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- [00:01]
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- [02:10]
Isaac Saul
From executive producer Isaac Saul.
- [02:13]
John Law
This is Tangle.
- [02:25]
Ari Weitzman
Good morning, good afternoon and good evening and welcome to the Tangle Podcast. The place where you get views from across the political spectrum, some independent thinking and a little bit of our take. I'm your host for today's episode, Tango's managing editor, Ari Weitzman. And I'm stepping in today because we're talking about the recent strikes on some boats outside of Venezuela. This was something that we'd been discussing covering for the last two weeks and I'd been kind of pulling my hair out over the fact that it's just been falling under the radar. And now that it's today's edition, I'm the one who's going to be stepping forward to deliver our take for today. So before we get started, just a couple quick announcements. First, we are coming to a theater near you, if near you is in Irvine, California. We've done a couple live shows in the past and now for the first time, the tango team is coming out to the West Coast. We've got an exciting slate of guests for everybody. Tangle's executive editor, Isaac Saul and our editor at large, Camille Foster will be sharing the stage with Anna Kasparian and Alex Thompson. It's a chance to get to see what we do live with a couple high profile and very smart guests. We'll also be doing an audience Q and A. And after the show, you'll have a chance to meet some members of the Tangle team. So we're going to put a link to where you can go to get tickets in the show notes, and we'll hope to see as many of you as we can out in Irvine, California later this month. All right, with that said, I'm going to pass it over to John for quick hits in today's main topic. Then I'll be right back here for my take.
- [04:06]
John Law
Thanks, Ari, and welcome, everybody. Here are your quick hits for today. First up, U.S. attorney General Pam Bondi testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee on Tuesday, answering questions about investigations into President Trump's political adversaries and her handling of files related to convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. Bondi also defended the Trump administration's recent deployment of National Guard troops to US Cities. Number two, the White House has reportedly prepared a memo that says furloughed federal workers aren't guaranteed compensation for the time they are forced not to work during the ongoing government shutdown, potentially denying back pay to as many as 750,000 federal workers. Number three, several US airports experienced flight delays and cancellations due to staffing shortages linked to the government shutdown. Airports in Nashville, Dallas and Chicago were among the locations operating with significantly limited staffing on Tuesday. Number four, the Supreme Court heard arguments in a case challenging Colorado's ban on treatments for minors intended to change their sexual orientation or gender identity, also known as conversion therapy. Some justices appeared swayed by the plaintiff's argument that the law discriminates against her religious views, while others seem open to sending the case back to the lower court. And number five, the European Union proposed a 50% tariff on steel imports and a reduction in its quota on tariff free steel imports in response to the global oversupply of the material and the United States similar tariffs.
- [05:40]
SimpliSafe Advertiser
The PENTAGON Announcing another U.S. strike on an alleged drug trafficking boat decimated off.
- [05:45]
Ari Weitzman
The coast of Venezuela, Secretary Pete Hegseth.
- [05:48]
SimpliSafe Advertiser
Says four men were killed.
- [05:50]
Ari Weitzman
He described them as narco terrorists.
- [05:52]
SimpliSafe Advertiser
Despite questions about evidence and due process, the administration insists lethal strikes like these will continue.
