Judging Freedom - Max Blumenthal : Israel Will Sabotage a Trump/Iran Deal

Episode Date: May 28, 2026

Max Blumenthal : Israel Will Sabotage a Trump/Iran DealSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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What if it is better to perish fighting for freedom than to live as a slave? What if freedom's greatest hour of danger is now? Hi, everyone. Judge Andrew Napolitano here for a judge. Judging Freedom. Today is Thursday, May 28, 2006. Max Blumenthal will be with us in just a moment on how can the feds make it a crime to bring medication to children in Cuba? And who's really making money in Venezuela? But first this. Don't you just cringe when people say, I told you so. Sorry, I told you gold and silver would reap the benefits due to excessive money.

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They're getting educated, and you should too. Call the best in the business and the people I trust, Lear Capital. Get their reports, get the facts, get some gold and silver. Tell them the judge sent you and get up to $20,000 in bonus gold or silver. Call 800, 511, 4620, or go to Lear Judge Napoliton. Max Blumenthal, welcome here, my dear friend. Thanks for accommodating our schedule, as you always do. What is the latest in Venezuela? Who's making money down there? Which American is calling the shots? Well, I'd only accommodate your schedule this early. I don't know if I'd even do anything on my own platform at this time, but it's important to get this all out there. I just published a piece at the Gray Zone, scooping the Washington Post, and now Reuters has a piece out about it.

I was out ahead of the curve, as we often are on Venezuela. Congratulations to you, as are well-deserved. Thank you. And we did it with one reporter. They needed three in like a million sources. But, you know, I uncovered much of the same material, maybe more on Mauricio Claver-Coron, who is said to be sort of the gate. gatekeeper who holds the keys to Caracas. He was the mastermind of all of Donald Trump's hardline policies which are causing so much chaos in Latin America have caused mass migration from

Latin America during the first Trump term when he was hired by John Bolton at the NSC, this Cuban-American regime change zealot initiated over 200 sanctions on Cuba and Venezuela. I mean, he really destroyed, he brought the Venezuelan economy. economy down to the point where you saw unprecedented wave of Venezuelan migrants to the U.S. border. Then he comes back in the second Trump administration and oversees the deportation of these Venezuelans who actually came legally under the TPS program to Seacot the torture prison in El Salvador. He oversaw the naming of Juan Guaido as interim president, this whole failed

coup attempt in Venezuela, pretty much every Trump policy towards Cuba and Venezuela that has been destructive has been the brainchild of this figure, Mauricio Claver-Corone, who kind of functions as the mentor of Marco Rubio. He faced a massive scandal when between the two Trump administrations, he was the president of the Inter-American Development Bank, and he appointed his girlfriend, whose name is Jessica Bedoya, who happens to also double as a CIA agent as his chief of staff. No one knew she was his girlfriend. He increased her salary by $133,000 in a year.

Scandal, kind of familiar to those who know what Paul Wolfowitz did at the World Bank. He was eventually drummed out by all of the governors of this important multilateral institution. Goes back into the Trump administration, causes conflict there. He's pushed out of the Trump administration. He's a private individual who's raising money for his own investment firm that he runs with his romantic partner, Badoia, and now he controls Caracas. So this speaks to how corrupt the environment is in Caracas. Now, what is the most important policy to the Venezuelan government of Delci Rodriguez? It is restructuring $170 billion in debt that they need to pay back to the debt owners.

And so the Trump administration announces that it will allow Venezuela to finally hire a financial advisor to help it restructure its debt, which means that they'll move out of sanctions possibly. Moricio Clavercone sends his girlfriend to Caracas, and they appoint their own, like they tell the Venezuelan government which financial advisor to appoint. Now Clavercaron is declaring himself that Jared Cushcheon. of Latin America. He's a private individual who says, if you want to play ball down here, you have to go through me. And you have these maga vultures feasting off the carcass of the post-Moduro Venezuelan Petro State, which is extremely depressing. I'm hearing that Donald Trump Jr. is down there to raise money for his 1789 fund, which is a major channel for corruption. Peter Teal's, a Peter Teal-backed startup just signed a major deal to reconnect Venezuela to the

