. Then I hear some of my colleagues in the hallway just saying, oh, no, big dude, we do this all the time.
Whenever we bomb people, we just do a second tap on them, man. If they're moving, we go back and hit them again. Well, if it's soldiers with guns shooting our soldiers, I'm fine with that. But this is a... pretense of a war.
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Chapter 4: How does Senator Paul view the responsibility of military orders?
And maybe he was falsely accused. And I say that facetiously because it gets to the point of if they label you a narco terrorist, they can kill you without trial.
But if they say you're not a narco-terrorist, you can be given a pardon even though you have been convicted, even though he's gloated over all the people he's loaded with drugs, including some who have probably and inevitably have died in our country. But he's okay because the administration does not label him a narco-terrorist. It gets to the whole problem of this.
So I have brought forward with Senator Kaine on a couple of occasions, and will do again, the idea that we have to debate whether this is war. There is a lower standard for rules of engagement in war, but they say it's not war.
But then they say, well, it kind of is war because we've labeled them narco-terrorists, and they are designated to be foreign terrorists, so you can kill them without any proof because they're enemy combatants. But if we try to have a vote in Congress as to whether it's war or not, we can't have that because this is our prerogative.
But then you get into the lunacy of, well, Orlando Hernandez is not a narco-terrorist, but these guys who we don't know their name and we've presented no proof, They're narco-terrorists. It's absolutely and utterly insane.
Senator, Republicans have often been hesitant to push back on the administration's policy moves. How optimistic are you that Republicans will be able to come together, find some unity on this issue and provide oversight on this issue of the boat strikes and the posture towards Venezuela?
I'm encouraged that the Arms Services Committee is going to do an investigation. That is a bipartisan thing. The Republican chairman, Wicker, is going forward with an investigation. I hope they will demand the actual footage and the audio of what happened during that strike. These are strikes that are going out without the approval of Congress.
At the very least, after the fact, they ought to show us the actual video the actual footage and the actual audio, and we should hear under oath from the admiral that gave the order and hear under oath from the Secretary of Defense.
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Chapter 5: Why does Senator Paul believe the government's actions are illegal?
I've got to ask you about health care, Senator. Just a couple of hours ago, you probably saw this, the president posting on Truth Social what appears to be a screen grab of a text that you sent him. Is that real, just for starters? Is that a text that you sent the president?
I did. And I've engaged with the president because I've worked with him before and still want to work with the president. In the first administration, I engaged with him on something called association health plans. These are group plans that individuals can buy.
So, for example, the biggest problem we have in health care is that if you're a small business person, say you're an accountant and you have three employees, you want to buy insurance, you go into the individual market and you have no leverage. And if one of your employees gets cancer or you get cancer, they jack up the risk for your really small risk pool.
Instead, what I'm proposing is you should be allowed to go anywhere you want to buy insurance across state lines, including places like Costco, Sam's Club, Amazon. And then if you became one of millions of people buying insurance, Amazon or Costco would negotiate directly with the insurance company and say, look, I got...
10 million people want insurance, and I'm negotiating for them, and all of a sudden they become the largest entity in America, and they'll drive the prices down. The problem with Obamacare, although well-intended to help people, is when you give people money to buy insurance as insurance rates are going up, you say, I'll give you $1,000, then I'll give you $5,000, then I'll give you $10,000.
You just keep chasing the rates higher because you're artificially increasing the demand, and the price just goes higher. It hasn't worked. So originally, President Obama said prices will go down $2,500 within, I don't know, a year or two of Obamacare. And the exact opposite has happened. So if we continue to do this, it won't get better. We're chasing our tail. We're chasing inflation.
And so what we need is leverage and to allow the marketplace to work, to bid down prices. My plan would also let everybody have an HSA and it would let you purchase your health insurance out of an HSA.
So as you save money and you're able to purchase your insurance out of it, there would be a possibility, particularly over time, that you might be able to accrue enough money that you would be able to get larger and larger deductible because you have a big savings account to cover your deductible.
Just to understand for our viewers and listeners here, Senator, do you need the president, now that you're pitching him on this, to say which plan yours or Bill Cassidy's should be pursued here? And will this get a floor vote when that happens?
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