Piers Morgan Uncensored - ‘WHY Wage Their War For Them?’ Trump Strikes Venezuela Boats

Episode Date: November 18, 2025

At least 80 people have been killed in 21 separate US strikes on Venezuelan boats, the most recent of which came only this weekend. The White House says they’re trafficking drugs to the United States - but whatever the purpose of the strikes, it’s very clear that something big is happening. The US has sent the world’s biggest aircraft carrier to the Caribbean Sea, where it joins a whole fleet of warships in the biggest military build-up for almost 40 years. What many of Trump’s supporters can’t imagine is how attacking Venezuela can possibly be reconciled with ‘America First.’ And critics on both sides worry about the long precedent of US presidents using war as a distraction. Piers Morgan discusses whether America is heading for war with former CIA operative Mike Baker, former US ambassador to Venezuela James Story, author, journalist and co-host of ‘Breaking Points’ Ryan Grim and Grayzone editor Max Blumenthal. Piers Morgan Uncensored is proudly independent and supported by: OneSkin: Get 15% off OneSkin with the code PIERS at https://www.oneskin.co/ #oneskinpod Tax Network USA: Call 1-800-958-1000 or visit https://TNUSA.com/PIERS to speak with a strategist for FREE today ExpressVPN: Right now you can get an extra four months of ExpressVPN for free. Just scan the QR code on the screen, or go to https://ExpressVPN.com/PIERS and get four extra months for free. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

They want regime change in Venezuela, but I don't understand why the United States would have to wage their war for them. And I'm most interested in chasing the money and the organizations down that are building apartments in Medellin and buying apartment buildings in Miami. Why are migrants coming to our shores? It's because of the coup program

that virtual ambassador and coup manager, Jimmy Story, oversaw, which brought Venezuela's economy to its knees by 2020, reversing all the gains they had made when Hugo Chavez slashed extreme poverty by 50%. Well, apparently I forgot to wear my tinfoil hat for the panel today. At least 80 people have been killed in 21 separate U.S. strikes of Venezuelan boats, the most recent of which came only this weekend. The White House says they're trafficking drugs to the United States, although we only have

their word for that. And whatever the purpose of the strikes is very clear that. something big is happening. The U.S. has set the world's biggest aircraft carrier to the Caribbean Sea, where it joins a whole fleet of warships in the biggest military buildup there for almost 40 years. Venezuelan dictator Nicholas Maduro has urged Trump to change calls and channel John Lennon instead. Peace, peace, peace. As everything for the peace. As far as John Lennon, no?

Alphenazare, how was the song of John Lennon? The minding us people. Well, many of Trump's supporters can't imagine is how attacking Venezuela can possibly be reconciled with America first. And critics on both sides worry about the long precedent of U.S. presidents using war as a distraction. So is the U.S. really heading for war?

Would join me to discuss all this is Mike Baker, the former CIA operative, host of the President's Daily Brief. Ambassador James Story, the former U.S. ambassador to Venezuela. Ryan Grimm, the Dropsite co-founder and co-host of Breaking Points. I'm Max Bimintel, the editor of the Grazer. Welcome to all of you.

Mike Baker, I want to start with a clip of Donald Trump talking on Air Force One on Sunday night. About another foreign campaign. We'll see what happens. I mean, I can't tell you what it is, but we've made a lot of progress with that as well in terms of stopping drugs or more than. But to go with that, U.S. Secretary,

State Marco Rubio issued a statement on Sunday announcing that the U.S. intends to consider the group Cartel de Los Souls, a foreign terrorist organization from November 24. The U.S. alleges the group is led by the Venezuelan president Maduro. So Mike Baker, what do you make of this? What is happening here, both in the attacks on these boats, which the administration says are all drug smuggling, and also the wider buildup of the military. which is pointing to an altogether more serious military engagement with Venezuela. Yeah, there's a lot of elements here. There's a lot of moving parts,

but I think what we're seeing is a couple of things happening at the same time. One, obviously, they've stepped up their counter-narcotics operations. I can't speak to the legality of all of this, the legal issues that surround knocking these vessels out of the water and killing over 80 people. I was, from an operational perspective, you can talk about the credibility of the intel. You know, from my perspective, I don't have insight on that, so it's speculation.

