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We need your help to build the future of independent news media and we hope to see you@breakingpoints.com Good morning everybody. Happy Monday. Have an amazing show for everybody today. What do we have, Crystal?
E
It's an interesting one today, so we've got a lot going on internationally. Trump saying the airspace over Venezuela is closed. He did have a phone call with Maduro though, so we'll read the tea leaves there as best we can. Also a crazy election in Honduras that we are just now getting the early results of after Trump's intervention there. Juan David Rojas is gonna join us to break down everything that is happening there. We've also got new reporting on potential Pete Hegseth war crimes to dig into. New election issue just dropped of course. We've been following it for a while, but New York Times writing up how electricity prices are the new priority. Price of eggs having massive electoral impact as data centers spread and grow. Trump commutes the sentence of a massive fraudster. Just the latest honestly of many that he has done. So we'll dig into all of that. Seth Harp is going to join us on the CIA death squads that that Afghan National Guard killer had been part of, apparently recruited into when he was 15 years old. So he's gonna break down all the details that we know there. And we've also got a few updates from Israel, including Netanyahu requesting a pardon. So a lot interesting stuff in the show today.
C
Yeah, that's right. Thank you to everybody who's been supporting the show. We do hope you all had a nice Thanksgiving with your family. Not too many arguments between all of you. If you're looking for a place which has great discourse, you see how I parlayed there. You can do breakingpoints.com, you can support our show. If you can't afford it, please, no worries. Just hit subscribe to our YouTube channel. And if you're listening to this as a podcast, please send an episode to a friend. It really helps other people find the show. But let's go ahead and start with Venezuela. As you said, some fast moving things. They're happening. President Trump declaring effectively a no fly zone over Venezuela, no congressional mandate. There's a lot of contraindicators as to why we would even want to do this. But just deciding, you know, and just out of the blue, like he did with Tehran whenever he ordered the evacuation and just said the airspace over Venezuela is officially closed. Here's what he said on Air Force One last night. Asked by reporters about this reporter, can you tell us why the airspace over Venezuela should be considered closed? Trump because we consider Venezuela not to be a very friendly country. Reporter, does your warning sign mean that an airstrike is imminent or we should not read it that way? Trump, don't read anything into it. Okay, well, I will read a little bit into it because we're talking about the president and the United States military. Let's go put a two up there on the screen. This was Trump's initial tweet, by the way. He actually is back on Twitter. I'm not exactly sure why, but he says to all airlines, pilots, drug dealers, human traffickers, please consider the airspace above and surrounding Venezuela to be closed in its entirety. Thank you for your attention to this matter. President DONALD J. Trump, obviously, incredibly important. One of the things in our last show that we did before Thanksgiving was warn everyone that the United States military was on high alert that southcom, many others, had actually restricted the travel of a lot of their personnel. They were flying B52s off the coast of Venezuela an incredible amount of firepower, carrier missile strikes, I mean, all kinds of stuff that is concentrated there in the Caribbean. The largest concentration of force down there since the Cuban missile crisis in 1962. Let's go ahead and put this up here on the screen as well. There are a lot of moving parts and this is absolutely the most important. Trump did apparently speak by phone with Nicolas Maduro, Venezuela's leader, sometime last week. Quote, they discussed a possible meeting between the two of them, but nothing has been scheduled. And the administration continues to increase the military pressure on Venezuela. Now, let me tell you what I flagged as the single most important part of this phone call. I think it's great that they're on the phone. I think it's an important thing. I actually do think if the two of them ever got into a room together that something would happen. But the phone call included the Secretary of State, Marco Rubio, to me, game, that's it. And the reason why is that he in particular, and I've described this on the show, I've been doing quite a lot of work on this from behind the scenes. What I can say is this, is that Trump is torn completely. You know, he loves the drug thing, he likes the idea of the oil. The Maria Machados and the Rubios of the world have realized that Trump doesn't actually care that Maduro stole the election or any of this. So called.
E
What a shocker.
C
Yeah.
E
Oh, horrible sanctity of elections. That's a big Trump issue.
C
It's preposterous, right? Oh, we're supposed to invade another country because they stole. Who gives a shit whether they stole an election? It's not my problem. The issue though is that they have convinced him couple fold. Number one, they think the drugs right thing is gonna poll. Well, it's not actually true, but okay, we'll put that to the side. Second is they genuinely have convinced him that overthrowing Madur is gonna be better to get the oil, the gold and all the minerals from Venezuela. Again though, this is difficult because when Trump speaks with Maduro, Maduro's like, listen, man, you can have it all. You can have whatever you want. The only thing is you can't force me out of office. I will leave, but just in a little bit, like a little bit later on. I need to save some face and all of that. For some reason though, he's drawn the hard line so much in the sand that he actually is in a no win situation. Like, he cannot cave at this point. Or maybe he can, but at least in his mind, Rubio and them are like, oh, this would be bad for the credibility of the United States if you don't end up in a deal where he actually does end up, where he actually does end up, like resigning. And so it's one of those where if the two of them could actually come together, it would potentially come to some sort of a deal. But with Marco Rubio and with many of the other people in the nsc, like Pete Hegseth and others, they're all telling, they're sweet talking and they're like, it would be a cakewalk. It would be easy. We don't have to do any troops, which, a couple land strikes, we just have to do this, we have to do that. And so the information environment around Trump, and look, I'm blaming him, him too, okay? He's the person responsible. And like, he should seek out others. I'm only explaining how there's a bottleneck here that makes this very unlikely. The overwhelming, the overwhelming consensus of the Rubio camp and others is that this will be a cakewalk. This will be easy. It's good for credibility. It's about sending a Congress, as we're about to get to, is all bought in Lindsey Graham and everybody. So everyone is aligned on this entire regime change op. And the thing is, the center of this is oil. Now, the key point I do wanna make is that this is the really dumb way to get the oil because he literally said, you can have it if you want it. You can have the gold, you can have the minerals. We will happily sell it to you. We just need to be able to preserve our regime in some form. And I can hand over office to my guy. Why is that a bad deal? Exactly. Why should we care? But that's the table. That's the table for where we're at. And it will be. I mean, first of all, obviously, I think it'll be a colossal failure. But second, it reveals, as we're about to get to with Honduras, where, I mean, the way that they can cartoonishly undercut their own justification is amazing because the entire legal justification for this is that Maduro is a drug dealer. And at the very same time, they want to pardon a convicted drug dealer here in the United States of America, former president of Honduras, and say, well, as long as he's good for us, it doesn't matter whether he deals drugs or not. And so, guys, none of this is about drugs. Maybe for the courts, and they can litigate that if they want to. But brass tacks, it's about oil. And with the oil, Maduro's willing to sell it to us. So even in terms of the deal stakes, it makes no sense whatsoever. This is a pure South Florida Miami operation. We have a Miami occupied government. Okay? And yeah, it's true. It's true. We have. Miami occupies the White House. We need to free ourselves from the shackles of Miami. We need a hurricane to come in here, okay. And actually do something about it. It's driving me crazy. But nobody wants to say anything about it from the right, the MAGA folks. Tucker's dead. One episode. There's been a few others who have been willing to speak out, but they're afraid because they're like, oh, what are you a week on the issue of drug dealing with. And it's like, well, it's not about drugs. Even Trump doesn't believe it's about. Nobody believes that it's about drugs.
