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Scott Horton Show - Just the Interviews
1/9/26 Chris Brunet on the People Getting Rich Off of Trump’s Intervention in Venezuela
00:44:30
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- [00:06]
Scott Horton
You ladies and gentlemen of the press have been less than honest according to the American people. What's going on in this country? We're dealing with Hitler revisited.
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Chris Brunette
This is the Scott Horton Show. Libertarian foreign policy, mostly.
- [00:22]
Scott Horton
When the president does it, that means that it is not a liberal. We're gonna take out seven countries. They don't know what the they're doing. Negotiate now. End this war.
- [00:33]
Chris Brunette
And now, here's your host, Scott Horton.
- [00:40]
Scott Horton
All right, you guys. Introducing Chris Brunette, and he writes@chrisbrunette.com that's his substack, and he's got this really great article. The biggest winner in Venezuela, Paul the Vulture Singer. An old and also medium and newer familiar name. Welcome to the show. How are you doing?
- [01:05]
Chris Brunette
Hey, it's good to be here. I. I know a lot of guests say that they're honored to be here, but I first came across your work when I saw your debate against Mark Dubowitz and. Oh, okay. I really love that. Like, it was like I was watching it and I could feel like patriotism bursting from my chest. So I am very honored to be here.
- [01:23]
Scott Horton
Well, thank you very much for that. Appreciate that. And I'm in good company here. I really like your writing here. You remind me of my old buddy Greg palace, who you cite in some of his old, long lost work. So that's very good. Why don't you tell us a little bit about yourself first here?
- [01:40]
Chris Brunette
Sure. Well, I am actually an economist by training. Like, I have a master's degree in financial economics. And I began my career working as a. As an economist for the government of Canada. And so I was working as an economist, and then I applied to PhD programs and I got blackballed from PhD programs. Classic. And then I started writing about corruption, academia, and then corruption in economics. And that took me basically into conservative media because, like, they saw my writing about academia. So then I started working at the Daily Caller, then back to Substack, then the American Conservative, then back to Substack, then the Manhattan Institute. Actually, I'm not sure if you're aware of that,
- [02:22]
Scott Horton
and I don't know anything about it. I've heard of it.
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Chris Brunette
Well, no, I was a fellow there. I was a junior fellow there.
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Scott Horton
Okay.
- [02:29]
Chris Brunette
And I really had a big split with them over the topic of Israel a couple years ago because, like, I was very naive when I started there. Like, I. I thought we were just like, fighting wokeness, and I thought we were just like it, like, fighting the good fight almost. But then, like, I would sit down at a table and like, the topic of Israel would come up and everyone would get real quiet. And I felt like there was, like, some coordinated agenda that I wasn't let in to, like, the inner circle of. And the biggest thing that made me angry about them was at the Manhattan Institute, I was working on Claudine Gay's plagiarism when she got kicked out of Harvard. Or she stepped down as president, but she's still a professor. And so we found her plagiarism, and I wrote a story about it. I broke that story, and I was like, look at all this plagiarism. And then she got brought in front of Congress and she got demoted. And then what happened is that Bill Ackman's wife got popped for plagiarism, too. And so I went to the Manhattan Institute group chat, and I said, hey, like, we're fighting academic corruption, right? Or research misconduct. Like, that's what we're doing, investigating plagiarism. Let's look at Bill Ackman's wife's plagiarism. And I got pulled aside. I was like, no. Like, this is what it's really about.
- [03:44]
Scott Horton
That's awesome. What a great story. I'm sorry. Keep going. I just had to enjoy that for a moment.
- [03:50]
Chris Brunette
Well, like, I. It's not really good for him to talk poorly about your former employer. But, like, all the things that they did. Like, they kicked out Glenn Lre for mild criticism of carpet. Carpet bombing children. They have Ilia Shapiro, who's the. Their director of constitutional Studies. He's writing on Twitter, like, several times about how he's demanding ethnic cleansing and how ethnic cleansing would be too kind for Gaza. And so, like, I'm watching all this happen, and I'm.
- [04:17]
Scott Horton
They publish that Reason, too.
- [04:19]
Chris Brunette
Pardon?
- [04:20]
Scott Horton
They published that guy at Reason too.
