Judging Freedom - Prof. Jeffrey Sachs : Regime Change in Venezuela.

Episode Date: November 4, 2025

Prof. Jeffrey Sachs : Regime Change in Venezuela.See 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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Today is Tuesday, November 4th, 2025. Professor Jeffrey Sachs joins us. Professor Sachs. I know it's practically Wednesday where you are. Thank you very much. much for your time. Thanks for making to be with you. I want to talk to you about, as you call it, and of course we all agree, the flimsy moral excuses for regime change of Venezuela. But before we get there, a few other questions. First, the news of the day. Was former Vice President Dick Cheney a war criminal? I would say yes, because we were led into a war criminal. war, the Iraq war, on completely phony pretences, not mistaken pretenses, but phony pretenses. The neocons led by Vice President Cheney, late Vice President Cheney, wanted a war in Iraq, and they sold the war to the

American people on false premises. And, of course, the war itself. was devastating, illegal by international standards. So that's a war crime to launch a massive war and occupy a foreign country. And it was done on a tissue of lives. So this was a tragic and extraordinarily costly episode for the United States, trillions of dollars, thousands of lives lost of Americans, many more lives lost of Iraqis, a devastation to the region that still is reeling from the Iraq War and the many other wars that Cheney championed. So he was not a positive contribution to America's stability,

prosperity or security. Let's not forget the Patriot Act, which he caused to be written before 9-11 in anticipation of the right event at the right time, which came on their watch, Bush and Cheney on 9-11. Let's not forget his so-called enhanced interrogation, which, of course, was the rampant CIA use of torture publicized by the late Senator Dianne Feinstein over the objections of just about everybody involved.

Let's not forget that he and his buddy Donald Rumsfeld together dominated American defense policy for about 16 years. And where did it bring us? Basically, since 1992, and I would say in terms, until today, because Trump has not made any real changes of foreign policy. The United States went into overdrive on a delusion, an arrogant delusion that the U.S. runs the world, and it entered into many wars on that basis, massive military spending, massive red ink in trillions and trillions of dollars, massive expansion of executive prerogatives of the kinds that you mentioned, surveillance, spying, torture that are completely outside of

the values that we supposedly profess and outside of the Constitution. So in this sense, the neocon era, which Maga was supposed to bring to a close but has not done, has been a period of growing insecurity of the United States, growing debt, growing economic distress and inequality. It has not brought this period of global U.S. dominance that was claimed all the way back in 1992 with Cheney playing a central role. It has brought a remarkable weakening of America, an increased insecurity, perpetual war. And we're not done with it yet because, well, Trump came. into office claiming that he was going to end all of this, these wars continue, and basically the foreign policies of the neocons, this grandiosity of American power continues until today. Why is Al Jolani a man who killed Americans, a man who cut people's heads off and boasted about it,

a man who today is slaughtering Eloades and Christians being welcomed into the Oval Office on Monday? Because the United States spent 14 years to overthrow the Syrian government, a task that President Obama assigned to the CIA in Operation Timber Sycamore, and Jolani is the quote-unquote success of American policy. This is how America does things. It has frequently turned to jihadists to be the American fighters in proxy wars. It built al-Qaeda in the 1980s when the U.S. supported the Mujahideen in Afghanistan, meaning that that country would have more than four decades of instability and war through U.S. machinations.

So this is not outside of the norm of American foreign policy. It is part and parcel of the CIA-led strategies of regime change, of which Syria was one of, of what I think is probably about 100 cases since the CIA was established in 1947. Yesterday, the Israeli government of Prime Minister Netanyahu defended, this is a new low to the extent that that is even mentally conceivable, Professor Sachs, and you know what's coming, defended the raping of a helpless, beaten Palestinian prisoner by numerous male members of the IDF

and arrested the chief lawyer for the IDF, who was so repulsed by what happened. She released a tape that they made of their own rape and Prime Minister Netanyahu in a new low, to the extent that that's even possible, has defended the rapists? He is a genocider in a literal sense. It's the worst crime we have on the planet, meaning that Netanyahu has led a genocide against the Palestinian people. Torture of Palestinian inmates is part of a genocide. It's part of the complete dehumanization of the Palestinian people by this Israeli regime. The fact that when somebody discloses these crimes by the Israeli defense forces and then gets arrested for disclosing these war crimes tells us a lot.

