Part 2 Anti-Anti-Nazi Barbarian Hordes are Knocking Down ...

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Max Blumenthal: IDF’s Plan in Gaza — Secret Israeli Base HIT in IRANIAN STRIKE!
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Hi everybody. Today is Wednesday, October 15, 2025 and our dear friend Max
Blumenthal is back here with us. Welcome back, Max. Great to see you, Nemo.
Please subscribe and hit like button and follow Max and what he's doing with his
website and his YouTube channel. They're doing a lot and you can learn a lot
following them. And right below his name, you see the Greyzone News and it's on a website and YouTube channel. Right.
Let's start with the Trump's so-called peace summit in
in Sharmash, Egypt. What was the endgame when you look at the summit
participation, the discussions there and the outcome? Well, to answer your question directly,
the summit was the endgame. Standing behind
standing in front of a banner that reads peace 2025
with Donald Trump flanked by the so-called Arab world and the so-called
or members of the so-called international community who Trump humiliated one after another.
That was the point. And Trump appears as though he has solved the most intractable problem
in recent human history. And it gives the image of a resolution to the Israel
Palestine crisis. Even though Netanyahu was not present,
Netanyahu is now claiming, "I couldn't be there because of Simha Torah and the ultraorththodox members of my coalition.
There was a Jewish holiday coming up and so I couldn't be there." That's not why he was there. He was there because he
didn't want to be forced into potentially Trump forcing him to shake hands with Mahmud Abbas which would uh
tear into his coalition and would echo contain echoes of the
famous or I would say notorious handshake between Yeetssak Rabbine and Yaser Arafat which Ya Rabbine was
assassinated for and which Netanyahu incited and helped incite the in the
assassination. Netanyahu's whole coalition rests on his promise to
obstruct a two-state solution to prevent a Palestinian state and actually to
prevent peace. And Donald Trump could care less about addressing the real
roots and actual causes of the conflict. He just wants to get a kind of
diplomatic win. Steve Witco who is his main negotiator on the issue of Israel
Hamas negotiations as well as many other conflicts
essentially retired after the Sharma summit.
And so Trump has just put this all behind him. He is concerned primarily
with his legacy. He did not get the Nobel Peace Prize and was obsessed with getting the Nobel Peace Prize to
consolidate his legacy forever. So this was the next best thing. And as far as
enforcing the ceasefire, well, we have to look at what Trump said in the Knesset. There are two parts to this.
There was the Chararmal Shik summit which was uh just a PR exercise for
Donald Trump in which the so-called Arabs Arab states were uh convinced that
they could actually exercise leverage along with Turkey over Trump which has proven ridiculous again or or delusional
again and again. And then there was the Knesset speech where Donald Trump
basically consolidated his legacy as the protector of greater Israel and paid
tribute to his top patron, the Israeli warlord Miriam Aden, who is the heir to
the fortune of casino baron Sheldon add. And it was there that Donald Trump said,
"Uh, she's sitting there looking so innocent, but she's not innocent. She has $60
billion in the bank and she was the most frequent visitor to
the White House along with her husband Sheldon who was very aggressive. I mean, it was an it was kind of like a roast,
but at the same time, he's paying tribute to her and he's saying they basically controlled my entire
uh policy outlook on the region. In fact, it was through Miriam Ad's money
that Donald Trump was bribed to relocate the US embassy from Tel Aviv to
Jerusalem, which was an extremely provocative move that I think actually was a factor in October 7th because it
puts more pressure on the Palestinians of East Jerusalem. It invalidates a
Palestinian state with a capital in East Jerusalem and it puts more pressure on
the Alaka compound which is being uh constantly invaded by
fanatical Israeli messianic religious nationalists including security minister
Minister Idomar Benge. So Donald Trump does all that. He admits that it was because he was bribed. And then he says
that Miriam Madison was asked, he asked her, "Which country do you love more,
America or Israel?" And she didn't answer. And he knows it was Israel. So he acknowledges that he was basically
bribed by an Israel first billionaire to wage political warfare on Palestinians
and on the region on behalf of her country. Is this someone who is actually going to apply leverage to Israel to
enforce a ceasefire that Israel is already in just about 72 hours violated
violated in flagrantly provocative ways? I don't think so. So where is the
counter pressure from Turkey for example from the Arabs who uh showed up at
Shamoshik uh United Arab Emirates in Saudi Arabia didn't go or they didn't send uh you know leading figures they
just sent like lower level officials. I I I'm I'm not seeing it. So again I
think this was an exercise in propaganda for Trump to complement a ceasefire
which is not peace. It is merely a pause.
Max one of the you know things that has
happened during the talks during the negotiations between the United States
and Arab states we see four katari you know negotiators were somehow
you know they they passed away. I don't know what was the reason of that. And
what do we know about that? Well, I I'll I'll I'll tell you the reason. We've we've been able to get a
investigative team on the ground in Egypt and they've been able to comb the country and question officials and we
know the answer. Um, actually, they just fell off a balcony, so I can't tell you.
Um, that's what I was told. Our team just fell off a balcony. I'm I'm I'm joking. Obviously, it it's impossible to
know what's happening in Egypt. I mean, it's one of the most difficult places in
the region for a journalist like to operate. So, I would have no way of knowing.
This team of I don't know if they were diplomats or security officials. I heard they were security officials. The
official story is that their steering column broke in a Mercedes. Uh it was like a Mercedes Sprinter. I
think this this is a pretty well-built vehicle. So, I'm not accepting the official story.
Uh and and and I mean, just think of all the times we've heard of activists and dissidents who fall off balconies in
Egypt. It just happens again and again. It's like a running uh it's like gallows
humor among Egyptians, though. He fell off the balcony. So, uh no one can accept the official
story. We have the background of Israel attempting to assassinate the Qatari
negotiating team, which actually is one of the things that triggered Trump to
make the one phone call, the only phone call that was needed to actually get to a ceasefire. Something Biden refused to
do. really demonstrating how much leverage the US does have if it's
willing to sideline the Israel first billionaires that control Congress and national
campaigns. Trump was willing to do that. Um so is this revenge somehow for the
fact that the Qatari negotiate I'm sorry the Hamas negotiating team was targeted
in Qatar? Qatar forced Trump to elicit an apology
from Netanyahu for that strike. Is this revenge for that saga by Israel? Is
Israel trying to send a message to Qatar that we can still harm you in a third country?
Um or is is was another intrigue at play? I have no idea. I can only offer
theories, but uh the official story in Egypt can never be trusted when there's
an unusual death like this. Donald Trump when it comes to is to
Brazil for example, he wants to be tough, you know, he tries to interfere in the internal policy of Brazil, you
know, siding with the former president of Brazil. But you when you look at his
performance in the canet, he was somehow humiliating his position, the position
of the United States. You know, he talked about his daughter moving from Christianity to
to to Jewish, you know, because of Israel. Yeah. You know, it's not because of she wants
to be closer to her her husband. It's it's all because of Israel. you know the way that he was playing the game he
asked the president of you know Israel to pardon Netanyahu what was that what
can we what what is because we have to understand the reality of what's going on in the mind of the president of the
United States who wants who really desperately wants the world to see him
as a tough guy but that wasn't Donald Trump in Israel
well there are two issues there one is Trump's personal sensibility
um which makes him popular inside the United States. It's the sensibility of a
casino owner and someone who grew up on his father's construction sites hanging
out with construction workers who really likes to entertain his audience. And he
would get up at casinos and introduce uh notable people. and he was a, you know,
he owned like a second rate football league called the USFL and he hung around pro aletes and he just loves to
get get up there and make everybody laugh. It it's it's sort of like an old
school almost like like like when the mafia owned Vegas and they would just come out
and you know Bugsy and the guys would come out on stage with Dean Martin and the Rat Pack and they would joke around
in front of the audience and at the same time they would apply some very dirty
tactics behind the scenes. He comes out of that world and he's roasting his own
daughter and he has some contempt for her because she's sort of a liberal who likes to hang out in Aspen and Davos
along with Jared. Jared suddenly materializes and makes her Jewish. She was um actually converted through Habad.