But I would like to see, I can tell you, I would like to see a little bit more transparency to the degree that you can from the administration to say these have been the targets. This is why we are going after them specifically rather than just some blanket statement saying they're narco-traffickers. They were on a narco-trafficking route, whatever it may be. So they need to, I think that's a real problem for them. but the buildup that's out there, if you're just looking at a counter-narcotics operation, it doesn't make any sense. It's outsized, right?

So having a carrier strike group out there, along with all the other support assets and vessels that are there, that doesn't make sense from just a pure counter-narcotics operational perspective. So I would look at that then and say, well, there's another track here, which is the effort to influence Maduro to move out of the way. and, you know, again, it's speculation as to whether they intend to get, you know,

involved in a kinetic effort on the ground inside Venezuela to actually affect regime change or whether they're saying, look, we think we can exert enough pressure to create change internally. Maduro either deciding to step down, I don't think that's going to happen, or his closest advisors or the senior military telling him that's going to have to happen. Okay, Ryan Grimm, you posted cartel to Los Souls as the most obvious. obvious CIA made up name for a cartel ever. No cartel names itself like that. This is a Langley creation. So finding a leader shouldn't be hard. Explain what you mean. So the CIA is based in Langley. So that's what I mean. If I was being a little obscure there, if they want to find out, you know,

who's responsible for grading this cartel, just, you know, pull out your, your ways or your GPS and find your way out to CIA headquarters. I think Max could probably tell you more about this. specific details of how this cartel came about. But it was effectively this like bizarre creation where like you've got the defense department, the CIA involved in some, you know, counter, you know, they're trying to basically overthrow a government and they need some like narco terrorists for whatever play they're using. And so they kind of fabricate this cartel of the sun and call it cartel of son.

It's like, what are you even doing? Nope. This is not even serious. Like give us like. at least something that is like plausible that we can cling to. Like what happened to the days where like, like, okay, maybe Saddam Hussein at one point did have weapons of mass destruction. He didn't then, but at least like it's plausible.

Like there's so little respect for the American people now that when they're trying to march them into war, they don't even give them something that they can even pretend to believe. So what do you think they really want to do here? Well, I think the Rubio wing, And I think we need to distinguish between President Trump and Rubio in this case. Rubio has been boxed out of Ukraine, has been boxed out of Gaza. So he's got his little Caribbean sandbox here.

And what he is doing is playing out the fantasies of the Cuban right over the last couple of decades. And they want regime change in Venezuela. And they think that that'll have the knock-on effect of creating regime change back in Cuba. That's fine if the Cuban right wants to do that. But I don't understand why the United States would have to wage wage. their war for them. The same kind of pressure was applied to President Obama when it came to Libya. And unfortunately, for us, for Libya, for the region, Obama capitulated to that. And we now have this disastrous situation that the entire world is living with. I think Trump is aware that this

kind of attempt to just decapitate a regime is likely to lead to another Libya situation. And so far, I think Trump actually deserves credit for standing up to this Warhawk wing. And in fact, if he does stand them down and resist a war, I'd almost say you would give him credit for stopping a war because to have a hawkish element, this committed to regime change, and to be able to stop that, even as president, is not that simple.

Ambassador's story. I don't think politically that Trump is in a great place right now with his base because of the Epstein scandal, because of the Israel-Mass war, to go and try and affect regime change in a place like Venezuela. I'd just think never mind the sort of military operational side or even the ethics of it, just from a purely political perspective.

It would seem to me to be an entirely self-harming act, wouldn't it? Yes, and I think Trump understands that. Sorry, sorry, Ryan, that was for Ambassador's story. Well, I'd be delighted if you wanted to answer the part of the Epstein files, to be honest with you. I'd rather say that I'd like to go back to why, what's the cause's belly here? What do we actually know to be the case? And this isn't an invention that the cocktail de Los Solis exists.

You can talk to Clever Akala, who's in jail, you can talk to Pollo Carval, who's in jail. You can talk to the nephew's Acilia Flores, who's married to Maduro, who were in jail. This is a criminal group masquerading as a government. And regime change already took place. It took place in July of last year when there was a vote overwhelmingly against Maduro by the Venezuelan people themselves. So does the president, what is the president's intentions? Certainly, our first panelist today said that this is much more than counter-racotics. That's correct. There's pressure on the Maduro regime, on the dictatorship. It's additional pressure that that which the Venezuelan people gave, when they, again,

they voted overwhelmingly to get him out of office last year. Now, where we go from here was the next step? That remains to be seen. But the president certainly has a number of options at his disposal. But you don't believe it's purely a war on drugs? Absolutely not. Absolutely not. I ran counter narcotics in Colombia for two years.