It's not the worst of what Israel has done. has done is to slaughter tens of thousands of innocent people. And though in name, we have a ceasefire. In fact, a couple hundred plus Palestinians have been killed by Israel, willfully murdered since the ceasefire began. So, yes, it is a low. I wouldn't say it's the lowest of the low because they're plumbing every depth of what humanity and its evil can do. And they're doing that right now. So it's shocking, though, I agree with you. It's completely shocking that a vulgar, gross, fully internationally illegal and

despicable act when exposed leads to the arrest of the person that makes that exposure. Here's a brief clip ending with Netanyahu's condemnation of her, the general, the major general, who was the chief lawyer for the IDF, is a woman. She's now in jail. Chris, cut number 15. The IDF's international legitimacy efforts are greatly benefited by the aura, the protection with which the justice system provides it. Yesterday, the reservist charged with abuse appeared in public and accused Tomer Yeru Shalmi of spoiling their case.

You've done a field trial on us in front of the cameras, as if you've already decided who's guilty. We will continue to fight for justice for ourselves, for everyone who came out in uniform and defended our home. This weekend, Tomar Yer O'Shalmi briefly went missing, and police found her abandoned car with a note. Police later found her on a beach, safe but in distress. The incident in Stetsaman caused immense damage to the image of the state of Israel and the IDF, to our soldiers. This is perhaps the most severe public relations attack that the state of Israel has experienced since its establishment. Severe public relations attack that the state of Israel has experienced since its establishment. The guys in the masks are the rapists who filmed themselves doing this, and then their superior got a hold of it.

She was so repulsed. She revealed it to the press. It's kind of tough. It can survive long in a so-called democracy. when a defense behavior like this. This is not a democracy, so let's put that aside. What is incredible is how this horrible person discusses and thinks about this. This is a public relations issue.

This is not an issue about putting a broomstick up a prisoner's rectum about torture, about the fundamental violation of the most basic standards of human behavior about mass murder. This is a public relations issue. What he complained about is what it did to the image of Israel. It is a public relations disaster. I have to say that when President Trump referred to the issue of Israel's behavior in Gaza, when he was in Israel recently, he said, and paraphrasing, but he said it looks bad, looks bad, this killing, killing, killing, looks bad. Because what these leaders are about is image. They're not about

substance. They're not about the murders. They're about how the murders look, how they're justified. And Netanyahu is so vile that he doesn't even know or care or try to hide the fact that this is all about PR for him. And this is the monstrous situation that we're in, that the issue is not torture. The issue is the PR around torture. continues to direct the Secretary of Defense, who calls himself the Secretary of War, to murder innocent, helpless, nameless, faceless, people who are not engaged in any act of violence on the high seas, some off the coast of Venezuela, some off the coast of Mexico. Is there a Nuremberg problem here with pilots under a future administration that might

at this differently saying, well, I just did my job. They told me to kill people and I killed them. People should understand that presidents of the United States in our modern history have been assigning murder, calling for the murder of people sitting in the Oval Office. I'm not talking about the wars. I'm talking about directed murder, occasionally of American citizens. More often not, but presidents sitting and causing people to be murdered, particular individuals. It's not only Trump, it's vile what we see, but this has been going on for quite a long time. It's shocking. It is what has happened to what we once had in the United States, which was, at least we claimed. We believe that we had a democratic system under the rule of law.

We have a murder incorporated, perpetual war, a military industrial complex, a private army of the United States called the CIA, which engages in operations like regime change that trigger wars that cost hundreds of thousands or sometimes millions of lives. and this emanates from the Oval Office. So this has been going on for quite a while. It's really important for people to understand this. This is not about partisanship. This is about our system. Our system is lawless. Our system is that a president orders murders.

