Democracy Now! Audio - Democracy Now! 2025-12-17 Wednesday

Episode Date: December 17, 2025

Headlines for December 17, 2025; A Path to WWIII? Greg Grandin on Venezuela, Trump’s “Madman Doctrine” & More; Chile’s Trump? Ariel Dorfman on the Election of Pinochet Admirer José Antonio Kast; How Did Epstein Get Rich? The New York Times Investigates His “Scams, Schemes, Ruthless Cons”

From New York, this is Democracy Now. The Trump administration, led by Marco Rubio, Secretary of State, is really making a play for Latin America. Venezuela, sure, there's oil, and that's important, but there's a lot of ways to get oil. But what's really at stake is getting Latin America organized, like moving on from Venezuela. They see Venezuela is the first step into a larger restructuring of the politics of the hemisphere. Venezuela would be first, then Cuba, then Nicaragua, and then isolating Brazil and Mexico. As President Trump orders a complete blockade of sanctioned oil tankers coming and going, from Venezuela, we'll speak to the Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Greg Grandin.

He says Trump's dated strategy is putting us on a path to World War III. Then Chile's elected its most right-wing president since Augusto Pinnishev. We will tirelessly work to recover calm, order, growth, and hope because Chile has demanded something that doesn't allow excuses. Chile wants a change. We'll look at the election of far-right politician, Jose Antonio Cast, with the renowned Chilean writer Ariel Dorfman. He calls the election a political and ethical earthquake.

We'll speak to him in Santiago. Plus, how did Jeffrey Epstein become rich? How did Jeffrey Epstein have the financial backing to abuse what turns out to be hundreds of young women and girls? through months of reporting and digging through documents. People's diaries, letters, old photo albums. The answer is he stole it. We'll speak to New York Times reporter David Enrich about his new piece,

Scam, Schemes, Roofless Cons, the untold story of how Jeffrey Epstein got rich. All that and more coming up. Welcome to Democracy Now. The War and Peace Report. I'm Amy Goodman. President Trump ordered a blockade on sanctioned oil tankers going to and from Venezuela Tuesday, ramping up his threats on President Nicolas Maduro. In a post on social media, Trump said, quote, Venezuela is completely surrounded by the largest armada ever assembled in the history of South America. It will only get bigger. And the shock to them will be like nothing they have ever seen. seen before, unquote. Last week, the U.S. seized a tanker in the Caribbean Sea that was carrying Venezuelan oil for Cuba and China. Since September, the U.S. military has been carrying out

airstrikes on alleged drugboats in the Caribbean and eastern Pacific near Venezuela, killing at least 95 people in 25 attacks without showing evidence of drugs. Meanwhile, Defense Secretary Pete Higgs said Tuesday, there are no plans to rely on. release the full unedited video showing a deadly second strike on a boat on September 2nd. Legal experts in human rights groups have described the strike on two survivors clinging to the wreckage of the boat as a war crime. This comes as Trump's chief of staff, Susie Wiles, suggested an interview with Vanity Fair that the U.S. military attacks on alleged drugboats aimed to ultimately topple President Maduro.

while said, quote, Trump wants to keep on blowing boats up until Maduro cries uncle. And people way smarter than me on that say that he will, unquote. This is Maduro speaking yesterday in Caracas. We tell the people of the United States are truth, and it is very clear. Imperialism and the Nazi fascist right wing want to colonize Venezuela to take our wealth. oil, gas, gold, iron, aluminum, and other minerals. We have sworn to defend our homeland. And in Venezuela, peace will always prevail, along with stability and shared happiness for our people.

President Trump is planning to give a prime time address to the nation tonight. We'll have more on this story later in the broadcast. In Gaza, Al Jazeera reports a two-week-old infant has frozen to death as winter storms battered the territory and Israel continues to block the entry of shelter and other humanitarian supplies for the hundreds of thousands of displaced Palestinians forced to live in makeshift tents or buildings damaged by Israeli bomb. Meanwhile, in another violation of the U.S. broker-truse, Al Jazeera reports Israeli forces killed at least one Palestinian in the last 24 hours. This comes as efforts to recover the remains of the last Israeli hostage in Gaza have been hampered by the heavy rains. The International Criminal Court has rejected Israel's bid to block an investigation and to war crimes committed by Israel and Gaza.

In more related news, Axios reports, the White House sent an angry private message to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu following the killing of Hamas senior commander Ra'edsad, which Trump officials said violated the U.S. brokered ceasefire that went into effect in October. Netanyahu is scheduled to meet Trump at Mar-a-Lago at the end of the month as tensions rise around the implementation of the next phase of the agreement with Hamas. In Sydney, Australia, the first funerals were held today for victims of the Bandai Beach massacre, including for Rabbi Eli Schlanger and Rabbi Yaakov Levitan. Meanwhile, authorities announced one of the gunmen, 24-year-old Navid Akram, has been. charged with 59 offenses, including murder and terrorism. The other gunman, his father, Sajid Akram, was shot dead by police at the scene. Here in the United States in Rhode Island, the manhunt for the gunmen who killed two students and injured nine others at Brown University Saturday has entered its fifth day.