global economy through the Swift system. And Claver-Corone is presiding over all of it, but he has no government portfolio, no official role, and therefore no accountability to us. And so we, the American taxpayer, have no idea where, or the Venezuelans have no idea where their oil export money is going to. As I wrote, two of the most corrupt trading houses on the planet called Trafigura and Vitole are responsible for exporting Venezuela's oil. These are groups that were rung up by the Justice Department corrupt foreign practices division for paying hundreds of millions of dollars in bribes.

What happened to that division under Donald Trump at the DOJ? He ended it. He suspended it. So everything the Trump administration is doing is Venezuela is to make things more opaque, more murky, so they can extract more wealth. Donald Trump just claimed that he was financing the Iran war with Venezuelan oil money. In other words, that it's all a slush fund for his personal international rampage. And this will come back to haunt the government of Delci Rodriguez, which for now has guaranteed

stability and could lead to the kind of chaos we're now seeing in Bolivia, where the country is on the verge of civil war, or right-wing a kind of neoliberal government coming in like we see in Ecuador, and carrying out harsh repression, raids, brutalizing peasants. This is the danger for Venezuela under Trump management. How has the American public gained? by the kidnapping of Nicholas Maduro and the disruption, the consequent disruption in Venezuela?

Well, I mean, speaking, for example, to a former senior U.S. official, I was told Maduro was very eager to accommodate the U.S. and make a deal before he was kidnapped. So a lot of this could have happened that the U.S. wanted to erode Venezuelan sovereignty,

and Trump wanted to pillet. the country, which Maduro would not have allowed. How is the U.S. benefited? Have our oil prices gone down? Have we seen, I mean, even if you were looking at this from a rapacious neo-colonial point of view, did the U.S. benefit? Did the American consumer benefit? No, the American consumer has benefited about as much as they did from the invasion of Iraq.

And meanwhile, ordinary Venezuelans are telling me nothing has changed. inflation is going up in Venezuela because inflation is going up globally because of Trump's war on Iran and the closure of the Strait of Hormuz and Trump's blockade of Iranian ports. So nothing has changed except for Trump cronies like, as I mentioned, Peter Thiel. Palmer Lucky is also involved with this startup that's making money there. Other Trump cronies are talking about buying luxury hotels, Don Jr. It's only for them. They're the only ones who have profited.

And if the Democrats win in the midterms, we're going to see the House Oversight Committee start to zero in on this corruption. And again, it's going to have negative consequences for Delci Rodriguez and the remnants of Chavismo to have overcomplied and embraced Trump so tightly when things have not improved. Domestically and the Democrats begin pushing for regime change with their usual mantra of democracy. What is switching over to Cuba? What happened to our mutual friend Medea Benjamin as she and her colleagues attempted to deliver medications for Cuban children in Cuba? Well, the Trump administration or the Trump mafia is presiding over one of the

worst and sloppiest reigns of repression against the anti-war movement that we've seen in our lifetime. They're determined to crush dissent. They hate the fact that Code Pink yesterday staged a major protest on the Capitol steps against Israel's holding of 8,000 Palestinians without any trial or without any charges who are basically hostages. Many of them are being sexually abused. I believe the United Nations just added Israel to a list of countries that practices sexual abuse. They hate the fact that Code Pink's always in the faces of people on Capitol Hill, that they're involved in protests nationally, and they're seeking to crack down accusing Medea Benjamin and podcaster Hassan Piker,

who is much closer to the Democratic Party's sort of progressive wing, of violating U.S. sanctions and OFAC licenses, by staying at a supposedly sanctioned hotel while they were delivering aid to Cuba. Fact is, they weren't staying at that hotel. It's silly enough that you could be prosecuted for staying at the wrong hotel in Cuba, which is a tourist destination, but they weren't staying at that hotel. The prosecution or the alleged subpoena is based on a viral tweet that was wrong. And so it's obvious what they're trying to do.