- [04:25]
Chris Brunette
So many things. They came out against free speech. Like, a guy named Tal Forking wrote articles about how America has too much free speech now. And so really, it left a bad taste in my mouth. And that's kind of when I got introduced to Paul Singer. Like, I knew who he was. I. Like, I'm aware. Like, oh, like, there's this billionaire, but I didn't. Like, I didn't know all of his evil deeds. Actually, my beef with him goes back further because when I was just starting out in conservative media, the Washington Free Beacon wrote, like, a really unfair, vicious hit piece against me. And it's because I wrote an article, like, complaining it. Complaining about CIA influence in an election, and they smeared me as anti Semitic for that, even though my article had nothing to do with Israel, nothing to do with Zionism at all. And, but then they put out like a really damaging hit piece against me, calling me anti Semitic. And in that hit piece they said, oh, his article is paywalled. So we didn't even read his article. But like, we think it's probably anti Semitic. So anyways, that's my beef with Paul Singer or like how I got introduced to him. And then he's in the news now this week, which is why I'm writing about him finally.
- [05:43]
Scott Horton
Yeah, and I'm sorry for laughing. I'm not laughing at your misfortune, just at the absurdity of what you've had to deal with here on the face of it is completely crazy. But that they would do that to somebody, but. And without any regret, without thinking twice about it whatsoever. So, okay, that's, that's a great origin story. Very interested in. In or that was very interesting to hear. So now that we got that straight. So tell us about what you've learned about this guy, the Washington Free Beacon, as you said, he's behind that. How influential is that newspaper in Washington these days anyway?
- [06:16]
Chris Brunette
You know, not that influential. Like it is a place to launder hit pieces and to push policy, but it's like a second or third tier newspaper these days. Like how many people do they employ? Like 10? They have a couple good guys, like really smart, really aggressive investigative journalists. But like they only really have a few left that are really like killers. They had to. They have a couple killers basically. But Paul, Paul Singer's influence, he does own that outlet. That's one of his many outlets. He served as the Manhattan Institute's chairman for like the past 20 years. Right. He was their top donor. And now he retired this year, he's chairman emeritus. And his, Paul, he funds dozens and dozens of think tanks. Maybe not dozens and dozens, but at least a dozen think tanks like the FDD and the American Enterprise Institute. And I could go on and on. And basically he uses his outlet and he uses these think tanks and he buys politicians. So then he's paying the politicians to repeat stories from outlets that he owns and then those outlets cite think tanks that he owns and it's all very like, it's a very well oiled machine to advance narratives, to meddle in American foreign policy, basically. And my big thesis is that I, A, I think Paul Singer is evil and B, I don't think he should have as much influence over American foreign policy as he does because I don't think he has America's best interests in at heart.
- [07:50]
Scott Horton
Yeah. Hey guys, Scott here. You know, you've probably noticed when I'm interviewing somebody or somebody's interviewing me that I've got this great bust of Dr. Ron Paul in the background on my bookshelf here. Well, you can get one like that too. They're available again from the great artist Rick Casale. Just go to my website, Scott, Horton.org and look in the right hand margin. Click the link through there and use promo code Horton. You'll save 25 bucks and get free shipping at least in the lower 48 states. And he does custom work as well. So I mentioned Greg Palast. He's an old buddy of mine, former reporter for BBC Newsnight and everybody else. I know a lot of things, you know, left leaning publications.
- [08:26]
Chris Brunette
Sure.
- [08:27]
Scott Horton
And this is one of his expertise. He wrote about this in his book is called Vultures Picnic and he has some other ones and you link to some of his work here. And I had forgotten the specifics of this, but I think you highlight it in your article. One of the things. And you talk about this and the others before we actually get into the Venezuela. Can we talk a little bit more about the background here because you're ringing some bells. Although it's been a long time since I had thought about this. I don't specialize in this type of sub Saharan African politics, usually from doing Africa be like war on terrorism type stuff or whatever. This is, this, this is where it gets the name of being a vulture. Here is preying on the sovereign debt of bankrupt nations. And this is something that Greg had written so much about back when. So can you take us through a little bit of how that works and what makes somebody like that different than say a capitalist?