Authorities released a new photo, enhanced videos, and a video timeline showing a person of interest movements in the hours leading up. to Saturday's shooting. One shooting victim remains in critical condition. Two have been discharged from the hospital. Six others are in stable condition. All classes and exams have been canceled. The campus remains on edge.

This is Parth Copta, a senior at Brown. Brown was honestly one of the happiest diabetes. That's how it was always known. But now, after everything that's happened, it's kind of become extremely scary. As a senior, having seen three years at Brown, like, I don't even know how this incident is going to change campus. It's very scary to go back, and it's extremely unfortunate to see what happened to a place like ground. An MIT professor was fatally shot at his home in Brookline, Massachusetts.

Authorities have opened a homicide investigation into the killing of 47-year-old Nuna Laredo, who was the director of MIT's plasma science and fusion center. In January, President Biden had awarded the presidential early career award for scientists and engineers to Professor Laredo. In an explosive set of articles in Vanity Fair, journalist Christopher Whipple, author of a book on chiefs of staff, conducted 11 interviews with President Trump's chief of staff, Susie Wiles, over the course of a year. Wiles characterized President Trump as having an alcoholic's personality and said she urged him

not to pardon the most violent rioters from the January 6th insurrection. In the interview, she says she thought Trump's efforts to go after his political enemies would end after 90 days and mentioned his campaign against New York Attorney General Letitia James, quote, may look like retribution. Wiles also said Vice President J.D. Vance has, quote, been a conspiracy theorist for a decade and called Russell Vote, the budget director, a right-wing absolute zealot. She also called Elon Musk an avowed ketamine user and blasted his dismantling of USAID, saying, quote, no rational person could think the USAID process was a good one. Nobody, she said. On immigration, Susie Wiles said, quote, I will concede we've got to look harder at our process for deportation, unquote. Wiles also criticized Attorney General Pambandi's handling of the Epstein files, saying, quote, she said that the witness list or client list was on her desk.

There is no client list, and it sure as hell wasn't on her desk, unquote. Meanwhile, the deadline for the Justice Department to release the Epstein files is set for Friday, December 19th. House Speaker Mike Johnson says he, will not call for a vote to extend Affordable Care Act health care subsidies that are set to expire at the end of the year. As a result, millions of U.S. residents will have to pay higher health insurance premium starting in January. Republican Congress member Mike Lawler of New York said, quote, everybody has a responsibility to serve their district to their constituents. You know what is funny. Three quarters of people on Obamacare are in states Donald Trump won,

Lawler said. Some House Republicans have signaled they would join Democrats in passing a discharge petition to force a House vote on a clean three-year extension of the subsidies, but that's unlikely to get a floor vote until next year. President Trump signed an order expanding his travel ban into the U.S. with partial or full restrictions to nationals from at least 20 additional countries, including Burkina Faso, Mali, Niger, South Sudan, and Syria. The Trump administrations also fully restricted travel into the U.S. for people holding

Palestinian Authority travel documents. In related news, the New York Times reports the Trump administration's transferred 22 Cuban immigrants to the Guantanamo Bay, U.S. naval base in Cuba. The men are believed to be the first Cuban citizens to be sent to Guantanamo since Trump returned to office and began his mass deportation campaign. It's estimated ICE has detained over 700 immigrants at Guantanamo this year. In news from Sudan, the UAE-backed paramilitary rapid support forces has been attempting to cover up its mass killings of civilians in the city of El Fasher by burning and burying bodies.

That's according to a new report by Yale's Humanitarian Research Lab, which analyzed satellite images depicting RSF fighters likely disposing of tens of thousands of remains following its capture of El Fasher, the capital of North Darfur, in October. At least 1,500 people were killed in just 48 hours after the RSF seized the city. The report said, quote, this pattern of body disposal and destruction is ongoing, unquote. This comes as over 100 civilians were killed in drone attacks on the Cordofon region, where fighting between the RSF and Sudanese military is intensified. Tens of thousands of people have been displaced as warring parties shift focus toward Kordafan.

UN experts describe Sudan's war as the world's largest humanitarian disaster. In the Democratic Republic of Congo, M23 leaders say they've agreed to withdraw from that key town of Uvira in the eastern DRC at the request of the Trump administration. This comes just days after Secretary of State, Marco Rubio, condemned the city's capture last week, saying it violated a U.S. broker-truth signed by Rwandan president Paul Kagami and DRC leader Felix Shizakheti earlier this month at a ceremony in Washington, D.C., hosted by Trump. M23 fighters are not signatories of that deal and have been involved in parallel peace talks

led by Qatar. Rwanda has been repeatedly accused of backing M23. In related news, Human Rights Watch reports at least 22 civilians were killed and scores more injured and attacked by militia fighters in late November on a territory in the Western DRC. As ethnic conflicts rise in the region, HRW said in a statement, quote, the global focus on the peace accords in eastern Congo shouldn't distract from the unchecked violence and injustice and the cycles of impunity in other areas.