- [06:00]
John Law
On Friday, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth said that the United States had struck a small boat in international waters off the coast of Venezuela, killing four people. Hegseth alleged that the boat was operated by the drug cartel Trende Aragua and was trafficking narcotics to the United States. The strike is the fourth confirmed time the Trump administration has sunk a small craft it alleges was controlled by narco terrorists, including a strike on September 2 that killed 11 and two others on September 15 and September 19. Much of the military's allegations, including the location of the strikes, the identities of those on board and the destination of the boats, have not been confirmed, and the total number of strikes may be as high as 6. Furthermore, drugs have only been confirmed to be retrieved from the September 19 strike. The Dominican Republic announced it had recovered over 2,000 pounds of cocaine from the wreckage. For context, earlier in his presidency, President Donald Trump designated Latin American drug cartels as terrorist groups. The United States deployed several warships to the waters near Venezuela to counter maritime narcotics trafficking in August. Simultaneously, the U.S. state Department increased its reward for information leading to the arrest of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro to $50 million, alleging that he led a drug trafficking organization. In a notice to Congress last week, the Trump administration stated that the United States was in a non international armed conflict with cartels operating out of Venezuela that it classified as terrorists, according to recent reporting from the Guardian. The military operations have been orchestrated by the Homeland Security Council, which White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller leads. The Maduro administration is not a government. It is a drug cartel, a narco trafficking organization that is running Venezuela, miller said in an interview in September. Secretary of State Marco Rubio has also criticized the Maduro administration, saying that the Trump administration would not tolerate a cartel masquerading as a government operating in our own hemisphere. On Thursday, the administration called off diplomatic outreach to Venezuela, citing Maduro's reluctance to step down. Recent reporting suggests that the United States could be preparing to launch an attack within the South American nation's borders. The Maduro administration accuses the United States of lying about the strikes, alleging that the United States is seeking to control Venezuela's oil reserves. President Maduro has accused Trump of instigating a war and denies that the people killed by the US Strikes were drug traffickers. Many legal experts have called the strikes extrajudicial killings, saying that the use of lethal force was illegal. The White House says that the use of force against an international terrorist organization is justified under the powers granted to the president under Article 2 of the Constitution. Today we'll cover what the right and left are saying about the strikes, and then Managing editor Ari Weitzman will give his take.
- [08:53]
Isaac Saul
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- [11:08]
John Law
Alright, first up, let's start with what the red is saying. The red is mixed on the ongoing strikes, with some arguing that Trump is taking necessary action to confront an immediate threat. Some question the legal basis of the strikes. Others say Trump's approach risks worsening the problem he wants to solve. In PJ Media, Sarah Anderson explored why the US can't afford to ignore Venezuela anymore Nicolas Maduro and his illegitimate narco terrorist Venezuelan government must fall. Not just for the sake of the majority of law abiding Venezuelans who deserve to have the government they voted for in summer of 2024, but for every single one of us in the US as well, Anderson wrote. Maduro isn't just some random dictator. Venezuela isn't just a failed country. It serves as a launchpad for cartels and narco terrorists poisoning and destabilizing American communities. And it's a safe haven for terrorist groups like Hezbollah. The Maduro regime itself is a cartel. Venezuela faces one of the largest displacement crises in the world. Between 2014 and 2024, 7.7 million Venezuelans fled their home country. While many of those people coming from Venezuela just wanted to get away from Maduro and find a new life, some of them had darker motives, anderson said. Human trafficking, drug trafficking, terrorism, you name it. That's how the TDA thugs get here. That's how terrorists from other parts of the world like Hezbollah who wish every American dead get here. Venezuela is their starting point. In the Washington Post, John Woo said Trump's boat strikes risk crossing the line between law enforcement and war. The Trump administration is right that illicit drugs are inflicting more harm on the US than most armed conflicts have. More than 800,000Americans have died of opioid overdoses since 1999. But the US cannot wage war against any source of harm to Americans. Americans have died in car wrecks at an annual rate of about 40,000 in recent years. The nation does not wage war on auto companies, wu wrote. Our military and intelligence agents seek to prevent foreign attacks that might happen in the future not to punish past conduct to perform that anticipatory and preventative function. We accept that our military and intelligence forces must act on probabilities, not certainties, but to prevent threats that might never be realized. The use of military force against the cartels may plunge the US Into a war against Venezuela, but a conflict focused against the Maduro regime is not a broad, amorphous military campaign against the illegal drug trade, which would violate American law and the Constitution, wu said. The White House has yet to provide compelling evidence in court or to Congress that drug cartels have become arms of the Venezuelan government. That showing is needed to justify not only the deportations, which were just overturned by the conservative