Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar - 12/1/25: MAGA Drive To Venezuela War, Trump Pardons Convicted Drug Trafficker, Stephen Miller Wife Owned On CNN

Episode Date: December 1, 2025

Krystal and Saagar discuss MAGA's drive to war with Venezuela, Trump pardons convicted drug trafficker from Honduras, Stephen Miller wife owned on CNN.   Juan David Rojas: https://x.com/rojasrjuand/ Seth Harp: https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/730414/the-fort-bragg-cartel-by-seth-harp/      To become a Breaking Points Premium Member and watch/listen to the show AD FREE, uncut and 1 hour early visit: www.breakingpoints.comMerch Store: https://shop.breakingpoints.com/See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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going on internationally. Trump's saying the airspace over Venezuela is closed. He did have a phone call with Maduro, though. So we'll read the tea. Tea leaves there as best we can. Also, a crazy election in Honduras that we are just now getting the early results of after Trump's intervention there. Juan David Rojas is going to join us to break down everything that is happening there. We've also got new reporting on potential Pete Heggseth war crimes to dig into. New election issue just dropped. Of course, we've been following it for a while. But New York Times writing up how electricity prices are the new price of eggs having massive electoral impact as data centers spread and grow. Trump commutes the sentence of a massive fraudster, just the latest,

honestly, of many that he has done. So we'll dig into all of that. Seth Harp is going to join us on the CIA death squads that that Afghan National Guard killer had been part of, apparently recruited into when he was 15 years old. So he's going to break down all the details that we know there. And we've also got a few updates from Israel, including Netanyahu requesting a pardon. So a lot of interesting stuff in the show today. Yeah, that's right. Thank you. to everybody who's been supporting the show. We do hope you all had a nice Thanksgiving with your family, not too many arguments between all of you.

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But let's go ahead and start with Venezuela. As you said, some fast-moving things. They're happening. Trump declaring effectively a no-fly zone over Venezuela. No congressional mandate. There's a lot of contraindicators as to why we would even want to do this, but just deciding, you know, and just out of the blue like he did with Tehran whenever he ordered the evacuation and just said the airspace over Venezuela is officially closed. Here's what he said on Air Force One last night, asked by reporters about this. Reporter, can you tell us why the airspace over Venezuela should be

consider it closed. Trump, because we consider Venezuela not to be a very friendly country. Reporter, does your warning sign mean that an airstrike is imminent or we should not read it that way? Trump, don't read anything into it. Okay, well, I will read a little bit into it because we're talking about the president and the United States military. It's going to put A2 up there on the screen. This was Trump's initial tweet. By the way, he actually is back on Twitter. I'm not exactly sure why. But he says, to all airlines, pilots, drug dealers, human traffickers, please consider the airspace above and surrounding Venezuela to be closed in its entirety. Thank you for your attention to this matter. President Donald J. Trump, obviously incredibly important. One of the things

in our last show that we did before Thanksgiving was warn everyone that the United States military was on high alert, that Southcom, many others had actually restricted the travel of a lot of their personnel. They're flying B-52s off the coast of Venezuela, an incredible amount of firepower, carrier, missile strikes, I mean, all kinds of stuff that has concentrated there in the Caribbean. concentration of force down there since the Cuban missile crisis in 1962. Let's go ahead and put this up here on the screen as well. There are a lot of moving parts, and this is absolutely the most important. Trump did apparently speak by phone with Nicholas Maduro, Venezuela's leader, sometime last week. Quote, they discussed a possible meeting between the two

of them, but nothing has been scheduled, and the administration continues to increase the military pressure on Venezuela. Now, let me tell you what I flagged as the single most important call. I think it's great that they're on the phone. I think it's an important thing. I actually do think if the two of them ever got into a room together, that something would happen. But the phone call included the Secretary of State Marco Rubio. To me, game. That's it. And the reason why is that he, in particular, and I've described this on the show, I've been doing quite a lot of work on this from behind the scenes. What I can say is this, is that Trump is torn completely. You know, he loves the drug thing. He likes the idea of the oil. The Maria Machadoes and the Rubios of the

world have realized that Trump doesn't actually care that Maduro stole the election or any of this so-called. What a shocker. Yeah. It's like, oh, wow, what horror. It's sanctity of elections. It's a big Trump issue. It's preposterous. Oh, we're supposed to invade another country because it's stolen. Who gives a shit? Well, they stole election. It's not my problem. The issue, though, is that they have convinced him couplefold. Number one, they think the drug's right thing is going to pull well. It's not actually true. But, okay, we'll put that to the side. Second, is they genuinely have convinced him that overthrowing Maduro is going to be better. to get the oil, the gold, and all the minerals from Venezuela.

Again, though, this is difficult because when Trump speaks with Maduro, Maduro's like, listen, man, you can have it all. You can have whatever you want. The only thing is, you can't force me out of office. I will leave, but just in a little bit, like a little bit later on, I need to save some face and all of that. For some reason, though, he's drawn the hard lines so much in the sand that he actually is in a no-win situation.

Like, he cannot cave at this point, or maybe he can't, but at least in his mind, Rubio and them are like, oh, sweet, bad for the credibility of the United States. If you don't end up in a deal where he actually does end up, where he actually does end up, like, resigning. And so it's one of those where if the two of them could actually come together, it would potentially come to some sort of a deal. But with Marco Rubio and with many of the other people in the NSC, like Pete Hegsteth and others, they're all telling, they're sweet talking. They're like, it would be a cakewalk. It would be easy. We don't have to do any troops. a couple land strikes. We just have to do this. We have to do that. And so the information

environment around Trump, and look, I'm blaming him too. Okay, he's the person responsible and like he should seek out others. I'm only explaining how there's a bottleneck here that makes this very unlikely. The overwhelming, the overwhelming consensus of the Rubio Camp and others is that this will be cakewalk. This will be easy. It's good for credibility. It's about sending a message. Congress, as we're about to get to, is all bought in. Lindsay Graham and everybody So everyone is aligned on this entire regime change op. And the thing is the center of this is oil. Now, the key point I do want to make is that this is the really dumb way to get the oil

because he literally said, you can have it if you want it. You can have the gold. You can have the minerals. We will happily sell it to you. We just need to be able to preserve our regime in some form and I can haunt over office to my guy. Why is that a bad deal exactly? Why should we care? But that's the table.

