Judging Freedom - Phil Giraldi : The Israel–Venezuela Nexus — Giraldi Explains

Episode Date: January 14, 2026

Phil Giraldi : The Israel–Venezuela Nexus — Giraldi ExplainsSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Undeclared wars are commonplace. Pragically, our government engages in preemptive war, otherwise known as aggression with no complaints from the American people. Sadly, we have become accustomed to living with the illegitimate use of force by government. To develop a truly free society, the issue of initiating force must be understood and rejected. What if sometimes to love your country you had to alter or abolish the government? Jefferson was right? What if that government is best which governs least? What if it is dangerous to be right when the government is wrong? 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 judging freedom. Today is Wednesday, January 14th, 2006, Phil Giraldi, joins us now. Phil, a pleasure, my dear friend. Thank you for joining us. What is the benefit for the average American

from the invasion of Venezuela and kidnapping of President Maduro? Well, I suspect you would have to say it's not a question of a benefit. It's probably a deficit.

in terms of what the United States will be spending to not get rich off of Venezuel and oil, except for, of course, a few billionaire friends of the president. But the rest of us are not going to benefit in any way. Oil will not be cheaper. It's going to take a year to get this program going and spending a half billion dollars to do so. So there's not going to be anything there. And the whole idea that we were being threatened by terrorism, narco-terrorists, everything was a fiction anyway. So Americans will not be safer as a result of this.

So I think you have to say that the whole benefit is something that's accrued to the very narrow political class, which will be making money off of this in one way or another, and will be gaining political advantages of various kinds. by lying and manipulating the situation. And we're seeing that going on every 10 minutes. I'm just watching wires coming over about the poor Greenlanders who are trying to talk sense with Rubio and the vice president. And, of course, that's a pointless task. Wow.

I would imagine that some of the president's a billionaire buddies like Paul Singer, the significant, the most important donor in Marco Rubio's career, who now owns Sitgo, brought it at a fire sale at about 30 cents on the dollar. He will benefit from this in some long-term way. He's not a young man, but in some long-term way he and his heirs will benefit from it. Yeah, that's precisely what'll happen. He bought it at the bottom price that could be negotiated for it. I remember when Citgo was very active in places like Texas,

but obviously we did our best to destroy it, and Donald Trump was a hand in that in his first term in office. And so now it was something cheap to pick up. And if the U.S. maintains some kind of control over what's going on in Venezuela, Mr. Singer will become uncountably rich early. Isn't it interesting? You mentioned the fiction of narco-terrorism. Those murders on the high seas have all stopped now. I don't know if that's because I could be sarcastic and say, oh, well, after we invaded Venice,

Well, the drug dealers have all gone home, or the president who has a notoriously short attention span is now focusing on something else, probably Iran, because Netanyahu and company are driving him crazy until he does something about that. Yeah, I think he's decided that we're moving on to another game now, and this is the big one. Iran certainly is the big objective of the neocons. and of the Israel lobby, which basically were the ones that even helped drive the attack on Venezuela by conjuring up these incredible stories about how Middle Eastern terrorists were basically using Venezuela as a base to attack the United States and do other nefarious things. All of this, of course, was nonsense. And this is what the Israeli lobby is very good at.

And it's clearly what the neocons, who are not necessarily in the lobby, but are kind of attached to the money that it throws around, like a Rubio. And this is what they're interested in seeing and doing. The lobby has done some really nefarious. I think I was talking to my mutual friend Joe Lauria today. I sent to my column. He commented very favorably on it. And I said, how are you doing?