Our system is that the CIA carries out covert wars, that doesn't mean the wars aren't known or that you can't point to the agents of these wars. It means that they deny the truth before our eyes. That's our system. And we have to end that and return to the idea of the rule of law, not just the idea, I mean the practice of the rule of law and the practice of the U.S. Constitution before, and I hope it's not, before it is irreversible. And I would like everybody to remember there was a Roman Republic and it became Roman Empire. And what the difference was was that the military industrial complex of the Roman Republic became the rule.

And when that happened, usually dated to 27 BC, when Augustus became Princeps, when the Republic ended and the Roman Empire began, it never reverted to a republic. So this, I think, is our circumstance in the United States. We're losing what we think we, many still think. we have, and if we have it, it is on a very, very fragile and a slender string right now. We're just forfeiting our constitutional order and our republic as a government. We were warned about it 64 years ago by President Dwight Eisenhower, who told us about the undue influence sought or unsought of the military industrial complex.

And this has become a situation where presidents order murder from the Oval Office. It's not the kind of system. I think the vast majority of American people want. And the supporters of this would like to silence us. here is one of their louder more bombastic ones speaking about us not necessarily you and me personally

but those of us who articulate the views that we do from the venues that we choose to the Republican Jewish coalition Chris number 16 we cancel stuff all the damn time Hitler admires Stalin admires Jew haters American haters, Churchill haters.

You're damn right, we're going to cancel them and deep platform them. They don't have a lifetime job like a bureaucrat who we're going to protect. And if they're your friend, there's something wrong with you. You don't get to rap your psychotic, mental, unhinged, Nazi, clan, jihadists, bullshit around American patriotism. We're surrounded by cowards. who have microphones, of TV cameras, who have websites, who have columns, cowards. It's spelled C-A-R-L-S-O-N. It's spelled F-U-E-N-T-E-S.

It's spelled O-W-E-N-S. It's spelled B-A-N-N-N-O-N. It's spelled Marjorie T-R-E-R-R-E. out yourself. To Tucker Carlson, I say, did you have a head injury? What happened to you? You platform these people. You deceive your audience. You lied to your audience. You've become a full-blown out-of-the-closet Jew-hater. Well, you know, the American people by growing large majorities find this repulsive, disgusting. And we should remember the American people are not calling for this. The opposite. 70% of the American people want a state of Palestine. 70% of the American

people want Israel to stop its murderous rampage in Gaza and throughout the Middle East. So this kind of fulmination that we looked at is not America. It is not what the American people want. Very large and growing majorities find all of this repulsive. And this is, it's so gross to walk, but these are vicious and desperate people. who are defending genocide. And defending genocide is the most despicable political position imaginable. They are defending the mass murder of people.

And when people speak out against that, then they attack them in this fulminant way. But the American people are not cowed by this. they're certainly not convinced by this. They see with their own eyes what's happening by a very large majority. The American people are decent people, and they don't want to be complicit in the mass murder of the Palestinian people. Professor Sachs, why is the Trump administration preparing a war of aggression against Venezuela? The United States, with the very heavy influence of Marco Rubio, both when he was senator and now his Secretary of State, has been trying to overthrow the government of Venezuela, really in a very active way for 23 years.

The first coup attempt came in 2002 in the 2010s. And by the way, another example of the deep state versus the partisanship, Obama was very much part of it, just like Obama was part of many of the perpetual wars and so forth. This is CIA, other permanent state, basically military industrial complex operations that have been trying to overthrow first Hugo Chavez. who was president of Venezuela in the first decade of this century, and then Nicholas Maduro since then. And they've used a lot of tactics, assassination attempts, trying to encourage coups by the Venezuelan military, economic and financial sanctions that have crushed the Venezuelan economy,

which was an upper middle income economy and has been crushed by measures that the U.S. has imposed. The U.S. seized the foreign exchange reserves of Venezuela, President Trump in his first term, actually, and it's almost like a joke, but what I'm about to say, but it really happened, designated someone else as president. The United States said, no, it's not you, the president. It's someone else we name at the time. It was a man named Juan Guaido. He actually invited him to one of his state of the union addresses and had him stand up and introduced him as the president of Venezuela. It was a joke.