That's the table for where we're at. And it will be, I mean, first of all, obviously, I think it'll be a colossal failure. But second, it reveals, as we're about to get to with Honduras, where it, I mean, the way that they can cartoonishly undercut their own justification is amazing because the entire legal justification for this is that Maduro is a drug dealer. And at the very same time, they want to pardon a convicted drug dealer here in the United States of America, former president of Honduras, and say, well, as long as he's good for us. it doesn't matter whether he deals drugs or not. And so, guys, none of this is about drugs, maybe for the courts, and they can litigate that if they want to. But brass tax, it's about oil. And with the oil, Maduro's willing to sell it to us. So even in terms of the deal stakes, it makes no sense whatsoever. This is a pure South Florida, Miami operation. We have a Miami-occupied

government, okay? And yeah, it's true. It's true. We have Miami occupies the White House. We need to free ourselves from the shackles of Miami. We need hurricane to come in here, okay, and actually do something about it. It's driving me crazy, but nobody wants to say anything about it. From the right, the MAGA folks, Tucker's dead one episode, there's been a few others who have been willing to speak out,

but they're afraid because they're like, oh, what are you, a week on the issue of drug dealing? And it's like, well, it's not about drugs. Even Trump doesn't believe it's about, nobody believes that it's about drugs. And then apparently, outside of a few voices on the left, I mean, the entire Democratic establishment is, yeah, cool. All right, Maduro, he's bad, right?

We don't like bad guys. We've learned nothing in Washington. A lot of them, what they'll do is like, oh, well, it shouldn't be removed this way. But it's sort of like a green principle. It's like, I mean, it's just pathetic. Like, Hakeem Jeffries, of course, the leader of the Democrats in the House, has not said one word last we checked about Venezuela at all. I mean, just think about this. You are supposed to be the opposition party and you have nothing to.

to say about a potential war that the supposed anti-war president is threatening to drag us into. Like, that is completely insane, frankly, criminal. Like, they've got to go. You need real opposition in there. But just to, we're going to get more to Honduras with Juan David Rojas, but just to spell the sound for you guys. Trump is pardoning this former Honduras president, Juan Orlando Hernandez, who was convicted here by a jury of actual, like, drug trafficking.

and was said to be involved in, you know, trafficking some 400 million tons of cocaine into this country was probably involved in the murder of a witness in a Honduras prison who produced evidence against his brother. I mean, just insane. And by the way, just so you know, like prior to his conviction, multiple bipartisan American presidents had been willing to work with the sky. But then once they were done with him,

then it's like, all right, it was time to lock him up. But, you know, I mean, let's be real about how much Trump cares about any of this, not to mention that the amount of drug trafficking convictions and investigations have dropped dramatically as they've decided instead the priority is like one at Home Depot, you know, so that's gone away as well. We know about the deals that they also struck with Buckelly in order to lock up a bunch of innocent people in Seacot. In exchange for that, they sent him a bunch of actual gang leaders and drug dealers. So, you know, I mean, you just cannot take seriously that this is a priority for them whatsoever if you're actually looking at their actions. But to Saugra's point, they've sort of thrown every justification scattershot against the wall for, well, let's just throw everything out there and see what sticks. We've got Lindsey Graham here is a perfect example of this. He's still, he's melding together the war on terror and the drug rhetoric here.

He says, I very much appreciate and respect the determination by President Trump to deal with the, listen to this terminate. drug caliphate countries that inhabit our backyard, chief among them. Venezuela for over a decade Maduro has controlled a narco-terrorist state that is poisoning America's created alliances with international terrorist organizations like Hezbollah. He's an illegitimate leader who's been indicted for drug trafficking in U.S. courts maintains control of Venezuela by reign of terror. President Trump's strong commitment to end this madness in Venezuela will save countless American lives, will give the beautiful people of Venezuela a new lease on life. I hear Turkey and Iran are lovely this time of year.

One of these South Florida Congresswoman was, you know, going on some crazy rant. Ryan and Emily covered it last week. Did you see this where they said that he was sending uranium to Hamas? I mean, it's just like completely insane shit here, right? For anyone who's been around the block, there was a nice Iraq war angle to that too with Niger and the yellow cake uranium. Oh, yeah, absolutely. It always comes back to the same thing. And then you can see the case that's being made from Scott Besson and from this, I think, same.

South Florida congresswoman to Trump about like, oh, but we're going to, you know, this is going to be great for, you care about affordability, right? You see, this is an electoral problem. This is going to be great for energy prices. Got to go forward with it so that we can deal with these, you know, with these rising prices and get the price of oil down further. So, you know, they're pitching that. And just like none of it makes any sense. The American people, to their credit, are not buying any of this shit, right?

If you look at the polling of this, the idea of, you know, military action against Venezuela, let alone invading Venezuela's dramatically unpopular. What in the world? It's insulting that the case is so like scattershot and just slapped together haphazardly. Like they have complete disrespect for the American people. We don't even get good propaganda anymore. It's all just pathetic. But ultimately, they don't feel the need to make the case.

They're going to do whatever they're going to do. Now, it's very possible. I think it's very possible that either Trump sort of saber rattles and then ultimately, you know, makes some sort of deal with Maduro. There's talk of maybe they're going to get together. I think it's unlikely. I think Sarah's probably right about Marco Rubio and the other Florida contingent and the White House just continually pushing and pushing and pushing this.

It's a similar dynamic to the dynamic we've seen with Israel where over a long enough time period, or with Ukraine, frankly, over a long enough time period, they get their way. They just keep wearing you down, keep coming up with new explanations. and because Trump has no ideological core, he's very susceptible to that. He's very susceptible to whoever is around him who has the strongest ideological viewpoint. And we know who that is in this White House when it comes to Venezuela. Another possibility is that you have a situation sort of like what happened with Iran, where he decides to go along with what the Zionists wanted to do and to participate in this bombing of Iran.

Could have a similar thing here where he decides, okay, we're going to strike this in that. target, but it's limited. It's not a wholesale invasion. It's not a wholesale. It doesn't go all the way through with regime change. I think that is a possibility as well. But everyone should be very concerned about the developments that we've seen here and certainly the rhetoric that is coming from, you know, so many parts of the Republican coalition that are all pushing in this direction and how little, how little resistance you see, even from the MAGA coalition that's supposed to be anti-war, about going in this direction. Let me continue, shall we? All right. Let's put the next one there up on the screen. This is from Maduro. His government rejects the Trump claim of closing

Venezuelan airspace. But one of the things I do want to underscore is what do we hear about Maduro? He is a psychotic communist. Pro China stole the election. He must be this nefarious guy. Now here's the thing. Do I think Maduro is a murderer? Yeah. Do I think that he stole the election? Yeah, probably. Has he destroyed his country? 100%. Now, all that being said, these people you can still deal with them. And let me give you a perfect example, A6, let's put that one up here on the screen. What they don't tell you is that this entire time, since Trump has been in office, Venezuela has been accepting huge migrant repatriation flights. In fact, this entire time, while Trump has been saber-rattling against Maduro, who supposedly invaded us, he will remember

all of that with the Venezuelan and the migrant situation. With all of that, all this entire time, While we're threatening to overthrow them, threatening to invade flying B-52s, Venezuela has been accepting migrant flights from the United States that we are sending them directly. They accept them, no problems, no questions even asked in many cases. Do you know why? Because they want to keep diplomatic channels and goodwill open with the United States government. And so now after the U.S. says that they are going to stop, Venezuela says, that the U.S. actually unilaterally suspended these migrant repatriation flights after Trump called

for the airspace to be viewed as closed. So let's again understand that, is that we were sending migrants there, deporting them, who are in our country illegally, to Venezuela. Maduro's government is like, yeah, we'll take, I'm sure, you know, there are citizens. We then suspend it because Trump tweets out that the airspace is closed. Does that sound like a guy who's difficult to deal with? He's like, they're like, we want you to take your migrants. He's like, okay, yeah, sure, all right. And so if he says, we'll give you the oil, why wouldn't we believe him? Why wouldn't we believe him?