In India, authorities are mandating all private and government employers to direct staff to work from home and schools have canceled in-person classes as dense, toxicism. smog has engulfed New Delhi pushing dangerous pollution levels to a record high. Healthcare officials have advised residents to avoid all outdoor activities and to wear a mask as hospitals have reported a rising number of people suffering from breathing conditions and eye irritation. The toxic haze has also affected visibility, impacting travel with dozens of flights and trains delayed. This is a tourist who is stranded in New Delhi. Visibility is very low. I can't see anything. We reached here by.

car yesterday due to fog and pollution. We could not see anything. We came to Andeagate, but we can't see it. We can hardly see it, as we have come closer. Pollution is also affecting my health a lot. Greece's parliament approved a new budget Tuesday, as massive protests were held by farmers and public sector workers denouncing low wages and skyrocketing food and housing costs earlier on Tuesday protesters gathered in Athens. We are striking today across the entire public sector and coordinating with the struggle wage by farmers against the government's passage of this budget. It is a budget that cuts millions from public hospitals, where I also work, and

channels the money into military spending. It hands it to the banks. We will not allow this. And Warner Brothers Discovery is reportedly rejecting Paramount Skydance's $108 billion hostile takeover bid to acquire the company. On Tuesday, Affinity Partners, which is run by President Trump's son-in-law, Jared Kushner, backed out of Paramount's deal. The move paves the way for Netflix to go ahead with its $83 billion bid for Warner Brothers. And those are some of the headlines. This is Democracy Now, Democracy Now.org, the War and Peace report. I'm Amy Goodman in New York, joined by Democracy Now's Juan Gonzalez in Chicago. Hi, Juan. Hi, Amy, and welcome to all of our listeners and viewers.

across the country and around the world. President Trump has ordered a total and complete blockade of sanctioned oil tankers entering and leaving Venezuela as the U.S. ramps of pressure on the government of Nicolas Maduro. The blockade comes amidst a major U.S. military buildup in the region and days after the U.S. seized an oil tanker filled with Venezuelan oil. In a post-untruth social, Trump wrote, quote, Venezuela is completely surrounded by the large armada ever assembled in the history of South America. It will only get bigger, and the shock to them will be like nothing they have ever seen before, unquote. Since September, the U.S.

militaries also carried out at least 25 airstrikes on alleged drug boats without offering evidence in the Caribbean and eastern Pacific near Venezuela, killing at least 95 people. On Tuesday, Vanity Fair published excerpts of bombshell interviews with Trump's chief of staff, Susie Wiles, in which she suggested the aim of the boat strikes is to topple Maduro. While said, quote, Trump wants to keep on blowing boats up until Maduro cries uncle and people weigh smarter than me on that, say that he will, unquote. On Tuesday, President Maduro denounce the U.S. actions. We tell the people of the United States our truth, and it is very clear. Imperialism and the Nazi fascist right wing want to colonize Venezuela to take our wealth, oil, gas, gold, iron, aluminum, and other minerals.

We have sworn to defend our homeland, and in Venezuela, peace will always prevail, along with stability and shared happiness for our people. To the people of the United States, we say again and again one and a thousand times. times. The claims. The claims about drug trafficking are fake news, a lie, an excuse. Since they cannot accuse us of weapons of mass destruction, chemical weapons, or nuclear missiles, they invent another pretext to create another Afghanistan, another Libya. And with moral authority and with God's blessing, I say,

No more Vietnam, no more Afghanistan, no more Libya, no more Iraq, no more war eternal, no, no, no and no, and no. We know we are morally and spiritually in the right. We're joined now by the Pulitzer Prize-winning historian, Yale University professor Greg Grandin. His latest book, America America, a new history of the New World. He has a recent piece in the New York Times headline Trump's dated strategy is putting us on a path to World War III. Welcome back to Democracy Now, Professor Grandin. Can you start off by responding to what's happening right now? We are doing this broadcast before President Trump's

makes his address to the nation tonight unclear what that's about. But talk about the latest developments with Venezuela. Well, it is an unprecedented military buildup. It's probably bigger than what the Spanish Empire sent to retake Spain in the 1820s in terms of sheer destructive force. And the classification of fentanyl as a weapon of mass destruction and all sorts of presidential announcements that, you know, trying to lay legal just,

for this. And of course, as this is going on, they're still blowing up speedboats in the Caribbean and in the Pacific. And as you mentioned, Susan Wiles, the chief of staff of Trump, said that this had nothing to do with narco terrorism, that Trump actually doesn't really care about narcot drugs coming into the country. This is really just setting up and hoping to induce regime change in Venezuela. And Venezuela is really just the first step. Marco Rubio, the Secretary of State from Florida, from South Florida, whose family itself is not uninvolved in drug trafficking, is, you know, sees it in very ideological terms.

He's, you know, Cuban. And for whatever reason, they see Venezuela as the first step of finally bringing down the Cuban revolution and bringing Cuba back into the orbit of the United States. And then from there, of course, it's Nicaragua. And we just saw this election in Chile, which I know you're going to talk about later with Ariel Dorfman. But Latin America really is on a kind of knife sedge between the left and the right. We see in Argentina, Javier Millet, and what the United States is willing to do to keep him in power, billions and billions of dollars, not just through the Treasury Department,

but also through the IMF to prop up the peso. Honduras, there's all sorts of machinations. going on there in terms of the election that the U.S. was involved in. And so that really leaves Latin America divided, almost unprecedentedly divided. In the past, Latin America tended to be coherent. I tend to be all dictatorships or all kind of sent to left presidents. And now we have a continent that's split angrily down the middle. And the image is quite stark. You have Brazil and you have Mexico. And those are the two bulwarks of Latin America. And ultimately, if you're going to get Latin America under control and back under the U.S.'s umbrella, you have to confront those

two countries. Ultimately, that is the end goal. And this is in the larger context of a dramatic reversal of the U.S. foreign policy. The total renunciation of liberal internationalism. Now, liberal international has an ideal. There was a big gap between, in practice, and as it actually functioned. But the idea was that the United States would superintend a world governed by common laws. The Trump administration announced in its national security strategy document, which should put out last week or a couple of weeks ago, that the bipartisan consensus that came out of the Cold War has failed.