E
Yeah.
C
And then apparently, outside of a few voices on the left, I mean, the entire Democratic establishment is. Yeah, cool. All right. Maduro, he's bad, right? We, we don't like bad guys. Not. We've learned nothing.
E
Yeah. In Washington, a lot of them, what they'll do is like, oh, well, it shouldn't be, shouldn't be removed this way. But like agree in principle. It's like, I mean, it's just put that like Hakeem Jeffries, of course, the leader of the Democrats in the House has not said one word, last we checked, about Venezuela at all. I mean, just think about this. You are supposed to be the opposition party and you have nothing to say about a potential war that the supposed anti war president is threatening to drag us into. Like, that is completely insane, frankly. Criminal. Like, they've gotta go. You need real opposition in there. But just to. We're gonna get more. 2. Honduras with Juan David Rojas. But just to spell this out for you guys, Trump is pardoning this former Honduras president, Juan Orlando Hernandez, who was convicted here by a jury of actual, like, drug trafficking and was said to be involved in trafficking some 400 million tons of cocaine into this country, was probably involved in the murder of a witness in a Honduras prison who produced evidence against his brother. I mean, just insane. And by the way, just so you know, like, prior to his conviction, multiple bipartisan American presidents had been willing to work with this guy. But then once they were done with him, then it's all right, it's time to lock him up. But I mean, let's be real about how much Trump cares about any of this. Not to mention that the Amount of drug trafficking convictions and investigations have dropped dramatically as they've decided instead, the priority is like Juan at Home Depot, you know, so that's. That's gone away as well. We know about the deals that they also struck with Bukele in order to lock up a bunch of innocent people in Seekot. In exchange for that, they sent him a bunch of actual gang leaders and drug dealers. So, I mean, you just cannot take seriously that this is a priority for them whatsoever, if you're actually looking at their actions. But to Sagra's point, they've sort of thrown every justification scattershot against the wall for, let's just throw everything out there and see what sticks we've got. Lindsey Graham here is a perfect example of this. He's still. He's melding together the war on terror and the drug rhetoric here. He says, I very much appreciate and respect the determination by President Trump to deal with the. Listen to this terminology. Drug caliphate. Countries that inhabit our backyard, chief among them, Venezuela. For over a decade, Maduro has controlled a narco terrorist state, is poisoning America, has created alliances with international terrorist organizations like Hezbollah. He's an illegitimate leader who has been indicted for drug trafficking in US courts, maintains control of Venezuela by a reign of terror. President Trump's strong commitment to end this madness in Venezuela will save countless American lives, will give the beautiful people of Venezuela a new lease on life. I hear Turkey and Iran are lovely this time of year. One of these South Florida congresswomen was, you know, going on some crazy rant. Ryan and Emily covered it last week. Did you see this where they said that he was sending uranium to Hama? I mean, it's just like completely insane shit here, right?
C
For anyone who's been around the block, there was a nice Iraq War angle to that too, with Niger and the yellow Keiki range.
E
Oh, yeah, absolutely.
C
It always comes back to the same thing.
E
And then you can see the case that's being made from Scott Bessen and from this, I think, same South Florida congresswoman to Trump about, like, oh, but we're gonna, you know, this is gonna be great for you care about affordability. Right? You see, this is an electoral problem for you. This is gonna be great for energy prices. Gotta go forward with it so that we can deal with these, you know, with these rising prices and get the price of oil down further. So, you know, they're pitching that and just like, none of it makes any sense. The American people, to their credit, are not buying any of this shit. Right. If you look at the Polling of this, the idea of, you know, military action against Venezuela, let alone invading Venezuela's dramatically unpopular. What in the world? It's insulting that the case is so, like, scattershot and just slapped together haphazardly like they have complete disrespect for the American people. We don't even get good propaganda anymore. It's all just pathetic. But ultimately they don't feel the need to make the case. They're gonna do whatever they're gonna do. Now, it's very possible, I think it's very possible that either Trump sort of saber rattles and then ultimately makes some sort of deal with Maduro, there's talk of maybe they're gonna get together. I think it's unlikely. I think Savvy's probably right about Marco Rubio and the other Florida contingent and the White House just contin and pushing and pushing this. It's a similar dynamic to the dynamic we've seen with Israel, where over a long enough time period, or with Ukraine, frankly, over a long enough time period, they get their way. They just keep wearing you down, keep coming up with new explanations. And because Trump has no ideological core, he's very susceptible to that. He's very susceptible to whoever is around him who has the strongest ideological viewpoint. And we know who that is in this White House when it comes to Venezuela. Another possibility is that you have a situation sort of like what happened with Iran, where he decides to go along with what the Zionists want him to do and to participate in this bombing of Iran. Could have a similar thing here where he decides, okay, we're gonna strike this and that target. But it's limited. It's not a wholesale invasion. It's not a wholesale. It doesn't go all the way through with regime change. I think that is a possibility as well. But everyone should be very concerned about the developments that we've seen here and certainly the rhetoric that is coming from so many parts of the Republican coalition that are all pushing in this direction and how little, how little resistance you see even from the MAGA coalition that's supposed to be anti war, about going in this direction.
C
Let me continue, shall we? All right, let's put the next one there up on the screen. This is from Maduro. His government rejects the Trump claim of closing Venezuelan airspace. But one of the things I do wanna underscore is what do we hear about Maduro? He is a psychotic communist, pro China, stole the election. He must be this nefarious guy. Now, here's the thing. Do I think Maduro is a murderer. Yeah. Do I think that he stole the election? Yeah, probably. Has he destroyed his country 100%. Now, all that being said, these people, you can still deal with them. And let me give you a perfect example. A six. Let's put that one up here on the screen. What they don't tell you is that this entire time since Trump has been in office, Venezuela has been accepting huge migrant repatriation flights. In fact, this entire time, while Trump has been saber rattling against Maduro who supposedly invaded us, you will remember all that with the Venezuelan and the migrant situation with all of that. This entire time, while we're threatening to overthrow them, threatening to invade flying B52s, Venezuela has been accepting migrant flights from the United States that we are sending them directly. They accept them, no problems, no questions even asked in many cases. Do you know why? Because they want to keep diplomatic channels and goodwill open with the United States government. And so now after the US Says that they are going to stop, Venezuela says that the US actually unilaterally suspended these migrant repatriation flights after Trump called for the airspace to be viewed as closed. So let's again understand that is that we were sending migrants there, deporting them who are in our country illegally to Venezuela. Maduro's government is like, yeah, well, it's like, I'm sure, you know, there are citizens. We then suspend it because Trump tweets out that the airspace is closed. Does that sound like a guy who's difficult to deal with?
E
Right?