U.S. court of Appeals for the Fifth Market, but also the naval attacks in the South American seas. In the Washington Examiner, Daniel DiPetras criticized Trump's unconstitutional, forever war against the cartels. To say there is a litany of problems with this militarized approach would be an understatement. Taking the fight to drug cartels has been done in the past, including in Colombia, Ecuador and Mexico, all driven by the assumption that military pressure will over time result in drug trafficking organizations fracturing into irrelevance. But it hasn't turned out that way, dipetras wrote. Mexico's murder rate is slowly going down, but the numbers remain staggeringly high compared to what they were at the beginning of the century. Colombia used to be a success story, but now it is viewed as a failure. Coca cultivation increased by more than 50% between 2022 and 2023. Trump can't order somebody's death simply by calling them a terrorist. Drug traffickers may be the scum of the earth, but they aren't terrorists using violence to achieve a political objective to mix the two together, as the Trump administration is doing, has dangerous practical implications, dipietris said. Let's remember Venezuela's trende Aragua is not the only Latin American criminal group labeled by the US State Department as a terrorist organization. The list now includes Vive Ansam and Grand Grif in Haiti, Los Joniros and Los Lobos in Ecuador, and a litany of cartels in Mexico. By Trump's logic, the US is now free to bomb any and all of these groups at whimsical alright, that is it for what the right is saying. Which brings us to what the left is saying. The left continues to oppose the strikes, suggesting Trump is acting lawlessly. Some argue the strikes have no legal justification. Others criticize the media's coverage of the military actions in the New York Times, W.J. hennigan wrote, if we're at war, Americans deserve to know more about it. The Trump administration told Congress this week that the United States is engaged in an armed conflict with drug cartels. The average American knows vanishingly little about what its government seeks to accomplish in this fight. Citizens aren't in possession of the metrics by which to judge the administration's pursuit of those goals, hennegan said. We haven't been told which specific drugs they seek to stop. We haven't been told much about what specific groups they seek to destroy. We haven't been told much about what legal authorities they are acting on. Withholding this information from the American public is the administration's way to escape scrutiny. So what's the ultimate goal? The Pentagon has amassed a wide range of firepower in the region that indicates that its ambitions extend beyond destroying drug boats, F35 stealth fighter jets, a Marine Expeditionary Unit and a flotilla of warships. Perhaps, as experts have speculated, the strikes are merely the opening salvo to push Venezuela's President Nicolas Maduro from power, hennigan wrote. The current deployment of US Forces, while sizable, still isn't enough for a full scale invasion, but we should know and hear more about the underpinning rationale for positioning them there. In Just Security, Marty Letterman described the legal flaws in Trump's the Trump administration's armed conflict justification is groundless. No one in the public, in Congress, or most importantly in the military itself should treat it as a plausible legal basis that might justify lethal strikes on the alleged drug vessels and the civilians on those boats, lederman said. It is necessary, at minimum one that the non state entity is an organized armed group with the sort of command structure that would render members targetable on the basis of their status because they're subject to commander's directions and control and two that the organized armed group has engaged in armed violence against a state that is of some intensity. Think of Al Qaeda's attack on September 11, 2001, and that has been protracted. The Trump administration hasn't made any effort, not publicly anyway, to demonstrate that any of the drug cartels in question are organized armed groups with the sort of command structure that would render members targetable on the basis of their status. But even if it could do so, those cartels haven't engaged in any protracted or intense armed violence against the United States, letterman wrote. When the president uses the term armed attack, he is referring not to any actual armed attack, as any state or international tribunals understand that term, but instead to the flow of illicit narcotics into the United States. The distribution of dangerous narcotics, however, isn't an armed attack or armed violence in the sense used in international law. In Common Dreams, Joseph Bouchard asked, why hasn't the mainstream media pressed the administration on these strikes being illegal and dangerous? Within hours of these strikes breaking, major outlets were repeating the Trump administration's line that this was a strike on a drug boat. According to this framing, the attacks were justified, necessary, and part of a broader war on drug trafficking. Virtually none of those outlets even entertained the obvious legal and ethical questions. Instead, they served as stenographers for the administration. Bouchard said this is reminiscent of the Iraq war era, when corporate media parroted the Bush administration's ludicrous arguments, paving the way for an invasion and occupation that would kill at least 200,000, maim millions and destroy American democracy. Further, due process was ignored. There was no trial, no arrest, no attempt at interdiction, just summary execution. And the strikes occurred in Venezuelan territorial waters, not in an international conflict zone. If another country did this, say Russia bombing a fishing boat in the Baltic, or China attacking smugglers near Taiwan, the Western media would have declared it a war crime the same day, Bouchard said, add to this list of Western double standards in the international arena, we are seeing the destruction of the liberal order in real time. Alright, let's head over to Ari for his take.
