Trump is authoritarian and doesn’t understand how government operates: Ron Paul

Former US congressman Ron Paul says frontrunner Republican candidate Donald Trump is a dangerous authoritarian who does not understand how government operates.

Paul, a former US presidential candidate, made the remarks in an interview with Russia Today (RT) on Thursday, when asked what kind of economy the United States would have if Trump is elected president.

The founder of the Ron Paul Institute for Peace and Prosperity said that Trump would be dangerous if elected president because he is an authoritarian who favors government intervention in business.

“I think, Donald Trump is an authoritarian and he brags about it. ‘I'm the boss and I tell people what to do,’” he said. “Well government happens to be a little different than that.”

“He is talking about of having strong taxes on imports. He wants to punish people. And he is the ‘boss’. So I think he would be very dangerous to the economy,” he added.  

“He says I’m going to bring jobs back. You don’t do that with protectionism. Protectionism makes things much worse,” Paul noted.

Trump wants to run people’s lives

Trump, the New York real estate billionaire, continues to dominate the crowded Republican field as a recent survey shows 23 percent of Republican primary and caucus voters say Trump has the best chance of winning the White House in the 2016 presidential election.

“He’s getting a lot of attention right now but he is an authoritarian. He wants to run people’s lives, and run the world, and run the economy, because that’s the way he lives his life,” Dr. Paul said.

“An authoritarian is the opposite of a libertarian. A libertarian wants to release the individuals, get government out of our lives, out of the economy, and out of all these places around the world,” said Paul, a former member of the Libertarian Party, which promotes civil liberties, free markets, non-interventionism, and laissez-faire.

Paul predicts major economic downturn

The former Texan lawmaker also predicted a major downturn in the US economy. “It’s totally chaotic. Everything is misdirected, because of the price of money. So there are bubbles at every place. You have a stock market bubble, you have still bubblemaking in housing ...”

“The world has never had a situation like this where the whole world endorsed a paper currency and had pyramiding of debts around the world by the reserve currency which is the dollar,” he said. “So it’s the biggest bubble ever, so it is going to be the biggest crash ever.”

Media manipulates election process

Elsewhere in his remarks, Dr. Paul said some of the machinations in the long election process are orchestrated by the mainstream American media and that he finds them entertaining.

The RT host asked Paul, whose son is also running for president, does the rise of private candidate mean the economy is the main issue on the minds of most Americans?

“Well, probably yes, but if you look at the Democrat side, you have someone like Bernie Sanders, who has been in nothing else except politics. And he's doing pretty well. And most incumbents are reelected,” he said.  

“So I think some of this stuff in the presidential campaigns is orchestrated by the major media. It is entertainment. They have competitions going on and on. So I don't put a lot of stock [in the presidential process], this is still pretty early,” he noted. 

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