They go to this elite upper east side synagogue that's sort of like a where a lot of very powerful people go. So, she
got involved in a different power network than Trump and Trump incorporated and she's sort of involved
in a kind of cult and I think Trump realizes it and he loves to humiliate people in public and entertain audiences
on the issue of Netanyahu's pardon. Part of that comes from Net of Trump's
sensibility because he's constantly and justifiably accused of corruption. And the corruption that we see in the United
States makes the cases that Netanyahu is facing pale in comparison. I mean, one of Trump's underlings, Tom H. Homeman,
who's in charge of mass deportations. He just took a bag of cash from FBI agents,
$50,000 in exchange for a bribe, like a naked bribe. This, you know, should wind
him up in prison. And Trump said he did nothing wrong. So Trump Netanyahu is accused of taking champagne and cigars
about $130,000 worth from his friends including uh Miriam add someone who testified against
him and Trump's joking about it and saying how how is this uh corruption? I
mean what the whole Trump family is dedicated to corruption. It's using
power in order to profit, whether it's by trying to take over Greenland or
launching a line of uh of golden cell phones, Trump cell phones that they try
to sell to suggestible members of their base. And they use presidential influence to make money. They're doing
memecoin rug polls. They've got, you know, they're while they're shifting
crypto policy in favor of Donald Trump. It's next level corruption. So he's make
he's making light of that in a way, but he's also roasting Netanyahu. But finally, there is a clever piece to what
Donald Trump is doing because if Netanyahu is not pardoned, and this is I
mean it kind of took me too long to get to this point, so I apologize. But if Netanyahu is not pardoned,
he is more likely to launch a war on Iran because his coalition is more
likely to fragment around the ceasefire coming under pressure from the more extreme members. Uh it's more it's
difficult for him to reenter Gaza at this point. It will piss off Trump. So
the best way for Netanyahu to unite his coalition and the Israeli public is by launching another war with Iran and once
again dragging the US in unless he feels comfortable about leaving power
and saying, "Hey, I was the longest serving Israeli prime minister in history. I managed to get our country
through a very difficult existential war and I'm not going to be prosecuted. If
he's not pardoned, he's got to stay in power until his death." So I think that's the reason Trump said that and uh
it was it was in a way wise for Trump to do that to the because Donald Trump is
not going to do what's necessary what Biden should have done which is to bring Netanyahu down by applying enormous
leverage and pressure that forces him into a situation where there's a
ceasefire without total victory which would have blown up his coalition and sent him back to court. But Biden was
too much of a coward and too much of a subject of Israeli influence to do that. As even Kla Harris is now saying in her
own memoir, the rhetoric of disarmament of Hamas and
you know demilitarizing Gaza, how is that going to help the United States, Donald Trump's position?
Because after all, I see Donald Trump putting himself and his administration in a corner that they can it could be so
hard to get out of that that corner with the same case. We had the same thing with the case of Ukraine. But when it
comes to the Middle East, what is the point?
What is the point of what is the point putting himself in a position? You know, he says that if
Hamas doesn't disarm, we're going to do it. we're gonna go there and we're gonna disarm Hamas and demilitarizing Gaza.
This is not gonna, to my understand, this is not going to happen, which means more war, bringing more war to Gaza
instead of, you know, avoiding new clashes between Israelis and Hamas.
Well, this is the problem with Trump is he'll he'll seed to reality and then
he'll shift days later back into an entirely different rhetorical
position that makes that that that almost makes
it seem like there he has a body double like a neoonservative body double. I mean he's threatening Russia now with
tomahawk missiles which is extremely provocative. It may be kind of like a tomah hoax because uh it took so long
after leopard tanks were promised to Ukraine or
um you know attack them missiles were promised before they actually showed up on the field or F-16s.
But tomahawk missiles is another level of provocation because Russia has no way of determining if these are nuclear
tipped missiles or not. It's a it's a further escalation toward nuclear confrontation
and Russia's openly recognizing that Trump is so Trump is completely caved to
the neocons on this issue when you know he was just in Alaska with Putin. What
was the point of that? That was just to make Trump seem like a man of peace as
he was vying for the Nobel Prize. Trump gets the Nobel Prize, the Trump family
and Trump incorporated will do that much more business and will seem that much more credible. So
that that's what Trump is doing here as well. There's not any actual basis to
Trump's desire for peace to address the real root con root issues of the conflict like colonization, occupation,
denial of rights to Palestinians. However, on Air Force One, I'm sure you
saw this clip. Donald Trump seated to reality on the issue of Hamas
maintaining weapons and said that we gave Hamas permission to be able to
maintain order in the Gaza Strip and to clean up the Gaza Strip when he was asked about the execution of
collaborators. And these are collaborators that were gangs of bandits that were supported by
Israel, protected with Israeli air cover, protected in Israeli de facto military bases in Gaza, the Yaser Abu
Shabbab gang, members of the Dagmash family. And Donald Trump said, well, Hamas has
to maintain order. And therefore he acknowledged that one
of the terms that his team agreed to was ambiguity around Hamas having weapons.
So disarming Hamas for now is off the table. Maybe next week Donald Trump will say they need to be totally destroyed.
But this is such a major blow to Netanyahu politically because he had promised his base total victory. That
was his mantra for the last two years. I mean that these blue hats that looked
like uh the Trump hats that said make America great again were distributed to LEUD activists to wear at rallies and
you know by declaring total victory what Netanya or outlining an objective of
total victory what Netanyahu would do was he would kick the can down the road
on the so-called hostages and it would allow him to constantly move the goalpost on negotiations with Hamas
which doomed doomed many of these so-called hostages to death, often through Israeli air strikes. And so, a
large sector of Israeli society is furious at Netanyahu for outlining such
a delusional objective. And now Trump has exposed the whole
thing and said there isn't going to be total victory. Israeli media is filled with anguished reports about Hamas
reconstituting itself, about the Alcasam brigades showing themselves in the streets and demonstrating that they
still have complete control and the aid is getting through. The aid is beginning
to get through to people because the looters that Israel was backing are being vanquished. So, Israel has reduced
the amount of aid by 50% violating another term of the ceasefire which Trump refuses to enforce. But back but
back to your question, I mean on the issue of Hamas disarmament, I think that's off the table for now.