C
He's like, they're like, we want you to take your migrants. He's like, okay, okay, yeah, sure. All right. And so if he says, we'll give you the oil, why wouldn't we believe him? Why wouldn't we believe him? Why wouldn't we believe him? If he says, I'll give you this, this and this, as long as we work out some deal in the future. It's, you know, they do this with everybody. They paint these people as insane, as psychos and like, yeah, there's something to that. But you can reason or you can at least strike deals, you know, with these types of people. Kim Jong Un, he's a madman. He's like, is he. He has nukes. He wants to die in his own bed of old age. That's actually not that hard to understand. Yeah, he'll kill a lot of people. That's not a good thing. Not justifying it, but as if you can understand somebody's motivation here. Maduro is like him, he wants to live. That's it? Is he a socialist? Kind of, you know, ish. He's also a Catholic, like super hardcore social conservative. Nobody fits into a box.
E
That's what they're a lot of our hawkish policy towards Venezuela, Nicaragua to Cuba, Iran. Like it props up these regimes, you know, towards Putin and Russia. Like it gives them legitimacy, it gives them an excuse for why things aren't going the way they should be in their country.
C
Maduro is executing people who are his opposition or throwing them in prison. Cuz he says that they're part of a CIA op to overthrow him. Again, the Iranians did the same thing after the whole Israel campaign. They're like, oh, anybody who's against us, Mossad, right, Because they had so much penetrated penetration. So yeah, if you're so concerned about the liberals in Iran and all that, yeah, they're fucking dead. Okay? I mean, same down in Venezuela. There's a reason that we have to spend all this money on the Venezuelan opposition. And at the end of the day everyone's like, his regime is weak. I don't think so. All right, Anybody who survives for like 20 years, who successfully, you know, according to them, stole an election, there's been no massive uprising. Like we always try to presume that we know what's best for these people. They have chosen their destiny or at the very least they're kind of okay with it. That's not for me to decide. What's for me to decide is somebody willing to send me oil, sell me oil, and also who's willing to take our. To take back their own migrants. Seems quite reasonable, somebody that you can deal with. They don't wanna do it.
E
Not to mention that all of these interventions and the sanctions and all of this, I mean this is part of what displaces people don't just wanna. It's not a small thing to leave your home and go somewhere and cross a border illegally. I mean, these are all very difficult, dangerous, painful, traumatic things. And you can look at our intervention in these various countries, Honduras being another one that we're about to talk to Juan David about, where when we get involved and we create chaos and lawlessness and partner with actual narco traffickers like the guy who was president of Honduras. This is part of what leads to these states being miserable, violent places to live with poor economic prospects and which does cause the displacement of people. There's one more factor here that we just have to mention because you always have to keep your eye on this. There is another group, ah, let's put up on the screen. There's another group very interested in always being at war. Trump's focus on drug war means big business for defense startups, which of course it does. So this is pretty self explanatory. But in any case, the US Military has turned its attention southward. The defense industry is lining up to sell the tools for a different kind of war. Defense tech companies and artificial intelligence startups have found a vital new market in Trump's rapidly escalating drug war. Weapons and AI platforms that were designed for a future conflict with China or struggled to prove themselves on the Ukrainian battlefield have found a niche in the administration's tech enabled crackdown on drug trafficking. Drone and imaging companies are assisting the U.S. coast Guard and Navy with interdiction operations in the Caribbean. AI companies from Silicon Valley to Dubai are pitching platforms that promise to map the hidden networks of fentanyl traffickers on the southern US Border. A counter drone system developed in Ukraine is being repurposed to deflect incursions from Mexico. As Washington has revived the rhetoric and legal tools of the global war on terror, more companies large and small have staked their claims to the emerging market. At times retooling to fit the latest mission, they've rebranded their drone sensors, AI tools and data platforms as custom tools for Trump's fight against narco terror. And so basically, you know, now that the Afghanistan war is over and we've actually fully withdrawn there, you know, that was the biggest cash grab. I mean, it's one of the biggest cash grabs for these defenses, industrial complex companies in history. And so you gotta have something, you know, you gotta have something to fill the void here. So what are you gonna do now? They're jumping on board with this quote unquote narco terrorist, the drug caliphate, countries, whatever. So this is the new cash cow for them. And Trump is close with a bunch of these guys. You've got Sachs, has investments in this, you've got Peter Thiel, of course, Palmer Luckey. Like all these characters are either directly in the administration or close allies. And so those folks are in his ear as well, who also want to move forward with this. So you got a lot of forces that are pushing for more war.
C
There's a lot of money in this. I mean, even if you read, look, the same thing happened with the gwa, which the Wall Street Journal accurately describes, is that the war on terror was a bonanza for them. These new defense tech startups, I mean, they don't have a bad pitch, which is that the prime defense contractors are inefficient bad, too expensive. But that doesn't mean that we need to gin up wars and other policy in order to justify some purchases of all of this AI boat. It's like, guys, it's a fucking boat. It's a small fisherman. Do you really need like AI targeting systems to take it down? No. All right, we've been doing it for years. You don't need any of that. And in fact, there are a lot of different ways that we could deal with it. So this campaign, this entire thing, it makes no sense whatsoever strategically on the merits in terms of what they're saying. It is preposterous. And luckily we have a great guest standing by Juan David Rojas to talk specifically about the Honduras angle to this. Let's get to it.
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C
All right, very excited now to be joined by Juan David Rojas to talk about this developing situation with Honduras. So Juan, at the very moment that we are going to potentially invade or overthrow the Maduro regime for drug trafficking. President Trump has announced that he will pardon Juan Orlando Hernandez, the former former president of Honduras, who was extradited to the United States and convicted for drug trafficking. When asked about this contradiction. Let's put this up here. Let's say on the screen, reporter says, you've made clear how you wanna keep drugs out of the U.S. tRUMP. Right. Can you explain why you would pardon a notorious drug trafficker, Trump? I don't know who you're talking about, Juan Orlando Hernandez. Trump, Many of the people of Honduras said it was a Biden setup. I looked at the facts and agreed with them. Reporter, what evidence can you share? It was a setup, Trump. You can take any country you want. If somebody sells drugs in that country, that doesn't mean you arrest the president and put him in jail for the rest of his life. You know, you might take that same logic and apply it to Maduro, but here with Honduras, apparently it is not applicable. Much of this is because Trump intervened in the Honduras election, of which we now have some results. So, Juan, your general reaction to all.
D
Of this, it's really stunning. I mean, this is definitely one of Trump's lowest points. I had been following, like, this story with Juan Orlando Hernandez for years. I thought it was terrible. It was extremely undercovered. In 2018, during Trump's first term, his brother, the president's brother, was arrested here in the US for trafficking charges. And. But despite that, he continued to be buddy buddy with multiple US Administrations going back to Obama, Obama, Trump, Biden is super embarrassing, but photo ops of all of them with Hernandez. And he was super close, actually, to former Trump's former chief of staff, John Kelly. They had like over 20 meetings and all of the, all this praise that it's like, oh, this guy is a huge US Ally. And so it's like, what the heck? This guy's a clearly like a, a Norco State kingpin. And so he was eventually extradited to the US in 2022, convicted last year. And look, the truth is, a lot of these cases against, like, politicians being connected to drug trafficking, Latin America, they do usually boil down just to the testimony of traffickers, which is unreliable. Right, because they just want better terms for their prison sentences. The thing is, with Hernandez, they really got him dead to rights. Like, there's really solid concrete evidence. They found these ledgers with the president and his brother's initials on it, like, for the kickbacks that they would get from different drug shipments.
