Judging Freedom - Prof. Jeffrey Sachs : Trump’s attempt at Venezuelan regime-change and his Gaza Illusion

Episode Date: October 27, 2025

Prof. Jeffrey Sachs : Trump’s attempt at Venezuelan regime-change and his GazaSee 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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Text fees may apply. Hi, everyone, Judge Andrew Napolitano here for Judging Freedom. Today is Monday, October 27, 2025. My dear friend, Professor Jeffrey Sachs, joins us now. Professor Sachs, thank you very much. for accommodating my schedule. I want to spend some time speaking with you about the Whitkoff, Kushner, Donald Trump, Tony Blair, so-called Gaza peace agreement.

But before we do, I'd like to explore your understanding on the latest events involving Venezuela, if I may. By what international or legal standard can the American government, declare that the Maduro government is illicit and that someone else is actually the president of Venezuela? The United States does not care about international law, and it's very important for Americans to understand this. The United States foreign policy is different from just about every other country in the world. When other countries deal with the government's that they don't like, they might have to negotiate with them, they may have to react to them. The United States instead typically tries to overthrow those governments.

This is an absolutely reckless and failed policy that is completely lawless, gets the United States into endless wars, destabilizes countries, and Venezuela. is on the list right now. It's been on the list, actually, for more than 20 years. The U.S. government has actively, over the course of 23 years since 2002, been trying to overthrow the government of Venezuela. And they're at it right now. They have tried many, many things which have created incredible instability, millions

of refugees destroying the Venezuelan economy, but for American officials, this is kind of a game. So Trump has called a major naval and Air Force operation to rattle the cage, perhaps to provoke a coup inside the Venezuelan military, perhaps to invade Venezuela. Of course, the president said he kills people. You don't have to ask for a furnish, and you just kill him is what President Trump has said. You have American senators like Lindsey Graham and Rick Scott of Florida saying the president of Venezuela better run for his life. Throw him out. We're going to overthrow him.

This kind of approach is maybe normal to Americans. It is so dangerous, so shocking, so destabilizing, and so fulminant of repeated failures that bring America into wars that we have a coup about to be tried by the United States. And everyone's watching like it's a kind of normal spectator's sport. No one's calling out the president. No one's saying, no, you can't just overthrow a government. No, you can't just send the military.

You can't declare war. But I have to say, and I think it's important to understand, it's not only Trump, since 2002. In fact, it was April 11, 2002, when the United States. States was involved behind the scenes in an attempted coup against the predecessor of the current president. And that coup failed, but it was clear that there was a lot of communication between the United States and those in the Venezuelan military that were attempting the coup. Then in the 2010s, the United States continued to intentionally destabilize and impoverished Venezuela with the idea of attempting an overthrow of the government by financial instability,

by instigating a coup or popular unrest. And President Obama was part of this. It is called the U.S. sanctions approach. President Obama introduced sanctions against Venezuela on March 2015, executive order 13-692. It's quite interesting, this executive order, if I can just read it for a moment. It says, I, Barack Obama, president of the United States, find that the situation in Venezuela, including the government of Venezuela's erosion of human rights guarantees, persecution of political opponents, curtailment of press freedoms, use of violence and human rights violations, and abuses in response to anti-government protests, and arbitrary arrest and detention of anti-government protesters, as well as the exacerbating

presence of significant public corruption, constitutes an unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security and foreign policy of the United States. And I hereby declare a national emergency to deal with that threat. Honestly, how weird is that that, that Venezuela, is cracked down on human rights, true or untrue, claimed by the president constitutes a U.S. national emergency, so that under U.S. national emergency legislation, specifically the International Economic Emergency Powers Act, the president puts on whatever financial squeeze, seizes assets, blocks individuals, prevents transactions, to destabilize the country. Because what's happening in inside Venezuela constitutes a national emergency, not for Venezuela, mind you, but for the United States of America.

Right, right. This is the game that we play. And this is the game that Trump played all through the first term. Biden did it as well, and now we're seeing Trump escalate further. They declare an emergency under an Emergency Powers Act. Is it an emergency for the U.S.? Is it a national security emergency? Of course it's not. But it's a claim by the United States that we can do what we want.

And what does what we want mean? It means crushing the economy of Venezuela. It means destroying the health care system. It means creating a high inflation to kill living standards and life conditions. It means creating millions of refugees. It means, by the way, as you said in one particularly weird moment, January 29, President Trump said, no, the president of Venezuela is not the president. The president is really somebody else.