This is all happening under the watch of the social. so-called counterterrorism director, Sebastian Gorka, a former British military intelligence officer who, before being in the Trump administration, was at Salem Media, which is now registered as an Israeli foreign agent. Sebastian Gorka replaced Joe Kent, and he is now directing the whole counterterrorism policy at the left. He has even said, being a leftist makes you a terrorist. He said this in an interview. He's coordinating this through the NSC, and they want to crack down on dissent. The target seems to be Cuba because the Trump mafia wants to restore Cuba to Miami control. It may launch a military intervention by this summer there. But I think this is really about Israel, and that Cuba is a

cover for Israel, and they don't want to admit it. How is Cuba a cover for Israel? The same way that China was a cover for Israel on the TikTok purchase, when members of Congress and the U.S. government under Biden were complaining that TikTok was supposedly owned by China and that young people were being targeted by Chinese propaganda, then we learned through Ted Cruz or even complaints by Tony Blinken and others that young people were actually being mobilized in support of Palestine after October 7th. That was the real source of their complaint. And who went ahead and bought TikTok?

It was David Ellison, the Israel first billionaire, son of Larry Ellison, the Data Center Kingpin, who's close friends with Benjamin Netanyahu. These are the people that now own CNN and CBS. Correct. And they've done it in many ways to tamp down on dissent against Israel. Hassan Piker is really despised by the Republicans and by, a wing of the Democrats, the Debbie Wasserman Schultz wing of the Democratic Party, the Chuck Schumer wing of the Democratic Party that hates that there's a part of their party that wants

to sanction Israel. Medea Benjamin is hated primarily for her activism on Palestine. And many of the other targets of this fake federal dragnet are primarily loathed by that side because of their activism on Palestine. But through Cuba and through this trip to Cuba that Medea Benjamin and Hassan Piker participated in, I think in April to deliver aid, they seem to have found an opening away in to issue subpoenas and begin to hound them. That's the way I'm reading it, is that the Trump administration is planning to support Israel's rampage throughout the region. They know there's going to be massive dissent. It's why when Pam Bondi was Attorney General, she was flown down to Florida to meet

with Miriam Adelson and then appeared on stage at Miriam Adelson's Israel American Council event to declare that the Justice Department will define anti-Semitism as hate speech and will begin cracking down nationally because they know that there's a growing segment of the public, including in the Republican Party base that is up in arms about this slaughter and that they need to crack down. How are American Jews reacting? I mean, are there statistics showing a significant number of American Jews opposing the Zioners? regime? Yeah, there's a new poll out. Let me get the name of that poll so I can be as precise

as possible in case no one believes me because it's pretty remarkable. This is a Jewish Voter Resource Center poll, and it finds that almost 50% of American Jews under the age of 35 favor a binational state, which means that they are functionally anti-Zion. and support ending Israel as a Jewish ethno-supremicist state. That's highly significant. That percentage is higher than the percentage of young Jews or Jews overall in America who favor annexing the West Bank, which is the de facto U.S. policy under Trump. The majority overall of American Jews favor a two-state solution, which is non-existent.

And because there will never be a Palestinian state, we can see all of the momentum within American Jewish life is moving towards anti-Zionism as they get younger. And this mirrors the overall opinion of the American public in Thomas Massey's district in this race where he was defeated essentially through Israel first billionaires. The majority of voters under the age of 45 supported Thomas Massey and those over 45 and especially over 50, the Fox News boomers supported the warm body that Israel ran against him, Ed Gowryne. You can even look at a Washington Post poll from several months ago, which found that over 60% of Jewish American adults believe that Israel had committed war crimes in Gaza, and 40%

believed that it had committed genocide. Look at the internals and the younger the respondents are, the more they felt that Israel was responsible for genocide. So Jewish life is changing against the backdrop of the Gaza genocide. Jews who are more progressive or tend to be more progressive in the United States, they tend to be less aligned with Orthodox Judaism. But on the other hand, there's another survey that I read by a kind of a Jewish pollster named Sergio de la Pregola, which found that inside the United States, the Jews who are having the most Jewish babies are ultra-Orthodox.