And it has been sexually announced implicitly that what it sees as replacing it is a Monroe doctrine for the entire world, the way the United States acted with impunity to seize, to kill, and to sanction it could do anywhere. Which brings us to what Secretary of Defense Pete Hegeseth just said at the Reagan Defense Forum. He said, quote, the Monroe Doctrine is in effect. After years of neglect, the United States will restore U.S. military dominance in the Western Hemisphere. We will use it to protect our homeland and access to key terrain throughout the region.

We will also deny adversary's ability to position forces or other threatening capabilities in our hemisphere. Past administrations perpetuated the belief that the Monroe Doctrine had expired. They were wrong. The Monroe Doctrine is in effect, and it is stronger than necessary. ever under the Trump corollary. A common sense restoration of our power and prerogatives in this hemisphere, consistent with U.S. interests. That was Defense Secretary, uh, HECS. I wanted to ask you, though, Greg, um, Latin America is not the same, uh, region that it was 100 years ago or that it was 50 years ago. And when you

mentioned this split in the region, uh, I'm not, I'm not so sure I agree. with you on that. Brazil, Mexico, and Colombia are the three largest nations in Latin America. They have half the population of the entire region. And all three of those countries are being led still by progressive, left-wing-oriented presidents. None of them are going to back a U.S. invasion, not to mention some of the smaller countries, like Cuba or Nicaragua. And so we're in a situation where the United States is trying to impose a past that no longer exists. I'm wondering what you think, even if the intervention were to occur, and it seems likely that's going to happen just in time to eclipse any news of the release of the Epstein files, the ability of the United

States to impose its chosen leader on Venezuela is going to be severely restricted, not only by the international condemnation, but also by the fact that the Venezuelan military, has been politicized directly over years now as a result of the Chavez Revolution, so they're not likely just to lay down their arms and allow the U.S. to come in. Yeah, I agree with you completely, and that's what they meant, that the region was split,

and that in Mexico and Brazil, if they're not isolated, then there is no kind of broader U.S. hegemony over the region. And certainly Columbia also, although there's elections coming up in Colombia, and that country is going to be in play. But I think Mexico and Brazil are secure for now. But, yes, and speaking about Venezuela,

it's unclear what the actual action is going to be. I mean, it's just stopping, just the sanction and blockade on the oil tankers are going to put enormous pressure on Venezuela to, you know, in terms of food, in terms of being able to import food and feed its people, and what kind of disaster that's going to be. The sanctions are already incredibly punishing that was bipartisan consensus going back decades to even to Obama.

We might see some massive show of force, some targeted strikes, but you're absolutely right. Venezuela is not Libya. It's not going to collapse. I think there is a kind of embedded structure that on the one hand, there is a radicalized sector of the population. On the other hand, there are, you know, there is, there are people invested in a kind of militarized corruption that does structure some of the, some of the ways the country is governed. And, and my daughter could or could not go, but that doesn't necessarily mean the United States is going to have its way and just be able to install a puppet like it did in Chile in 73 or Guatemala or in 54 or any number of coups in the past. It's a dangerous game.

I was sitting out in the waiting room today, and just now, a second ago, and CNN talked about a second year crash between a private jet and some U.S. military force. I mean, they're really pushing it to the max. You know, of course, these murders on the high seas, now we have an admission from the administration that this is just, you know, this has nothing to do with drugs. It has everything to do with Medado. You know, these are innocent people. It's, you know, it's like, he's like the Red Queen and Alice.

You know, you execute, then you have the trial, and then you have the conviction, and then you have the trial. You know, he does everything backwards. We're living in like an Alice in Wendland foreign policy in Latin America. But Latin America is confused, you know. There's tension within Latin America. Petro said that he wouldn't shake a president-elect cast's hand, this is a Nazi, and he was immediately rebuked by Boris, you know, a center-left. So there's also a lot of tension within Latin America about how to respond to the United States.

That kind of unity that existed coming out of the 2000s, Chavez and Chavez president, and Lula was the president in Brazil, and you had Kiersner in Argentina, and you had Bachelet in Chile. And, you know, it was a very rhetorically strong and dominant form of social democracy that really commanded the rhetorical field. I think what we're seeing here is a lot of confusion about how to deal with Trump, just like the rest of the world. You know, it is in some ways the madman doctrine of diplomacy, except the man-man doctrine was supposed to be a performance, an act,

but we actually have a madman in the White House in some ways. Well, but this whole, the issue is clearly the key aspect of this in Venezuela that distinguishes Venezuela from all the other governments in the region that Trump may not like is these vast oil reserves that on the one hand, could you talk about the importance of these oil reserves and also the fact that the American people, by and large, all the polls indicate they have no interest in the United States launching war against Venezuela because Venezuela has not posed any threat to the United States. Yeah, and that's interesting. I think that's one of the reasons why it's taking Trump so long to know to figure out what to do. He may be a man man, but he's not completely irrational. He does calculate, and there is obviously no bloodthirst within the rank and file of the Trump administration for a ground war in Venezuela, and certainly not within the country as a whole. And so he's responding to that.