Why wouldn't we believe him if he says, I'll give you this, this, and this, as long as we work out some deal in the future. It's, you know, they do this with everybody. They paint these people as insane, as psychos. And like, yeah, there's something to that. But you can reason or you can at least strike deals. Well, you know, with these types of people, Kim Jong-un, he's a madman. He's like, is he? He has nukes?

He wants to die in his own bed of old age. That's actually not that hard to understand. Yeah. Yeah, he'll kill a lot of people. That's not a good thing, not justifying it. But as if you can understand somebody's motivation here, Maduro is like him. He wants to live. That's it.

Is he a socialist? Kind of, you know, ish. She's also a Catholic, like super hardcore, social conservators. Nobody fits into a box. A lot of our hawkish policy towards Venezuela and Nicaragua to Cuba, Iran, like, it props up these regimes, you know, towards, I mean, Putin and Russia. Like, it gives them legitimacy. It gives them an excuse for why things aren't going the way they should be in their countries.

Oh, Maduro is executing people who are his opposition or throwing them in prison because he says that they're part of a CIA op to overthrow him. Again, the Iranians did the same thing after the whole Israel campaign. They're like, oh, anybody who's against us, Mossad, right? Because they had so penetrated them. So, yeah, if you're so concerned about the liberals in Iran and all that, yeah, they're fucking dead, okay? And same down in Venezuela. There's a reason that we have to spend all this money on the Venezuelan opposition. And at the end of the day, everyone's like, oh, his regime is weak?

I don't think so, all right? Anybody who survives for, like, 20 years who successfully, you know, according to them, stole an election, there's been no massive uprising. Like, we always try to presume that we know what's best for these people. They have chosen their destiny, or at the very least, they're kind of okay with it. That's not for me to decide. What's for me to decide is somebody willing to sell me oil, and also who's willing to take back their own migrants. Seems quite reasonable.

Somebody that you can deal with. They don't want to do it. Not to mention that all of these interventions and the sanctions and all of this, you know, I mean, this is part of what displaces people. Like, people don't, you know, just want to, it's not a small thing to leave your home and go somewhere and cross a border illegally. I mean, these are all very difficult, dangerous, painful, traumatic things. things. And, you know, you can look at our intervention in these various countries, Honduras being another one that we're about to talk to Juan David about, where, you know, when we get involved and we create chaos and lawlessness and partner with actual narco traffickers like the guy who was president

of Honduras, this is part of what leads to these states being miserable, violent places to live with poor economic prospects and which does cause the displacement of people. There's one more factor here that we just have to mention because you always have to keep your eye on this. There is another group A8, let's put up on the screen. There's another group very interested in always being at war. Trump's focus on drug war means big business for defense startups, which of course it does. So, you know, this is pretty self-explanatory, but in any case, the U.S. military has turned this attention southward.

The defense industry is lining up to sell at the tools for a different kind of war. Defense tech companies and artificial intelligence startups have found a vital new market in Trump's rapidly escalating drug war. weapons and AI platforms that were designed for a future conflict with China or struggled to prove themselves on the Ukrainian battlefield have found a niche in the administration's tech-enabled crackdown on drug trafficking, drone and imaging companies are assisting U.S. Coast Guard and Navy with interdiction operations in the Caribbean AI companies from Silicon Valley to Dubai are pitching platforms that promise to map the hidden networks of fentanyl traffickers on the southern U.S. border

counterdron system developed in Ukraine is being repurposed to deflect incursions from Mexico as Washington has revived the rhetoric and legal tools of the global war on terror. More companies, large and small, have staked their claims the emerging market at times retooling to fit the latest mission. They've rebranded their drone, sensors, AI tools, and data platforms as custom tools for Trump's fight against narco terror. And so basically, you know, now that the Afghanistan war is over and we've actually fully withdrawn there, you know, that was the biggest cash grab. I mean, it's one of the biggest cash grabs for these defense. industrial complex companies in history. And so you got to have something, you know, you got to have something to fill the void here. So what are you going to do? Now they're jumping on board with this

quote unquote narco terrorist, the drug caliphate countries, whatever. So this is the new cash cow for them. And, you know, Trump is close with a bunch of these guys. You've got, um, Sacks has investments in this. You've got Peter Thiel, of course, Palmer Lucky, like all these characters are, um, either directly in the administration or close allies. And so those folks are in his ear as well. who also want to move forward with this. So you've got a lot of forces that are pushing for more war. There's a lot of money in this. I mean, even if you read, look, the same thing happened with the GWI, which the Wall Street Journal accurately describes, is that the war on terror was a bonanza for them. These new defense tech startups, I mean, they don't have a bad pitch, which is that the prime defense contractors are inefficient, bad, too expensive. But that doesn't mean that we need to gin up wars and other policy in order to adjust.

some purchases of all of this AI boat. It's like, guys, it's a fucking boat. It's a small fisherman. Do you really need like AI targeting systems to take it down? No, all right? We've been doing it for years. You don't need any of that. And in fact, there are a lot of different ways that we could deal with it. So this campaign, this entire thing, it makes no sense whatsoever, strategically on the merits in terms of what they're saying. It is preposterous. And luckily, We have a great guest standing by Juan David Rojas to talk specifically about the Honduras angle to this. Let's get to it. A decade ago, I was on the trail of one of the country's most elusive serial killers,

but it wasn't until 2023 when he was finally caught. The answers were there, hidden in plain sight. So why did it take so long to catch him? I'm Josh Zeman, and this is Monster, hunting the Long Island serial killer, the investigation into the most notorious killer in New York since the son of Sam. Available now. Listen for free on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, wherever you get your podcasts. Hi, Kyle. Could you draw up a quick document with the basic business plan? Just one page as a Google Doc and send me the link. Thanks. Hey, just finished drawing up that quick one page business plan for you. Here's the link.

But there was no link. There was no business plan. It's not his fault. I hadn't programmed Kyle to be able to do that yet. My name is Evan Ratliff. I decided to create Kyle, my AI co-founder, after hearing a lot of stuff like this from OpenAI CEO Sam Aldman. There's this betting pool for the first year that there's a one-person, a billion-dollar company, which would have been like unimaginable without AI and now will happen. I got to thinking, could I be that one person? I'd made AI agents before for my award-winning podcast, Shell Game. This season on Shell Game, I'm trying to build a real company with a real product run by fake people.

