Throughout the entire 2016 election trail, former Texas Republican Congressman and three-time presidential candidate Ron Paul has been pretty skeptical about Donald Trump. And this level of skepticism has continued with the real estate billionaire mogul winning the presidency last week.
Speaking in an interview with Fox Business Network on Monday, Dr. Paul questioned if Trump will actually “drain the swamp” over the next four years. Although he conceded that “some things will be improved,” he urged caution by nothing that the United States still has “a long way to go.”
Despite some positives coming out of Trump’s camp, Paul believes that his policies will contribute to the national debt, which presently stands at $20 trillion, something that Trump openly criticized during the campaign.
“I think Republicans have a pretty good record of not being bashful with spending money, especially if they have the House and the Senate and the presidency. And we know that Trump has not been bashful about spending money, so we’ll see.”
For the past week, pundits have wondered why Trump pulled off the upset victory. Paul’s belief is that Americans’ concerns about an inflationary economic environment were being ignored.
“I think one of the reasons that Trump did so well is that people are suffering, they don’t have good jobs, but the cost of living is going up and nobody will listen to them. Nobody will believe it and they say, ‘oh, there is no inflation so you don’t get a cost of living increase.’ So, I think that is the problem.”
Nonetheless, Paul warns that more inflation is still on the way, and stated that the term stagflation will become common in the U.S.
Paul, who confirmed that he did not vote for Libertarian Party candidate Gary Johnson or Trump, hinted that he may have voted for his son, Rand Paul.
Trump’s Base Still Enthusiastic Over Paul
Will Paul’s cynicism impact the support he has earned among a lot of Trump’s supporters? Perhaps not. It has been widely known that Paul hasn’t been a vocal supporter of Trump’s, either through the primary process or during the general election campaign.
Joe Hank launched a petition calling for the president-elect to appoint Paul as either Secretary of State or Secretary of the Treasury. Here is what the petition says:
Recently neocon Jennifer Rubin stated she is concerned that Trump might want Ron Paul for the role of Secretary of State in his cabinet. Ron Paul has recently addressed this, saying this is an unlikely scenario.
Yet the entirety of Trump’s candidacy has been made up of unlikely scenarios. And while Ron Paul might not align with Donald Trump politically, the similarities of their candidacies are striking; both didn’t buy into special interests, both exposed corruption on national TV, both weren’t afraid to speak their mind, both are fierce critics of the current foreign policy of the United States and both made the establishment shake in their boots.
This leaves me with the thought of “why not?”. Why would Trump not want Ron Paul in his cabinet? Ron Paul has proven to be a capable statesman and a patriot, and has a large following. Trump could be compelled to bring him in both because Trump wants a competent and intelligent cabinet and because it will draw many voters to him.
So far, the petition has garnered nearly 14,000 signatures.
If that did happen then Paul would upset nearly every part of the political establishment: liberals, who want more spending and debt, and neo-conservatives, who want more war and military intervention.
Unfortunately, it doesn’t seem like there’s a place for Paul in a Trump administration. So far, the president-elect has been surrounding himself with the likes of John Bolton, Michael Flynn and Sarah Palin.
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