I ran counter narcotics in the Western Hemisphere for three. I can tell you that these are the types of resources in military hardwomen aware that are frankly a little heavy handed when it comes to counter narcotics. Generally speaking, we use white holes, those are Coast Guard vessels, we judicialize the cases. And frankly, the kind of unilateral action we're taking in the region will have knock-on effects, negative knock-on effects, undermining intelligence sharing across the region with our partners. Out of Key West Florida, we have joint interagency task force south, and that has 20 liaison officers

from the region as well as from the UK, France, and the Netherlands, the Intel sharing will dry up. And I'm most interested in chasing the money and the organizations down that are building apartments in Medellin and buying apartment buildings in Miami. And I think that going at that judicialized route gives us more intelligence, helps us shore if our regional relationships and is a better approach. Certainly this will have an impact on drug trafficking, but drug traffickers are transnational. They don't pay attention to borders. They also aren't democratic, and they don't work by committee.

So they will change their route. Before I go to Max, I just wanted to ask you, on the legality of these attacks on the boats, which the administration say are drug smugglers, they're not getting any prior approval from Congress for this. They're not providing much information in terms of what evidence they've had to justify what they've done.

your opinion is what is happening here with these boats legal? Listen, I think that if you look at going after foreign terrorist organizations as we did under many of the prior administrations going back to Bush, you can look at Obama and you can look at Clinton, you can look, there was a methodology by which targets were assessed and went through a preview process and then the president had the ultimate decision. I don't know what the process is here. What I can tell you is what the impacts will be for our cooperation. regionally, and that's a negative impact on our cooperation.

So certainly the Congress has a role to play with AUMF, the authorized use of military force, to the extent that Congress is back in session and wants to take up this issue, they may indeed need to do so. Okay, Max Blumenthal, a lot to unpack here, obviously. First of all, on that point about the attacks on these boats, there'll be a lot of Americans who'll say, well, if they are drug smugglers, Happy days. Why should we care? There are not a lot of Americans who believe that only 29% of Americans,

according to a recent Reuters Ipsos poll, support these murderous attacks on supposed drugboats without due process that have killed citizens of Trinidad and Tobago, as well as Colombian citizens, and cause British government to suspend intelligence cooperation as the virtual ambassador, James Story, just acknowledged. This is of all base. as Ryan pointed out, on a series of WMD-level lies that haven't even been explained to the American public,

which is why only 21% of the American public, according to that poll, supports this criminal regime-change war in the making which will negatively affect them. That's what story meant when he referred to knock-on effects, meaning more mass migration. The big lie of this war is the cartel of the Sons. As Ryan said, the Cartel of the Sons was literally created. created by the CIA, also known as the cocaine import agency, to ship 22 tons of drugs into the United States in the early 90s through its main point of contact in the pre-C Chavez, Venezuelan National Guard, General Ramon Guillen Davila.

And he wore a patch on his arm that was a son. And so they just called it the cartel of the sons as cover. And they thought that they would use these. This was also during the 80s under Reagan. They thought they would use these drug shipments to gain intelligence on drug traffickers in the U.S. It wound up poisoning our own society. The CIA for doing that should be classified as a narco-terrorist organization. Then there's Tren de Aragua, the supposed gang that Nicholas Maduro is said to control by the Trump administration.

That's another WMD-level lie that U.S. intelligence exposed in a declassified April report from this year. And you know what happened? Director of National Intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, came out and fired, presided over the firing of the two officials who exposed the lie that Maduro controls TDA and is invading the United States. Why are migrants coming to our shores? It's because of the coup program, the regime change program, that virtual ambassador and coup manager, Jimmy Story, and other U.S. foreign policy apparatchiks oversaw, which brought Venezuela's economy to its knees by 20. 2020, reversing all the gains they had made when Hugo Chavez slashed extreme poverty by 50%. This caused mass migration, and it's not just according to me. It's according to Thomas Shannon, who was undersecretary for the State Department in Donald Trump's administration who said U.S. sanctions reduced Venezuela's economy to dust. He told this to the Washington Post,

and it caused out migration. So if Donald Trump is going to fall into Marco Rubio's, selfish gusano games. We are going to see another massive wave of migration to the U.S.-Mexico border. And whether you're on the right or the left, you do not want that, and you cannot fall for another WMD series of lies that will produce a Libya in the Western Hemisphere. Okay, Mikeyke, your response to that? Well, apparently I forgot to wear my tinfoil hat for the panel today. There's nothing I can say that it's going to change Max or Ryan's position.