Oh, hey, Evan. have you join us. I found some really interesting data on adoption rates for AI agents and small to medium businesses. Listen to Shellgame on the IHeart Radio app or wherever you get your podcast. Hi, I'm Dr. Priyank Wally. And I'm Hurricane DeBolu. On our new podcast health stuff, we demystify your burning health questions. You'll hear us being completely honest about her own health. I'm talking about very serious stuff right now, and you're laughing at me. And you'll hear candid advice and personal stories from experts who want to make health care more human. Sometimes you're there to listen, to understand, to empathize, maybe to give them an understanding

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Find health stuff on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. All right, very excited now to be joined by Juan David Rojas to talk about this developing situation with Honduras. So, Juan, at the very moment that we are going to potentially, invade or overthrow the Maduro regime for drug trafficking, President Trump has announced that he will pardon Juan Orlando Hernandez, the former president of Honduras, who was extradited to the United States and convicted for drug trafficking. When asked about this contradiction, let's put this up here, let's say, on the screen, reporter says, you've made clear how you want to keep drugs out of the U.S. Trump, right. Can you explain why you would pardon a notorious

drug trafficker. Trump, I don't know who you're talking about. Reporter, Juan Orlando Hernandez. Trump, many of the people of Honduras said it was a Biden setup. I looked at the facts and agreed with them. Reporter, what evidence can you share it was a setup? Trump, you can take any country you want. If somebody sells drugs in that country, that doesn't mean you arrest the president and put him in jail for the rest of his life.

You know, you might take that same logic and apply it to Maduro. But here with Honduras, apparently it is not applicable. Much of this is because Trump intervened in the Honduras election, of which we now have some results. So, Juan, your general reaction to all of this. It's really stunning. I mean, this is definitely one of Trump's lowest points. I had been following, like, this story with Juan Orlando Hernandez for years. I thought it was terrible.

It was extremely undercover. In 2018, during Trump's first term, his brother, the president's brother, was arrested here in the U.S. for trafficking charges. But despite that, he continued to be buddy-buddy with multiple U.S. administrations, going back to Obama, Obama, Trump, Biden, is super embarrassing photo ops of all of them with Hernandez. And he was super close, actually, to Trump's former chief of staff, John Kelly. they had like over 20 meetings and all of the all this praise it's like oh this guy is a huge u.s ally and so it's like what the heck this guy's a clearly like a narco state kingpin uh and so he was eventually extradited to the u.s in 2022 convicted last year and look the truth is a lot of these cases against like politicians being connected to drug trafficking in latin america they do usually

boil down just the testimony of traffickers, which is unreliable, right? Because they just want better terms for their prison sentences. The thing is with Hernandez, they really got him dead to rights. Like, there's really solid concrete evidence. They found these ledgers with the president and its brothers' initials on it, like for the kickbacks that they would get from different drug shipments. Wow. And the DEA also geolocated traffickers visiting the presidential palace. There was also matches. Hernandez had in his Google account, the content. attacks of traffickers. So this is a shut case. Like, I mean, there's nothing you can say about this guy. This guy funneled allegedly, yeah, or not allegedly, you're convicted for 500 tons of

cocaine to the U.S. So it's, yeah, like you said with Maduro, it's hilarious. I mean, supposedly yesterday, you had another phone call with Maduro telling him, hey, you have to leave or else. Yeah, I mean, this guy appears to be what Trump is pretending that Maduro is. appears that, like, he's the actual thing that Trump is pretending that Maduro is. And now Trump has, you know, made this extraordinary intervention into the elections in Honduras. As of right now, we have partial results that are returned. They're very slow coming in. We'll get to that in just a second. But let me put this Trump, these series of Trump truths up on the screen to see the way that he is sort of like both threatening and bribing

Honduras, the people of Honduras, to vote for his chosen right-wing candidate. So he says here. If Tito Asphuro wins for President Honduras because the U.S. has so much confidence in him as policies and what will do for the great people of Honduras, we will be very supportive. If he doesn't win, the U.S. will not be throwing good money after bad because a wrong leader can only bring catastrophic results to a country, no matter which country it is. Goes on from there, you know, all kinds of additional information, including going after the more center-right figure as well, saying that Nestor. That's the center-right figure, is no friend of freedom, a borderline communist, et cetera, et cetera.

So really throwing in behind this more right-wing candidate. And, you know, it was very reminiscent of the successful gambit that he pulled in Argentina as well on behalf of Javier Malay and his party, who, you know, had direct ties to, you know, some of the people in the Trump administration. So talk to us about this, how extraordinary this intervention is and how you think people in Honduras are reacting to it. Yeah, I personally think that if Trump hadn't, well, I guess it's hard to say because the funny thing is that that centrist candidate that looks like he's going to win. Currently, Asforda, the right win candidate is barely ahead, but there's still over 50% of the results left.

I think probably Nasrallah will win. And he's the most interesting of the three candidates. I don't necessarily say that in a good way. He was actually a current president, Siomara Castro's vice president. He stepped down over, you know, problems with, like, corruption in our administration. And the funny thing is that he was actually the candidate of the leftist Libre Party in 2017, when Hernandez ran for an illegal second term and committed fraud, he stole the election, he committed fraud. Nasralla was the rightful winner.

But anyway, and now he's the candidate of the centrist, the liberal party. So the funny thing also is that he had conducted outreach with a ton of Miami Neocons, our friend Maria Elvira Salazar. And so she was out, like, campaigning for him, basically. So Trump, when he stepped in, he, like, backed Asforda clearly because of his good relations with Hernandez before. Yeah. But in a way, like, it probably divided the vote. Yeah, hard to say exactly what the impact was. Yeah, it means a crazy situation because, look, polls can be wrong.

The polls had the left-wing candidate up significantly, and the Trump candidate was, you know, trailing behind in third place. The exit polls that were coming out yesterday evening. Yeah, had a Monkauer. Yeah, had the left-wing candidate also significantly winning. I saw local broadcasters like, oh, this thing is pretty much over. It looks like she's going to prevail. And then the results start coming out, and they look dramatically different. Now, we were both talking to Ryan this morning, like, what was going on here?

He's got a guy on the ground who's saying, like, no, he's at the polling places, and it looks like the results are legit. One other thing to throw in the mix here, too, Polly Market, which, you know, is just a betting website, but usually, you know, at least somewhat in the ballpark of what's going to happen, originally had the left-wing Canada's this massive favorite. it. And then once the polls closed, it completely flipped in a dramatic way in the other direction. So, I mean, it looks pretty extraordinary what's going on here. The polls, you know, certainly were wildly wrong. The other thing that I think is worth noting is Trump effectively sort of comparing the left wing and even the center right candidate in Honduras to Maduro. And I think people may also be like, well, I see what's going on with Venezuela. I don't really want that for me, too. So I don't know, from the outside, not an expert here, but it appears that Trump may not get his chosen candidate, but it appears to me, like his intervention had a huge impact on what ultimately happens here.