E
Wow.
D
And the DEA also geolocated traffickers visiting the presidential palace There was also matches Hernandez had in his Google account, the contacts of traffickers. So this is a shut case. Like, I mean, there's nothing you can say about this guy. This guy funneled allegedly. Yeah. Or not allegedly. He was convicted for 500 tons of cocaine to the U.S. so it's. Yeah, like you said with Maduro, it's hilarious. I mean, supposedly yesterday, yet another phone call with Maduro telling him, hey, you have to leave or else.
E
Yeah, I mean, this guy appears to be what Trump is pretending that Maduro is. It appears that like he's the actual thing that Trump is pretending that Maduro is. And now Trump has made this extraordinary intervention into the elections in Honduras. As of right now, we have partial results that are returned. They're very slow coming in. We'll get to that in just a second. But let me put this Trump, these series of Trump truths up on the screen to see the way that he is sort of like both threatening and bribing Honduras, the people of Honduras, to vote for his chosen right wing candidate. So he says here, if Tito Aspura wins for president of Honduras because the US has so much confidence in him as policies and what he'll do for the great people of Honduras, we will be very supportive if he doesn't win. The US Will not be throwing good money after bad because a wrong leader can only bring catastrophic results to a country, no matter which country it is. Goes on from there. All kinds of additional information, including going after the more center right figure as well, saying that Nasrallah, that's the center right figure, is no friend of freedom, a borderline communist, et cetera, et cetera. So really throwing in behind this more right wing candidate, and it is very reminiscent of the successful gambit that he pulled in Argentina as well, on behalf of Javier Milei and his party, who had direct ties to some of the people in the Trump administration. So talk to us about how extraordinary this intervention is and how you think people in Honduras are reacting to it.
D
Yeah, I personally think that if Trump hadn't. Well, I guess it's hard to say because the funny thing is that that centrist candidate that looks like he's going to win currently, as for the right wing candidate is barely ahead, but there's still over 50 of the results left. I think probably Nasrallah will win. And he, he's the most interesting of the three candidates. I don't necessarily say that in a good way. He was actually a current president, Siomara Castro's vice president. He stepped down over, you know, Problems with like, corruption in our administration. And the funny thing is that he was actually the candidate of the leftist Libre party in 2017 when Hernandez went, ran for an illegal second term and committed fraud. He stole the election. He committed fraud. Nasrala was the rightful winner. But anyway. And now he's the candidate of the centrist Liberal Party. So the, the funny thing also is that he had conducted outreach with a ton of Miami neocons, our friend Mario Salas Salazar. And so she was out like campaigning for him, basically. So Trump, when he stepped in, he like, backed. As for that, clearly because of his good relations with Hernandez before.
C
Yeah.
D
But in a way, like, it probably divided the vote. Yeah. Hard to say exactly what the impact was.
E
Yeah. I mean, it's a crazy situation because, look, polls can be wrong. The polls had the left wing candidate up significantly and the Trump candidate was trailing behind in third place. The exit polls that were coming out yesterday evening.
C
Yeah.
D
Had some.
E
Yeah. Had the left wing candidate also significantly winning. I saw local broadcasters like, this thing is pretty much over. It looks like she's gonna prevail. And then the results start coming out and they look dramatically different now. We were both talking to Ryan this morning, like, what's going on here? He's got a guy on the ground who's saying, like, no, I was at the polling place and it looks like the results are legit. One other thing to throw in the mix here too. Polymarket, which, you know, it's just a betting website, but usually, you know, at least somewhat in the ballpark of what's gonna happen. Originally had the left wing candidates this massive favorite, and then once the polls closed, it completely flipped in a dramatic way in the other direction. So, I mean, it looks pretty extraordinary what's going on here. The polls certainly were wildly wrong. The other thing that I think is worth noting is Trump effectively sort of comparing the left wing and even the center right candidate in Honduras to Maduro. And I think people may also be like, well, I don't see what's going on with Venezuela. I don't really want that for me too. So I don't know from the outside, not an expert here, but it appears that Trump may not get his chosen candidate, but it appears to me like his intervention had a huge impact on what ultimately happened here.
D
Yeah, yeah. I'm not. It's. It's hard to say. Pulling in on Duras tends to be pretty bad.
E
Yeah.
D
Historically, it's possible that he drove turnout for AS food. I'm generally inclined to think that whenever he intervenes, voters will be inclined to vote for against them. But, you know, yeah, yeah, yeah, the calculus could be different. I mean, Honduras is a lot closer to the U.S. maybe voters felt that it was really in their self interest to have a candidate that was friendly with.
C
One of the things, though is I was reading this morning, you know, not everything is about us. A lot of it is about us down in Central America. But one of the voters that the New York Times spoke with said, well, I was very disappointed with the narco trafficking of the previous administration. And none of the narco trafficking has gone down because they believe that the current administration was in on it too. So it's like they have still one of the highest murder rates in all of Central America. They have plenty of their own domestic. Potentially the sale there was. Look, everybody's corrupt. At least the US will extend us a helping hand or something like this under the Trump administration. But more interestingly, I think we have to come back to. Let's put a 11 up there on the screen. Ryan's tweet here is that the circumstances of this trafficking case still seem to be so important for the story with Venezuela. Like Trump threatening to bomb Venezuela over the drug trafficking while also pardoning this drug trafficker. I'm curious for your perspective, Juan, now that we have kind of a mixed record of Trump intervention in Latin America, how any potential Venezuelan invasion or overthrow, OP or CIA operations that go kinetic and end up killing Maduro or trying to force him out of office, how would that affect the broader grand strategy of Latin America and the big powers in the region?
D
Greg? Yeah, that's a great question. Really quick. Yeah, I love that you said that. Yeah, the, the truth is that Siamara Castro's government is super corrupt, has had her own dealings with drug traffickers. So the truth is the whole of Anders's political class is extremely discredited. But yeah, as for your other question, uh, yeah, really. Uh, and this is another thing too, that, uh, Rick Simon Kata, the, the leftist candidate and also Simara Castro are open supporters of Nicholas Maduro, which actually isn't that common among left wing leaders in the region. A lot of them, you know, they have like mixed feelings. A lot of them have been kind of forced to recognize that Maduro is terrible, especially if like their neighbors with them like Colombia and Brazil. You know, Lula had this huge about face. He said, oh, there was this. Maduro visited him in 2023 right after he came back into power. And Lula said that, oh, there was a fabricated media narrative Against Venezuela, whatever. And then over time there, the first, like Venezuela, you know, on paper annexed two thirds of neighboring Guyana. And the Brazilians are like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, what's going on here? And then they stole the 2024 election. And yeah, Lula really has turned on Maduro ever since, similarly with Petro. I mean, yeah, you have like 3 million Venezuelan migrants that are live in the country now. Maduro sponsors all these leftist guerrillas that, you know, attack Colombians, even though Petro is also left wing.