- [19:45]
Ari Weitzman
I'm sorry, but are we going to war with Venezuela? I know there's been a lot going on lately. Bouts of political violence, ceasefire negotiations in Gaza, the National Guard deployments, a congressional hearing with the Attorney General. The Supreme Court term just got started. The government is literally shut down. But a new extraordinary use of military force to kill alleged drug traffickers outside of US borders should probably be headline news everywhere. And the fact that it's not that the headlines take on a blase tone of, oh, by the way, the US sank another Venezuelan boat is making me feel a little crazy. A month ago, on our Suspension of the Rules podcast, I personally channeled this attitude of nonplussed acceptance, which I regret doing. But I did. I argued that based on Trump's pattern of behavior, the administration would present a dramatic show of force and deliver explosive rhetoric before claiming some kind of victory and moving on. The best predictor of future behavior is past behavior, and we've seen this show before with this administration. Mexico and Canada were both targets of emergency orders due to what Trump described as, quote, the flood of illegal aliens and drugs pouring across our borders. Then they reached the deal. Trump declared Victory, and we moved on. Iran was also the target of a military strike. Then they reached the deal. Trump declared victory, and we moved on. Those situations are far from totally resolved, but Trump and the media and the rest of us, including Tangle, have all moved on all the same. So why would this be any different? I expected some bluster, maybe a few more boats to be sunk. Then the US And Venezuela would reach some kind of deal, probably involving trade, likely petroleum. Trump would declare victory and we would move on Then. As much as our podcast listeners know that, I loathe to credit Isaac. He said something on that podcast that stopped me in my tracks. We were talking about how Trump will probably sink a couple more boats, but that really trivializes what that means. It's really him ordering the killing of additional handfuls of people without any attempted interdiction, without a trial, without conviction, all for alleged drug smuggling. This is an insane normalization of what should be a major stop you in your tracks. Likely illegal use of military force. After the first strike in early September, we were pretty clear where we stood. We criticized the lack of evidence for the government's claims, we questioned the legality of the attack, and we called the military operation that killed 11 to be Trump's most lethal use of executive authority yet. But now the US has struck at least three more boats off the coast of Venezuela, and we still don't know who was on them, where they were headed, and even if they were in international waters at the time, how is this not a bigger deal? But let's back up for a sec and talk about Venezuela. Venezuela has certainly been inviting some kind of intervention from the US over the last few years. Both the Trump and Biden administrations have said Maduro's election was illegitimate. As president, he has overseen hyperinflation and allowed street crime and international drug trafficking to flourish. This has impacted the United States, where the influx of Venezuelan migrants has contributed to the overwhelming of our immigration system. And Trenda Aragua or TDA gang members have been credibly accused of everything from drug dealing to human trafficking to murder. The instability of the Venezuelan government and the inability of the Maduro administration to control an international criminal organization does justify a US Response. But we have other tools at our disposal for how to respond. Sanctions, decertification campaigns, joint task forces with local governments, even trade deals, which the administration has proven they are pretty friendly towards doing. Or we could just