Yeah, yeah, it's hard to say. Polling in Honduras tends to be pretty bad. Yeah, I would say. It's possible that he drove turnout for Asfura. I'm generally inclined to think that whenever he intervenes, voters will be inclined to vote. vote for against them. But that's not what happened in Argentina though, you know. Yeah, yeah, yeah. The calculus could be different. I mean, on Lourdes is a lot closer to the U.S. Maybe voters felt that it was really in their self-interest to have a candidate that was friendly with one of the

things, though, is I was reading this morning, you know, not everything is about us. A lot of it is about us down in Central America. But one of the voters that the New York Times spoke with said, well, I was very disappointed with the narco-trafficking of the previous administration. And none of narco-trafficking has gone down because they believe that the current administration was in on it, too. So it's like they have still one of the highest murder rates in all of Central America. They have plenty of their own domestic problems. Potentially, the sale there was, look, everybody's corrupt. At least the U.S. will extend us a helping hand or something like this under the Trump administration. But more interestingly, I think we have to come back to,

let's put A11 up there on the screen, Ryan's tweet here, is that, you know, the circumstances of this trafficking case still seem to be so important for the story with Venezuela, like Trump threatening to bomb Venezuela over the drug trafficking while also pardoning this drug trafficker. I'm curious for your perspective, Juan, now that we have kind of a mixed record of Trump intervention in Latin America, how any potential Venezuelan invasion or overthrow op or CIA operations that go kinetic and they end up killing Maduro or trying to force him out of office, how would that affect the broader, like, grand strategy of Latin America and the big powers in the region? Greg, yeah, that's a great question.

Really quick, yeah, I love that you said that. Yeah, the truth is that Sumara Castro's government is super corrupt, has had our own dealings with drug traffickers. So the truth is the whole of under us's political class is extremely discredited. But, yeah, as for your other question, yeah, really, and this is another thing, too, too, that Rick C. Moncada, the leftist candidate and also Cimarra Castro, are open supporters of Nicholas Maduro, which actually isn't that common among left-wing leaders in the region. A lot of them, you know, they have like mixed feelings. A lot of them have been kind of forced

to recognize that Maduro is terrible, especially if like their neighbors with him, like Colombia and Brazil. You know, Lula had this huge about face. He said, oh, there was this, uh, uh, Maduro visited him in 23, right after he came back into power. And Lula said that, oh, there was a fabricated media narrative against Venezuela, whatever. And then over time,

the first, like, Venezuela, you know, on paper annexed two-thirds of neighboring Guyana, and the Brazilians were like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, what's going on here? And then they stole the 2024 election. And yeah, Lula really has turned on Maduro ever since.

Similarly with Petro, I mean, yeah, you have like three million Venezuelan migrants that are living in the country now. Maduro sponsors all these leftist guerrillas that attack Colombians, even though Petro is also left wing. So there's a lot of animosities.

At the same time, no one, especially on the left, is cool with the U.S. just invading Venezuela. And Petro's even said that if like, you know, this is bluster, but he said that if the U.S. invades Venezuela, the Colombia would come to its defense. Lula has also said that, you know,

just kinetic action would be unacceptable and also that uh uh the the boat strikes uh which you know are very dubious legally and on various other levels have really pissed off a lot of leaders even on the right too so um yeah i was just in columbia and people have a lot of mixed feelings about you know venezuela the bombings uh all of the stuff uh on the other hand for instance so while i was there support a negotiated transition in Venezuela. And that's a pretty big news item. I remember you messaging me about that. The thing that I coming back to on that is why is Trump,

the thing is Maduro, as you and I have talked about, Maduro, he doesn't even care. He's like, I'll give you the oil and I will leave. I just won't leave today, right? Like I need some face saving. I can need hand power off to my guy. I want my regime to survive and all that. Everybody else in the region seems to be bought in.

but Trump is demanding that he leave now, like tomorrow, right, and effectively allow not just him to be gone, but say that the entire government and its apparatus, which obviously wouldn't even be able to guarantee his safety. Like, it seems that the negotiating terms of this make it impossible for Maduro to negotiate at all, other than absolute surrender. Yeah, that's definitely a result of Rubio

and the rest of the Miami lobby. I mean, they are just fixated on this. a completely two-dimensional view of Venezuela and the other, you know, the so-called Troika terror. It's also funny because the similarities between Hernandez and Maduro, I mean, it's really great. I mean, okay, Maduro, you know, stole the 2024 election. Hernandez stole the 2017 election for his reelection. You know, they're both accused of drug trafficking, you know, we can debate the specifics of both cases. after their fraudulent re-elections, they killed a bunch of demonstrators, too.

I mean, and actually, when you think about it, the only difference really between them, Maduro is super socially conservative. So as Hernandez, you know, both anti-abortion, both super Catholic. Maduro, I told you this in probably before, during the past Olympics, he said that the French desecrated Christ over the weird blue people thing. So he has a portrait in his office of Jesus and him steering the ship of Venezuela. So the only difference here that matters is, oh, you know, Hernandez was in favor of Washington, Maduro was against it. And that's like the two-dimensional logic of neocons and anti-imperialists, respectively. It's like, guys, look beneath the surface. There's really a lot in common here.

I totally agree. Let's talk a little bit more about the pardon. of the motivations of the pardon of Juan Orlando Hernandez has put 814 up on the scram. I just mentioned earlier how potentially some of the motivation for intervening in Argentina propping up Javier Malay were financial because you have a bunch of like hedge funders who are either in the administration or tied to the administration who have a lot of money to lose there. Here you have this, this pet project of the Peter Thiel libertarian tech bros of the

world that was coming to fulfillment in Honduras. And Hernandez was a partner of this. So these economic development zones called Zedes were heavily pushed as a means of stimulating economic development by Castro's predecessor, former president Juan Orlando Hernandez, who was extradited the U.S. on April 21st to face drug trafficking charges, but fears over sovereignty, land expropriation and legality all undermine legitimacy of the project. Prospera pitched international investors. This was this like crypto libertarian city, utopian city that they set up. Pitched international investors' visions of a beachside libertarian paradise replete with low taxes, crypto-friendly regulation.

The zone recently made Bitcoin legal tender, past legislation facilitating the issuance of Bitcoin bonds. Prospera's investors include Silicon Valley heavyweights like Peter Thiel and Mark Andreson through Pronomos Capital, a VC fund, which invests in Autonomous City Project. So this is part of this like network state bullshit, libertarian bullshit that these people are into. And so Hernandez was a supporter of that. The current government was not and was putting an end to this stuff. I mean, this seems like you could see how these people would be in Trump's ear about like, oh, you know, this is a vendetta. It was a witch hen against him.