Smidge says that we will establish settlements in Gaza
if they let's assume that they go in that direction to disarm Hamas and Hamas
agrees to be you know to to do some sort of modification changes internally just
to somehow facilitate the agreement between the west and has between the
west and Hamas and Gazans when they see I'm talking about Gazins
when they see Smokey talking about the set new settlements in Gaza
what that would bring to them that would bring the case of the West Bank you know
there is you know how could that you know who who's the
who has the upper hand in the Net's administration in the Net administration who has the
you know is that about Smoothri and together with Ben Gavir or because I somehow feel that the smir
they're different from Netawa and his faction in the government. What's your take on that?
They are different. I mean they're religious nationalist messianists.
Netanyahu is completely secular. Probably doesn't believe in God.
He is actually sort of the radical center of this coalition. Netanyahu is holding
the coalition together as a uniting figure and what comes after Netanyahu is
unclear. But Smok Smotick and Ben Gvere have played the role of the spoilers in
every ceasefire negotiation until Trump came down and actually just absolutely
demanded one and his team demonstrated some flexibility with both sides particularly Hamas
allowing it sort of a yes but and then there was a vote among all the
ministers and Smoke Bengavir and an irrelevant but extremely radical I
wouldn't say irrelevant but another radical settler figure named or it struck voted against it but they were
widely outnumbered and so they were actually sidelined. Smoker is speaking on behalf of
the religious nationalist camp in Israel, including many that don't vote for his party or for him, but he's
trying to emerge as sort of a spokesman for the Messianist camp that fought in
unprecedented numbers in Gaza. And if you saw the imagery of soldiers erecting
gigantic manoras in Hanukkah in the ruins of Shijaya or dancing with Torah
scrolls and destroyed homes. I mean this is who Smokere is speaking to. And many of them also died or suffered injuries
and they resent the fact that they're not getting what they want after making this great sacrifice because what they
wanted was a new gush kif referring to the settlement of about 9,000 fanatics
that was forcibly evacuated from Gaza in 2005 following the end of the second
inifat. They were actually pushed out by Hamas at the Alcasam brigades and Palestinian resistance and then the Gaza
was placed under siege. And this was done by another figure who um come who
was what was the godfather of the Likud party, Ariel Chiron.
Um wasn't expected that Ariel Chiron would do something like this. He was in many ways a supporter of the settlement
enterprise although he himself was secular was not a religious nationalist.
So there is a difference between these two camps and is it feasible for the
settlers to go into Gaza at this point? No. Because Hamas still has its weapons. It looked like Israel was moving towards
trying to ethnically cleanse the north by destroying all the major residential towers in Gaza city by destroying as
much of Gaza city as possible. Jabalia camp is mostly destroyed. Beth Hanoon is
mostly destroyed. They were trying to push everyone south. And I think Smotrich believed that if this could
continue then, you know, they could just go in, clear some rubble and bring the settlers
in there. But the other issue is that throughout the the years, the attempt to
settle Gaza was generally a failure because anyone outside of the most fanatical
spheres of the religious nationalist camp who tried to settle in Gaza didn't really want to be there and left. And so
they were left with just 9,000 nutcases. uh the more secular settlers,
those who want cheaper housing and have anti-Palestinian attitudes, they'll go to the major settlement blocks and get a
very nice condo for much less than anything inside the green line in Ariel or Mallayadum in these kinds of places.
So why why would you want to go to Gaza? Uh, so I think that's right now a more
distant fantasy, but it's something that they would that that they would push for
if a figure like Netanyahu leaves the scene and maybe someone with more
religious nationalist credentials comes in. Yeah. Iranian have decided Iranians have
decided not to participate in Egypt. The argument on their part was the foreign
minister of Iran said that the United States has attacked us and they're threatening us a lot of sanctions on
Iran. That's the reason we are not going to be there. But we are welcoming any
sort of solution for Gaza. Do you see anything beyond that? what
beyond what the foreign minister of Iran said in as the one of the you know main
reasons that Iran didn't participate I think there's a security reason
given the U the role of the US and assassinating Iran's top leaders given
the role of Israel in assassinating Iranians putting yourself in a country like Egypt
that may not be able to provide security. Uh given that Israel attacked
the Hamas negotiating team inside Qatar, it would have been absurd to enter a
scenario like that. Espec and also given I Egypt's coordination with Israeli intelligence
and Israeli security. Given the amount of Mossad penetration in Egyptian
society, I think it would have been a huge risk. Diplomatically, it would have
what what would the point of it been had been given that the entire spectacle was geared to show the dominance of the US
and that the only reason that any country would be there would be to demonstrate their desire to still be
within Washington's orbit and part of a transatlantic alliance. Uh all the Arab
states that were there depend on US aid with especially Egypt. So Iran continued
to demonstrate its independence from these hollow spectacles and from the
unipolar vision that Washington seeks to project on the world by basically
staying home. And that I think was the rational move. And I I think that'll
become clearer in the coming weeks as uh Trump refuses to exert leverage to
actually make peace and war begins to creep to Iran's doorstep courtesy of
Israel and Netanyahu. The main issue with Gaza is the their
you know their right to decide about their future. the you know but that
wasn't you know me that that was not mentioned in the peace plan in the so-called peace
and there the point number 19 it mentions that the United States considers the you know the desire of
Palestinians to have a state nothing more than that what is that the issue
why have they decided to agree with the United States if there is no mention of
the Palestinians state in that document. I mean, Trump didn't even mention Palestinians in his Knesset speech. He
didn't say, you know, they've suffered enormously and you need to consider them as a people like just as humans. He
didn't say anything like that in the Knesset. They didn't exist. And then
Mahmud Abbas, what was the purpose of him being in char? I mean, he
his presence was completely diminished. And behind the scenes, he and the
Palestinian Authority have been lobbying against the release of Marwan Bargoti, who would be the most unifying figure
who Hamas has sought to release even though he is not someone who has been
friendly to or a member of Hamas because he's a unifying figure with street credibility that transcends the
factionalism of Palestinian politics who could emerge as a figure to lead a unity
government towards a kind of Palestinian state. So Abbas is participating with
Israel and Trump in undermining this process just to maintain his
gilded prison in Ramla, the five-star occupation.
as and as far as the Palestinians, I mean, the issues of occupation and
colonization were never addressed by Trump or by anyone in this entire
charade. What all that took place was a ma a relief, a welcome relief to the
killing and the release of 2,000 Palestinians, including 1,700 who were
kidnapped by Israel inside the Gaza Strip since October 7th. And this may
have been the best deal that could have been taken under the circumstances given the preponderance of power that Israel
has over the Western powers, but it doesn't address anything and doesn't
move any closer towards a Palestinian state. So, I mean, we're set for more
conflict. Max,
you wrote a piece. I'm not talking about you. your team and you and your team wrote a piece on the gray zone news
about the secret Israeli base being hit by Iranian strike during the 12-day war
and what do we know about the what has happened in those days considering this
case? Well, this was a report by Jack Pollson,
who is an independent reporter who has emerged from the tech industry to expose
the role of tech in collaborating with the military, the
intelligence services, and with Israel, particularly Israel's unit 8200, and has
produced some of the most indispensable work on that subject over the past
several years since he quit his job at Google and Wyatt Reed who's my colleague
at the Greyzone. And what they did was they managed to geollocate site 81,
which is a hypers secretive de facto Israeli military base that provides command and control to the
military intelligence apparatus of Israel. And it is right within nestled
within the Hakirya complex which is a large tower
in north Tel Aviv off Manakim Beagan Boulevard right near the Araeli shopping
mall and Azraeli complex and it's surrounded itself by a series of residential towers as well as the
Israeli Air Force headquarters. And I've written about this before, how this
represents the ultimate human shielding of the central node of Israel's genocide
machine and it's fortress of Zion bunker where Netanyahu and his inner circle
hide whenever there's retaliation for the wars that they launch across the
region. Most recently in June during the 12-day war. So on June 13th in the midst
of the 12-day war, targets near Hakiraa were hit. One of
them was the north tower of the Da Vinci apartment complex, which is a residential tower built next
to Hakirya. and the then and it's and it's just south of the Canarit
Israeli Air Force towers. And what Jack Pollson and Wyatt Reed
determined was it was also above this underground military intelligence bunker which is jointly administered by the US
and Israeli militaries. And they used a through a collection of leaked emails
from the Hondale leaks which contain the emails of top level
Israeli military and diplomatic officials as well as public documents, Israeli news reports and photographs
that the location, one of the locations that was struck by Iranian ballistic missiles on June 13th was directly above
site 81. So I don't know if Iran knew that was the site.