- [09:21]
Chris Brunette
Right. So that's actually what I was debating with a friend last night is that I was explaining that it's wrong for Paul Singer to buy up debt to take advantage of these nations. And he said, oh, like what are you a communist? Or what do you want to do? Ban interest and buy, ban buying debt. But what Paul Singer does really is not capitalism, it's crony capitalism or vulture capitalism or I. It rewards people who can afford the most lawyers, basically. He finds, he finds loopholes and he goes to legal fights with countries after he, after they go bankrupt and he buys their debt, he takes them to court for years and drags it out. And he is the one that pioneered the strategy. So in the 1980s before he started, when there's a sovereign default, about 5% of sovereign defaults led to litigation. And now it's more than 50% of sovereign defaults that result in litigation. So basically he's pushed litigation into this new realm and he's done it in. You mentioned Africa. Like Congo is one of his worst cases. In the 2000s, Congo was undergoing their worst famine, their civil war, a cholera epidemic. And he bought $10 million worth of their debt and turned it into a $400 million asset seizure where he like the children were dying, people were dying, the country was in complete mess. And he went and took $400 million of their money, which I should say is also a lot of American aid money that went in there. Right? Because like that's where they get a lot of their money from. And so he did that in Peru. Like when Peru went bankrupt, the president of Peru tried to flee the country and Paul Singer seized his jet. He did it in Greece when Greece went bankrupt. And Paul Singer was responsible largely for like pushing them towards austerity. And so he does that with sovereign countries. The most famous case is actually Argentina, when he took Argentina through a 15 year court battle. But he does it with companies too. I think the worst company that he did, which is covered by your friend Greg Palast, is Owens Corning. And Owens Corning is an asbestos company. And they were going bankrupt in the 2000s because their workers were dying of asbestos related injuries. And that was bankrupting the company because they owed all this medical expenses to their employees. And so Paul Singer profited from these dying workers because a, he knew they were going to die. So he was like using their time was running out against them. And he waged a whole PR campaign against them. He lobbied Congress against them. He went on a big crusade where he even funded research downplaying the effects of asbestos. Like how much more evil can you get than that? And that's in a paper called Ongoing Downplaying of the the Carcinogenic the Carsonicity of Asbestos by vested interests in the Journal of Occupational Medical Toxology. That's where you can read about how he funded research that downplayed asbestos. And he even like lobbied George Bush directly in that case. And George Bush came out and said, oh, these workers are kind of like faking their asbestos related deaths. It was a big, big evil case in the 2000s. And so he did that with the auto industry. After the auto industry collapsed in 2008, he gutted Detroit. When a town in Nebraska collapsed in the 2010s, he gutted a town in Nebraska. He got it a little bit about
- [13:12]
Scott Horton
be more Specific about Detroit there in Nebraska. What does that mean? That he gutted him? Detroit's got plenty of problems, so.
- [13:20]
Chris Brunette
Right. Well, he. I'm not an expert on the Detroit case, but in Nebraska, what he did is there was a company called Cabellos, I believe it was, and they were competing with. They were dying. They were actually profitable. Sorry. But he went in there and gutted the town. Sorry, I'm a little loose on those details.
- [13:48]
Scott Horton
I know what you're talking about too. And you link to these in your piece here, right? Other stories about this. And this is where. This is the one that Tucker did. You have the video here of that Tucker show from before he was fired from Fox where he talks about this? Where it was. Yeah, it was Cabela's and then was it Bass Pro Shop was the other one. And he. It was some kind of scam where he ran one into the ground and forced the merger and this kind of thing and just cashed out.
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Chris Brunette
But that's what he does. He runs companies into the ground. And like he does a lot of legal trickery with mergers and pushes mergers.
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Scott Horton
It's like Tony Soprano takes over your bar. He sells all your stuff out the back door and then burns it down. He's got no long term interest in the thing.
- [14:29]
Chris Brunette
Right. And, well, that's kind of the whole problem with his business model is that he doesn't create anything. He preys upon carcasses that are dying. And while the only time that he
- [14:41]
Scott Horton
does, it's like Russian shock therapy stuff.
- [14:43]
Chris Brunette
Right.
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Scott Horton
Forcing these assets to be distressed and then buying distressed assets.
- [14:51]
Chris Brunette
Yeah. Well, he's an American oligarch, so it's no surprise that he would act like a Russian oligarch.
- [14:56]
Scott Horton
Yeah, seriously.
- [14:59]
Chris Brunette
Well, mostly what he does is destroy. But the one time he does build, he builds in the interest of Israel. So Whitney Webb has a really good article about this in 2019 called Paul Singer is driving the outsourcing of US tech jobs to Israel. About how Paul Singer read a book called Startup Nation, the Story of Israel's Economic Miracle. And that led him to fund a organization called the Startup Nation Central in 2009, and that was staffed by APAC staffers and by Unit 8200 soldiers. And the whole purpose of that think tank that he funded, the first time he is ever trying to create jobs instead of destroying them, is that he built an influential organization and then it's filled with Israeli spies and then used that, his influential connections with the US government to move jobs from America to Israel. And again, all you have to do is Google Whitney Webb, Paul Singer. And it's an amazing article. I, I highly recommend it.
- [16:03]
Scott Horton
All right now, Venezuela and Sitgo tell us all about that.