I've talked with folks like this before who, you know, great. I don't know where to go with that. I wouldn't say that, you know, from my perspective, what do you know about with the CIA? The problem here is, the problem here is, as usual, is a lack of transparency. And whether it's from the Trump administration or a previous administration, I am a big proponent of transparency here on. something like this. This is a serious matter, right? I'm also a big proponent of counter-narcotics operations. I spent a lot of time in the drug wars. And one thing that I think we need to insist on from the current administration is more explanation, right? I'm not comfortable saying with a

blanket authority that, yeah, sure, we're going to trust the credibility of the intel on these various targets. I'm not talking about legality. I'm not talking about, I'm not, it's not going to go into the things that Max and Ryan are talking about, because from my perspective, that just lends credibility if I try to refute that. It's like, you know, when was the last time you beat your wife, Senator? So I think, you know, I would argue that there's two things happening here. They're operating on a dual track. They are going after narcotics. This ambassador is absolutely correct. Columbia has already shut down Intel sharing. This will have ramifications that I don't think the State Department or the White House understand. And I think at the same time they are

pressuring. There's no doubt about it. Look, are they after regime change? Sure. That should not be a goal here. I think if we can pressure internally the advisors around Maduro to say it's time for you to step down. That would, in fact, I don't know whether Max and Ryan agree with me, but a changing government in Venezuela, I'm not saying regime change, I'm just saying if Maduro stepped down, that would be a wonderful thing for the Venezuelan people,

I think, unless they're big proponents of the form of socialism that Maduro is pushing. Anyway, that's what I got. I'm back to the story. Obviously, the United States doesn't recognize Maduro as the president, after the outcome of that last election in 2024. It's been dismissed widely internationally as well and by the opposition in Venezuela.

The opposition leader of Venezuela just got the Nobel Peace Prize, which many think was not a coincidence. That election is deemed to have been neither free nor fair, and they believe the opposition party won the election, but the Maduro government stole it. So you have that as the backdrop to the legitimacy of the Maduro election.

History also shows us that when the United States tries to enforce regime change anywhere in the world, it's rarely anything but a bit of a mess, often with extremely bad repercussions. You know, is it not better? I mean, Trump's instincts have always been America first, fewer foreign wars, don't go and rattle hornet's nests. He's got the Israel-Hamas war, which has thankfully now reached a point of cease far at the moment. he's getting nowhere in Ukraine. I just don't think that his instincts will be telling him that going in there mob-handed to affect regime change would be anything but a potential disaster, maybe not militarily, but politically for him.

Well, I want to kind of turn your quick. You asked like five questions and one here. And I'm going to try to pull it apart a little bit without going after the ad homin attacks by one of the other panelists. I think we need to recognize a couple of things here. One, this is a criminal group masquerading as a government, without a doubt. Two, this is a group of people, Maduro and company, who have crimes against humanity charges

against them in the ICC. They have narcotic trafficking indictments in the United States. They are responsible for the mass migration, which started in 2017, before the oil sanctions began to be even instituted. Therefore, nine million people have already fled that country because they're fleeing. torture, dictatorship, and death. What happened to Captain Acosta Ravalo? What happened to General Baduel?

What happened to Fernando Albán? And what we have, and we have people who continue to make excuses for a murderous regime because they don't like the politics of the current administration in the United States. Now, the president has a number of options. I do not believe that the girl leading to Israel will end in Haiti or Libya or Iraq.

That's simply not true. Now, Maduro likes to talk about Afghanistan and Vietnam, and it will be we're going to enter this terrible moment. It's not true. And it's not true because they have the resources to rebuild their country. They don't have the same level as sectarian or ideological divide. Heck, most of the people, from the leadership of the opposition to the leadership of the Maduro regime, they went to college together.

