Judging Freedom - Max Blumenthal : The Venezuelan Deception.

Episode Date: December 4, 2025

Max Blumenthal : The Venezuelan Deception.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

The Weight is over. Dive into Audubles' most anticipated collection, the best of 2025, featuring top audiobooks, podcasts, and originals across all genres. Our editors have carefully curated this year's must-listens, from brilliant hidden gems to the busiest new releases. Every title in this collection has earned its spot. This is your go-to for the absolute best in 2025 audio entertainment, Whether you love thrillers, romance, or nonfiction, your next favorite listen awaits.

Discover why there's more to imagine when you listen at audible.com slash best of the year. Hi, everyone, Judging Andrew Napolitano here for Judging Freedom. Today is Thursday, December 4th, 2025. Our dear friend and colleague, Max Blumenthal, joins us now. Max, I know you have been traveling. You had an unbelievable. debate here in New York City the other night in which you tamales to the other side about Venezuela, and I deeply appreciate you're letting me pick your brain on what the American public needs to know

and doesn't hear about Venezuela. But before we get there, what is the current story behind Prime Minister Netanyahu's ostentatious 100-page request for a pardon in his three criminal trials. Well, it's all the same. It's what we've been hearing from Netanyahu all along, but now it's his most explicit appeal for some form of clemency. And you have the Israeli president, Isaac Herzog, and the American president, Donald Trump,

who has functioned as a sort of subsidiary for Netanyahu on regional policy. he now beseeching the Israeli high court and the prosecutors to let Netanyahu go scot-free on these various corruption scandals. And my feeling on it is, yeah, Netanyahu is extremely corrupt. He attempted to plot in a judicial coup before October 7th that would have given him Lord-like powers over Israel, but Israel's basically already a one-party state. Everyone is, everyone essentially functions in or around the Likud party. Netanyahu has been a master of destroying all challenges to himself.

He is, his coalition is stable for the next year at least. And one of the only ways he will possibly leave office is by knowing that he won't be prosecuted. And one of the principal ways Netanyahu has managed to stay in office is by launching wars, is by extending the genocide in Gaza, launching up unprovoked assault on Iran, which prompts Jewish Israelis to rally around the flag, to rally around him. So it makes it more likely that he'll carry out another war of choice. If he is not pardoned, I mean, that's the predicament. But at this point, Israeli democracy is a farce.

And Netanyahu has no one to stand in his way. wake, if he leaves, I think Israel will be politically destabilized in the wake of Netanyahu. There's just simply no figure that can fill his shoes. Does President Herzog come from the Lekud Party? Is he part of the Netanyahu crowd, or is he some truly independent above the political fray largely symbolic, but obviously with some real power figure? Isaac Herzog is in a symbolic position. He's the president. The president of Israel is often someone who at least has a facade of enlightenment while the prime minister Ariel Sharon, for example, is a right-wing open war monger. Looks like one of us is meeting Ashkenazi rabbis. He represents sort of

of the urban, enlightened public, the old Labor Party, he comes out of the Labor Party. I mean, he existed within the right wing of the Labor Party, but he's not from Netanyahu's Likud Party. And he's provided Netanyahu cover, which has been his role on the international stage, while he personally signs howitzer shells that will be fired into civilian neighborhoods in Gaza.

What is the true reason, as you understand it, that Donald Trump has targeted speedboats in the Caribbean and amassed an armada, a navy naval armada off the coast of Venezuela? Well, I think Venezuela and Nicholas Maduro were always eager for negotiations with Donald Trump. There were negotiations, basically renew Chevron's license. and Venezuela will work with Trump on accepting as many migrant flights as possible. And that's gone. That was the track of Rick Grinnell. He was someone who could have been Secretary of State, but he was superseded by Marco Rubio,

who represents what I call the gusano industrial complex of South Florida, specifically Doral. And these are a few districts which the GIC, the gusano industrial complex of Cuban Americans, Venezuelan Americans, and now a large number of right-wing Nicaraguans, uses to hold the Republican Party in particular hostage because they need to win these districts. So for Trump, this was about domestic politics,

and he finds himself in a situation where he has committed something like 15 to 20% of the U.S. Navy and its assets, which cost a lot to run every day, to the Caribbean, and fallen into what to rubio's trap, which is to launch this phony drug war as cover for regime change war that I'm not sure Donald Trump actually wants to wage, but now Trump is in a situation where he has to save face.