Many of them are actually themselves non or anti-Zionists like the Satmar, and that by 2050 or 2050, close to a majority of Jews in the United States will be ultra-Orthodox. The males do not work often, and therefore, for live off the state. And so a crisis is brewing. And then meanwhile, this Jewish voter resource center poll, which should generate a lot of reflection by the Jewish communal institutions and these self-appointed Jewish leaders who have supported the genocide in Gaza,

they're not commenting on it. The Jewish federations, which is the main kind of body that coordinates Jewish communal official, like semi-official life in the U.S., and which is staunchly Zionist, has refused to comment on this poll. And in my own experience, you know, if you are moving towards this trend of anti-Zionism within Jewish life and you're organizing around it, you get pushed out of Jewish communal life. You can't find anywhere to be a part of anything. So the crisis is brewing as the self-appointed leadership will find itself in many ways in the same position that our political leadership nationally finds itself in, where they have to impose undemocratic, anti-democratic measures

to suppress the dissent within their own base on Israel-Palestine. So it's actually reshaping American life totally. And this is not confined to Jewish life at all. What do you think Trump would gain by his threat yesterday to blow up Oman as absurd as that is an American ally? An American ally, a key negotiator, one of the most important negotiators in this entire conflict. Trump threatens to blow them up if they don't do what he wants around the Strait of Hormuz, because they are supposedly essential underpinning of, of the coming toll system around the Strait of Hormuz, which Iran has made a red line on their negotiating terms.

The State Department promoted Trump's threat to blow up Oman. This is significant because it's a message to the Gulf states overall, to the GCC. Trump is also, and I don't think he knows what he's talking about, Jared Kushner told him to say this, he's also demanded that all of the other Gulf states, For example, Saudi Arabia, primarily Saudi Arabia, join the Abraham Accords, what I call the

Epstein Accords, which are designed to bury the Palestinian question and the Palestinian struggle and force them to normalize with Israel in order for there to be a deal with Iran. So what Trump is saying to Saudi Arabia or what he's saying to Oman is if they don't do what he wants, they will be destroyed. Either Trump will order them to be blown up or he will reignite war against Iran, and we all know that Iran will escalate against countries that are hosting U.S. bases, such as Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, and he will plunge these countries into disaster. So Trump is threatening the destruction of all of these countries that have done so much to support him. Remember the sword dance in Donald Trump's first term

in Saudi Arabia? We walked away with a trillion dollars from his last visit there, and all they got were threats of their own destruction. Let me just say, it's time for Saudi Arabia and these states that have not sold out like the United Arab Emirates to wake up and start making regional alliances and accommodate Iran or face destruction from the Mad King. That's clearly the message. Wow. What happens if the United States and Iran enter into some agreement whereby,

why Trump removes the U.S. military, what would Netanyahu and company do to sabotage that agreement? Well, removing the U.S. military from the Gulf states would not necessarily be kind of endgame for Israel. You can already see how Israel's positioning itself. It is willing to and is even soliciting the U.S. to establish permanent military bases inside its own territory. And it's given over airfields at Ben-Gurion Airport for U.S. C-130 and F-35 and F-15 jets, basically turning the entire airport into human shields. Nevitim Air Base in the south and the negative. of desert of Israel is where the F-35s are primarily disembarking from towards Iran.

And that's also because Israel, with its small landmass, high population, which is military-ready, has more anti-aircraft, anti-missile defenses in a tighter space than the Gulf States. So it's more defensible. and its military censorship regime has been airtight. So it's been hard to see how much damage Iran has done to U.S. jets on the ground at these bases. So Netanyahu might actually exploit the situation to make Israel seem more indispensable to U.S. power projection in the region. And then there's also Azerbaijan, which is aligned in many ways with Israel against Iran, launching attacks through the Caspian Sea on Iran.