They're first cousins. They know each other. This is a country that's set to be, once it regains this democracy, but it's gains this democracy, really an economic engine for the whole region. I have a much more optimistic view of the ability of the Venezuelan people to create a transitional government, fix the institutions that have been destroyed, and become a normal part of society again. Ryan Grim, a lot of people think the big play here is that the United States, under Donald Trump, they want to get their hands on Venezuela's resources. Max actually posted on next to

last week, Trump has folded Dick Cheney's fake war on terror into Ronald Reagan's phony war on drugs to justify a war to steal Venezuela's resources. Do you share that view that this is the bigger picture here? And, you know, how do you argue, when you try and sort of argue against any action against Venezuela, how do you argue that much of the international community does believe it's an illegitimate government that shouldn't be an office to start with? Today's show is sponsored by One Skim, which could help all of us. look even younger. One Skin is redefining skin care with cult favourites like OS1 body, face and eye, build around their patented OS1 peptide, which is clinically proven to target senescent cells,

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Right now, you can get an extra four months of ExpressVPN if you go to ExpressVPN.com slash peers to scan the QR code on the screen or go to ExpressVPN.com slash peers to get four additional months of service. That's ExpressVPN.com slash peers. Well, yes, I think Trump himself has been pretty transparent and open that the main objective here is Venezuela and resources.

Venezuela, in particular, Venezuela and oil. I don't even think that he would deny that. I'm sure you ask him that directly. Be like, yeah, that's precisely it. On the question of their, you know, elections and, you know, human rights abuses, yes, sure. Like, I'm glad to hear our fellow panelists uphold the virtues of the international criminal court. I hope he agrees with applying those standards universally to other countries that are committing genocide and human rights abuses as well.

But, you know, Gaddafi, I don't think it was anybody's favorite person around the world, but going in and, you know, launching a regime change didn't benefit the Libyans, didn't benefit us, didn't benefit the rest of the world. So, yeah, I just don't think that it would be the cakewalk that people are suggesting. Well, Max, that is certainly the concern, isn't it? I mean, if you look at actually a lot of the regime change that happened during that whole frenzy sort of Arab Spring period, you know, a lot of unrest was caused by it. A lot of deaths came as a result of it.

It's hard to see that much stability was brought through it. You know, the Iraq War was pretty well a disaster and so on. You know, I can understand people's concerns that just barreling into Venezuela, whatever the reason, whether it's to affect regime change, whether it's because of the drugs, whether it's because of the oil, it's probably a bit of all of that. I mean, it could just turn that to be another question. Well, I think Americans are sick of regime change wars for plunder.

That's why this is so unpopular. And just to quickly respond to two points the other panelists made, Mike Baker accused me of wearing a tinfoil hat. This, the truth about the cartel of the Suns being created. I said I forgot mine. Okay, fine. I just want to point this out for viewers. The truth about the CIA founding the Cartel of the Suns, ship cocaine in the United States was exposed to a national U.S. televised audience by Mike Wallace

on 60 minutes in 1993, back when 60 minutes reported on the CIA and not on behalf of the CIA. And just quickly to respond to virtual ambassador's story who accused me of ad hominem attacks, you are a government official, you are a veteran coup plotter, and it is legitimate for a journalist to scrutinize the activities of a coup plotting government official who in February 2021, hosted an insurrectionist summit at the Marriott Hotel in Bogota, you with Leopoldo Lopez, the U.S.-backed coup leader who staged multiple failed military coups and led violent riots that saw Afro-Venezuelan citizens burned in the streets.

Check out Orlando Figuera. And Carlos Vecchio, the fake ambassador to Venezuela, who is actually the lawyer for ExxonMobil, which seeks to regain its control of Venezuelan fields. This is one of the most deeply anti-democratic opposition movements led by Maria Karina Machado, who has led several coup attempts in Venezuela. I mean, it's basically like January 6th again and again with the sponsorship of the U.S. embassy, violent riots that have killed hundreds.

I personally watched Maria Karina Machado attempt to take over La Corlota Air Base in Caracas while the U.S. was trying to ram aid trucks into Venezuela, which the Venezuelan opposition subsequently burned and blamed on Maduro. This is a corrupt opposition that stole millions of dollars from Citgo after the U.S. stole it from Venezuela. This is a corrupt opposition that has paid millions to U.S. mercenaries like Jordan Gujarro, who I interviewed, who has personally described to me what the real agenda here is, which was for Trump incorporated cronies to get their hands on contracts and to plunder Venezuela's rich mineral wealth and oil, Ambassador's story revealed the agenda himself when he appeared on a

straightforward propaganda piece for regime change on 60 minutes and said, Nicholas Maduro is a bad actor sitting on the world's largest oil reserves. Well, that's why you consider him a bad actor, because there's plenty of bad actors in the world, and neither of you will condemn ICC wanted war criminal Benjamin Netanyahu or call for his arrest, will you? Neither of you will talk about Ecuadorian president, Danielle Neboa's role in the international drug trade through Benita and his family shipping, his family shipping company. I mean, the list goes on and on.