You said, terribly. I'm in Australia. Australia is in the process of criminalizing anti-Semitism. You ready for this? ex post facto meaning something you said four or five years ago when it was lawful at the time

can now be criminal and you could be punished now for what you said four or five years ago. Thanks be to God, we have a prohibition on that in the U.S. Constitution doesn't exist in Australia and they're apparently about to make the most of it. That's really interesting. I knew, of course, that

they had already criminalized criticism of Israel, among other things, and they declared them as being anti-Semitic and were put it, had been arresting and putting people in jail and finding them for that crime. I wasn't aware of this new wrinkle on it, which is incredible. But of course, to say that we're protected by the U.S. Constitution against something like that is nonsense because Trump does not believe we have a constitution or, or any rules based order. So we're, you know, we could wind up on the same page as this. Well, I'm sorry to say that we have a constitution of no authority. It exists formally,

but not functionally because the president gets away. I mean, formally, we still have a president. We still have two houses of Congress. We still have a judiciary. But functionally, none of this works. When he can say, I'm restrained only by my own mind and my own morality, not by international law, which comes from treaties, which under the Constitution are the equivalent of the Constitution, when ratified by the Senate, they become the Supreme Law of the Land. He doesn't believe that, doesn't accept it, and doesn't accept it, and his behavior has manifested that.

Well, what's amazing to me is the fact that he is so ignorant that he doesn't mind saying these things openly, which if he had two brain cells to rub it, together, he would recognize these things, would be raising all kinds of flags among certain quarters in the public, and also among the political class. And also even among people who have been throwing a lot of money at politicians who would say, hey, you know,

it gets dangerous if all of a sudden you kind of make our argument unpalatable. And so I think there's a lot of this going on. And that's the good side. of it in the fact that a lot of people are waking up to what Trump is doing and what these people who are running Trump are doing, more to the point. And, you know, we'll just see where it goes, but I wake up every morning. I'm not optimistic about where we're going. There's always these new stories, like the one about what's going on with Greenland today with this meeting after Trump

has already said, he said, we're either going to get Greenland one way or we're going to do it another way, which will be a lot harder. And, you know, what kind of threat is this for a country that is essentially a NATO ally and where we already have a military base as part of NATO? And this is just incredible. Well, I don't know where that's going to go. Does Greenland pose a threat? to American National Security. Did I miss something here, Phil?

It's probably that cocaine that they're raising there and shipping into New England. You know, that must be what they're doing. And all those Chinese ships and everything in the Arctic that nobody has seemed to identify, well, they're, you know, they're there. They're hiding. They're very good at hiding. Here's sadly the president on Sunday on Greenland, Chris cut number four. If we don't take Greenland, Russia or China will take Greenland, and I am not going to let that happen. Is there any deal they can offer you? Yeah, sure, I'd love to make a deal with them. It's easier.

But one way or the other, we're going to have Greenland. There you go. That's exactly what you said, he said. back to Venezuela. Why did Netanyahu appear on U.S. television accusing Venezuela of exporting terrorism and saying this has got to change? What terrorism did he even claim that Venezuela was exporting? You remember that famous Bill Buckley interview where he interviewed Netanyahu. This is back in the 90s.

Buckley pinned him down and said, can you define terrorism? And Netanyahu gave a definition that he really can't live with anymore. And that is attacking civilians to change government policy. Well, what terrorism is he talking about coming out of Venezuela? Well, see, that's the trick. Essentially what he's saying is that Venezuela, or essentially, I mean, he's saying it directly, that Venezuela has become a place that harbors terrorist groups like Hamas and Hezbollah and, of course, the Iranians. And it has all these people, and it's become a sort of a point from which terrorism is allowed to radiate all over Latin America.

and the threat is developing against the United States because these Iranians, who are crafty buggers, who are basically able to supply the Venezuelans with cruise missiles and other advanced technology, this kind of stuff has the range of the United States and will be used against us. This is just a totally phony argument that's concocted by a creep like Netanyahu, and like the creeps and the Trump administration, to create fear in the American public

that, first of all, we're all being drugged to death by the Venezuelans. And secondly, they're just planning an attack with the collusion of the Iranians. And that's how they want us to see the state of the world that is the world that they depict to create a situation where they can do, as Trump puts it, I can do anything I want. The Washington Post just reported as you were speaking.