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Chris Brunette
So that's what my article is about. Venezuela and Sitco and what happened. It goes back to 2019 when there was the Juan Guido coup attempt. And the legal dynamics are very, very tricky to understand. Gray. The gray zone has a good walkthrough of how the legal dynamics work. But basically the, the United States spent years squeezing Venezuela with sanctions. And while they were squeezing them with sanctions, they also seized their assets in America and then they put those assets up for sale. And that has been working through the courts for the past several years now. And it culminated with the sale of Venezuela's state owned oil company, which is called Citgo. They own three refineries and many, many oil terminals and thousands of gas stations across the United States. And that was sold to Paul Singer or a subsidiary of Paul Singer on November 25th, which was just over one month ago, for the price of $5.9 billion. And there was actually a $7 billion bid that was rejected because the, the special master overseeing the sale ruled that Paul Singer was more likely to actually pay what his bid price, which is kind of a chintzy reason. And the company called Gold, I believe it's Gold Co, it's a Canadian company that bid 7 billion. They're appealing it for conflict of interest. But basically Paul Singer won with the lower bid. And I would put forward that the reason he won with the lower bid is because the special master put in charge of the sale and dictating who gets the sale was a guy named Robert Pincus. And he sits on the board of, the board of directors of APAC. And so Paul Singer donates $3 million per year to APAC and then the director of the board of directors, APAC grants Paul Singer an oil company for pennies on the dollar, despite the fact that he didn't even have the highest bid. And so that is a major conflict of interest. And that's how Paul Singer acquired Venezuela's state owned oil company.
- [18:35]
Scott Horton
So now this means that whatever private LLC or whatever private company owned by Singer owns Citgo outright.
- [18:44]
Chris Brunette
Right? And the name of that company is Amber Energy, which is a subsidiary of Elliott Management, which is Paul Singer's hedge fund. And so the real fundamental value of Citgo, which he paid $5.9 billion for, is roughly in the 10 to $20 billion range, depending on whose estimates you trust. Like this has been valued by um, Venezuela says it's 20 billion. An independent firm says it's 13 billion. So that's kind of in that range is what it's worth. And so the idea is that Paul Singer is set to double or triple his investment, netting like, another five or $10 billion profit for him and his firm. And if you think about who is. Who wins in Trump's invasion, or whatever you want to call it, regime change in Venezuela, I don't. I don't think it's American taxpayers who win. It's basically Paul Singer who wins the most out of anybody.
- [19:45]
Scott Horton
Yeah. Oh, they want so desperately for us to believe, even if it's like, oh, that's wrong to do that, essentially, we're stealing cheap gas. And everybody who's got to get to work in the morning is going to catch a break now, thanks to this, where if you're for it or against it, you're supposed to believe that when that's not true, you can't even get that stuff to market. Trump says the whole thing is we want to get the price of oil down to 50 bucks and keep it there. Well, then you can't refine this stuff. It costs almost 100 bucks to bring this stuff to market. You know, so anyway.
- [20:20]
Chris Brunette
Exactly. So what I think.
- [20:21]
Scott Horton
I wonder if actually the whole plan is to redline Venezuelan oil to. To extract less out of there, or to make sure that, you know, the Chinese aren't not just benefiting from it, but actually increasing the global oil supply in a way that they don't want, trying to rig the price higher.
- [20:40]
Chris Brunette
Right. And back to Greg Palace.
- [20:42]
Scott Horton
That's what Greg says about Iraq War two.
- [20:45]
Chris Brunette
That.
- [20:46]
Scott Horton
Not that the neocons had the plan to privatize all the oil because they wanted to smash OPEC because Israel wasn't getting along with Saudi at that time. But then James Baker came in and said, oh, no, you don't. We're going to have. He was the lawyer for Exxon at the time and the president's father's Secretary of State back when. And he came in and said, no, we're going to have a national oil company and they're going to stick to OPEC quotas as dictated by Riyadh, and that means not producing all that they can from their Kurdish and Basra oil fields, their Kirk and Basa oil fields, to keep the price artificially high. So that's counterintuitive if you listen to TV propaganda about it again for Oregon, but makes more sense when you put it that way. And then, of course, The Neocon plan was they wanted to build the oil pipeline to Haifa because they only care about Israel. But that's a different story. Go ahead.