Then there's the calculus of, well, distraction, the Epstein files, will this distract or will people make the connection that we're doing it to distract? You know, there's a lot of independent, we've heard about how the Republican eco-sphere information sphere is kind of fracturing and coming apart and eating each other. Venezuela does have oil, but, you know, there's lots of ways of getting Venezuela's oil. I mean, my daughter has basically offered it up. Chevron, as we speak, is pumping oil and sending it to a port author in Texas to be processed. There's lots of ways to make it control.

So a war with Venezuela over oil is an ideological war, and it's led by the Marco Rubio faction, the war party within the Trump administration, that sees Latin America in very ideological terms in which Venezuela is the first step to contain a left, a left that, yes, is still strong and still, you know, has quite a purchase. I mean, even in Chile, right, 42% of the population voted for a communist woman in one is most socially conservative countries in Latin America. That's not nothing. I mean, it's a shame we got the Nazi, but, you know, 42% of the country voted for Jeanette

Hado is, you know, a communist woman. That speaks, I think, to the ongoing strength of the left. But there isn't a coherent strategy of how to deal with the United States. I mean, any country are going to come to Venezuela's aid to try to get the oil out. I don't think Colombia can risk that. You know, there are ways in which you can imagine Colombia trying to get Venezuela's oil out of it, but do they want to provoke the United States to that degree? It's a little unclear. So I think everything's up in the air and on the table at this moment. Anything can happen. And I guess things will be clarified by the speech or not. Well, Greg, Brandon, we want to thank you for being with us.

Yale University History Professor Pulitzer Prize-winning author, his latest book, America, America, a new history of the new world. And we'll link to your piece in the New York Times headline, Trump's dated strategy is putting us on a path to World War III. We'll link to you at Democracy Now.org. Coming up, Chile has elected its most right-wing president since Augusta Pinnichet. We'll go to Santiago to speak with the renowned Chilean writer Ariel Dorfman. This is Democracy Now. We'll also later on the broadcast look at the untold story of how Jeffrey Epstein got rich.

Back in 30 seconds. Inesperated for my voice A song of love and of Goce A song of love Of those two

A canceion Chorubia be able to A A song, a song, a song, a song by the Cuban musician Silvio Arriguez, performing at New York Central Park years ago. This is Democracy Now, Democracy Now.org, the Warren Peace Report. I'm Amy Goodman with Juan Gonzalez. We turn now to Chile, looking at the election of Jose Antonio. Cast, who's set to become Chile's most right-wing leader since the U.S.-backed dictator, Augusta Pinnishet.

In Sunday's election, Kast won about 58 percent of the vote, defeating Jeanette Hara, a member of the Communist Party. She'd served as Labor Minister under outgoing Chile and President Gabriel Boric, who was not eligible to run for re-election. Kast once praised Pinnis Shea, saying, quote, if he were alive, he would vote for me, unquote. On Tuesday, cast travel to Buenos Aires to meet with Argentina's far-right president, Javier Millet. We go now to Santiago, where we're joined by Ariel Dorfman, the acclaimed Chilean American novelists, playwright, essayist academic, and human rights activists, distinguished professor emeritus of literature at Duke University in North Carolina. Ariel Dorfman served as a cultural advisor to Salvador Allende from 1970 to 1973.

After the U.S. back military coup that installed dictator Augusta Pinnisht. Ariel Dorman fled Chile and went into exile. Today, he's recognized as one of Latin America's greatest writers. His essays, novels, poems, plays have been translated into more than 40 languages, and he has a new article in the New York Times headlined, Chile's election is more than just a swerve to the right. Thanks so much for being with us, Ariel Dorfman. Explain the significance of Chile's election today.

Well, thank you so much for having me, Amy. And it's a pleasure to be on Democracy Now, especially with Democracy Now, is in such danger in Chile and around the world. There has been, since democracy was restored in 19. We have had basically center-left governments, except for two occasions, which is Sebastian Pinedera. And Sebastian Pinedera, twice was elected president, but he could be understood as a moderate conservative. What made it possible for him to be elected in Chile over his 35 years, eight years of the 35

years, is that he voted against Pinochet remaining in power in the referendum in 1988. In that referendum of 1988, a young, 22-year-old student called José Antonio Caste, appeared on television saying how he adored the general and hoped that he would remain in power forever. Now, that same man who since then has accumulated a series of more outrageous statements still is going to be the next president of this country. In other words, a land that got rid of General Pinochet that danced in the streets when Pinochet died in 2006, that man is now going to be the president of this country. It is a political and ethical earthquake because there are, I mean, I can just go on and on about what this man means. He is going to assault the network that has been constructed not in the last 35 years,

has been the last hundred years, the economic and social rights of workers, the indigenous rights, he's against abortion, even if the mother's life is in danger. He's against gay couples, obviously. I could just go on and on and on about this man, whose father, by the way, was a Nazi himself. He was in 1942, joined the Nazi party as an officer in the Wehrmacht of Germany. And then he, under false papers, arrived in Chile. So it's very strange, you know, because Kast has based his campaign on an anti-immigrant agenda. And according to that agenda, his father would be expelled right now because he arrived undocumented to Santiago.