So how will he save face? Will he launch the war that Rubio and Elliot Abrams have called for with special forces in teams attacking Venezuelan bases after a massive air assault all across Venezuela. Will he just announced that he's killed 100 drug dealers and stopped the poisoning of the U.S. and call it a day? I don't think so. Will he waged symbolic strikes as Bill Clinton did,

these pinpoint strikes in Iraq, kind of a wag the dog scenario? That's also likely. But Donald Trump has to save face now, because he's fallen for the trap, which is intended to trigger a regime change war. And we can talk about this more, but you know, you'll have the Pentagon Brass on Capitol Hill today testifying about the criminality

of these strikes and Pete Hakeseth ordering U.S. soldiers to commit war crimes. And this is really thrown a gear into, a wrench into the gears of the war machine and slowed down the decision, and complicated the decision. decision-making process. But the whole war is contingent for those who've devised the policy on the complete removal of the Bolivarian government of Venezuela and the destruction of Venezuela

as an independent sovereign country. To what end? I mean, other than to justify the military buildup there and to put Mrs. Machado, an agent of the Mossad and CIA and MI6, an asset of the Mossad, CIA, and MI6 there. If President Maduro has offered favorable terms on all that oil, what is Trump thinking? I got to justify what I did. I'm going to kill human beings to justify what I did. American pilots are going to come home in body bags to justify what I did?

Douglas Farah, who is an intelligence asset, intelligence operative who has worked for think tanks like the Institute for National Security Studies, as well as the Washington Post, where he sort of posed as a reporter, was for years a major regime change advocate vis-a-vis Venezuela, and he war-gamed U.S. attack on Venezuela in 2019 and determined that it would be a catastrophe and would lead to conflict with no end.

Essentially, what the U.S. unleashed in Colombia when it began to destabilize the country in its fight against communism in the 1950s, a kind of civil war with deepening narco-cartel penetration and a new wave of migration to the north, which would be disastrous for the U.S. and for the continent. And this war is not only about oil. Venezuela under Hugo Chavez and Nicolas Maduro has always been eager to refine its oil in the refineries in Texas. The U.S. has made that impossible or difficult through sanctions. The U.S. regime has stolen Venezuela's largest foreign asset in the form of Citgo to starve it of assets because the U.S. regime and specifically neocons, Cuban Americans like Marco Rubio, see Venezuela as the engine. of a kind of regional project that threatens U.S. hegemony and U.S. control in the Western

hemisphere. And what they ultimately would like to do is topple the government in Cuba as well, the government in Nicaragua, and to destroy the center left all across the subcontinent, including Lula de Silva in Brazil. They openly say this. So the drug wars just cover for a larger regional project under the auspices of the Monroe Doctrine, but it really represents a complete misinterpretation of the Monroe Doctrine, which was enshrined at a time when the U.S. was not even one of the great powers in the world to keep the British and other major colonial powers out of Latin America. There is no threat of another country moving into Latin America. And the idea that China poses this great threat through some kind of infrastructure cooperation deals in South American countries really underlines the intellectual bankruptcy of this entire Monroeist policy because it's delusional.

If you go to the website, Colonel McGregor just pointed this out, if you go to the website of the Drug Enforcement Administration, Donald Trump's drug enforcement. administration and look up Venezuela. There is no significant, even detectable drug trafficking from Venezuela to the United States. And yet the government has attempted to perpetrate this deception on the American people to the point where it is committing war crimes by killing civilians, non-combatant civilians on the high seas. And even as, you know, as we know from the controversy of this week, murdering rather than rescuing survivors that had tried to and failed to kill.