I don't know what they were targeting be uh specifically other than Hakiraa,
but it struck directly above site 81 and this is the significant part. Site 81 is
located almost directly below or in the shadow of the Da Vinci towers. So what
this means is a residential tower is being used to shield to human shield one of the
most sensitive secretive aspects of Israel's military intelligence apparatus
command and control. And I think that's the takeaway from this piece. And uh
just one other point or something to note is that a a
reporter from Fox News, Trey Yinst, showed up at the site of this strike or these series of ballistic missile
strikes on June 13th. And there's footage of Israeli police pushing him away and demanding that he not film.
Israel has since shielded this area further to prevent the public from
filming it with high walls. And there's they've they've they've
basically evacuated uh some of these areas. So there's an
acknowledgement there that they don't want the public to know about this or the press to know about these areas.
It's all sort of rema it remains under official censorship. But the Israelis can no longer claim that Iran is trying
to kill Israeli civilians when this was clearly a military target.
What's the understanding on the part of the Israeli officials when it comes to new attacks on Iran?
Do they have any sort of assessment internally that what would be the main objective if they can achieve that? And
what would be the outcome for Israel in terms of the new missiles coming into Israel and maybe destroying other sites,
military and intelligence sites? I haven't been able to parse through the
comments by Israeli officials to understand what they expect to achieve.
It appears to me that there's still a delusional thinking among the Israeli
political leadership that regime change can be achieved in Iran. And this is something we've also reported on. Um,
we republished a piece by Jack Pollson exposing the fact that Mossad is
increasing its online recruitment efforts of Iranians in the diaspora,
especially in Germany, promising uh lots of,
you know, lucrative payouts and opportunities to get their family out of
Iran and to relocate them to subsidize their housing if they can provide
information on sensitive Iranian facilities, especially nuclear facilities. And so they're specifically
recruiting Iranians in uh the diaspora, but also inside Iran
who work in these facilities. And weirdly, the Mossad is running these ads, this ad campaign through an LLC in
Atlanta, Georgia, which is registered to an influencer, a comedian influencer
named Desi Banks. I I wonder what he has to say about this. We couldn't reach him. But the
point is they're still trying to degrade Iran's scientific knowhow, its nuclear
industry. That remains the main target for Israel. It's sort of consistent with their general strategy of mowing the
lawn where they try to I mean it's a disgusting phrase that Israel conceived
during its siege of Gaza where they without achieving regime change or
destroying the enemy are able to weaken it through continuous warfare and various operations that might just last
a few days but it sets the enemy back. And so that's that's one thing I know
they are seeking, but I've seen Israeli leadership say what we're actually
seeking is uh to harm Iran to the point
to to replicate their success in Lebanon against Hezbollah. get Iran to stand
down weakened in a ceasefire and then wage what they call wars between wars
where they degrade targets without any retaliation by Iran because Iran has been so severely weakened. That's
delusional. Iran is not Lebanon. Uh Iranian deterrence is much stronger
than Hezbollah and they're also not located directly on Israel's doorstep. And the other aspect is the political
failure of the 12-day war by Israel. Israel united the Iranian public around
the flag, including large sectors of the public that has issues with the Islamic
Republic, with the revolution, because of the amount of civilian casualties Israel caused, because they
attacked Iranians in ne areas that are bastions of opposition or criticism to
the Islamic Republic like Taj and North Thran, just setting off Mossad car bombs.
the Mossad uh death squads that Israel had armed and trained inside Iran or were were
just widely seen as terrorists and hated. The bombing of the Ev Ev Ev Ev Ev Ev Ev Ev Ev Ev Ev Ev Ev Ev Ev Ev Ev Ev Ev Ev Evan Prison Gateway completely
backfired and killed families visiting their loved ones inside the prison as
well as social workers. So it was a total backfire by Israel. So I think if they the the leadership the military
intelligence apparatus in Israel is rational, which they probably are not, they'll dispense of the fantasy of
regime change. But I think they exist in their own bubble. And the political dimension
is also pushing Israel to war, which is Netanyahu's own survival. And the just
the sheer fanaticism of the Jewish Israeli public.
The Trump administration when it came to power has decided to go after Yemenes
Houthies. They said this time going to be different. We're going to make them, you know, feel how powerful the United
States is. They went there and they after all they have decided to withdraw from the Red Sea bubble mandaban and
that region. Do you think the same curves goes to the conflict between the United States and
Iran? What how do they feel? Do they feel differently or they have learned
something from the first phase of the war between the United States between Israel and Iran and then United States
interfered? What is the point? Do you do you think that there was still there some people in the administration that
they feel that they can defeat Iran or they feel the same way that it was as it
was in the bubble man in the Red Sea? That's not going to work. We're not going to go in that direction.
I think the faction in the White House that believes it can defeat Iran was
seated in the Knesset or the figures were seated in the Knesset. one of them
right in front of Miriam Madison and that was John Ratcliffe who we
identified based on comments from a Trump administration official at the
grrey zone as Mossad's stenographer someone who had convinced Trump that Iran was on the verge of producing
nuclear warheads and actually even distributing nuclear warheads to Yemen's
Ansura another WMD hoax John Ratcliffe
is essentially unqualified for any intelligence
position, even in the House of Representatives. He was a backbencher
and a small town lawyer from suburban Dallas. He represented a town of like
7,000 people outside Dallas. And now he's risen to the head of the CIA. And a lot of it has to do with backing
from Apac, Israeli intelligence. And they essentially control his thinking.
while the the lesserk known officials in the CIA make him feel important and
manipulate him in their own way. So what was he doing seated in front of Miriam MD? It was because he's so friendly and
so close with the Israelis and played such a seinal role in getting to the
point where Israel felt like it could start a war unprovoked against Iran and that the US would rescue it from the
consequences of the war it launched but could not finish. And there are other figures in the administration.
The the former Sentcom chief Michael Carilla was another figure that Israel loved. They called him Israel's favorite
general. And it's shocking that a foreign country can have that much influence over a the top US military uh
you know brass that they could even say that publicly. His replacement I think his name is
Bradley Cooper. He's very there there's I I could I can't discern any difference
between him and Korilla Pete Hegth. He'll do whatever Donald
Trump wants. He's just a Trump loyalist and he's concerned with uh more concerned with humiliating uh woke
generals for being fat and gay than he is with uh actual you know geopolitics.