It was so unfair. It was a Biden setup, blah, blah, blah. Yeah, this is crazy. And in my opinion, it's the reason why Trump decided to intervene because his donors were, yeah, is here and told her, hey, you have to get involved. We need to save our city. So in 2012, Hernandez was the president of Honduras's Congress. It's a unicameral legislator, legislature. And before, and the president at the time, Profito Lovo, who also is deeply involved in drug trafficking, they tried to pass this law creating these special economic

zones. The Supreme Court said no, because essentially they said it was uncons. constitutional for the Honduran state to cede sovereignty over its own territory, because they basically would forego control over these areas. So they staged a kind of coup against the Supreme Court, removed four of the justices at once, and put in cronies that approved the law that went against the country's constitution, created the so-called Ceres, and immediately consortium and investors backed by Peter Thiel and Mark Andreessen, created this. city called Prospera, and that's what the investor group is called, on the island of Roatan, who's this, it's this famous island off the coast of Honduras's Caribbean coast, beautiful,

you know, pristine, white sand beaches, whatever. Today, the city controls around 3% of the island's territory, and they also recently bought a court on the mainland. And it's a libertarian wet dream. Everything is private, the police, the schools, even the justices. system is private. Apparently, they have, like, some state, former state Supreme Court Chief Justice among the people they paid a, you know, rule on issue of rulings and stuff like that. And when Castro came in, she, one of her first actions, was to suspend or to overturn that law. And so now the city is stuck in this kind of limbo, but they're fighting back and they actually stand a chance of winning.

They sued the government under Honduras' free trade agreement, which, by the way, has been disastrous for Honduras, the CAFTA agreement, Central America, free trade agreement, for almost $11 billion. That's around the same as Honduras' entire yearly budget. So they really have them in a chokehold. Castro has been fighting back. That's one of the good things that she's done. and there's a lot of popular discontent over, you know,

selling out your own country to these crypto billionaires. That's another thing. We're just going to give this island to these like tech oligar, foreign tech oligers. So we're just going to do that. You have no say over it. Crypto is legal and prosper. You can buy anything with crypto. So it's, yeah, it's crazy.

I remember hearing about this year's back. I didn't realize it became an actual thing. Yeah. Yeah. Crazy. All right, Juan, you're the best, man. Thank you for everything. Where can people find you?

Where should they subscribe? Subscribe to my substack. It's called Social Democracy with Populous characteristics. And I'll have an article coming out about this, the election for Compact, today or tomorrow. Okay, I'm looking forward to you. Thanks, Juan. A decade ago, I was on the trail of one of the country's most elusive serial killers. But it wasn't until 2023 when he was finally caught.

The answers were there hidden in Plain. in sight. So why did it take so long to catch him? I'm Josh Zeman, and this is Monster, hunting the Long Island serial killer, the investigation into the most notorious killer in New York, since the son of Sam, available now. Listen for free on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, wherever you get your podcasts. Hi, Kyle, could you draw up a quick document with the basic business plan? Just one page as a Google Doc, and send me the link. Thanks. Hey, just finished drawing up that quick one-page business plan for you. Here's the link.

But there was no link. There was no business plan. It's not his fault. I hadn't programmed Kyle to be able to do that yet. My name is Evan Ratliff. I decided to create Kyle, my AI co-founder, after hearing a lot of stuff like this from OpenAI CEO Sam Aldman. There's this betting pool for the first year that there's a one-person, a billion-dollar company,

which would have been like unimaginable without AI and now will happen. I got to thinking, could I be that one person? I'd made AI agents before for my award-winning podcast. Shell Game. This season on Shell Game, I'm trying to build a real company with a real product run by fake people. Oh, hey, Evan. Good to have you join us. I found some really interesting data on adoption rates for AI agents and small to medium businesses. Listen to Shell Game on the IHeart Radio app or wherever you get your podcast. Hi, I'm Dr. Pryonk Wally. And I'm Hurricane DeBolu. On our new podcast Health Stuff, we demystify your burning health questions.

You'll hear us being completely honest about our own. own health. I'm talking about very serious stuff right now, and you're laughing at me. And you'll hear candid advice and personal stories from experts who want to make health care more human. Sometimes you're there to listen, to understand, to empathize, maybe to give them an understanding or a name for what's going on. That helps people a lot, understanding that is not just in their head. We are breaking down the science, talking with experts, and sharing practical health tips you can actually use in your day-to-day life. From when to utilize and avoid artificial light to how to sleep better.

Everything you need to know about fiber and how to poop better. How to minimize the effects of jet lag and how to stay hopeful in times of distress. We human beings, all we want is connection. We just want to connect with each other. We want to make health less confusing and maybe even a little fun. Find health stuff on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. So as you guys know, the Trump administration has been randomly killing a bunch of people in the Caribbean and the Pacific that they claim to be drug traffickers with very little or no evidence. We now have new reporting about the first of those attacks.

I don't know if you guys remember the details. That particular boat had 11 people on board. Part of what made it very suspicious because normally drug traffickers wouldn't have actually that number of people on the boat because they would want to have more space for drugs on the boat. in any case, the reporting indicates that Pete Hegseth himself gave the order to, quote, kill them all after the initial strike on the boat. There were two survivors who remained, who were clinging to the wreckage, and that voice command from Pete Hegseth led to a double-tap strike that experts say is a pretty clear, if we're even accepting their legal rationale that they could be bombing these people to

begin with, is a pretty clear war crime. In any case, Trump was asked yesterday about that second strike, that double-tap strike from Pete Heggseth. Let's put this up on the screen. I'll read it because the audio was really bad. So the reporter said, if there was a second strike that killed wounded people, would that be legal? Trump said, I don't know what happened. And Pete said he did not even know what people were talking about. I would not have wanted a second strike.

The first strike was very lethal. It was fine. This reporting also led to a rather explosive exchange on CNN involving Stephen Miller's wife, Katie Miller, and Bacari Sellers. Let's go ahead and take a listen to that. He said that those orders that were given, the drug boats in Venezuela were illegal. Can you cite those statutes, please? Yes, because it's actually called the Due Process Clause of the United States of America, because can you point to one of those boats that actually had drugs on them?

Do you know that? Do you know about the Trinidadians who were killed innocently, who were just fishermen? Can you actually kill those fishermen without due process? So the answer to the question is yes. I can cite the Constitution, just as Scott did. If you go and say that those were members of Al-Qaeda or ISIS coming to our shores with enough drugs or enough ammunition to kill 1,000, 100,000 Americans, wouldn't you expect our commander-in-chief to take action to stop that? That's what's happening here. That is what's happened, by the way.