Well, Ariel, to what do you attribute the majority of the Chilean people voting for him? and also to what degree do you think you'll be able to implement that program? He still needs support in the Chilean government as well among the elected deputies of that country. So let's go first to your first question, which is, by the way, he won 58 percent, not 50 percent of the vote, 58 percent, which is an enormous majority in Chile, more than 16 points more than Jeanette Hara, who was his adversary. But the point about this is that the major problems that Chileans constantly are speaking about

is too much immigration, enormous amount of crime, though the crime is not linked to immigrants, as the right wing will say, it's mostly Chileans against Chileans, but it doesn't matter. That's their message, and people are buying it. And the problem affordability.

But, you know, GAST would not be able to have this victory, this significant victory, in which a series of people who are not necessarily against democracy want security in their lives. They want somebody strong, like Bukele in El Salvador, in fact, because that's one of the things. Cast has had advisors from Bukele, the Salvadorian despot, to build maximum security prisons here and do away basically with habeas corpus and other forms of democratic institutions. So, cast would not have been able to fill this void if the center left had not over many, many years, in some senses, turned its back on the troubles of the people.

I want to mention here, because I think I had mentioned this before when I spoke about coming on the program, in my novel The Suicide Museum, there was a long section, several chapters on the year 1990. All of it happens in the year 1990, which is the year of the transition from dictatorship to democracy. And I focus on the moment when Salvador Allende is taken from his anonymous tomb and given a state funeral in Santiago. I was there. I was part of that. I was living there at the moment. And what called my attention, and I mentioned in the novel, the Suicide Museum, is that the elite was inside the cemetery and in the cathedral where a yinda was being buried. But all the people, the young people, the women, the workers, the peasants, the students,

everybody who had given their lives and fought for 17 years against Binochet, those people were left outside. They were even tear gas, because they wanted also to give a homage to their presence. their dead president. The people who had made it possible for a yenda to be buried in democracy, for democracy to be returned to Chile, were sort of left out. I found this symbolic. It's not that in 35 years many good things were not done, you know. Poverty was diminished significantly. Infrastructure was major. Major things were done in indigenous rights, major things were done in sexual rights and reproductive rights. So there have been very, very big advances in that sense. But it's been

insufficient. And I think that there is a need for the center left and the left in general to look very carefully at what blindness or mistakes or fractures they have allowed in the past and ask themselves what they need to do to reimagine the country in a different way, to think of the country as a different project. You know, I found that one of the things that I found in Chile this last month and a half that we've been here is there's a sense where people are detached. They're uneasy. I call it Malistaad in my article

in today's New York Times. Malestad, meaning they don't feel well with themselves. They're a bit sick. They're a bit unhinged. They don't feel that things are going well. And so, of course, they'll say, well, somebody offers us security. They offers us a clear solution,

even if it means, you know, getting rid of some democratic institutions, well, let's be secure at last. Let's not have criminals roaming the streets. I hardly know if anybody who has not had some sort of assault, a criminal assault of some sort, not all narcotrafficking, but a lot of that, right? So people are fed up with that and tired of that, and the left has not given them a solution. And this is not, I think, only the case in Chile. I think it's a case worldwide.

The rise of authoritarianism is only possible because we who want a just and equal society who do not want to continue with exploitation and super-exploitation. millionaires deciding everything for us and climate apocalypse because cast of course is getting rid of all the watchdogs on climate change right we we want and we want to make sure that those people who are decent progressive people and who are i think the great majority find a way of expressing themselves in something that inspires inspires the people i don't find my people here inspired. I find them angry, confused, sad with malestat, with that sense of unease and malaise everywhere almost, right? There's still, you know, there's still a great deal of joy in the people. But I think that in the referendum of 1988, the people of Chile, in the worst circumstances,

they managed to defeat the dictator, even if the dictator had, that this is the one where Cas was before Pinochet and Pineda, the moderate conservative, was against him. In that election, the people of Chile rejected that, that possibility of Pinochet staying in power. And that is why I have some hope as well. I feel as if that joy was demobilized, that struggle, that sense of participation, of protagonism that was possible all during the dictatorship from 1988, especially until 1990, it was stopped. In some sense, it was said, go home, produce, consume, be happy, and just leave the governing to us instead of saying, let's continue the mobilization. You know, when Pinochet, who was commander in chief in democracy even, he put his troops on alert because he was being investigated. Instead of calling the people into the streets and saying, we are stopping this country, stop it. You're not in charge, General Pinochet anymore. They said, go home. Don't Don't worry. We'll take care of things.