He's basically a Trump loyalist. Then you have Trump and who's erratic, JD
Vance who said he's against war with Iran and the American public which is dead set against the war including most
of MAGA except for Fox News viewers over age 55 because Fox News has become a
straightup vehicle for Israel. I think with all of these factions, it's politically perilous for Donald Trump to
simply greenlight another Israeli war. And after this uh peace spectacle, I
think it sets the clock back on an Israeli war. I think the clock was the
the the the timeline was set back as well by Israel's
self-destructive strike in Qatar. But we still have to expect that another round
will come. And Israel assumes that it has a much better chance of drawing the
US in now than it will after a potential midterm election in which the
Republicans suffer a humiliating defeat and the Democrats take control of the
House and possibly even the Senate. So,
I still would expect somewhat in the near term the Israelis to attempt something. I just I just don't know what
they're actually thinking. And and I think we can all assume if it does if they do launch it, it will be more
violent and bloodier than the last round. And Israel will suffer a heavier blow uh potentially with ballistic
missiles and weapons that we hadn't even seen before.

Max, before wrapping up this session, we have a new winner of Nobel Peace
Prize and Maria Corina Machado. Yeah.
Yeah. She won. She somehow defeated Donald Trump.

She's more important for the establishment than Donald Trump right now. Yeah. And what is the case of, you
know, the case of Venezuela? Because looking at 2021, it was the Russian
opposition. 2022, it was Belar Russian opposition. 2024 Iranian opposition. And
right now, Venezuelan opposition. What do they want from Venezuela? It's all about oil. It's something geopolitic and
much beyond that. What's your take on that?

Well, the Nobel Peace Prize now has to
be renamed the Nobel War Prize because it is being engineered to give a green
light to the US war on Venezuela. a war which is currently underway in which the
United States is carrying out arbitrary extrajud judicial executions of unknown
Venezuelan citizens branding them without any process any legal process as
narco terrorists killing them on the high seas. Maria Karina Machado has been
awarded the Nobel War Prize after she endorsed Donald Trump's war on Venezuela
and after she signed a cooperation document with Netanyahu's Likood party
and personally appealed to Benjamin Netanyahu to lead an Israeli invasion of
Venezuela. She later, a year later, called on the
US to launch a Libya style military intervention in Venezuela at the same
time that I personally witnessed her attempt to take over a Venezuelan
military base along with members of the Venezuelan upper class opposition in Caracus.
This failed. But we can see that Maria Karina Machado represents the most radical faction of the Venezuelan
opposition which has supported sanctions which according to the center for economic and policy research have killed
tens of thousands of Venezuelans as well as triggering a massive migration wave
to the north to the US Mexico border which has fueled the rise of Trump and
the nivist anti-immigrant right. when many of those Venezuelans in Donald
Trump's second term were deported not back to Venezuela, something that the government of President Nicholas Maduro
was allowing and welcoming, but to a torture camp in Na Kelly's El Salvador,
where they were humiliated. Maria Karina Machado stood not with her countrymen in
Venezuela, but with Donald Trump. And this is consistent with Maria Karina
Machado's entire career since she first emerged leading a campaign called Las
Salida in which she encouraged Venezuelans to
call for regime change against Ugo Chavez and then and and Nicholas and
then Nicholas Maduro which led to violent riots which killed hundreds of Venezuelans in Las Salita. the parties
and the political mechanism behind it was funded by the United States through the National Endowment for Democracy,
which has hailed Maria Karina Machado's uh uh reception of the Nobel War Prize.
Finally, Maria Karina Machado has openly promised that if the US will push ahead
with an invasion of Venezuela to place her in Mera Flores palace as the
president, that she will hand over Venezuela's oil wealth and mineral wealth to the highest bidder. And it
appears pretty clear that a codery of MAGA billionaires has already assembled
to plunder Venezuela, which is why Elon Musk suddenly turned into a pro-regime
change fanatic on Venezuela after never having mentioned the issue before when Maria Karina Machado was running for
president. So this this is an award for war. It validates Donald Trump's
illegal extrajudicial executions and the general push to plunder Venezuela's
resources through a regime change war and it totally discredits the Nobel Prize.

Thank you so much, Max. Great pleasure as always talking to you and learning from you and your information is
amazing.

Thank you so much, Nema. See you.

[admin]

FULL: Pritzker, retired military leaders address federal troop deployment
NBC Chicago
Oct 16, 2025



Transcript

Well, good afternoon everyone. In the United States of America, our brave
men and women in the armed forces put their lives on the line to protect the hard-fought freedoms guaranteed by the
Constitution. And they protect our democracy. Every president in modern history has
understood the gravity and seriousness of deploying troops abroad and in very
rare and urgent occasions at home. Every president has carefully weighed the
costs of separating service members from their families and communities. Every
president has kept our troops above partisan politics, honoring the duty to
defend freedom, not political agendas. every president except one.
Amid Donald Trump and Steven Miller's ongoing effort to deploy troops in
Illinois, I convened a group of former military generals, rear admirals, and
veterans to hear their perspectives on this uncalled for, unprecedented, and
unlawful move. They are here with me today. Major General William L. and your
the former agitant general of the Illinois National Guard, Major General Randy Manor, Major General Paul Eaton, Lieutenant General Charles Lucky, Rear Admiral Michael Smith, who is also
the CEO of National Security Leaders for America, and Janessa Goldbeck, a veteran
and CEO of the Vet Voice Foundation. I want to thank you all of them for
their time and for their continued service to this nation.

This group has served across the various branches of the military and represent a broad spectrum of expertise. They are
not here on behalf of a party or political agenda. They are here out of a commitment to our country.
With their combined wealth of experience, I have been hearing from them about what this power grab means
for our state, for our country, and for our brave men and women in uniform.
What the likely long-term consequences will be of the escalation for our
military. One thing is evident, this effort to deploy troops in American
cities is not normal. There is no rational justification for
such a deployment. It is a breach of the most fundamental values and customs that
our armed forces operate on. That is why there is such little precedent in our
history for federalizing and deploying National Guard troops and other military
onto American streets. Other presidents have used this power incredibly
sparingly, and there's a good reason for that. In 1965, Lyndon B. Johnson
federalized the Alabama National Guard and sent additional backup to protect
Martin Luther King and civil rights leaders peacefully marching to Montgomery. In 1992, at the request of
the California governor and mayor of Los Angeles, President George HW Bush agreed
to activate the National Guard and provide additional support to local law enforcement during the widespread riots
following the killing of Rodney King. But now in 2025, President Trump says he
wants to go to war with Chicago, use it and our people as a training ground, and
is sending military troops against the wishes of its people in order to punish
his political opponents. One of these instances is not like the
others. And to Stephen Miller, who is pulling the strings for Donald Trump, Illinois is not a place you can conquer,
and our people are not your subjects. Period. Past presidents have understood the
gravity of the decision that they were making. This president is deciding to take National Guard members away from
their families and communities. These are citizen soldiers who signed up to
serve their country in times of need. They have lives and loved ones that
they're being pul pulled away from. A classroom of kids is missing their teacher. A hospital department full of
patients is missing their nurse. So many children are missing their parent. All
because Donald Trump wants to punish people who didn't vote for him and to threaten his political opponents and to
carry out his agenda of chaos to justify his actions.