And he named some other person, the U.S. named some other person as president of Venezuela. And then it said that person now controls the financial assets of Venezuela, thinking that in Washington, you don't like the government. You declare who's president in that. There's a federal statute that defines emergency as, paraphrasing you now, a sudden and unexpected event which adversely affects the national security or economic stability of the United States. It's almost inconceivable to me that these declarations of emergency, whether it's Obama or Trump, comply with that, not to aggravate you all the more, but your favorite senator. from South Carolina opined on all this in a rather reckless and irritating way yesterday on Face the Nation, Chris? We looked at the JAG manual. Preventative self-defense employed to counter non-imminent threats is illegal under international law. So if we are not at war and these suspected criminals pose no threat of imminent violence, isn't this potentially a war crime to be

killing the people on these boats and then to be taking out a leader? No, not at all. I don't know what manual you're referring to, but I know what President Bush 41 did. He took down Ortega, the leader of Panama, because he was involved in drug trafficking, threatening our country. Venezuela is now partnering with Hezbollah. Hezbollah is running out of money because Iran is weak. That's not new. They're partnering with drug cartels in Venezuela.

It should have stopped. Here's what's new. You got a commander-in-chief's not going to put up with this crap. We're not going to sit on the sidelines and watch boats full of drugs come to our country. We're going to blow them up and kill the people that want to poison America. And we're now going to expand operations, I think, to the land. So please be clear about what I'm saying today. President Donald Trump sees Venezuela and Colombia as direct threats to our country because they house not. narco-terrorist organizations, the leader of Venezuela is an indicted drug dealer in American courts. So, yeah, the game is changing when it comes to drug traffickers and drug cartels. We're going to use military force like we have in the past to protect our country. That's the new game we're playing, and I'm glad we're playing that game. And if I were Maduro, I'd find a way to leave before he goes down. This is a stomach churning. What is your understanding of the root cause, the true reason the United States has been trying to destabilize Venezuela for the past 20 years?

Well, it's obvious. Venezuela has the world's largest reserves of oil. We're trying to steal them pure and simple. It's not even complicated. This has nothing to do with narcotics trafficking at all. This is an insult to our intelligence to watch this smirking gangster discuss this way. He's the one, by the way. Lindsay Graham's the one who says, oh, we got to fight in Ukraine because they have $10 trillion of minerals.

He's just a simple gangster who works in an organized crime mob called the U.S. government and the smirk on his face, lady, you don't think we can murder the people we want to murder? Are you so naive? Do I have to sit for an interview on Face the Nation and explain to you we can murder whoever we want? And we can give any explanation that we want? We can say they're narcotics traffickers by the The way when Obama put on these orders and when Trump followed up on these orders in 2015 and in 2019, it had nothing to do with narcotics trafficking. That's just the excuse of the day. They've been trying to bring down this government for more than 20 years. And they will murder. They will make inland incursions, so-called. It's called an invasion. And they'll do that and they'll smirk.

and he'll laugh and he'll threaten like a gangster you better get out of there because we're going to clean this up and we have the right to do it we are the united states of america and where does this get us it gets us war after war after war huh so much for maga so much for peace president yeah come on this is gangsterism and it's in full view and by the way Please, somebody in the Congress, in the courts, in the United States, in the media, say something about this unbelievably vulgar and illegal mobilization of the American military for this ongoing attempt to grab Venezuela's oil. So the president was asked on Friday if he would consult with the Congress before. going further. You will not be happy with his answer. I'm sure you know what it is already, but here's what he said. Chris? And Mr. President, if you are declaring war against these cartels

and Congress is likely to approve of that process, why not just ask for a declaration of war? Well, I don't think we're going to necessarily ask for a declaration of war. I think we're just going to kill people that are bringing drugs into our country. Okay, we're going to kill them. You know, they're going to be like dead. Okay. With that cavalier attitude, A, about human life, B, about the Constitution, C, about federal law, D, about international law, is just reprehensible. I don't remember hearing anything that cavalier, even from George W. Bush right after 9-11. I don't want to compare presidents, but what we have now is a person who believes that might. makes right figuratively literally he believes in murder and murder from the Oval Office of the

United States of America but more than that we need to understand this is not about narcotics trafficking as I said this is about a coup this is about regime change it's about violent regime change so that we can control Venezuela's oil Now, people should know another very interesting point. When Trump came in in his first term, he had a dinner with a number of Latin American presidents early in the term. And I know this from two of these presidents. And what did he say at the dinner? He said openly at the dinner, why don't I just invade?

Why don't I just invade? Why don't I just take this guy out? And both presidents independently explained this conversation to me, so I've heard it twice. And of course, all of them were shocked at the vulgarity of it. And one of them said, Mr. President, it might not be a good idea. it might lead to a serious reaction across the Western Hemisphere and in the world. There might be other ways to do this, or this is just not a good idea. And as this person explained to me, tried to talk this man down.