They just called him president because they think that the world is PR, that the world is the reality that they define. So now Trump is, then Biden has been part of this, and Trump is now escalating a bounty on the head of a foreign leader, now a $50 million bounty, as if this is truly the Wild West. And then the president killing people telling us, we don't need to try them. We don't even need to present evidence. We are just going to kill them. And that's on the sea. So he says, well, we're going to do it on the land.

And he's ordered the CIA, which is the private army, the unaccountable army of the U.S. president to take action, a covert action, inside Venezuela. And he's amassed a lot of firepower in the Caribbean outside of Venezuela. Well, I can't say we're waiting to see what happens. There should be an outcry to stop what is happening, which is already illegal, is already a complete abuse of international law, is already in full violation of the U.N. charter, the threat of force against another country in this way, the use of force to kill people in boats who the president of the United States orders to be killed, this is not the kind of country we want. And the large majority of American people do not want the United States

to go to war with Venezuela. So again, we have this reality that we call ourselves a democracy in which the public is not only to be represented, but its voice is to be heard through its representatives in Congress and its voices to be heard in the decisions that our government takes. And yet the government behaves in a lawless and gangsterish fashion.

Now, why is the U.S. doing this? Why has it tried to bring down this government for more than 20 years? Well, there's a famous three-letter word, O-I-L oil. Venezuela actually has the largest reserves of oil in the world, even topping Saudi Arabia. It's so-called heavy oil. It's more expensive to process. It is not as profitable as Saudi oil.

these numbers also of the size of reserves are not precision science, I want to add. But Venezuela has a huge oil reserves, and Trump wants them. And the deep state has always wanted them. We very, very, very often go to war in oil and gas-rich countries. It's not an accident. It is not just a random pattern. It's part of the behavior of the U.S. Empire, which is to try to grab the resources of other countries, to try to control them. We once overthrew the government of Iran in 1953, a democratically elected government because it had the audacity to say that the oil in Iran,

was actually the oil of the Iranian people. This was just too much for the CIA and MI6, so they overthrew Prime Minister Mossadegh for saying that and installed a police state. Now the threats against Venezuela, which as I say have been a regime change operation for more than 20 years, the war in Iraq, the war in Libya, in Syria, Trump boasted,

that our troops have stayed in Syria because we got the oil. We keep it under control. So what we're seeing in Venezuela is a long story. And it's a story that has its echoes around the world. It's rapacious. It's illegal. It's vulgar. It's dangerous.

It's against what the American people want. It is our system. Our system is a. politics of regime change. If you don't like the other country, overthrow its government. This is called foreign policy by the U.S. It leads to disasters. Under the flimsy moral excuse of fighting drugs, I don't know anybody that believes this. This has nothing to do with fighting drugs, nothing. They make it up, they smirk, they laugh. The war in Iraq had nothing to do with weapons of mass destruction to return to the late

Vice President Cheney where we started the discussion. These are made-up reasons patently absurd in order to give a flimsy cover to lawlessness. That's all. Professor Sachs, thank you very much. I know it's tomorrow where you are. and I deeply appreciate your, as always, eloquent analysis on a vast array of issues. All the best to you, my dear friends.

Safe travels, we'll look forward to seeing you next week. Wonderful. See you next week. Thank you. All the best, Professor. Coming up tomorrow, Wednesday, at 8 in the morning, the former British diplomat, and from time to time guest on judging freedom, Ian Proud. Professor at 8 in the morning. Professor Glenn Deeson at 11 in the morning.

It's Wednesday at 3 in the afternoon. Phil Giraldi. Judge LaPolitano for judging freedom. Thank you. Thank you.