So it's been compromise after compromise, and it's been too many. And I think people, therefore, are uninspired, basically. And if you have an uninspired left, an uninspired people, they will tend to, the void will happen in that sense. You know, I have a metaphor for this, by the way. The reason why I think that cast is in trouble and may be in trouble in the future. First of all, I think he's not going to be able to put into his... He wants to get rid of hundreds of thousands of civil servants

because they're parasites, according to his advisers. He wants to deport 330,000 undocumented immigrants. He wants to build a wall, of course. I mean, he wants to finish with all the transgender rights and the gay rights and the women's rights, a series of things. But apart from that, it turns out that he wants to erase the country's history he wants to get rid of the story of what the coup was about

and what the coup engendered he wants his hero pinocet once again to be venerated by all he wants to forget the concentration camps and the executions and the torture and the exiles and all the terrible things that had been memorialized in this time I think that there's a saying I like this saying I was thinking of it

I was thinking about caste you know it says an African proverb says the axe forgets but the tree remembers and I think this is true in Chile I think the dead of Chile remember I think the survivors of Pinochet remember

I think many people in Chile remember I think I know this is I mean I'm a writer I'm a novelist I'm a poet so I think there's a lyrical sense to this which is, the caste presidency will be haunted by what it tries to suppress. It will come out from all the trees of Chile. I think Chile is a forest of resistance. We are a minority now for the moment.

We are taking our time. It's 42%. It can be more. It doesn't matter how many you are, really. It matters that in the streets, people will not allow a regret. of this sort. And if Kast wants to throw the army into this, to try to repress the people as happened in the past, because the story of Chile is a story of massacres, of peasants and workers and students for 100 years now, if Kass wants to do that, he may find that there is a recalcitrant

army. The army already went through the shame of having been the pawn of Pinochet's dictatorship. They do not want it anymore. And when there was a estuary. the explosion of hundreds of thousands of Chileans who were fed up this time from the left, let's say, right, and almost brought up around the government, Pinera, was then president before Boric, Pinera asked the armed forces to police the streets, and the general in charge of the armed forces says, we are not policemen, that is not what we do. And this is a very big change, right? So let us see what's going to happen as Pinera, as Casst tries to impose, a neoliberal model on a country that has, in fact, in the polls,

constantly said that it's against so many millionaires having so much money, so much inequality, so much injustice. But people want control over their lives. And they can't have control over their lives if they feel that there's a security threat next door to them and that things will happen which they can't control their own neighborhoods in that sense, right? Ariel, we have 20 seconds. We're up against a very special moment.

I'm sorry, yes. I want to thank you so much for being with us, Araldorfman, acclaimed Chilean American writer. We're going to link to your New York Times. Aped, Chile's election is more than just a swerve to the right. Coming up, scams, schemes, ruthless cons, the untold story of how Jeffrey Epstein got rich. Stay with us. an allyada, the that cancea

and the campaign I can't I can't, I can't, I can't, but no I'm going to be the best of

because my body I'm pertainse, I decide of my time, when I want and where I want,

independent, I'm nacy, independent, I decided, I don't I'm not I'm right of you,

I'm coming to the par to you. You don't you're going to you're going to be to you don't me

to make to you don't me to make sure, you don't me to delirate you don't you're going to

Anti-patriarcha, anti-patriarchy by the Chilean musician Anatoju performing in our Democracy Now studio. This is Democracy Now, Democracy Now.org. I'm Amy Goodman with Juan Gonzalez. Friday is the deadline for the Department of Justice to release its investigative files into the dead financier and serial sex trafficker, Jeffrey Epstein. The deadline was set with the passage of the Epstein Transparency Act last month. One of the questions that's remained largely unanswered, until now is, how did Jeffrey Epstein become so extravagantly wealthy, wealth that both enabled his crimes and shielded him from scrutiny and accountability for so many years? Well, a new investigation by the New York Times uncovered details about Epstein's rise previously unreported

and provides an answer. The investigations headline scams, schemes, ruthless cons, the untold story of how Jeffrey Epstein got rich. This is a video clip featuring some of the reporters. It begins with business reporter Jessica Silver Greenberg. How did Jeffrey Epstein have the financial backing to abuse what turns out to be hundreds of young women and girls? The hundreds of millions of dollars that Epstein amassed the policeal estates and aircraft. Connections to some of the wealthiest, most established people all over the world. There's been a tremendous number of conspiracy theories and myths. From he was running a huge blackmail operation to he was affiliated with.

with spy agencies. Through months of reporting and digging through documents. People's diaries, letters, old photo albums. The answer is he stole it. He stole it. The New York Times investigation begins with Epstein in his early 20s, a college dropout teaching math at the prestigious Dalton High School here in New York. He's introduced by a student's father to Ace Greenberg, the future chief executive of Bear Stearns,

an introduction that changed Epstein's life. For more, we're joined by New York Times Deputy Investigations editor David Enrich, who co-wrote the new piece. We thank you so much for being with us, joining us from Dobbs Ferry. Can you name names, lay out Jeffrey Epstein's rise, the critical importance of the people he connected with, and the lies, the thievery, all that you lay out after what months, years of this investigation? Yeah, we've spent a long time on this one. And it really starts at Bear Stearns, where Epstein is introduced to a guy named Ace Greenberg, who was a top executive at the investment firm. And Greenberg and another of his colleagues, Jimmy Kane, who's also a top executive there, took Epstein under their wings and made him their protege. And Epstein proceeded to go on kind of this spree of wrongdoing at Bear Stearns, everything from abusing the

expense account, lying on his resume, giving a girlfriend early access to kind of hot investment deals. And time and time again, Epstein's protectors at the bank went to bat for him and basically got him out of trouble. And this was the start of a lifelong pattern for Epstein, where he would push the envelope cross ethical, moral, sometimes legal lines, and basically escape with impunity because of his really astounding ability to charge him. people in positions of power and to use his leverage over people in positions of power. And one of the things we heard about Bear Stearns was that he was, and this was a time in the late 70s and early 80s where there was a lot of drugs and sex going on within the firm itself.

