Transcript

Ali Velshi: You think you got a chance of winning in Iowa?

Ron Paul: Those odds sound pretty good. I guess we certainly do have a chance, but I think we have a little bit of work to do, we still have a couple of weeks. I think we’re in a good position and I’m really enjoying it because I think the American people have come around to believing that government is not our answer, and my offer of the freedom philosophy is something that is very attractive.

Ali Velshi: You actually want to close a lot of federal agencies, and there was an interesting poll in the Des Moines Register that I want to show our viewers about the number of people who agree with you. 60% of respondents agree with closing the Department of Housing and Urban Development; 57% respondents agree with closing the Environmental Protection Agency; 54% respondents agree with closing the Department of Education; 45% respondents agree with closing the Department of Energy; 42% respondents agree with closing the TSA, we can discuss what you can do with that, if you can get rid of the TSA. 36% respondents agree with closing the Federal Reserve.

Here is the issue: places like the EPA have 17,000 employees, HUD says that they got 8,900 employees. What do you do in a tough economy like this with the unemployment rate where it is, job creation not where it is? And you’re advocating a whole lot of people losing their jobs.

Ron Paul: Well, you go through attrition and you let them go and you reduce the number of people that are working for the government. Because many of us who see government as the problem, and people working for the government as being non-productive; it takes money out of the private economy, puts it in the government, and then the bureaucrats do damage to the economy. So you lose twice. But it’s not like putting them on the street on the first day, but there is attrition and they go back into the workforce. But we’ve gone through periods like this, and the example I’ve used frequently is, after World War II 10 million people came home and we didn’t have any work program. And all of a sudden they had jobs again because the government got out of the way.

Ali Velshi: I believe there has been some resurfaced talk again about some things that were written in a newsletter under your name. I know you’ve started to address this, but in 2008, The New Republic, James Kirchick attributed some comments to you in newsletters where you refer to disturbances in Washington’s Adams Morgan as “Animals taking over the DC zoo”. Referring to African Americans you said Martin Luther King seduced underage girls and boys. You talked about Ronald Reagan proclaiming Annual Hate Whitey Day with Martin Luther King Day. And you advocated prohibiting AIDS patients from eating in restaurants. These things were published under your name.

Ron Paul: Yea, but I didn’t write them and I disavow them.

Ali Velshi: But you’re a presidential candidate. That’s tough, right? I mean, it kind of comes back to bite you that you made money off of things that were published under your name that were hateful and racist.

Ron Paul: Yea, but this has been addressed for 20 years and nobody accuses me of that type of beliefs or language. I’m a true civil-libertarian and I think people dig these up when people think, “Oh, his economic policies are winning, his foreign policies are winning, his monetary policies are winning”. So they have to dig these things up which they really can’t pin on me because they’ve been disavowed and they’re old, they’ve been re-hatched. Just go back and read all the articles and there are all the explanations. So yes, it wasn’t good, but I didn’t write them and those aren’t my beliefs, so I sleep well.

—

This is a rush transcript. If you notice any errors please report them using the “Help improve this post” link at the bottom of this post.