I don't know if this is true or not, but this is what they're reporting. Days before protests erupted in Iran in late December, Israeli officials notified Iranian leadership via Russian mediators that they would not launch strikes against Iran if Israel were not attacked At first, Iran responded through the Russian channel that it would also refrain from preemptive attack diplomats and regional officials with knowledge of the exchange said. So effectively, both Israel and Iran have assured each other via Russia that they will not strike first. Who in the right mind would accept Israel's word on this? Well, nobody.

But the point is that BB Netanyahu is probably convinced Donald Trump to strike first, which is what we see kind of developing right now, and that a lot of participants on your program, I think, are seeing it

and speaking about it, too. This is where the cards are. I mean, this is a man with the new, now let's remember one other thing that nobody talks about, except maybe me, is that, you know, we're talking about Israel is a nuclear power. And some of these other countries like Russia that are marginally involved in this,

their nuclear powers too, and China is too. If we play this thing the wrong way and all this thing kind of goes down the toilet, which has a distinct possibility of occurring, this could be something that is catastrophic. for all of us. And yet this is what is happening, and this is what Donald Trump, for his rhetoric, he's gonna help the protesters. Well, that's total crap, because the protesters,

from my own internal knowledge, from when I was running Iranian ops out of Turkey back in the 1980s, I can tell you that a lot of those protesters are ethnic and other minorities inside Iran, who, and, the Baluchis, the Kurds, Arabs, they were all recruited, actively recruited by the United States, by Britain and Israel. And these people were like what they referred to as stay behind operations. These are the people that are there now that have been able to kill Iranian scientists and government officials.

because they've been put in place. They've been there for years, and they are very capable. Why was the kidnapping of Maduro good news for Israel? Well, I think it was good news for Israel because it kind of takes the pressure off of the killing that they're doing in Gaza, and it also kind of gives them an excuse for somehow, or maybe even starting the war, the new war against Iran, claiming that Iran is building up this offensive arsenal of terror and of threat in Latin America.

So it's a kind of a game where Trump and Netanyahu basically say things that they think are going to be picked up by the audience out there, which is, the American public, and among others. And this is going to make it easy going to start another war. Wasn't Israel critical of, excuse me, wasn't Venezuela critical of Israeli war crimes? Yeah, absolutely. Back, I think under Chavez, the Venezuelans actually broke off diplomatic relations with Israel, and that was under much milder versions of Israeli war crimes at that time,

although they involved Gaza, and they broke off diplomatic relations, and the Venezuelan government has been very friendly with the Palestinian cause. Well, why did the New York Times arch-Zionist editorialist Brett Stevens say, that the Maduro kidnapping, undoubtedly, I'm quoting him, had Zionist overtones. Well, what he did was he questioned the fact that the vice president of Venezuela was now the active president, Rodriguez, claimed that it had Zionist overtones. And he said, of course, this shows how crazy she is and how crazy the claims are about Israeli involvement in Venezuela. So that's what that's what he said. This was the day right after the

kidnapping that the Times had two articles, two op-ed articles in the paper. One was from Brett Stevens. The other was from even more horrific, Elliot Abrams. And they both came down on the point that Israel was trying to make about Venezuela being a hotbed of terrorism and anti-Semitism and the whole nine yards. Is or was Mossad in Caracas? Oh, I would absolutely assume Mossad is in Caracas. There is a, I think, actually a substantial, or there was a substantial Jewish community in Venezuela as well as in most Latin American countries.

And whether this could have been exploited to have intelligence agents there, I would suspect, yeah, I'm not saying that the whole diaspora ethnic group there was all intelligence people, but they certainly would have been able to feed them in there. And this is characteristic of how they are. operate worldwide. They use the usual the Osper community as a mechanism to do things. And to a certain extent, they don't realize this is what's giving Jews worldwide a bad name and a bad reputation. They're hurting their own cause. We usually don't discuss domestic issues, but I think you'll appreciate this clip from Joe Rogan

ripping into the tactics of Donald Trump's Department of Homeland Security. Chris cut number one. After that woman was shot, I think unfortunately, well, everything is unfortunate about it, right? But one of the real problems is now ICE are villains. And now people are looking at them like murderous, military people that are on the streets of our city, and they're masked up, which is also a problem, right? Because if you get arrested by a cop, you're allowed to ask the cop,

what is your name and badge number? And you could film that cop. If you get arrested by an ICE agent, you have no such right. They're wearing a mask. They don't have to tell you shit. That's a problem. That's a problem on our city streets, right?