That's what happens in every war zone, whether you go to Iraq, Afghanistan, Iran, Somalia, go there. Let's talk about it. Give me one name of one individual that you can compare to Al-Qaeda coming through that had enough fentanyahu. to kill all these Americans. Can you name one? Let's go to what these drug votes are talking about, which is that we are actively ensuring that the war on drugs that we've been doing

for 50 years, which has not worked one single day. Yeah, we can agree on that. It hasn't been successful one day. So what did you want our... The administration, not sending their best there, I would say. Let's go and put this reporting actually up on the screen so I can read you some of the details here. Hagseth order on First Caribbean Boat Strike officials say,

kill them all. The longer the U.S. surveillance, aircraft followed the boat. The more confident intelligence analysts watching from command centers became that the 11 people on board were ferrying drugs. Defense Secretary Pete Hegeseth gave a spoken directive, according to two people with direct knowledge, the order was to kill everybody. One of them said, a missile screamed off the Trinidad coast, striking the vessel, igniting a blaze from bow to stern. For minutes, commanders watched the boat burning on a live drone feed. As the smoke cleared, they got a jolt. Two survivors were clinging to the

smoldering wreck. The Special Operations commander overseeing the September 2nd attack, the opening salvo in the Trump administration's war on suspected drug traffickers in the Western Hemisphere ordered a second strike to comply with Hegsef's instructions. Again, two people familiar, said the two men were blown apart in the water. Hegset's order, which has not previously been reported, adds another dimension to the campaign against suspected drug traffickers. Some current and former U.S. officials and law of war experts have said the Pentagon's lethal campaign, which has killed more than 80 people to date is unlawful and may expose those most directly involved to future prosecution. They go on with a quote from Seth Moulton here, actually. They say

the idea that wreckage from one small boat in a vast ocean is a hazard to marine traffic is patently absurd, because that was the justification that they used, that they were like clearing the way for marine traffic, and killing survivors is blatantly illegal. He went on to say, mark my words, it may take some time, but Americans will be prosecuted. for this either as a war crime or outright murder. And so, you know, there have been Sauger since then. Of course, we've had, I don't know how many boat strikes at this point. Over 80 people have been killed at this point.

We had another instance where there were survivors of the strike instead of doing the second strike, they actually repatriated those survivors to their countries, which again raises a lot of questions over whether these are really drunk traffickers. Because if they are, what you do is you get them. and you take them to the U.S. and you try them in court here. That is normally the process that is supposed to be followed. But this is almost like a textbook example of a war crime to do a second strike on wounded survivors who now pose zero risk, even if you take it face value that these are drug

traffickers. And we've already talked about how the justification for this is, you know, insane to begin with. So what you're really talking about here is just outright murder ordered by the Secretary of War Pete Hegessef. Well, it's important to note is a couple of things. It's number one, one of the reasons that this has burst into the air is about Hegset's non-denial. Is he explicitly has not denied it?

What this also kind of gets to, and in my opinion, what this is a good segue, because we're about to cover the Afghan thing, in some ways, very unfortunately, this has been the modus operandi for the way that we have approached the entire war on terror. And I think what people should be afraid of, and this certainly, I've had this as well, is it was very easy in 0405 to be like, yeah, we're killing them all and all this. But when you watch this stuff get normalized and institutionalized in the U.S. military and then be brought to the Western Hemisphere right off of the borders of the United States with a legal justification that could technically apply to anyone, it should freak you out

because that's the same thing with the FBI. Remember we talked about the January 6th stuff. There's really nothing different from the way that the FBI was goading the Gretchen Whitmer kidnapping situation or the January 6th stuff from the way they approach the war on terror that's how they do business they infiltrate groups and basically encourage people here is the same thing this was a very common look yes technically they would say capture kill they would basically write the rules of engagement which made it so that it was like kill them all and if anything hex is just an idiot for explicitly saying the quiet part out loud in this particular case

but what it means is that the southcom commanders and others they did not have the way that you know, the legal justifications for the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Here, they're operating explicitly under so-called anti-narco-trafficking laws. And even with this designation of narco-trafficking as terrorists, the legal justification around that is almost certainly what led to that Southcom commander resigning. Remember, we covered this. At the time, we were like, hey, this is a big deal. The fact that he just resigned out of nowhere. He's been telling people behind the scenes, Ryan and I have reported this that he was very uncomfortable. Now we seem to understand exactly what it is.

And there's a reason why there's been all this legal wrangling in the White House to find some sort of legal justification. But, you know, again, just to bolster a real-world example, if you remember the Captain Phillips raid and one of the pirates was brought on board the U.S. Navy ship, he was arrested, actually, and brought back to the homeland. He's in federal prison today. We prosecuted him under federal anti-private. He was like the first person like 200 years. convicted of piracy. But the point is around these drug traffickers, if you repatriate them to your own country, then what case can you possibly make that this is actual drug trafficking? And even the designation of the so-called narco-terrorists, this is about importing a war on terror, not just to the

Western Hemisphere, but closer to the United States than ever before. And I think that's what's really terrifying about the situation. Because Steel Team 6 was involved here. Look, I'm not putting them down, like, at the end of the day, like, you know, they are the one. At the end of the day, like, their culture of the entire GWAT and everything was shaped around these types of operations. And the Pentagon, in the Pentagon, the leaders and others, they've normalized this. I mean, if you think about all the kill operations that we've done over the last 20 years, we've basically trained them and created the entire organization to be focused on this one thing. It's really about the Pentagon opening up this can of worms, putting a lot of them in danger,

you know, legally. But not just legally, but like you're making them a target. of investigation, their commanders and others. If anything, you know, it would be a genuine case of like, yeah, maybe they should have raised a concern or whatever. You've got the Secretary of Defense and others saying, no, this is the explicit direction of the President of the United States. This is the same thing. They did this with Al-Wiki. They've done this all over Afghanistan, Iraq, Yemen, Somalia. This has been unfortunately very normalized. I'm glad it's actually breaking out into the open. And the reason why it's terrifying is because this is in some country for 3,000 miles away.

This is here. This is America. Like, this is in our territorial waters in some cases. And there's nothing that would keep them from doing the same thing here on our own soil. I mean, that, I really want people to understand that, that they are claiming the ability to randomly murder whoever they want, wherever they want, and just, oh, they were involved in drug trafficking. Like, that's what they are actually claiming here. And, you know, I think that that is really horrifying. I mean, they are saying there is no, there are no limits, zero limits.

on what we can do, on the violent murder that we can commit if we just say, oh, it was a drug trafficker. And we know from reporting, there's actually going to be a lawsuit. We know from reporting that some of the people that they killed are alleged to have just been innocent fishermen. And as Ryan has pointed out, even if you accept, I mean, I think that some of these these boats probably did have drugs on board them. You're not getting the, you know, one Orlando Hernandez is this is one example. You're not getting the kingpins here. You're getting some low level, yes, probably fisherman was paid or threatened or whatever to carry this shipment of drugs. In any case, you know, you've got, look, you've got a long track record

with Pete Hegg said. He was involved in trying to successfully getting off the hook these convicted war criminals from the war on terror. Sagar is absolutely right that, you know, the way this starts is, okay, well, Al-Qaeda attacked us. They genuinely did. So we need to sort of suspend some of our normal protocol in order to go after them. And that has just expanded and expanded and expanded. This is one more extraordinary leap in terms of what the powers that they are claiming here

and the violence that they are committing. To your point about the HECF, non-denial belief, we've got before up on the screen, you know, he says, as usual, fake news, blah, blah, blah. But he doesn't actually deny the details of what is reported. He denies that it's illegal, but he does not actually deny

the details of what was reported by the Washington Post, which you should essentially take as a confirmation. The intercept, by the way, just to give them credit, they were the first to report that this was a double-tap strike. So there are multiple news organizations now who have confirmed that particular detail. You have bipartisan committees in both the House and the Senate.