Yeah, that's the strike on December 2nd, the one we know about where survivors were ordered killed by the admiral in charge of Operation Southern Spear. And this is consistent with, but it was a verbal order from Pete Heggsett. And this is consistent with Pete Heggsett's attempt to eliminate the rule of engagement, basically to what he called untie the hands of the soldiers and increase

lethality. He boasted in the book that he released last year that a unit under his control in Iraq that he instructed them to ignore army rules of engagement and to kill at will. Just a quick correction. The strike that I mentioned was September 2nd, not December 2nd. Correct. The generals are all going to have to take the fall for Pete Hague sets lawlessness to today they're going to they're going to be the fall guys for haggseth. There are rumors that there's a push to replace Pete Hague set with Dan Driscoll, who's the Army Secretary, who is a close friend of J.D. Vance. And all these conflicts are emerging because the policy has already failed. And remember, the U.S. lost a war in Yemen against one of the poorest countries in the world last year. It's policy failed there, but not after significant civilian deaths caused in Yemen. including Pete Hankseth ordering the mass murder, the massacre of tribal elders who were having a village meeting. And he tweeted the snuff film of their massacre.

Yes, yes. These were tribal elders who were standing in a circle, and he said that they were Houthi terrorists plotting a terror attack. So that's the level, that's what we're operating with. The corporate hack press is not allowed in the Pentagon briefing room. They would be asking tough questions now, maybe for partisan reasons. And now Laura Lumer and TPSA are in there. And, you know, I wish one reporter in there would ask for one name of one person who is a so-called

narco terrorist that the U.S. has eliminated because I bet you the Department of War Crimes cannot even provide the name of one person that they have eliminated on the high seas. We do know the name maybe one or two people because they were Colombian citizens and their boat had floated into the danger zone because its engine went out. It was displaying an emergency sign. And so the U.S. military eliminated everyone on the boat. And now the parents of one of those killed on that boat are suing the U.S. government. And Trump is retaliating against Gustavo Petro, the president of Colombia,

by sanctioning him and threatening to carry out land strikes inside Colombia. And that brings us to another issue. Venezuela, as Colonel McGregor said, is not the source of drug trafficking into the U.S. That's not just according to the DEA, it's according to the U.N. Department of Drugs and Crime. My debate two nights ago, I displayed the graph that's on the website of the UN office,

which shows the transit routes of drugs to the United States. They're all from the Pacific coast of South America. The Pacific coast is ruled by U.S. allies including Danielle Noboa, the billionaire Miami-born president of Ecuador who probably stole the election there, and who is actually a U.S. citizen, is a friend of Marco Rubio, who just hosted Christie Nome, who was attempting to plant U.S. military bases in Ecuador. Oh my goodness. Daniel Noboa was the head of the shipping company for Noboa family shipping, which owns Bonita

Fruit Company. Now, if you're watching this right now, you can just Google this and uncover one of the biggest scandals that our media barely touches, which is that tons of cocaine are showing up in ports in Europe and the United States packed in Bonita bananas. Or they're transferred into Mexico and then they're transferred through other means. So Daniela Boas really preside. Our ally is presiding over a major drug trafficking operation as his country, sinks into deep into poverty. What was once one of the safest countries in the Western Hemisphere is now the least safe, has five of the ten least safe cities, and we're focused on

Venezuela for purely political reasons. One of the descriptions you gave of Hegset's book, he articulated with great clarity. I can imagine this being played at his trial, by prosecutors who would need to prove intent. Chris cut number seven. We unleash overwhelming and punishing violence on the enemy. We also don't fight with stupid rules of engagement. We untie the hands of our warfighters to intimidate, demoralize, hunt, and kill the enemies of our country. No more politically correct and overbearing rules of engagement.

Just common sense, maximum lethality, and authority for warfighters. That's all I ever wanted as a platoon leader. And it's all my E6 squad leaders ever want it. Back to that E6 rule. We let our leaders fight their formations. And then we have their back. It's very simple, yet incredibly powerful. Profoundly against the law and just what you described.

He's not using his intention to commit war crimes. And it's very clear. And he's also obfuscating and conflating situations in the field where rules of engagement supposedly threaten soldiers' lives because they have to make a snap decision with the order that he explicitly gave to kill unarmed men who are civilians outside of any actual combat theater in order to flaunt the rules of engagement, to mock international law and to carry out a purely political massacre on people whose names we don't even know.