capture these boats and question those on board. That's been the standard approach to suspected drug runners, and it's something we're already doing. In the Pacific. The actions of TDA gang members simply do not justify the United States engaging in extrajudicial killings. A lot of people with far more experience covering international affairs than I do have said it better than I could. Here are some quotes from three of our Procedures and practices for identifying lawful targets are extremely robust. In my experience, the principles of distinction and proportionality that the United States applies are not just recited at meetings. They are implemented rigorously through the planning and execution of lethal operations to ensure that such operations are conducted in accordance with all applicable law, wrote political scientist Mika Zenko. It is vital that the legal basis, and to the extent possible, factual basis for our targeted killing policy be publicly debated so that Congress and the American people can decide in an informed way if they approve or if they wanted a deeper congressional role, wrote former Bush legal counsel Jack Smith. If a person is driving a truck in the desert of Yemen, he's not actively engaged in any warfare against the United States of America. It is absolutely criminal for the president to kill that person. The authority simply doesn't exist and it's denied expressly by the Constitution, said Judge Andrew Napolitano. Oh, by the way, none of those quotes were about Trump strikes on these alleged drug boats. All of them were about President Barack Obama's drone strikes in Pakistan, Somalia and Yemen. And our deadly interventions in those three countries also serve as a reminder that extrajudicial killings typically fail to resolve the unrest intentions that create international strife. Just look at all three of them. Pakistan is still home to burgeoning and powerful terrorist groups, the State Department has Somalia at its highest level of risk for American travelers, and we all know about the Houthis in Yemen. As for what happens next, I truly don't know, but the situation does look extremely precarious. My prediction that Trump would strike a few more boats has sadly come true. But the Trump 2 step of a quick deal and a big headline doesn't seem to be on the horizon. In fact, the opposite seems to be the case. Reliable reporting has indicated that high ranking members of the administration are considering strikes within Venezuela itself, or even military action against Maduro's government. The naval operations in the Caribbean haven't been sudden or covert. They've been intentionally provocative and carried out over the course of the past few months now, and the administration's stance on Maduro has been steadily getting more and more aggressive. In other words, it's very possible that we haven't seen the final escalation towards Venezuela. Despite all this, I still don't think this President is ever going to be the one who stands up in front of Congress and asks it to officially declare war. Even if Rubio, Hegseth, Miller, and teams of people behind the scenes are edging us towards putting boots on the ground in a Petro state. Our favorite Trump has shown time and again that he will make the final call, and he seems to care a lot about his image as a peacemaker. And despite some hardlining and isolated military actions, he has also been consistent about not bringing the US into prolonged military entanglements. I don't feel highly confident in this read, but if I had to make a call one way or another, I'd say that Trump is probably going to keep being the person he's always been and he'll find an off ramp. It worries me that I can't see what that off ramp could look like, but at the end of the day, I think his attachment to his image and pressure from the MAGA base are going to motivate Trump to find one.
- [28:02]
Isaac Saul
We'll be right back after this quick break.