C
Right.
D
So there's a lot of animosities at the same time. No one, especially on the left, is cool with the U. S just invading Venezuela. And Petro's even said that if, like, you know, this is a bluster, but he said that if the US Invades Venezuela, the Colombia would come to its defense. Lula has also said that, you know, just kinetic action would be unacceptable. And also that the, the boat strikes, which, you know, are very dubious legally and on various other levels, have really pissed off a lot of leaders even on the right too. So, yeah, I was just in Colombia and people have a lot of mixed feelings about, you know, Venezuela, the bombings, all of this stuff. On the other hand, for instance, so while I was there, Petro said that he would actually support a negotiated transition in Venezuela. And that's a, that's a pretty big.
C
I remember you messaging me. The thing that I coming back to on that is why is Trump. The thing is Maduro, as you and I have talked about Maduro, he doesn't even care. He's like, I'll give you the oil and I will leave. I just won't leave today, right? Like, I need some face saving, I can need hand power off to my guy. I want my regime to survive and all that. Everybody else in the region seems to be bought in, but Trump is demanding that he leave now, like tomorrow, right. And effectively allow not just him to be gone, but say that the entire government and its apparatus, which obviously wouldn't even be able to guarantee his safety. Like, it seems the negotiating terms of this make it impossible for Maduro to negotiate at all other than absolute surrender.
D
Yeah, that's definitely a result of Rubio and the rest of the Miami lobby. I mean they, they are just fixated on this. They have a completely two dimensional view of Venezuela and the other, you know, the so called troika terror. It's also funny because the similarities between Hernandez and Maduro, I mean, it's, it's really great. I mean, okay, Maduro, you know, stole the 2024 election. Hernandez stole the 2017 election for his reelection. You know, they're both accused of drug trafficking. You know, we can debate the, the specifics of both cases after their fraudulent reelections. They killed a bunch of demonstrators too. I mean, and actually when you think about it, the only difference really between them, Maduro is super socially conservative. So as, so was Hernandez. You know, they're both anti abortion, both super Catholic. Maduro, I, I told you this in private before, during the, the past Olympics, he said that the French desecrated Christ over the weird blue people thing. So he has a portrait in his office of Jesus and him steering the ship of Venezuela. So the only difference here that matters is that, oh, you know, Hernandez was in favor of Washington, Maduro was against it. And that's like the two dimensional logic of neocons and anti imperialists respectively. It's like, guys, look beneath the surface. There's really a lot in common here.
C
I totally agree.
E
Let's talk a little bit more about the pardon of the motivations of the pardon of Juan Orlando Hernandez. Let's put a 14 up on the screen. I just mentioned earlier how potentially some of the motivation for intervening in Argentina and propping up Javier Milei were financial because you have a bunch of hedge funders who are either in the administration or tied to the administration who have a lot of money to lose there. Here you have this pet project of the Peter Thiel Libertarian Tech Bros of the world that was coming to fulfillment in Honduras and Hernandez was a partner of this. So these economic development zones called ZEDs, were heavily pushed as a means of stimulating economic development by Castro's predecessor, former president Juan Orlando Hernandez, who was extradited to the US on April 21 to face drug trafficking charges. But fears over sovereignty, land expropriation and legality all undermine legitimacy of the project. Prospera pitched international investors. This was this like crypto libertarian city, utopian city that they set up pitched international investors visions of a beachside libertarian paradise replete with low taxes, crypto friendly regulations. The zone recently made bitcoin legal tender pass legislation facilitating the issuance of bitcoin bonds. Prospero's investors include Silicon Valley heavyweights like Peter Thiel and Marc Andreessen through Pronomos Capital, a VC fund which invests in autonomous city projects. So this is part of this like network state bullshit, libertarian bullshit that these people are into. And so Hernandez was a supporter of that. The current government was not and is putting an end to this stuff. I mean this, this seems like you could see how these people would be in Trump's ear about like, oh, you know, this is a vendetta. It was a witch hunt against him. It was so unfair. It was a Biden setup. Blah, blah, blah.
D
Yeah, this is crazy. And in my opinion, it's the reason why Trump decided to intervene. Because his donors were in his ear and told him, hey, you have to get involved. We need to save our city. So in 2012, Hernandez was the president of Honduras's Congress. It's a unil camel, unicameral legislator, legislature and before. And the president at the time portfolio, who also is deeply involved in drug trafficking. They tried to pass this law creating these special economic zones. The Supreme Court said no because essentially they, they said it was unconstitutional for the Honduran state to cede sovereignty over its own territory because they basically would forego control over these areas. So they staged a kind of coup against the Supreme Court. Remove four of the justices at once.
E
Wow.
D
And put in cronies that approved the law that went against the country's constitution, created the so called sales and immediately. Yeah. Consortium of investors backed by Peter Thiel and Mark Andreessen created this city called Prospera. And that's what the investor group is called on the island of Roatan. Who's this? It's really, it's this famous island off the coast of Honduras's Caribbean coast. Beautiful, you know, pristine white sand beaches, whatever. Today the city controls around 3% of the island's territory. And they also recently bought a port on the mainland. And it's a libertarian wet dream. Everything is private, the police, the schools, even the justice system is private. Apparently they have like, like some state, former state supreme court chief justice among the people they paid, you know, rule on issue rulings and stuff like that. And when Castro came in, she, one of her first actions was to suspend or to overturn that law. And so now the city is stuck in this kind of limbo. But they're fighting back and they actually stand a chance of winning. They sued the government under Honduras's Free Trade Agreement, which by the way has been disastrous for Honduras. The CAFE agreement, Central America Free Trade Agreement.
E
Yep.
D
For almost $11 billion. That's around the same as Honduras's entire yearly budget. So they really have them in a chokehold. Castro has been fighting back. That's one of the good things that uh, she's doesn't, she's done. And there's a lot of popular discontent over, you know, selling out your own country to these crypto billionaires. That's another thing.
E
This island to these like tech oligarch, foreign tech oligarchs. We're just going to do that. You have no say over it.
D
Crypto is legal in prosperity. You can buy anything with crypto. So it's. Yeah, it's crazy.
C
I remember hearing about this years back. I didn't, I didn't realize it became an actual thing.
D
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
C
Oh, crazy. All right, Juan, you're the best man. Thank you for everything. Where can people find you? Where should they subscribe?
D
Subscribe to my substack. It's called social democracy with populist characteristics. And I'll have a article coming out about this. The election for compact. Excellent. Today or tomorrow.
E
Fantastic. Thanks, Juan.