We can put B-5 up on the screen who have said they are going to investigate. Chairman, U.S. Senator Roger Wicker, who is a Republican, chair of the Senate Armed Services Committee, and U.S. Senator Jack Reed, who is the Democrat, the ranking member, issued a statement saying the committee is aware of recent news reports in the Department of Defense's initial response regarding alleged follow on strikes and suspected narcotics vessels in the Southcom area of responsibility. Committee has directed inquiries to the department and we'll be conducting vigorous oversight to determine the facts related to these circumstances. The House, as I said before,

also saying that they are going to look into this too. And I can put B6 up on the screen. You've got a bunch of former military lawyers who are saying, you know, former Jags working group unanimously considers both the giving and the execution of these orders, if true to constitute war crimes, murder, or both. War crimes, if you accept the, you know, other terrorists and were at war, justification, which, again, very, very dubious, and outright murder if you do not accept that justification, which I think there is a little reason to accept that justification. And we also know, Sagar, that, you know, Hags had fired a bunch of Jags as well, that he,

a bunch of military lawyers that he, you know, apparently was concerned, which. not just go along with him doing whatever it is that he wants to do. And then the other thing that I'll say about this is the other context is there's this whole dust up going on right now about the Slotkin and Mark Kelly video saying, hey, if you're given unlawful orders, you should not follow them. And Hegseth and Trump are freaking out about that. I mean, I think this is part of why that really touched such a nerve because there is a real vulnerability here for the people who were involved.

Now, what Trump is likely to do is just on his way out of office. blanket pardon, anyone was involved in this, you know, you're off the hook, get on a jail-free card. But if you're one of the elites who is involved, you'll probably feel like fairly comfortable that you'll probably be protected. The, you know, the more rank and file, members of the middle of the SEAL Team 6 guys, like you really feel confident that they're going to go to Matt for you and make sure that you're protected as well. Well, the Intercept connection that you mentioned there is interesting. The Intercept has long, all the way by going back to the Bin Laden raid, has had sources inside of SEAL Team 6 and has always

reported some of the, yeah, you've got to give them credit a lot. They blew a lot of the stuff open and there's, I mean, I don't want to get too deep into the weeds, but like basically they have long raised questions about the official narratives of Steel Team 6. So the fact that they reported at first confirms some of their previous connection there with the highest levels of that commitment. And yes, I mean, obviously they also, they're going to have to save their own ass if this ever comes into an official inquiry. This has been blown open. And I think the reason why is that Congress, look, the administration pulled a fast run on Congress. The Congress was about to vote in the Senate where they were going to try and censor the administration over

the Venezuela War in particular. But what they did is that the Trump administration indicated actually we're going to back off things. Remember there was like two, three week period? And so the Senate said, okay, we're going to give you the benefit of the doubt. Obviously, that was incredibly stupid. What's happened in the interim, though, is that with this so-called double tap and more, Congress has the, Congress actually has to also not just declare war, but has oversight over all of this. And this is the part where the administration, and actually, Republicans are increasingly waking up to this. The midterms, as they look right now, it's going to be a blowout. When all this stuff, subpoena power in the House of Representatives and oversight authority,

let's say some crazy shit happens, the Senate goes Democratic. I mean, if you're a Steel Team 6 commander or any of these other people, you know, high-level operator in the naval special warfare, your ass has come into Washington. And you're going to be testifying at least at the very at least behind closed doors before the new House Armed Services Committee or the new Senate Armed Services Committee or they're not going to give you a dollar whenever it comes to funding the government. Like they have no idea what is actually coming. And at that point, I mean, putting these guys under the bus, causing huge problems for them, I think I just want to underscore, this is about war on terror coming to America. That's what's terrifying about it.

And the fact is, is that these tactics and, you know, modus operandi and others, largely, it's been normalized, unfortunately, I think, in a lot of our GWAT. And what? what people are really reacting to. And I think this is part of the unfortunate thing, is that people are only really reacting because it's about drug trafficking. But the ground has been set, Al-Wiki, we murdered a US citizen completely with no due process.

I mean, they basically died that day. It was over. And then from that point forward, we had all of these captures kill raids, or just kill raids, all over Afghanistan, all over Iraq. And now, so it's like you set that ground over 20 years, you create that culture.

And that's now being imported here. And that's what's the scariest thing about it. And it's like, that's why, you know, look, I'd be honest, I didn't, I didn't clock it at the time. Only people like Glenn and others really understood, like, what was actually had. Because it's easy to justify. Oh, they're killing terrorists. And it's like, this is what it leads to. This is actually the logical justification.

Yeah, it was just, you know, I mean, it was. It was convenient. It was Glenn, who's like, really genuine committed principled civil libertarian. And, you know, and it was lefties who were like, this is leading to a bad place. Like, you may be okay with this now. But just, you know, every president is going to take this power and is going to expand it. And there's a direct line between those power grabs and what we're seeing now, even though this is an even more, you know, brazen and even more insane.

So in any case, I mean, well, I guess I'm glad to see Congress asserting itself a little bit here. Never know. What could happen. But clearly, Hegsheth and others feeling at least a little bit nervous and uncomfortable, which is, I guess, a good thing, even though this is, you know, all. completely insane. That's right. All right. Okay, let's get to data centers. On this week's episode of next chapter, I, T.D. Jake, sit down with Denzel Washington, a two-time Academy Award-winning actor and cultural icon for a conversation about change,

identity, and the moment everything shifted. I mean, I don't take any credit for it. It's nothing I did a special, you know, did knock down a few pegs and recognize it, but I just didn't put me first. I just put God first and he's carried me. Whether you're rebuilding, reimagining, or just trying to hold it together, this one will speak to you. Listen to the next chapter podcast on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your. your podcast. New episodes drop weekly. Don't miss one of them. Hi, I'm Dr. Priyanko Wally. And I'm Hurricane DeVolu. On our new podcast Health Stuff, we demystify your burning health questions. You'll hear us being completely honest

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