Past presidents have understood the mission and purpose of the National Guard. To come to the aid of our
communities in times of urgent crisis or to be sent abroad to defend our nation.
Anyone claiming that there is a rebellion or insurrection in Chicago is
not telling the truth. I want to make an important distinction. No person could be faulted for believing
that the US military is already patrolling our streets. It feels that way already. Masked federal agents from
ICE and CBP are on the ground terrorizing our communities with tear gas and rubber bullets. And some are
wearing camouflage uniforms that could easily be mistaken for the military.
It is Trump and Miller's agents who are operating like his own personal secret
police. Harassing civilians, tear gasing communities, arresting journalists, and
grabbing people on the street to ask them for their papers based on the color of their skin.
This is intentional. Chaos, confusion, and destabilization
are the means. Eroding our democratic institutions is his end goal. Trump is
looking to cause mayhem and lay the foundation for actions far more craven.
Today, he is trying to make us comfortable with masked agents or troops on our streets. Tomorrow, he's looking
to leverage his power, take advantage of our elections, and scare people away from voting. He wants to create the
perception of chaos in order to further consolidate his power. He's hoping to
blur the lines between his masked federal agents and members of the National Guard and active duty military.
We cannot let that happen. We cannot accept any of this as normal and we
cannot remain silent. We must continue to call this what it is, a dangerous a
dangerous power grab that echoes the rise of authoritarianism
and authoritarian regimes throughout world history. I'm grateful to have
clarity given by the retired generals, rear admirals, and veterans here with me
today. I've asked them to share with the people of Illinois and throughout the country what they shared with me.

And I'll first invite Major General William L. Enyard, our former adjutant general of
Illinois to join us at the podium. General.

Thank you, Governor. Appreciate you. Good morning,
Governor Pritsker. Thank you for that kind introduction. I'm here today with two other
generals and one admiral. Now we brought the admiral along because
Chicago of course sits on Lake Michigan and we thought it'd be useful to have a sailor.
But seriously we represent over 300 other like-minded admirals and generals who belong to an organization called National Security Leaders for America. NSL4A is a nonpartisan not-for-profit organization, and we strongly support the governor's efforts to stop the misuse of our
military members against our fellow Americans. As the governor indicated, I served as
Illinois's National Guard adjutant general or the commander for those of you who don't speak National Guardes.
I come from a proud family of veterans. Between my father, my brother, and myself, we served nearly 64 years in the
military. Between my brother and I, one or both of
us served in the military from 1969 until 2012.
Now, during my term as agitant general, which was the last five years of my career,
from 2007 to 2012, we had the largest ever combat deployment of the Illinois
National Guard since World War II when we sent the 33rd Infantry Brigade Combat
Team to Afghanistan. We were in combat. The Illinois National
Guard had soldiers and airmen in combat 365 days a year, 24 hours a day for the
entire time that I serve as served as the agent general. In fact, for more than 20 years, the
Illinois National Guard had soldiers and airmen in combat in Iraq, Afghanistan, and other places.
That's an incredible record. And the National Guard has never been held in higher esteem in this country because of
the track record that we have established serving our nation not only in combat but also in times of natural
disaster. You know, we took an oath to the constitution of this great nation and
that's why I'm here today. It is imperative that we as citizens,
not just as officers, but as citizens, stand up to the overreach of the federal
government today in Illinois, in California, and elsewhere.
Our National Guard members joined and served to defend our nation,
to respond to natural disasters. They are not policemen.
They are not political pawns. They are sons and daughters, husbands
and wives. They're teachers, farmers, mechanics, carpenters, and students.
They deserve to be treated with the respect that they have earned for volunteering to put their lives on the
line for our country and our communities. They should not be treated as props for
political theater. You know, I I the number that I've heard for the Los Angeles deployment, 4,000
National Guardsmen for 60 days is $120 million. So, that's a real cost. That's
a cost to the American taxpayer. But there are hidden costs. Costs that the
governor alluded to, costs to the individual soldier, to the families,
to the communities, to the employers. A typical private first class, that's a
lowranking enlisted person, uh, makes about $91 a day when they're on active duty. That's about 11 bucks an hour. If
you're flipping burgers here in Chicago, you make $15 an hour or more. So, these
young soldiers are paying a financial penalty. And what about the cost of the family?
They're not there to go to that soccer game. They're not there to help with that homework. They're not there to make
sure the car gets serviced, all of the myriad tasks that we all perform in our
civilian lives. And these are, after all, part-time soldiers. They're not full-time soldiers.
They signed up to be part-time soldiers, not part-time policemen.
There's the cost of the community. those educators, ministers, lawyers,
whatever their job title is, they're not there in the community to attend those Kowanas Club meetings or the Lions Club
or to go to the PTA meetings. There's also the impact on the on the
soldiers as soldiers and on their units. I call those costs the three Rs,
recruiting, retention, and readiness. recruiting because if you're a young
soldier and you're making less money sitting in Washington DC than you would
at home and you're picking up trash or putting
mulch out on the flower beds at the Washington Monument,
that's not what you signed up for. The soldiers that I and airmen that I served with loved being called up for natural
disasters. They loved it. They loved being out there in that hot sun, sweating on the Mississippi River,
chasing ticks off and and uh and eating MREs in the field. Why did they love it?
They loved it because that was what they signed up to do. Help their communities, help their friends, help their
neighbors. They felt a sense of accomplishment. Do you feel that sense of accomplishment
when your video flashes up on the screen at home and your soldier is there
picking up trash in Washington DC? How many families are going to support a
soldier's desire to reinlist when that's what they're seen doing? How many
employers? What's the impact on the employers? when your soldier the you know when that
soldier is gone you are required by law as an employer to give them their job back when they get back
you have to cover that soldier's job. So you're either paying other employees overtime or you're hiring temporary
workers or you're doing the work yourself. Whatever it is you're doing to cover for that soldier. You turn on the
television set when you get home at night and here is your soldier spreading mulch in Washington DC as a political
prop. As an employer, you got to hire him back, right? But
that next employee you hire doesn't have to be a guardsman, does it? That's an
impact. That's an impact on military readiness in terms of so we're going to
have that adverse impact on recruiting because that soldier who's out there picking up trash in Washington DC is not
going to go home and tell his his or her buddies, "Oh, hey, the guard's a great deal. Uh, come on, sign up and and we'll
get to uh do some great things." Yeah. Like picking up trash in DC.
Recruiting readiness, retention. Let's talk about readiness for a second. Every day that a soldier spends
sitting in Washington DC or Los Angeles
guarding a building is a day they are not training for their job. Their job as
a soldier whether that soldier is is in a trucking company or an infantry company or or or flying an airplane. If
they're in this type of mobilization, they are not gaining readiness. They're
not being prepared to be a soldier to deploy in the defense of this nation. So the three Rs, recruiting, readiness, and
retention. And this applies to the entire military. We're not just talking about the National Guard. But as a
National Guard agent general, I feel special expertise to talk about that. And as the governor mentioned, I'm very
concerned as a soldier, as a retired soldier, I'm very concerned about these
ICE agents walking down Michigan Avenue dressed in combat fatigues, wearing
combat boots just like the ones I wore, just like the ones I still have in my basement in case the governor needs me.