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So as you guys know, the Trump administration has been randomly killing a bunch of people in the Caribbean and the Pacific that they claim to be drug traffickers with very little or no evidence. We now have new reporting about the first of those attacks. I don't know if you guys remember the details. That particular boat had 11 people on board. Part of what made it very suspicious, because normally drug traffickers wouldn't have actually that number of people on the boat because they would want to have more space for drugs on the boat. In any case, the reporting indicates that Pete Hegseth himself gave the order to, quote, kill them all after the initial strike on the boat. There were two survivors who remained who were clinging to the wreckage. And that voice command from Pete Hegseth led to a double tap strike that experts say is a pretty clear, if we're even accepting their legal rationale that they could be bombing these people to begin with is a pretty clear war crime. In any case, Trump was asked yesterday about that second strike, that double tap strike from Pete Hegseth. Let's put this up on the screen. I'll read it. Cuz the audio was really bad. So the reporter said, if there was a second strike that killed wounded people, would that be legal? Trump said, I don't know what happened. And Pete said he did not even know what people were talking about. I would not have wanted a second strike. The first strike was very lethal. It was fine. This reporting also led to a rather explosive exchange on CNN involving Stephen Miller's wife, Katie Miller, and Bakari Sellers. Let's go ahead and take a listen to that.
G
He said that those orders that were given the drug boats in Venezuela were illegal. Can you cite those statutes, please?
H
Yes, because it's actually called the due process clause of the United States of America. Because can you point to one of those boats that actually had drugs on them? Do you know that? Do you know about the Trinidadians who were killed innocently, who were just fishermen? Can you actually kill those fishermen without due process? So the answer to the question is yes, I can cite the Constitution just as Scott did.
G
If you go and say that those were members of Al Qaeda or ISIS coming to our shores with enough drugs or enough ammunition to kill a thousand people Americans, wouldn't you expect our commander in chief to take action to stop that? That's what's happening here. That is what's happened, by the way. That's what happens in every war zone. Whether you go to Iraq, Afghanistan, Iran, Somalia. Go there.
E
Let's talk about it.
H
Give me one name of one individual that you can compare to Al Qaeda coming through that had enough fentanyl to kill all these Americans. Can you name one?
G
Let's go to what these drug votes are talking about, which is that we are actively Ensuring that the war on drugs that we've been like, doing for 50 years, which has not worked.
H
Yeah, we can agree on that.
E
The administration not sending their best there, I would say. Let's go and put this reporting actually up on the screen so I can read you some of the details here. Hagset order on first Caribbean boat strike officials say kill them all. The longer the US Surveillance aircraft followed the boat, the more confident intelligence analysts watching from command centers became that the 11 people on board were ferrying drugs. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth gave a spoken directive, according to two people with direct knowledge. The order was to kill everybody, one of them said. A missile screamed off the Trinidad coast, striking the vessel, igniting a blaze from bow to stern. For minutes, commanders watched the boat burning on a live drone feed. As the smoke cleared, they got a jolt. Two survivors were clinging to the smoldering wreck. The special operations commander overseeing the September 2nd attack, the opening salvo, and the Trump administration's war on suspected drug traffickers in the Western Hemisphere ordered a second strike to comply with Hegseth's instructions. Again, two people familiar said the two men were blown apart in the water. Hegseth's order, which has not previously been reported, adds another dimension to the campaign against suspected drug traffickers. Some current and former U.S. officials and law of war experts have said the Pentagon's lethal campaign, which has killed more than 80 people to date, is unlawful and may expose those most directly involved to future prosecution. They go on with a quote from Seth Moulton here. Actually, they say the idea that wreckage from one small boat in a vast ocean is a hazard to marine traffic is patently absurd because that was the justification that they used, that they were like, clearing the way for marine traffic and killing survivors is blatantly illegal. He went on to say, mark my words, it may take some time, but Americans will be prosecuted for this, either as a war crime or outright murder. And so there have been Sagar since then. Of course, we've had I don't know how many boat strikes at this point. Over 80 people have killed at this point. We had another instance where there were survivors of the strike. Instead of doing the second strike, they actually repatriated those survivors to their countries, which again raises a lot of questions over whether these are really drug traffickers. Because if they are, what you do is you get them and you take them to the US and you try them in court here. That is normally the process that is supposed to be followed. But this is almost like a textbook example of a war crime to do a second strike on wounded survivors who now pose zero risk, even if you take it face value that these are drug traffickers. And we've already talked about how the justification for this is insane to begin with. So what you're really talking about here is just outright murder ordered by the Secretary of War, Pete Hegseth.
C
Well, what's important to note is a couple of things is number one, one of the reasons that this has burst into the air is about Hegsett's non denial is he explicitly has not denied it. What this also kind of gets to and in my opinion, what this is a good segue because we're about to cover the Afghan thing in some ways very unfortunately, this has been the modus operandi for the way that we have approached the entire war on terror. And I think what people should be afraid of, and this certainly I've had this as well, is it was very easy in 0405 to be like, yeah, we're killing them all and all this. But when you watch this stuff get normalized and institutionalized in the US Military and then be brought to the western hemisphere and right off of the borders of the United States with a legal justification that could technically apply to anyone, it should freak you out because that's what the same thing with the FBI. Remember we talked about the January 6th stuff. There's really nothing different from the way that the FBI was goading the Gretchen Whitmer kidnapping situation or the January 6th stuff from the way they approach the war on terror. That's how they do business. They infiltrate groups and basically encourage people. Here is the same thing. This was a very common look. Yes, technically they would say capture, kill. They would basically write the rules of engagement which made it so that it was like kill them all. And if anything, Hexa is just an idiot for explicitly saying the quiet part out loud in this particular case. But what it means is that the southcom commanders and others, they did not have the way that, you know, the legal justifications for the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Here they're operating explicitly under so called anti narco trafficking laws. And even with this designation of narco trafficking as terrorists, the legal justification around that is almost certainly what led to that southcom commander resigning. Remember, we covered this at the time, we were like, hey, this is a big deal. The fact that he just resigned out of nowhere. He's been telling people behind the scenes, Ryan and I have reported this, that he was very uncomfortable. Now we seem to understand exactly what it is. And there's a reason why there's been all this legal wrangling in the White House to find some sort of of legal justification. But again, just to bolster a real world example, if you remember the Captain Phillips raid and one of the pirates was brought on board the US Navy ship, he was arrested actually and brought back to the homeland. He's in federal prison today. We prosecuted him under federal anti priority. He was like the first person like 200 years to be convicted of piracy. But the point is around these drug traffickers, if you repatriate them to your own country, then what case can you possibly make that this is actual drug trafficking? And even the designation of the so called narco terrorists. This is about importing a war on terror not just to the western hemisphere but closer to the United States than ever before. And I think that's what's really terrifying about the situation. Cause SEAL Team six was involved here. Look, I'm not putting them down like at the end of the day, like you know, they are the one at the end of the day, like, like their culture of the entire gwat and everything was shaped around these types of operations. And the Pentagon, in the Pentagon, the leaders and others, they've normalized this. I mean if you think about all the kill operations that we've done over the last 20 years, we've basically trained them and created the entire organization to be focused on this one thing. It's really about the Pentagon opening up this can of worms, putting a lot of them in danger, you know, legally, but not just legally, but like you're like you're making them a target of investigation, their commanders and others. If anything it would be a genuine case of like yeah, maybe they should have raised a concern or whatever. You got the Secretary of Defense and others saying no, this is the explicit direction of the President of the United States. This is the same thing. They did this with Alwaqi. They've done this all over Afghanistan, Iraq, Yemen, Somalia. This has been unfortunately very normalized. I'm glad it's actually breaking out into the open. And the reason why it's terrifying is because this is in some country four or three thousand miles away. This is here, this is America. Like this is in our territorial waters.