And I can guarantee you that the Army brass is worried, that soldiers who are involved in executing this policy are worried because they've been exposed. They've been legally exposed. That is why the top JAG officer, the top lawyer in the southern command of the U.S. military has expressed their opposition to this policy and called it illegal. That is why five other active JAG officers have come out and called the policy illegal. That is why the commander, the top general and command of this operation, General Alvin Halsey, is planning to retire. So it's like, I don't have to be Michael Parenti or Noam Chomsky to call out this policy, it's being called out at the highest levels of the military is criminal, and the entire American public is against it. Only 13% of Americans see Venezuela as posing a threat

to the United States, according to a November 24th UGov poll. We should also mention most Venezuelans, according to a poll by an independent firm called data analysis in Venezuela. Most of them overwhelmingly are opposed to military strikes in Venezuela, regardless of how feel about Maduro. What do you think Trump's people will plan to do, physically kill him or arrest him and physically replace him with Mrs. Machado? Well, Machado would not last if they did that. And it really exposes how anti-democratic the entire policy is and how anti-democratic the

U.S. created, funded, and coached Venezuelan opposition that Machado represents is and always has been. Their path to power has always been coups. They can only hold, they can only campaign in elections when Venezuela has a gun to its head and a rope around its neck to strangle its economy. They can never win otherwise. And so, and so it would be a fantasy to think that Venezuela would not be destabilized and possibly plunged into civil war. if Machado were installed with such violent and undemocratic means. I don't think they have a way out of this. I don't think they have a real conclusion to this policy

other than intimidating Maduro by surrounding him with a naval siege, increasing the strangulation of Venezuela's economy, and hoping that he negotiates his own exit. And that's just knowing, having interacted with him as a journalist, on a few occasions and knowing the movement that's around him, I just don't see that as likely because they understand if he stands down

and they stand down to Machado, that's the end of Venezuela's independence and the country will be looted by Trump's business cronies. Last matter I want to call to your attention is this reprehensible cartoon that Hegseth posted. Franklin the Turtle, of course,

your children know this is an amiable cartoon that children love here he has given this cartoon character military equipment shows him shows the turtle killing people in boats and if you can read that clip at the top for your christmas wish list how depraved is his thinking as depraved is anyone who thinks that's acceptable i'm working on my own Franklin Meme. Franklin pays an out-of-court settlement to silence a rape accuser, squeaks through Senate confirmation, and becomes the world's most cringeworthy war criminal. It's a book about Pete Hague-Seth. Max, you're the best.

This is a really depraved individual, and he thinks that he represents and embodies the ethos of MAGA, but he doesn't understand how repelled. so many Americans are by the policy because he's cut off. And he's surrounded himself with hack propagandists in the Department of War Crimes briefing room. He's giving interviews with his wife to Stephen Miller's wife. And that's the world that he exists in. And, you know, before that, he was in the Fox Green Room before he was the Trump administration's top DUI hire. Wow.

Before we go on Thanksgiving. day, Chris put together a marathon, eight hours of Colonel Douglas McGregor. With your permission, on Christmas Day, we would like to post a marathon of eight hours of my interviews of you. We'll call it the Maxathon. I'm with it. If it can intersect with Hanukkah somehow. It's after Hanukkah, I think. But thank you, Max. I know you're having a very, very busy week. And I know you're a few blocks from me in Manhattan. There's no way we could be in the same room. But thank you so much. We have a nice time. I don't want to. Yeah, Chris, can you put up that picture of Max and me? There we are in a lovely little coffee shop downtown last night. And it was great to be with you.

Thank you, my dear friend. Safe travels. I love to Anya and your children. All the best. time i'll dress better oh you were fine great seeing thank you bye bye coming up later today at one o'clock professor glendeezen at two o'clock colonel lawrence wilkerson at three o'clock professor john meersheimer at four o'clock i don't know where he is but we'll find him pepe eskabar judge napolitano for judging freedom Thank you.