The average citizen is not going to know the difference between a National Guardsman and an active duty soldier
from the 10th Mountain Division or a Marine from Camp Pendleton.
They all look alike. They're not going to know the difference. But I would tell you what the difference
is. The difference is that these ICE agents are not trained soldiers. They're
not trained soldiers. and they don't show the discipline that soldiers do.
They don't obey the same rules of engagement that soldiers do.
It offends me as a soldier that we have ICE agents I think the modern term is
co-plaining. I would say pretending to be soldiers. They're not soldiers. And
it is it is a smirch on the National Guard's reputation uh for them to be wearing the same uniform that we are.
Thank you for your attention and uh general manner. Thank you.
Thank you, Governor, for the opportunity to stand here with you and to stand up
for what is right. I served for 36 years in the US Army as a regular officer and
as a citizen soldier in the National Guard. Like General Inyard, I also come
from a family who has served our nation in combat. From my father who served in
Vietnam as a 30-year career soldier to my son who completed a 22-year career as
a combat search and rescue pilot in the Air Force, saving lives in Afghanistan.
We made the commitment and sacrifice of a combined 88 years of service to our
fellow Americans, to all of you. for my first assignment in the 82nd Airborne
Division as a young Airborne Ranger platoon leader through being the deputy
commanding general of third US Army responsible for the lives of tens of
thousands of men and women in combat in Iraq, Afghanistan, and across the Middle
East to being the number two general officer in the National Guard bureau in
the Pentagon, responsible for over 450,000 citizen soldiers. ers and airmen in all
54 states and territories and the District of Columbia. I have seen the very best of Americans.
No matter what their color, their gender, their their religion or national origin, all that ever mattered is their
ability to do their job. We and our fellow veterans are proud to have served
all of you and to have served our nation. Our military is one of the most
respected institutions in the United States. The National Guard has two missions. First, it is trained,
equipped, and organized to defend our nation as as a strategic reserve from
foreign threats overseas. And second, to serve as a capability to governors to
help save lives in times of natural disasters such as floods, earthquakes,
tornadoes, or hurricanes, and to assist, as mayors may ask, to temporarily
augment local capabilities for special events such as the Super Bowl or the
Olympics or things in that manner. Our military and national designed National
Guard are designed for combat, not for community policing. Soldiers are trained
to eliminate threats, not to deescalate tensions or protect constitutional
rights during protests. When we blur that line, we risk turning our own
streets into battlefields and our citizens into potential enemies. The use
of the military by this administration is in Los Angeles, Memphis, and possibly
Chicago is inappropriate. It's dangerous, and it is a clear and present
danger to the security of our nation. It is unamerican.
History warns us of this danger. The Posi Kamatandis Act of 1878 was created
precisely to prevent the military from enforcing domestic law because our
founders understood that freedom cannot thrive under the shadow of military
control. Civilian police accountable to local communities and bound by civil law
are the right tools for maintaining order, not troops and tanks. If we truly
want safe and peaceful cities, we should invest in stronger communities, better
policing standards, and more trust between citizens and local law enforcement. Not the presence of armed
forces meant for war. America's strength comes not from fear or force, but from
the principles of liberty and self-governance. Let's protect those principles by
keeping the military where it belongs, defending the nation, not policing its
people. I stand here today speaking resolutely, not only as a retired
soldier, but also as a father and father-in-law of my daughter and her husband and my three-year-old grandson
who are residents of this wonderful city. Thank you, Governor, for demonstrating the courage to stand up
for what is right, not only for the millions of citizens of the city of Chicago in the great still state of
Illinois, but for my own family as well. So, thank you. Governor,
thank you. Thank you, sir. Appreciate you.
Good morning. My name is Janessa Goldbeck and I served as a combat engineer officer in the United States Marine Corps. Today I lead VetVoice
Foundation which is a national nonpartisan nonprofit representing more than 2 million veterans, military family
members and supporters from all walks of life and all backgrounds. We empower veterans and military families to engage
in public life and defend the democratic values we swore an oath to uphold. Over the past year, we've grown increasingly
alarmed about the growing politization of the military. We've actively pushed back in the courts through policy
advocacy and by preparing elected officials to preserve the apolitical character of our armed forces. Today,
I'm honored to stand here alongside Governor Pritsker and these esteemed retired general officers to voice a
principled objection grounded in history, the Constitution, and the hard-earned experience of those of us
who have worn the uniform. An objection to the Trump administration's attempt to deploy National Guard into the city of
Chicago. Deploying military forces into American cities when there is no widespread unrest, no breakdown of local
law enforcement, and against the wishes of local leaders and local police is an extraordinary and dangerous breach of
long-standing democratic norms. A reckless precedent that threatens uh both our systems of government and
undermines public trust in our armed forces. It also risks doing harm to the very people who serve in uniform. The
troops that are being told to deploy are not faceless. They are our neighbors, mostly young men and women from middle
and workingclass families. Many of them are first or second generation Americans. In their civilian lives, they
are the EMTs who respond when your child can't breathe. The linemen who restore power after a storm, the nurses who pull
double shifts in county hospitals, the police officers and firefighters who keep our neighborhoods safe. When they
take off the National Guard uniform, they go home to take care of their kids, coach little league, and volunteer at their churches. Pulling them out of
their communities for what amounts to a political stunt doesn't just disrupt readiness. It leaves holes in our local
safety nets. It means fewer first responders on the job. It means missed paychecks, missed birthdays, and missed
moments that can never be replaced. It is a betrayal of the dual mission of our National Guard that our National Guard
serve to protect both state and nation. There's also a significant impact to readiness and morale. Picture a young
guardsman, newly trained for disaster relief, homeland support, or overseas deployment. Imagine him arriving in
Chicago, ordered into neighborhoods he doesn't know, confronting emotionally fraught scenes, families being ripped
apart, frightened children, communities watching in horror. This is not what he trained for. His ethos was not shaped
for inner city checkpoint enforcement. His peers are serving overseas or preparing for hurricane season at home.
And yet here he is in a highly charged situation with no clear mission. When the president of the United States
places soldiers and airmen into roles that clash with their identity and values where they may be viewed not as
protectors but as agents of contention, it damages unit cohesion. It sews doubt.
It introduces political fear, hesitation, and mistrust. It harms our operational readiness by pulling the
guard away from their real missions. And it puts guardsmen in impossible positions where one misunderstanding,
one wrong move could turn a tense situation into a tragedy. Misusing them in this way risks escalation that puts
both service members and civilians in harm's way. It also risks alienating entire communities, communities whose
trust the military may need tomorrow in a crisis. The president has planted the perception that the military is not
neutral, not apolitical, not above the fray, but that it is part of his personal political tool set. That
perception corrods recruitment, retention, willingness to serve, and the moral reserve we expect from our armed
forces. We must also not lose sight of the human dimension at the heart of this mission.