E
And there's nothing that would keep them from doing the same thing here on our own soil. I mean that I really want people to understand that, that they are claiming the ability to randomly murder whoever they want, wherever they want and just oh, they were involved in drug trafficking like that. That's what they are actually claiming here. And I think that that is really horrifying. I mean, they are saying there are no limits, zero limits on what we can do on the violent murder that we can commit if we just say it was a drug trafficker. And we know from reporting there's actually going to be a lawsuit. We know from reporting that some of the people that they killed are alleged to have just been innocent fishermen. And as Ryan has pointed out, even if you accept, I mean, I think that some of these drug, these boats probably did have drugs on board them, you're not getting the one Orlando Hernandez, this is one example. You're not getting the kingpins here. You're getting some low level, yes, probably fisherman was paid or threatened or whatever to carry this shipment of drugs. In any case, look, you've got a long track record with Pete Hegseth. He's involved in trying to successfully getting off the hook these convicted war criminals from the war on terror. Sager is absolutely right that the way this starts is okay, well Al Qaeda attacked us. They genuinely did. So we need to sort of suspend some of our normal protocol in order to go after them. And that has just expanded and expanded and expanded. This is one more extraordinary leap in terms of what the powers that they are claiming here and the violence that they are committing. To your point about the Hegseth non denial belief we've got before up on the screen he says as usual, fake news, blah blah blah, but he doesn't actually deny the details of what is reported. He denies that it's illegal, but he does not actually deny the details of what was reported by the Washington Post, which you should essentially take as a confirmation. The intercept, by the way, just to give them credit, they were the first to report that this was a double tap strike. So there are multiple news organizations now who have confirmed that particular detail. You have bipartisan committees in both the House and the Senate. We can put B5 up on the screen who have said they are going to investigate. Chairman U.S. senator Roger Wicker, who is a Republican, chair of the Senate Armed Services Committee and U.S. senator Jack Reid, who is the Democrat, the ranking member issued a statement saying the committee is aware of recent news reports and the Department of Defense's initial response regarding alleged follow on strikes and suspected narcotics vessels in the southcom area of responsibility. Committee has directed inquiries to the department and we'll be conducting vigorous oversight to determine the facts related to these circumstances. Circumstances. The House, as I said before, also saying that they are going to look into this too. And I can put B6 up on the screen. You've got a bunch of former military lawyers who are saying former JAGS working group unanimously considers both the giving and the execution of these orders if true to constitute war crimes, murder or both war crimes. If you accept the other terrorists and we're at war justification which again very, very dubious and outright murder if you do not accept that justification, which I think there is little reason to accept that justification. And we also know Sager, that Hagseth fired a bunch of jags as well. That he, a bunch of military lawyers that he apparently was concerned would not just go along with him doing whatever it is that he wants to do. And then the other thing that I'll say about this is the other context is there's this whole dust up going on right now about the Slotkin and Mark Kelly video saying hey, if you're given unlawful orders you should not follow them. And Hegseth and Trump are freaking out about that. I mean I think this is part of why that really touched such a nerve because there is a real vulnerability here for the people who were involved. Now what Trump is likely to do is just on his way out of office, blanket pardon. Anyone was involved in this, you're off the hook, get on a jail free card. But if you're one of the elite who was involved, you'll probably feel like fairly comfortable that you'll probably be protected. The, you know, the more rank and file members in the middle of the SEAL Team six guys like you really feel confident that they're gonna go to Matt for you and make sure that you're protected as well.
C
Well, the intercept connection that you mentioned there is interesting. The intercept has long all the way by going back to the bin Laden raid, has had sources inside of Seal Team 6 and has always reported some of the interesting. Yeah, you gotta give them credit a lot. They blew a lot of the, the stuff open and there's, I mean I don't wanna get too deep into the weeds but like basically they have long raised questions about the official narratives of Seal Team 6. So the fact that they reported it first confirms some of their previous connection there with the highest levels of that commit. And yes, I mean obviously they also, they're gonna have to save their own ass if this ever comes into an official inquiry. This has been blown open and I think the reason why is that Congress, look, the administration pulled a fast one on Congress. The Congress was actually about to vote in the Senate where they were going to try and center the administration over the Venezuelan War. In particular. But what they did is that the Trump administration indicated actually we're gonna back off things. Remember there was like two, three week period. And so Senate said, okay, we're gonna give you the benefit of the doubt. Obviously that was incredibly stupid. What's happened in the interim though is that with this so called double tap and more, Congress has, the Congress actually has to also not just declare war, but has oversight over all of this. And, and this is the part where the administration and actually Republicans are increasingly waking up to this, the midterms as they look right now. It's gonna be a blowout when all this stuff, subpoena power in the House of Representatives and oversight authority. Let's say some crazy shit happens, the Senate goes Democratic. I mean if you're a SEAL Team 6 commander or any of these other people, you know, high level operator in the Naval Special Warfare, your ass is coming to Washington and you're gonna be testifying at the very least behind closed doors before the new House Armed Services Committee or the new Senate Armed Services Committee or they're not gonna give you a dollar whenever it comes to funding the government. Like they have no idea what is actually coming. And at that point, I mean, putting these guys under the bus, causing huge problems for them. I think I just wanna underscore this is about war on terror coming to America. That's what's terrifying about it. And the fact is that these tactics and modus operandi and others largely it's been normalized unfortunately I think in a lot of our gwad and what people are really reacting to, and I think this is part of the unfortunate thing, is that people are only really reacting cause it's about drug trafficking, but the ground has been set. Ah, Wookiee. We murdered a US citizen completely with no due process. I mean they basically died that day. It was over. And then from that point forward we had all of these capture kill rates which were just kill raids all over Afghanistan, all over Iraq and now. So it's like you set that ground over 20 years, you create that culture and that's now being imported here. And that's what's the scariest thing about it. And it's like that's why, you know, look, I'd be honest, I didn't, I didn't clock it at the time. Only people like Glenn and others really understood like what was actually happening. Cause it's easy to justify, oh, they're killing terrorists. And it's like, this is what it leads to. This is actually the logical justification.
E
Yeah, it was just, you know, I mean, it was.
C
It was convenient.