I could spend the next 45 minutes talking about U.S. sponsored bad actors, but they're our bad actors. The reason Maduro is a bad actor is because he's sitting on oil reserves. It's only fair. It's only fair. They're rather than giving you another 45 minutes to expand on that. Let me ask Ambassador's story for his, I'm going to give you a right of reply to that. So, respond.

I mean, of course. I mean, Max is often wrong and never in doubt. That's his stock and trade. And he will never say anything bad about Putin because that's where his finances come from. If you actually listen to what I'm talking about being funded by Russia. I've been specifically talking about. A U.S. official is lying about me being funded by Russia. This is all they have is lies.

For supporting Democratic actors. Nobody wants to talk about Fernando Aband being thrown off the 10th story of a bellicoide. Nobody wants to talk about Captain Acosta Révelo. clearly, clearly near death in court begging for help. The human rights abuses, the killings, the destruction of institutions within Venezuela, and then you have this Democratic opposition which done everything. They've gone out into the streets and they've protested. They've run an elections.

They've won elections. They've negotiated with the detainees. They've organized coups. At the end of all of this, they've protested. win an election, and that's still not good enough for people. So I'm going to stick with the Venezuelan people, and the Venezuelan people voted him out of office, and I believe he should be gone.

Okay, Mike Baker, I want to play you a clip. This is Chris Murphy, the U.S. senator, on ABC, when he was asked about this last week. Well, it seems pretty clear. It's just an effort to distract people from the rising prices and from the Epstein scandal. No one wants a war with Venezuela. to the extent they're claiming it has something to do with the drug trade coming to the United States.

The majority of drugs don't come through the Caribbean. They come via a land route, a land route that the president is ignoring because he is so focused on this absurd, illegal military campaign against Venezuela. So I don't think he'll find much support amongst Republicans or Democrats in this country for it. And by the way, it's wildly illegal. The president can't start a war with a nation without a congressional authorization. is just another sign of how out of control and how lawless this president is and another signal to Democrats

as to why we need to draw those firm moral lines in the sand right now to constrain his growing illegality. It's interesting. It might beg it to me to hear that given that I don't remember Senator Murphy being quite so vocal when Barack Obama was dropping bombs all over the world or running what many considered to be illegal drone program.

So his insistence on congressional prior approval for this kind of thing seems to be singularly related to the Republicans. But given what he said there, do you believe there is perhaps an ulterior motive that Donald Trump wants to distract people's attention? This is a good way to do it? I mean, it's an enormously visible and costly way of doing it.

If that's the case, I'm not saying it's not. Look, I'm shocked that politics would play a role in here and that they would be looking for a reason to beat on the Trump administration. every party in power does the same damn thing. I would pick up on something that Ryan said that I agree with 100%. If anybody in the White House or anybody in the administration of the Pentagon or the State Department imagine somehow that a kinetic movement into Venezuela

to affect regime change would somehow be a rather straightforward, they don't understand how complicated, how complex and how messy something like that would be. So I go back to my original. statement, which I suspect, and I don't know, but I would suspect that their strategy, if there is one, within the White House on this issue, is to exert sufficient pressure to get an internal change. Again, I don't think it's going to come, you know, as a decision from Maduro, but from people around him in one way or another. So I, you know, again, is that a form of regime change, absolutely, right? Does it ultimately, as the ambassador mentioned,

Would that benefit the people of Venezuela? Well, one would hope so. I mean, they were once one of the wealthiest nations in the region, and now they're a basket case. I know that other panelists say that that's because of US actions. And certainly the sanctions have impacted the economy. There's no doubt about that.

Again, I can always speak to the operational aspects of this, and the buildup there is outsized and doesn't make sense if all you're talking about a counter narcotics situation. And yes, there are multiple routes for narcotics coming into the US. I would argue that Mexico is target number one, if that's the problem, we should be going after that

in a bigger way. Yeah, I don't think, though, to go back to your question, Fierrez, I'd have a hard time imagining that even the Trump administration, which sometimes seems operating in chaos, would look and say, you know what, we need a distraction from higher prices in the US. So you know what, let's do a massive military buildup in the Caribbean.

It seems like a bit of a stretch. Yeah, I would say that's probably right. We've got to leave you there. A fascinating debate. Thank you all very much. I appreciate it. Piers Morgan Unsenssenant is proudly independent. The only boss around here is me.

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