- [28:07]
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- [28:35]
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- [29:13]
Ari Weitzman
Okay, that's it for my take today, which brings us to your questions answered. Today's reader question comes from Cameron in Milwaukee, Wisconsin who asks, I was wondering what you all thought of the Pentagon reassigning 600 military lawyers to be temporary immigration judges. Isaac has mentioned one of the solutions to our immigration mass as more immigration judges. So is this the right move? Thanks for the question, Cameron. And just to catch us up, in late August the Trump administration approved a plan to send up to 600 military lawyers to serve as temporary immigration judges in the Justice Department. The first group of these temporary judges started training on Monday, and about half of them will begin a six month term as soon as their training ends. If the Trump administration successfully appoints 600 new judges, it will roughly double the current number of working judges, even after 139 left their positions were fired or were involuntarily transferred. On its face, doubling the number of working judges seems like a step in the right direction, especially when over 3.4 million immigration cases are currently pending. Frankly, the number of judges probably couldn't increase quickly enough to deal with all these cases in a timely manner without a program like this, even if more experienced judges had not been forced out of their positions. Of course, the experience, or lack thereof that these lawyers have provides a point of contention. The army and National Guard asked for candidates with experience in administrative law, immigration law, service as a military judge, or related fields, and at least some are likely to have enough experience elsewhere to qualify them to enter the position. But other applicants may not have much or any experience in these fields. At the same time, asking 600 military lawyers to fill these roles in a temporary capacity on a condensed timeline and after firing over 100 judges doesn't seem like a robust long term solution. And it's possible, perhaps even likely, that some of the inexperienced judges won't be able to adjudicate the enormous backlog of cases fairly on net. It's a semi desperate solution to a very desperate issue, but any effort to clear this backlog is going to be good for our system as a whole. That's it for our reader question today, and that's it for my contribution to the podcast today. So I'm going to send it back over to John for the rest of the podcast and I'll talk to you all soon. You'll hear from me on our Suspension of the Rules podcast this Friday. Until then, have a good day.
- [31:49]
John Law
Thanks, Ari. Here's your under the radar story for today, folks. Gold futures have risen 50% this year, and on Tuesday they surpassed $4,000 per ounce for the first time. The surge has coincided with a 10% drop in the US dollar index and investor uncertainty over President Trump's global tariffs and trade policies. Central banks and retail investors in particular have been buying more gold this year, and the price recently spiked after the Federal Reserve cut interest rates in September. However, on Monday, bank of America advised investors that gold could face upward trend exhaustion, with the potential for considerable correction in the final months of 2025 CNBC has this story and there's a link in today's episode Description all right, next up is our numbers section. Between fiscal year 2017 and fiscal year 2024, the United States provided Venezuela with approximately $336 million of funding for democracy, development and health assistance. Seventeen total people were reported killed in the three US strikes on alleged drug vessels in September, while four people were reported killed in the US strike on the alleged drug vessel on Friday. There are approximately 4,000 sailors and marines that are on three amphibious assault ships deployed to the Caribbean waters. According to the betting website Polymarket, as of 11:30am Eastern Time, the odds of a military engagement between the United States and Venezuela by the end of 2025 is 54%, and the odds of a military engagement between the US and Venezuela by the end of October is 29%. According to a September 2025 YouGov poll, 36% of US adults approve of sending US Navy ships to the sea around Venezuela, while 38% disapprove. 16% of US adults approve of US using military force to invade Venezuela, while 62% disapprove. And last but not least, our have a nice day story. One day, while working as a shop cart collector in Toowoomba, Australia, Scott Shaw found a large, strange book that looked like a Bible. Unsure of what to make of it, Shaw decided to leave it inside a friend's car as a practical joke. When his friend's wife saw the book, she thought it might be important and soon discovered that the book was a stolen handwritten ledger of locals who had served in World War II. Now the Ledger, still in good condition, has been safely returned to the church that kept it. ABC Southern Queensland has this story and there's a link in today's episode description. Alright everybody, that's it for today's episode. As always, if you'd like to support our work, please go to retell tangle.com where you can sign up for a newsletter membership, podcast membership, or a bundled membership that gets you a discount on both. We'll be right back here tomorrow. For Isaac and the rest of the crew, this is John Law signing off. Have a great day, y'.
- [34:35]
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- [34:36]
John Law
Peace.
- [34:38]
Isaac Saul
Our Executive editor and founder is me, Isaac Saul, and our Executive producer is John Lowell. Today's episode was edited and engineered by Dewey Thomas. Our editorial staff is led by Managing Editor Ari Range Weitzman, with Senior Editor Will K. Back and Associate Editors Hunter Casperson. Audrey Moorhead Bailey Saw Lindsay Knuth and Kendall White. Music for the podcast was Produced by Diet75. To learn more about Tangle and to sign up for a membership, please visit our website@readtangle.com.
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