And they didn't invade. They just declared someone else president. And it wasn't about narcotics trafficking. then. It was about crime, corruption, whatever you want to say. It is the claim that the United States gets to choose who is in government in other countries in the world. And people don't really hear so much about this, but this is the standard way that the United States proceeds. It's why we have one and a half trillion dollars a year spent on this military of ours, which gets us into endless debt and endless trouble. There was a book written in 2017 called Covert Regime Change,

a brilliant book by a scholar named Lindsay O'Rourke. And she documented 64 such regime change operations between 1947 and 1989. She took that earlier date because of the release of documents, the ending of confidentiality and so forth so that she took an end date so that she could carefully study these events. what she found that the U.S. led in Guatemala or the overthrow of the democratically elected government of Iran in 1953 or the 14-year war that Obama started and that Trump has just finished to overthrow the government of Syria. And the list is literally in the dozens over this period. It leads to profound instability for their violence, coups, impoverishment, distress, refugees. It almost never achieves what it's supposed to achieve and wrecking these countries. And that one that we watched, Lindsay Graham, sitting there smirking about this.

Oh, he's been there all along. And he is an agent of unbelievable destruction over these years. But frankly, our newspapers don't cover it. I can tell you, by the way, firsthand, because I know it, there was a coup that overthrew a government of, Haiti, and I, the president told me he thought he was going to be overthrown. And sure enough, the U.S. government overthrew his government in one of these operations flew up in a CIA unmarked plane on a receipt.

And I called the station chief in Port-au-Prince Haiti of the New York Times and said, aren't you going to cover this? And I was told well, the editor's not very interested in his story. Meaning his CIA Masters have told them not to cover it.

Wow. This is a profound analysis, Professor Sex, but I want to pick your brain before we go on God is the killing every day by the Israelis the Israelis are not retreating from Gaza the Israelis are not letting in aid the Israelis are continuing though in a little bit a little

bit toned down way an ongoing genocide and they have no intention of letting go of Gaza. This is a government that believes in so-called greater Israel, meaning this territory and the West Bank and everything else that Israel occupies a pastoral belief. That's their fundamental action. And what was called a peace plan was not a peace plan after all and not agreed by anybody.

There was a meeting, there was a declaration to stop the killing. The killing, unfortunately, hasn't really stopped, but it has maybe slowed down. I'm not even sure of that. But there was no plan a government of the United States that fundamentally backs Israel's greater Israel demand. In other words, the White House does not say, has not said, and I don't know whether they ever will say, but they must say if they're listening to the American people, that Israel has

to leave the Palestinian territory so that there can be a state of Palestine. Now, like so much else in this world judge. The American people are on the right side, but no one asks them. The American people overwhelmingly say, of course, what Israel's doing is God awful, it's horrendous. Look up and down in this 20-point peace plan, so-called 21-point peace plan, nothing of the sort is put forward, even though, 180 countries in the United Nations have called for this repeatedly. The United States is basically still in Cahoonie political solution. And so there is no peace plan. There is repression. There is continued murder. There is a de facto annexation of the West Bank. and Gaza, and there are smiles all around of our peace president.

Very sad. Here's the president last week, Professor Sachs, being asked about the West Bank, Chris cut number five. Yes, yesterday there was a vote at the Gnetset in Israel on annexing the West Bank. Do you see it as a challenge to your peace efforts? Will you answer that, please? Because I cannot understand the words you say. Where are you from? Where are you from?

France, a beautiful accent, but we can't understand what you're saying. The West Bank, Israel's not going to do anything with the West Bank, okay? Don't worry about it. Is that your question? They're not going to do anything with the West Bank. Don't worry about it. Not going to do anything with it. Does you understand what has happened in the West Bank?

What is happening as we speak, how the director of national security is handing out weapons to settlers so that they can kill and chase away Arabs whose homes and land they were stolen, how Israel has de facto portions of the West banks. Basically, they have annexed it already de facto decades ago, and the people, people of Palestine live in misery because when they go out to collect olives to harvest the olives or to do their farming, they are shot, they are dispossessed, their homes are burned down. This frontier violence is the way that these settler colonial efforts work, which is you terrorize the native populations. And Israel, terrorizes the local Palestinian population. Of course, what Israel's doing is vulgarly and flagrantly illegal.

And the International Court of Justice has made absolutely clear of this point. Israel's borders are the borders of the 4th of June, 1967. That means that the West Bank and East Jerusalem and God, Gaza are not Israel. Israel's presence there is illegal under international law, and the International Court of Justice gave the United Nations one year to settle this illegality. Of course, the United States blocked any efforts of the UN to put in place the solution, which is the two-state solution. So until this day, the United States blocks peace, and calls it peace.

It's what George Orwell told us about decades ago in 1984. You make war and you call it peace. Professor Sachs, thank you very much. I know you're on the other side of the world and it's late at night, but thank you for your analysis on Venezuela and for the update on Gaza. Safe travels, I look forward to seeing you very much. Maybe later this week, Jeff,

developments warrant. Absolutely. Talk to you again soon. Sure. All the best. Coming up at 11.30 this morning, I believe from somewhere between Moscow and the United States, flying home, Larry Johnson,

Judge the Palatano for judging freedom. Thank you.