- [21:38]
Chris Brunette
Right. Well, the whole thing about Trump, what he's saying is that he wants to keep oil at $50 per barrel, but Venezuelan oil costs $100 per barrel to produce. So what? I don't think it's so much about profit like we're going to take their oil to profit America. It's more about energy security. So we're taking the oil even if it costs us money to go in, and we're keeping China from having that oil. But then the thing about China is that if China's not getting their oil from Venezuela, they're going to get it from somewhere else. And the obvious answer is that it's going to just keep pushing China into the arms of Russia because Russia has oil. And that's really the big geopolitical implication here is that I think it's really an acceleration towards a multipolar world order. Right. Like Trump is saying that Venezuela is in our sphere of influence, which kind of emboldens China to say, oh, Taiwan's in our sphere of influence and Russia to say, Ukraine's in our sphere of influence. So the US doesn't really have any, like, moral high ground to China now to say, oh, you can't take Taiwan and you can't take Ukraine, Russia, because they're. They're doing their own imperial conquests.
- [23:00]
Scott Horton
Yeah. All right, this episode of Scott Horton show, brought to you by the books I wrote. You can see them behind me there. Enough already. Fool's Errand. And then Enough already. And Provoked. And then, of course, one might have fallen down there, but I got Ron Paul, the great Ron Paul. Scott Horton show interviews. And Hotter than the Sun. You see that one back there over there? That way. Hotter than the Sun. Time to abolish nuclear weapons. That's all interviews I did, all about nukes and really great stuff. And I busted my ass on these things and, you know, I've gotten a really great reception on all of them. They all been endorsed by Ron Paul and Daniel Ellsberg endorsed two of the three I wrote. He would have endorsed the third one. I know, but he died too soon, unfortunately. Tucker Carlson says that Provoked is the definitive account. In fact, that's what Glenn Greenwald and Aaron Mate said about it, too. The definitive account of the new Cold War with Russia and the war in Ukraine. So maybe check that out. Well, yeah, they. They lost that moral high ground a long time ago. And they got no cards to play in either case anyway and they know it. So there's that. But yeah, I guess, you know, well, I guess I'm, I'm, I'm interested in the, let's stick with the singer in the sitcom situation.
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Chris Brunette
Yeah.
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Scott Horton
I'm trying to think of what my great question was going to be next about, you know, how he's getting away with this and, and what about the other oil companies here? I know Chevron had a long term deal with Venezuela still going on, but then I saw that Exxon was on their way to the White House for a meeting today, actually, I think the Wall Street Journal said yesterday. So I wonder whether, and look, I agree with you. I think is, is never really about the companies. It's what the Pentagon joint staff comes up with as what they think the plan is. And it's all about. Yeah, keeping these resources out of the hands of the Chinese and maybe out of the hands of the globe global market overall, ultimately. In fact, I think that was something else they had in the Journal, wasn't it in the Journal where they were saying, you know, China put all these restrictions on their rare earths in reaction to Trump's big tariffs at the start of last year. And that was then when they decided, oh well, then we got to make sure to limit their access to Venezuela. Was, that's the third step in the chain of events when they were the ones who started it, you know, but.
- [25:31]
Chris Brunette
Right, and then the fourth chain of events is the US defense budget getting a 50% boost yesterday. Like the, the news cycle is moving really fast. It's hard to keep up with.
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Scott Horton
Yeah. You know, I saw a funny tweet a guy showed me about made it look like a basic pump and dump. I mean, I don't know, who knows what was really behind it, but Trump had put out this big tweet about how he's going to put a cap on CEO profits on multi, on military industrial complex firms until they start producing more and better, faster and reinvesting. And no more stock buybacks, no more dividends until you do what I say. And that caused Lockheed stock to drop 7%. And then the next day he goes, I want the new budget to be $1.5 trillion. And Lockheed stock went up 7%. So if you got a little bit of an inside track there, you can make a killing if you're already rich and into that kind of stuff. I'm sure a lot of people did.
- [26:28]
Chris Brunette
Yeah. Well, the Wall Street Journal also reported that Trump gave oil companies advanced notice of the strike in Venezuela. He did not give Congress advanced notice, but he gave oil companies advance notice. And Paul Singer is a man who, with a lot of fingers and pies of oil companies. So I think it's fair to say, say or fair to assume that Paul Singer probably knew about this in advance. Yeah, I mean, that's.
- [26:53]
Scott Horton
You make the important point in your article that you're not saying he's behind this, you're just saying there's a larger conspiracy of interest and he's one of them and he's very influential. And then you count the ways, I think you count seven ways that he has exerted real influence here. Not to put him behind it all. Obviously, Trump's the President, not Paul Singer, but he's a guy and he's got money and this is how he makes it. And so tell us a little bit about the steps that he took to try to ensure that this policy would come out this way.