E
It was Glenn who's like really genuine, committed, principled civil libertarian. And it was lefties who were like, this is leading to a bad place. You may be okay with this now, but just every president is gonna take this power and is gonna expand it. And there's a direct line between those power grabs and what we're seeing now, even though this is even more brazen and even more insane. So, in any case, I mean, well, I guess I'm glad to see Congress asserting itself a little bit here. You never know what could happen. But clearly Hegseth and others feeling at least a little bit nervous and uncomfortable, which is, I guess, a good thing, even though this is all completely insane.
C
That's right.
D
All right.
C
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Episode: December 1, 2025 – MAGA Drive To Venezuela War, Trump Pardons Convicted Drug Trafficker, Stephen Miller Wife Owned On CNN
This episode dives into the escalating U.S. military rhetoric against Venezuela under Trump, the administration’s contradictory pardon of Honduras’ former president and convicted drug trafficker, and exposes disturbing details about Trump’s “war on drugs” in the Caribbean. The hosts, Krystal Ball and Saagar Enjeti, critically dissect the latest developments, exposing the underlying motives—often oil, money, or poll-driven optics—rather than the professed aims of fighting drugs or promoting democracy. The episode is notable for its clear-eyed skepticism, biting humor, and deep dives into Latin American politics, U.S. interventionism, and the normalization of military overreach.
[03:01 – 15:40]
Trump unilaterally declares Venezuelan airspace “closed” with no congressional mandate, echoing Cold War-era posturing (“largest concentration of force in the Caribbean since the Cuban Missile Crisis”). Trump’s ambiguous messaging leaves open whether military strikes are imminent.
Reports of a phone call between Trump and Maduro: The hosts see this as potentially positive, but the hardline presence of Marco Rubio (now Secretary of State) makes any negotiated outcomes unlikely.
Underlying motives: Hosts argue the real driver is not concern for democracy or drugs, but access to Venezuelan oil, gold, and minerals, and the political influence of the Miami-based anti-Maduro lobby.
Quote (Saagar):
“This is a pure South Florida Miami operation. We have a Miami occupied government. … We need to free ourselves from the shackles of Miami.” [08:28]
U.S. justifications are incoherent—if Maduro is a ‘drug kingpin,’ why pardon an actual convicted trafficker in Honduras?
Krystal’s critique of both parties:
“You are supposed to be the opposition party and you have nothing to say about a potential war that the supposed anti-war president is threatening to drag us into. Like, that is completely insane, frankly. Criminal. Like, they've gotta go. You need real opposition in there.” [10:00]
Public apathy or disengagement:
“The American people, to their credit, are not buying any of this shit. Right. If you look at the polling… military action against Venezuela… is dramatically unpopular.” [13:13]
“Brass tacks, it’s about oil. And with the oil, Maduro’s willing to sell it to us. … This is a pure South Florida Miami operation.”
— Saagar [08:28]
“Outside of a few voices on the left, I mean, the entire Democratic establishment is. Yeah, cool. All right. Maduro, he's bad, right? … We've learned nothing.”
— Krystal [09:49]
[15:40 – 45:00] with expert Juan David Rojas
Stunning contradiction: As Trump ramps up pressure on Maduro for alleged narco-trafficking, he pardons Juan Orlando Hernandez, ex-president of Honduras and a convicted narco-trafficker.
Juan David Rojas (guest) breaks down the hypocrisy:
“This guy appears to be what Trump is pretending that Maduro is. … The truth is, a lot of these cases against politicians in Latin America usually boil down to the testimony of traffickers…but with Hernandez, they really got him dead to rights.” [28:21]
Direct U.S. meddling in Honduran elections: Trump threatens to cut aid unless his preferred candidate wins, echoing his intervention in Argentina, backing Javier Milei.
Financial motivations:
Broader impact: U.S. hypocrisy and interventionism further destabilize the region, fueling violence and migration.
“They are just fixated on this. They have a completely two-dimensional view of Venezuela and the other…so-called troika of terror.”
— Juan David Rojas [38:34]
“This is part of this like network state bullshit, libertarian bullshit that these people are into. And so Hernandez was a supporter of that. … I mean, this seems like you could see how these people would be in Trump's ear…”
— Krystal [41:50]
[47:01 – 63:30]
Bombshell reporting: Trump and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth ordered the killing of suspected drug traffickers in the Caribbean, often with scant evidence.
Details of a September 2nd attack: Hegseth’s explicit order to “kill them all” results in a “double tap” strike—killing wounded survivors in the water, widely considered a war crime by experts.
“A missile screamed off the Trinidad coast… As the smoke cleared… Two survivors were clinging to the smoldering wreck. The special operations commander… ordered a second strike… The two men were blown apart in the water.” [49:43]
On-air exchange: Katie Miller (Stephen Miller’s wife) tries and fails to defend the legality of the strikes on CNN.
Bakari Sellers: “Can you actually kill those fishermen without due process?” [48:43]
Legal and moral crisis:
On the normalization of extrajudicial killings:
“When you watch this stuff get normalized and institutionalized in the US Military and then brought to the western hemisphere and right off of the borders of the United States… it should freak you out.”
— Saagar [52:24]
On legal endangerment:
“You are claiming the ability to randomly murder whoever they want, wherever they want…if we just say it was a drug trafficker. … They are saying there are no limits, zero limits on what we can do on the violent murder that we can commit.”
— Krystal [56:24]
On bipartisan investigations:
“Committee has directed inquiries to the department and we'll be conducting vigorous oversight to determine the facts.” [Senate Armed Services Committee statement, read at 58:56]
On the danger of endless power grabs:
“There’s a direct line between those power grabs and what we’re seeing now, even though this is even more brazen and even more insane.”
— Krystal [63:26]
Saagar, diagnosing the Miami stranglehold:
“We have a Miami occupied government. Okay? … We need a hurricane to come in here, okay. And actually do something about it. It's driving me crazy.” [08:28]
Krystal, on American propaganda:
“We don't even get good propaganda anymore. It's all just pathetic.” [13:13]
Juan David Rojas, on Hernandez and Maduro:
“The similarities between Hernandez and Maduro… it's really great. … The only difference here that matters is that, oh, you know, Hernandez was in favor of Washington, Maduro was against it.” [38:34]
Pete Hegseth, war crimes reporting:
“The order was to kill everybody, one of them said. … For minutes, commanders watched the boat burning on a live drone feed… The special operations commander… ordered a second strike to comply with Hegseth's instructions.” [49:43]
Krystal, on the potential for domestic military violence:
“There’s nothing that would keep them from doing the same thing here on our own soil.” [56:24]
This episode of Breaking Points is a blistering, jargon-free analysis of U.S. foreign policy hypocrisy, revealing the real interests at play—oil, tech oligarchies, and the bid for “credibility”—while warning of a militarized future where endless war powers and normalized war crimes threaten both U.S. principles and global stability. Krystal and Saagar play off each other with sarcastic clarity and deep domain knowledge, making the episode accessible yet urgent. For listeners, it’s an essential primer on why narratives surrounding foreign intervention, drug wars, and military overreach deserve constant skepticism.
For further reading and sourced analysis, follow Juan David Rojas’ substack: “Social Democracy with Populist Characteristics.”