Because you can also pretend to be an ICE agent. Right. I don't know where this is going to go, Phil, but certain American cities, people are terrified. Our friend, Gerald Salenti, showed me a clip this morning of a lady who made a wrong turn. Yeah. Now, the five ICE agents descend on the car, they scream, they shout, she goes, I have a doctor's appointment, I made a wrong term, which I let me turn around.

They won't let her turn around. They tell her to get out. She won't get out. They force the door open. They use a knife to cut the seatbelt that she's wearing. the handcuffer and they push her to the ground. And it turned out she was disabled. Correct.

Now, this just can't go on in America. It just can't. In the name of arresting people that failed to qualify for their entry into the United States years ago, this collective punishment, collective arrest. One of the things the Minnesota Attorney General, I disagree with them on many political things, but one of the things he asked for in his federal complaint that he filed on Monday

was that arrests have to be based on arrest warrants with probable cause. That's pretty basic. That's been the law of the land since 1791 when the Fourth Amendment was ratified because ICE doesn't follow it. Yeah, well, but here we have these knuckleheads in charge in the Trump administration that don't believe in any of that stuff. It's the comments that come out of the DHS are just incredible. It's like it's like the this Gestapo regime that they've unleashed on our cities can do no wrong. that nobody has any rights when one is confronted by them.

And so this has become awful and it's become unspeakable. And it makes me, and I'm sure a lot of others wonder, is there any way out of this? This has gone to the point where we have an administration that believes that whatever it wants to do, and I assume that that even probably includes starting a nuclear war, is something that, if Trump gets up in the morning or is up on his truth speaks or whatever it is that he does to make himself happy

and comes to the conclusion that we have to nuke China and Russia, are they going to do it? Here's, I'm not even going to tell you who this is, but you'll know in a second. Here's the head of the Gestapo, cut number 11. To all ICE officers, you have federal immunity in the conduct of your duties. And anybody who lays a hand on you or tries to stop. you or tries to obstruct you is committing a felony. You have immunity to perform your duties, and no one, no city official, no state official, no illegal alien, no leftist agitator or domestic insurrectionists can prevent you

from fulfilling your legal obligations and duties. And the Department of Justice has made clear that if officials cross that line into obstruction, into criminal conspiracy against the United States or against ICE officers, then they will face justice. Well, he's dead wrong on the law. You remember the FBI sniper shooter Lon Horiucci who murdered people at Ruby Ridge

was tried, indicted for manslaughter and state court. I'll give you the last word on this, fill. I have to hop to another matter in three minutes. Okay, I'm just saying it's a, you know, we've kind of reached the point where the

the possible solution to what we have here really has to be like an 180 degree change in attitude in terms of the people who are running our government in terms of the media, which of course is controlled by special interests, and in terms of, you know, how the American people have to rethink in terms of some of the propaganda they've been fed ever since 9-11. And I think that's what comes down to. Phil Giraldi, thank you very much, my dear friend. All the best to you. We'll look forward to seeing you next week.

Thank you. Sure. Coming up tomorrow at 11 in the morning, Aaron Mote, at 1 in the afternoon, Colonel Larry Wilkerson, at 2 in the afternoon, we're hosting a debate, sponsored by Zero Hedge, but hosted by judging freedom. Dinesh D'Souza versus Dave Smith, what is America first?

What does it mean? And then at 3.30, the great Professor John Mearsheimer, Judge Napolitano for judging Freedom.