- [27:25]
Chris Brunette
Right. So first of all, would be in the Washington Free Beacon. In the month before Trump took out Maduro, they published five articles begging Trump to take out Maduro. And that's the month in between or right after Paul Singer's sale of Citgo went through. And the notable thing about that is in the entire year leading up to that sale, they only published five articles about Venezuela. So they ramped it up by like 400 in the month before taking down Maduro.
- [27:57]
Scott Horton
Singer sale of it. I'm curious, did you say Singer sale of it? Or you mean when Venezuela was forced to sell it?
- [28:07]
Chris Brunette
When. When Singer bought it?
- [28:09]
Scott Horton
Oh, gotcha.
- [28:10]
Chris Brunette
Right. And so the like using the Washington Free Beacon as your mouthpiece to beg for war would be one way that Paul Singer has influenced. A second way would be that Paul singer donated over $10 million to the Manhattan Institute in the over the past 15 years. And they put out articles begging for war against Venezuela. They even have a full time Venezuelan, like free market guy who tweets full time about how Venezuela needs freedom so we can take their oil. Like that's all he does full time. And a third way would be that Paul Singer did the exact same thing with the foundation for Defensive Democracies. He donates them millions of dollars. And then in the past month, they published eight articles with titles like Free Venezuela Elevates US Energy Security. So all these think tanks that he's funding are all pushing for the exact same thing at the exact same time. So it's a little bit fishy or coordinated, I would say.
- [29:15]
Scott Horton
So if I understand the Way you explain the thing right here is you have essentially the, the government through their sanctions, I mean, communism already is a bad way to run an economy, but through their sanctions of government intervention, they run these things into bankruptcy and into, you know, completely into the ground. And so that then the creditors have to restructure all of whatever that they were owed. Then a guy like Singer comes in, as you say, he's pioneered this, he comes in and buys up all that debt and then he's willing to spend the time going through the courts to consolidate it all. But it requires this government intervention on his behalf to distress these assets so that he can get them and then get this fire sale and this big windfall from it. So it's b. Is this, it's basically the, the tales of an Economic hitman kind of a thing, right? G. Ed Griffin wrote about this in the Creature from Jekyll Island. Even back in the 1990s, they come in, they basically get the national government leaders to sign up for a bunch of debt for the whole country. They get a Swiss bank account or whatever payoff, right. And then. But it's always more debt for some, you know, extravagant infrastructure project that's going to go nowhere and that they're not, it's not going to pay for itself. And then the peasants of the country are on the hook for the debt and they go, well, you're just going to have to turn over your water resources to Nestle and you're just going to have to turn over your oil resources taxon and you're just going to have to turn over your wheat fields to Archer Daniels Midland or Monsanto or whoever. And they just come in and go nation after nation. This is basically like that. It's just sort of this one guy has figured out how to position his niche inside that same sort of machine. Right?
- [31:02]
Chris Brunette
Right. And that's the point, is that Paul Singer is not solely responsible for anything in Venezuela, but he's so deeply embedded in the machinery that he's essentially working hand in glove with the Trump administration, who, by the way, he donated $37 million to reelect congressional Republicans last year. Another 5 million to Donald Trump's super PAC, another 1 million to Trump's inauguration. So, like, he meets with Trump all the time and like, what do you think they talk about? Probably how to take out Venezuela, right?
- [31:35]
Scott Horton
Yeah. Oh, man. Well, listen, thank you. Let me check my, my notes here that I can't read without my glasses on. Now that I'm an old man, I want to make sure I didn't skip anything I had jotted down in my silly notes here. Notes to selves. Oh, no. Just one thing in my head though was I skipped this point earlier in the chain of the discussion. But I like the way that you phrase it where you say the country has to be like broken and destitute enough that they have to restructure all their debt this way, but they have to still be strong enough to enforce the New Deal. When we make them settle and agree to pay, they still have to be just enough state to ruthlessly exploit their own people for the American, at least corporations, benefits.
- [32:27]
Chris Brunette
Right. So Paul Singer, I don't think he's going to go into Somalia. Right. Because they don't have functioning court systems, but Argentina does. And what he's a master at is legal lawfare. So he needs the legal system to still function. And now what America is doing is turning Venezuela into a puppet state, or it looks like that's what their goal is. So it wouldn't surprise me to see, well, he didn't buy Venezuelan debt in this case. He bought an asset based in America. But my point is that Paul Singer didn't invent these sanctions, he didn't invent sovereign debt litigation, but he's a master at manipulating the system. Sorry, I forgot what the question was.
