FACT CHECK: Did Trump Really Say Replace The Dollar With Gold As The Global Currency To Make America Great Again?

In March 2015 as a presidential candidate for the Republican Party's nomination, Donald Trump told WMUR television in New Hampshire (amazing video ––hat tip Forbes):

"In some ways I like the gold standard. There's something very nice about the gold standard. There's something very nice about having something very solid. You know we used to have a very, very solid country, because it was based on a gold standard. We don't have that any more... Bringing back the gold standard would be very hard to do, but boy, would it be wonderful. We’d have a standard on which to base our money."

Then-presidential candidate Donald Trump said that as a followup to a followup question from the town hall moderator after an audience member asked his opinion about the Federal Reserve:

Audience Question: What if any changes would you make to Federal Reserve? And two do you think they should be audited on a regular basis?

Donald Trump: "Audited absolutely. As far as Federal Reserve is concerned I really think that you can have it, you can not have it, a lot of people like it, a lot of conservative people like it, they think that there's a certain adjustment they make with interest rates and other things. I am not a fan. I'm not a big fan. Audit 100%, but I like a free economy, I like having a great and free economy, and they do a lot of adjustment to the economy. In some cases perhaps it's good, perhaps it's not. The truth is no body really knows. And no body really has an idea. And we have some very conservative Republicans that like the Federal Reserve. And we have some that think it should be totally disbanded. I have no opinion yet. I have not really formed an opinion."

So Donald Trump committed to no opinion about the Federal Reserve, though he did show a quite healthy skepticism of it along with a shout out to a free economy, then said that he does think bringing back the gold standard would "be wonderful."

But did Donald Trump follow through with that kind of rhetoric as president? No. In fact quite the opposite. As president Donald Trump is trying to threaten the Fed into lowering interest rates (inflating the currency) and has shown no serious intention of going to the gold standard, or any commodity standard, really, though it should be mentioned here that he does appear to be following through on his Syria policy.

Obama keeps pushing the bipartisan religion of interventionism

Michael Scheuer is deadly accurate - foreign interventionism is a bipartisan religion (or disease, whichever you prefer). Too often, I believe, Americans think about Washington’s interventionism only as the actual physical intervention of U.S. military forces abroad in places where no U.S. interest is at risk. That activity certainly is intervention, but President Obama’s despicable decision last week to have his administration leak intelligence claiming that Israel has concluded an agreement with the government of Azerbaijan to allow its use of Azeri airfields for an air strike on Iran is just as much an unwarranted intervention by the United States government. Readers of this blog will know that I carry no brief for Israel, that I believe it is a state that is irrelevant to U.S. national interests, and one whose U.S.-citizen supporters are disloyal to America and involved in activities that compromise U.S. security and corrupt the U.S. political system. That said, Israel — l...

Ron Paul’s Devious Plan to Steal the Presidency

This is an absolute hoot! Ron Paul hating Republicans are in panic mode. The website Hillbuzz.org includes in its blogroll Ann Coulter, Michelle Malkin and Conservatives4Palin. Hillbuzz is so utterly revolting that I may just have to subscribe to its updates. Up until yesterday, I really hadn’t taken the Ron Paul campaign very seriously. Most non-Paul voters probably felt like I did, and laughed him off as that “kooky Uncle” who didn’t have a chance in hell to win the Republican nomination for President. Well, I’ve changed my mind. Big time. Yesterday I attended the Republican organizational convention for my Senate district here in Minnesota, and what I witnessed was an organized take-over of our nomination process by Ron Paul cultists. They came to this convention with the sole intent to take over as many of the delegate seats as they could, and sadly, they succeeded. Read the rest here Hillbuzz

How Thorough a Brainwashing

Saw this on Facebook: Left this comment: It's more thorough of a wash job than that. They don't just believe they are not brainwashed, the question has never occurred to them and as long as they keep reading TIME and watching MTV, it's *impossible* for the question to occur to them. Oh brave new world, that has such people in it. EDIT: And one more thing-- don't ever stop considering what questions it is currently impossible to occur to you . This is what I've been thinking about a lot lately and I'm worried just how large and numerous my own blindspots are. The only solution is to be as intellectually curious as possible. To learn voraciously. To read things that challenge us. To read things that are hard for us to understand and then try to understand them. To expose ourselves to ideas far removed from our present culture and place on the timeline. Read old books. Read foreign books. Turn off the TV. You have already absorbed its biases and blindspots. ...

The Humble Libertarian original

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