And Epstein, it sounds like, was providing some of the top executives with drugs and with access to women. And so, you know, he had leverage and he was not afraid to use the leverage. and again, we see this over and over and over again in the ensuing decades of Epstein's life and career. And, David, one of the key figures that he cultivated was the Harvard Law Professor Alan Dershowitz. Could you talk about how they got together in the importance of Dershowitz in his rise?

Yeah, Dershowitz is interesting because he is both, and he goes on to become Epstein's kind of leading defender and leading protector, but Epstein connects with him through by doing this thing that he does all the time, which is he leverages one connection to form another, to form another. And so in the case of Dershowitz, Epstein in the early 90s had become close with a woman named Lynn Forrester, who was this successful telecom executive, who was very close to Bill Clinton and the Clinton White House. Epstein befriends her. She is friends with Dershowitz and Forrester asks Epstein if, or I'm sorry, ask Dershowitz if Epstein can come over and

visit him. So Epstein and Dershowitz get together on Martha's Vineyard and Epstein convinces Dershowitz to fly out to Ohio with Epstein to, for a birthday party for Les Wexner, who is the billionaire retail tycoon who owns brands like Victoria's Secret. And this is the start of a years-long and very fruitful relationship for both Epstein and Dershowitz. I think Dershowitz gets a lot of notoriety and, I think from his perspective, probably fame from his representation of Epstein. And Epstein, for his part, gets this access to a world-class lawyer who engineers a sweetheart deal for him in around 2007 that gets him basically out of trouble when he was facing a sex trafficking and money laundering investigation in Florida. And Dershowitz, and to this day,

is one of Epstein's leading public defenders. And so it was an investment that Epstein made in this man in a very kind of prescient way early on. And that entailed not just introducing him to people, but also getting him access to invest in very exclusive hedge funds. And when those investments didn't work out, getting Dershowitz bailed out of those investments. So Epstein was just absolutely masterful at leveraging one connection to benefit another.

And, you know, it's often been said that Epstein is this math genius and this super sophisticated financier. What we found in our reporting is much simpler, which is that he may have been those things, but the evidence shows that what made a difference for him in the long run was his ability to charm and entrance and leverage powerful people off of one another. And if you can talk about the connections as we're about to see the documents released, if we are, Friday, December 19th, The connections to Trump, to Robert Maxwell, the father of Guillain Maxwell, to Gilane Maxwell, ourselves serving a 20-year sentence for sex trafficking. Go ahead, David. Well, and we don't know what's going to be in these files, if indeed there are files released by Friday.

And I think it is much more likely, I don't think it's very likely that we're going to see a lot of stuff that kind of plums through Epstein's ancient history, the way we did in this article. That's part of the reason we wanted to do this reporting was to provide, kind of shine a light on a phase in his life that has not undergone quite as much scrutiny as his later years. And I think what we're likely to see in these files is quite a bit about him in the 2000s, essentially, and in 2010s. And that happens to be a period where he certainly overlapped with Donald Trump for a period. He overlapped with Bill Clinton for a period, and there are a lot of powerful, important figures kind of darting in and out of his life. And obviously, there is an enormous amount of interest, rightly so, in what these files show, if anything, about how Epstein's sex trafficking operation ensnared some of these kind of bold-faced names.

The truth is, and I'm not trying to be coy or evade the question, we just really have no idea what is in these files and what is going to actually be released in a way that is legible. there's an expectation or a concern that these might be very, very heavily redacted if they get released at all. And hopefully I'm wrong about that because I think the whole world is clamoring for some transparency here. And as someone who's been covering this for like six years, six plus years now with my colleagues at the times, we are really eager to see what's in these files. And finally, what surprised you most as you investigated him for all of these years, we just have 30 seconds. I think what surprised me the most was just how pedestrian some of his scams were.

This is not someone who is hatching this extremely elaborate plot to con, sophisticated people through all these bells and whistles. He was just grabbing people's money and running with it. And for all of the attention that's been paid to the possibility of Epstein being part of spy services or running this really sophisticated blackmail operation, the truth that we have, And there may be more to it. But what we found was much more run-of-the-mill and kind of low-level than that. David Enrich, we want to thank you for being with us. Deputy Investigations editor for the New York Times. We'll link to your new investigations, scams, schemes, ruthless

cons, the untold story of how Jeffrey Epstein got rich. Happy birthday to Jeff Stouch and happy belated birthday to Renee Feltz. I'm Mimi Goodman with Juan Gonzalez. Thanks for joining us.