- [33:06]
Scott Horton
Yeah, me too. But yeah, that's an important point. You're saying he didn't, he didn't buy, he didn't invest in Venezuela. He just bought debt from people who had later. He was never really owed anything by anyone.
- [33:23]
Chris Brunette
Right. And the people who are getting the proceeds of the sale are the creditors of Venezuela. Who the two biggest, one or two of the biggest ones are China and Russia. So of the $5.9 billion that Paul Singer bought, this, this asset for a billion dollars of that is going to China and Russia.
- [33:46]
Scott Horton
Oh, and what we were talking about was that the courts have to still be strong enough to screw the people on behalf of the vulture. So he, he, he's not taking risks on countries where, what, I guess he's got to find that sweet spot where the, the state is bankrupt enough that they can't just do regular business, but they're still strong enough to collect the debt to pay him off.
- [34:10]
Chris Brunette
Right. And he lobbies for legislation that makes the courts favorable in his business. So there are these things called champerty laws and they ban the sale of sovereign debt in order to profit from a vault. A vulture fund like the UK has this law. Other European countries have this law, but Paul Singer has lobbied against law in America and successfully maybe because he's friends with, well, he's really good friends with Samuel Alito. Right. He went on that fishing trip with him at a time when he had 10 cases in front of Samuel Alito. So he, he really knows how to.
- [34:55]
Scott Horton
Sorry, 10 cases is a lot to have in front of your fishing buddy. Sounds like.
- [35:01]
Chris Brunette
Right.
- [35:02]
Scott Horton
Need to mention that. So what do you think we can expect for what's next for Venezuela? I know it a lot depends on just how much of a sock puppet the new president is going to allow herself to be in the regime to be now under American Dick Tod. But so we can expect like the full austerity regime and abolish all social welfare and turn over all your resources to us. And the, the basic template there, what
- [35:29]
Chris Brunette
they're saying is that we can expect about $100 billion investment from U.S. oil companies into Venezuela. And once they invest that capital, they're going to want to protect it. So I would, if I were had, if I had to bet on this, I would say that American troops are going to go protect that investment. But my bigger concern isn't even about Venezuela. It's about this whole expansion of empire and Don Row doctrine that's going on. So Trump is saying he's going to go into just last night he said he's going to conduct strikes on Mexico and he said Cuba's teetering on the edge and we got to go into Colombia too. He, and he's also warmongering now with Iran and it looks like there's going to be strikes on Iran. And so combine that with the fact that America just boosted their defense budget by 50%. I'm more concerned about America becoming pugilistic and interventionist abroad. Right after Donald Trump ran in the last election against inter foreign intervention, he like almost ran as an isolationist and now he's, he's like doing a Nikki Haley turn. He's doing what Nikki Haley would have done or he's doing things that would make George Bush and Dick Cheney blush. So I feel very betrayed because I supported Trump because he was better than Kamala, basically. But he also, because he was saying things that were good about no new foreign wars, no intervention, we're going to have peace, we're not going to have intervention. And then the opposite is happening now. And with a big new defense budget, I think they're going to use it. They're just not going to let their shiny new one 1.5 trillion budget sit there. And so that's my point. I'm not so much concerned about Venezuela as the new pugilistic stance that America's taking in foreign policy.