Wow. Last question about Lebanon. Weren't Israel and Lebanon engaged in ceasefire negotiations in Washington, D.C.? Well, this just shows the fecklessness of the Lebanese government. Its own prime minister, Noaf Salam, doesn't even represent a political party and how they have provided cover for some of the most heinous attacks that we have witnessed against the Lebanese population for years. They carried out negotiations on two occasions in Washington, supposedly for a ceasefire. They have entertained the possibility

of using the Lebanese military to disarm Hezbollah. They haven't done it yet, which would mean civil war and a complete surrender to Israel, which has troops in southern Lebanon. They have not agreed to any timeline for Israeli withdrawal as they went into these constitutionally illegal negotiations. And now what is Israel doing? It has evacuated the fifth largest city in Lebanon, tier, in the south of Lebanon, causing ethnic cleansing on a historic scale. Today it's now bombing and issuing evacuation orders for Nabatia as well. And what it's doing is it's attacking what it thinks is Hezbollah's support base because it cannot defeat Hezbollah militarily and its soldiers are suffering losses under FPV drone attacks that they can't repel. So they're just targeting

civilians across the border and the Lebanese government is doing nothing except waving the white flag. It's absolutely criminal. I don't think we understand the scale of human suffering in Lebanon. I would encourage everyone to follow the reporting at the gray zone of Wyatt Reed who's in Beirut, who's been in and out of southern Lebanon, producing, for example, a report with Nabatia rescue, who are the rescuers who have been trying to tend to the wounded that are getting hit with Israeli drone strikes and bombings of their homes. And what's happening is these rescuers are being killed day after day in double and triple tap strikes on ambulances, and Israel just says it's all, they're all has bullet targets.

This is an epic crime unfolding in real time as we watch. So the U.S. and Iran, well, let me put it this way, Iran will never enter into an agreement with the U.S. that fails to restrain Israel in Gaza, the West Bank and Lebanon, will it? Well, Lebanon is really the key because of the alliance with Hezbollah. And that's another reason why Israel's escalating. Netanyahu's escalating in Lebanon in order to sabotage this deal in which Iran has declared that they will not allow any, they will not sign any agreement unless Lebanon is included. To the extent that Iran gets that deal, Iran will receive the respect of many Lebanese citizens who are not Hezbollah supporters because they simply don't want war imposed. on them. Israel can't allow that to happen. Netanyahu can't allow the war to end because it will be a defeat for himself and he's going to elections later this year. I can see the polls in Israel are

kind of seesawing. A couple weeks ago, it looked as though Netanyahu's party, Likud, would lose to his opposition. Now they're up by two seats. And as long as he keeps the war going, he can keep his, he can maintain some possibility for Likud to survive, which means he must sabotage the Iran deal. He must sabotage it also because a deal between the U.S. and Iran would destroy Netanyahu's lifelong project of regime change in Iran. And so Netanyahu is working to sabotage the Trump administration, intervening in U.S. politics through proxies like, for example, Senator Ted Cruz, whose office is run by an Israeli operative named Omri Saren. And we've seen Trump move very close towards a deal and now he has to walk it back.

I would be very, very surprised if there were any serious negotiations even taking place. I'd be very surprised if the Trump administration were even talking to Iran in a serious way. After all the pushback Donald Trump got from Israel, Idemar Ben-Givir has opened, the security minister in Israel, is openly declared that Israel will not allow the United States to make any deal. And that really tells you how the power, it really exposes the true contours of the power dynamics and who's in charge in Washington. Wow. Max, thank you, my dear man.

Again, your knowledge of all these hotspots is truly encyclopedic, and you bring a great explanation to all of us. Thank you so much. Thanks again for your time. Thanks a lot, Judge. Sure. what a brilliant and gifted man he is. Coming up later today, if you're watching us live in an hour and 15 minutes at 11 this morning,

I think he's in China. Maybe he's in St. Petersburg, Pepe Escobar, at 2.15 this afternoon, Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson. Batting cleanup at 3 o'clock, Colonel Douglas McGregor. Judge Napolitano for Judging Freedom.