- [37:22]
Scott Horton
Man, if you have any money, you should be buying gold with it. Central banks are hoarding it up. And if you need some, should go to RRBI Co. That's Roberts and Roberts Brokerage, Inc. It's my buddy, Tim Ferray. He's a really great guy. Him and this business. They've been over there for a very, very long time, and they will help you get your medals, and they will always do you right. That's Roberts and Roberts Brokerage, Inc. At RRBI Co. Yeah. And look, man, I. Because I've seen this before, after Panama was so easy, relatively, to an actual war, they said, oh, man, and we can do this in Iraq. Let's do it. Iraq next. We could do Bosnia, Bosnia, Kosovo. We could do, you know, it. War is cheap and easy and fun, and we're the superpower and nobody else is. There's no one who can oppose us. And I think the mindset of W. Bush, when he marched the big green machine into Iraq, the basic conception was, nobody can stop us. There is no force in the world as powerful as a US army. So shut up. There's just nothing else to debate. Anything that they want to do, they can do because of their strength. Even though that's stupid and that's not how everything works. That's only good for destroying stuff. There's a lot more to life than just destroying stuff. And they are very good at that. We all agree, but it's sort of beside the point. And as we have seen. But. So, yeah, and I'm worried about where Venezuela is going to go because they're paying themselves into a corner here. You know, Donald Trump, he doesn't need to, but he seems to be trying to adopt the Colin Powell Pottery Barn rule that, oh, if you break it, then you own it. Well, or not. Like, maybe you break it and don't even say you regret it or anything, but just stop breaking it after that. You don't have to keep breaking the thing that you broke. This whole thing is stupid. If you were in the Pottery Barn and you broke something and then, like Leslie Nielsen, you just started breaking more and more things while you're trying to clean it up. Like, it would be okay for them to just throw you out and ask you to stop helping, please. Which has pretty much been the message from the countries we've been intervening in, I think. But Trump has said, like, oh, yeah, no, we are in charge until they're doing things the way we want. And yet it's still the same gangster commie regime that it was already. It's just with a different figurehead in charge of it now. And so if none of that's changing, how cooperative are they really going to be? And you know what I mean, there's a lot of contradictions in the thing. They want to say on a, like, on a sliding scale of Panama to Iraq War two, that this is going to be Panama, this is going to be nothing. There's, it's already over and you don't have to worry about it. But like you're saying, there's a potential for US Troops here. I think there's a potential for, you know, violent conflict within the country. If, well, I don't know, they didn't change the regime, they just changed the president. So maybe not. But if they, if they decide that they have to actually change the regime to get what they want, then they're going to have a much bigger problem. And, you know, we could be headed that direction. And then, yeah, you're right. They all the rest of it, too. I mean, they're talking, I think, very seriously about trying to kill the ayatollah. I mean, what the hell? If we can nab Maduro, why can't we drop a bomb on the ayatollah's head? And then who knows what will happen next? But maybe it'll be good. You know, if that was easy, you send in the Delta Force and in this case, you send in the Air Force. And but same difference, you just get what you want. And so that's what I'm really worried about, right, was it wasn't even Iraq War one. It was Panama, where we beat the Vietnam syndrome. We can do war as fun and cheap and easy. That was even before, you know, what led to Iraq War One then. So which we've been bombing Iraq for 34 years ever since then. So that's how quick and easy that was. But yeah, no, it's a real problem, ain't it? And as far as Trump running as the peace candidate, this has been true of every presidential candidate since at least George W. Bush. I don't know what Clinton really said in 92. He ran to Bush seniors right on a couple of things in 92. But in and Dole, I guess, ran to his right on Bosnia and a couple other things in well, more interventionists, if you want to call it that, in 96. But then in 2000, W. Bush said we want a humble foreign policy in 2000. 8. Barack Obama said, I want to bring the troops home from Iraq in 2016. Donald Trump said, I want to come home from Afghanistan and Somalia and everywhere else, win the war on terrorism and then call it quits real quick. And Joe Biden is the only one who ran on we must escalate everywhere and whatever in 2016. Pardon me, in, in 2020. But. But then, and then Trump ran on peace again as, as Dr. Paul likes to point out, Richard Nixon ran on Peace in 1968. People want peace and they vote for the president who promises them peace. Same for Wilson and FDR before them and, you know, probably many more examples. And yet, as Tom Wood says, no matter who you vote for, you always get John McCain. And so here we are. Yeah, sucks, but it's true.
- [42:49]
Chris Brunette
As the town. No,
- [42:54]
Scott Horton
that's funny. Soon I think they add to it, right? But no Tom woods. Oh, great Libertarian, right. Same difference. No, lots of wise things come from both mouths. But no, they might update that soon, actually, to say no matter who they vote for, we will always give them John McCain.
- [43:16]
Chris Brunette
No, I thought it was a funny joke, but yeah. Anyway, I think that might be a good place to end. Right?
- [43:23]
Scott Horton
That's right. We're both going to be canceled after that. Thanks very much for coming on show, Chris. Appreciate it.
- [43:28]
Chris Brunette
Cheers. Pleasure.
- [43:30]
Scott Horton
The Scott Horton show is brought to you by the Scott Horton Academy of Foreign Policy and Freedom, Robertson Roberts Brokerage, Inc. Mundo's Artisanc Coffee, Tom Woods, Liberty Classroom and APS Radio News. Subscribe in all the usual places and check out my books, Fool's Errand, Enough already. And my latest, Provoked How Washington Started the New Cold War With Russia and the Catastrophe in Ukraine. Find all of the above@scotthorton.org and I'm serializing the audiobook of Provoked at scott hortonshow.com and patreon.com Scott Hortonshow Bumpers by Josh Langford Music intro and outro videos by Dissident Media Audio Mastering by Podsworth Media. See y' all next time.