The people being targeted by ICE are not faceless threats. Many of them are mothers, fathers, workers, veterans,
long-standing contributors to our economy and society. Some may have put on the uniform themselves. Others have
raised children who serve in uniform today. to treat every immigrant as a threat, to call in the military as if we
are facing an invasion, ignores both our shared humanity and the complexity of the immigration system itself. It
reduces real people in our communities to targets instead of our neighbors. For those outside of Chicago, take note
because what is happening here will could happen anywhere tomorrow. Once the president is said that the president can
deploy troops in US cities to enforce immigration law, what stops him from using the same authority to respond to
peaceful protests to deploy the guard outside of polling places during next year's elections? Today, we have to draw
a line in the sand respectfully, firmly, and without equivocation. This is not normal. This is not American. And this
is not what the military is for. To the soldiers standing by to standby in Chicago today, you are seen. You are
respected. And you deserve better leadership than this. Veterans stand with you, not as partisan instruments,
but as guardians of what our country claims to be. The strength of our democracy is measured not just by how
well we defend our borders or respond to foreign threats, but how by how consistently we uphold our
constitutional principles here at home. Every American, regardless of party, should be agre able to agree to this.
Our military does not belong to the president. It belongs to the people. The guard exists to serve the states and
their citizens, not to enforce political loyalty to one man. If we allow the
president to turn our military inward, to use it as a weapon against his own citizens, we lose the very thing that
makes this country worth defending, our freedom. Thank you and seify Governor Pritsker.
Thank you. Appreciate it. Thank you. Happy to take any questions
from members of the media. Shia um maybe one of the generals can talk about this as I understand it right they
are federalized but not deployed because of the courts if that changes how does the
guard and the guard is supposed to be watching over what the
immigration agents are doing. What happens when a guardsman sees an immigration agent uh crossing the line?
You know, we saw pictures online of, you know, an immigration agent with a gun in a
Walgreens. You know, what what happens then? Is there a risk of confrontation?
Does the guard protect that person or are they protecting the public? What is
their job? That's a terrific question. I don't know the answer to that. I don't
think anyone knows the answer to that. And that is going to be a very telling situation.
Um, we you are the boss. What would you have said?
They you know the we have a make sure they can hear you. Sorry. We excuse me. Soldiers have a
duty to obey lawful orders.
An order that is issued by a superior officer is presumed to be lawful.
So, you are putting some of these young soldiers, and this is what we're talking about here. You're putting some of these
young soldiers in really an untenable position. You all remember when President Trump said, "Shoot them in the
legs." All right, that's pretty clearly an unlawful order. You don't just go
shooting people in the legs because they're engaging in protected First Amendment discourse.
But that young soldier out there who gets that order, do you really want to put them in the position of having to
determine whether it's a lawful order, whether it's a constitutional order? Uh they're they're not trained for that. Uh
now, if you see someone doing something unlawful,
soldiers are required to tell superior authorities about it. And
we have seen uh actions in uh in combat in Afghanistan and Iraq where uh
soldiers reported to superior authorities what their fellow soldiers had done in in uh
violation of of the rules of engagement and violation of international law. And we've seen the Trump administrator,
we've seen the president uh those soldiers who committed wrongful acts
were court marshaled. And we've seen the current president turn around and commute those sentences or pardon those
folks and and have them reinstated. Uh I think that uh that's very problematic
and unfortunately we may well see this happen and I think it's going to be
incumbent. you know, it's gonna will the courts then step in? You know, I think
the courts are have several of the judges have done a terrific job so far standing up to this administration, but
I think that's one of the reasons that we as retired generals are here. We can speak out. We we got our first amendment
first amendment rights back. If I were still on active duty, I wouldn't be able to stand here before you and and tell
you some of these things. Thank you for your question. Yes. The National Guard is deployed. Does
they have any plans to protect Latin communities, Latin neighborhoods?
Well, if they're deployed, they're being deployed by the president of the United States. They've been federalized. So, I
we don't know what those orders will be, but I tend to doubt that that is what the Trump administration has in mind,
protecting those communities. That doesn't seem to be what they're telling ICE or CBP. And so I can't imagine
they're going to order the National Guard to protect those communities. I wish that we could do that. Uh and
that's one reason why we don't want the president to be able to bring federalized troops onto uh the grounds
of American cities. Yes, sir. Governor BBC London.
This is clearly a power struggle between governor and his state and the president
takes a different view how he exercises. So the question for everybody not just
the United States is who prevails and how
I might just add to that for you. You compare what's happened or may
authoritative regime's behavior elsewhere in the past. So quite simply,
how far do you think this could go? Well, you saw that the president of the United States threatened to jail me to
jail he's threatened in the past to jail the governor of California and the mayor of Chicago. So, do I think he could
carry it that far? Well, he says he would. Uh yeah, this is a struggle uh around the
10th amendment to the constitution which protects states rights. Uh it's also a
struggle uh in my view about protecting the military. Um the the reputation of
the military in this country is very very good and you know there were years in the
past when it wasn't but it's very good. People have enormous respect and
admiration for those who are part of our military forces. Uh what the president
is now doing has the potential to significantly erode that faith that the
American public has. And I think you've heard, you know, the idea that readiness, the idea that uh our national
security is at risk as a result of the American public losing faith um is of
great concern to people who've spent their lives or much of their lives uh leading military troops or serving in
the military. So I too have that same concern and of course I'm focused right
now on Illinois's National Guard and other National Guards being sent here. But I can speak with I know many members
of the Illinois National Guard. They did not ask to be called up for this sort of service, to have to stand against their
fellow Illinoisans in some fashion and maybe even be given an unlawful order that they're not sure whether to act
upon because they're not judges or lawyers. Um they're and they're trained
for military service and of course to help rescue people in emergencies and
not to do this kind of service. On your income, are you concerned that
or another potential rival in a presidential primary could use the capital gains the gambling winnings
against you sort of campaign. No no I I think people know that when I got
elected and have known for some time that you know that I've been very fortunate in my life and uh if they want
to use something like that in the campaign I don't know but I'm not you know right now I'm focused on running for reelection as governor. Uh that's
the only thing I'm focused on politically and of course most importantly in my job as governor today
protecting the people of Illinois from the unlawful acts of Steven Miller and Donald Trump Christy Gnome Tom Hman and
Gregory Bavino. Governor, can you just explain a little more the circumstance that 1.4 million?
I mean that's that's those are big winners a high roller table. Were you were you gambling with millions and
millions of dollars? I I obviously um and I've explained this or at least we
did in a statement, you know, that uh I went on vacation with my wife, with some friends. Um I was incredibly lucky, you
have to be to to end up ahead, frankly, going to a casino anywhere. Uh it was in
Las Vegas. Uh, and uh, I like to play cards and so you know that I founded a
uh, charitable poker uh, match here in Chicago called the Chicago Poker
Challenge that raises millions has raised millions of dollars for the Holocaust Museum here. Um, and
particularly to stand up for civil rights. That's much of what the Holocaust Museum does. Uh, and so
anyway, that's that's all I can say about I mean, I had had fun doing it. I, you know, encourage people to come to
the state of Illinois and gamble in our casinos here. Uh, we have some really lovely places to go.
Governor, I just want to clarify. Olivia and then Mitch. Thank you. Um, I the number that was
reported like can you say how much you have lost handling? That's a I I believe that's a net
number. So yeah, but but I mean it was it was all you know it all happened over one trip and again it was just I mean
incredibly lucky and as you know most of the time anybody who's been to a casino you you win and you know all of anybody
who's played cards in a casino knows that you know you often play for too long and lose whatever it is that you've
won. I I was fortunate enough to have to leave before that happened. So what was the final hand?
Oh I don't remember. Thank you Mitch. Governor, the president has publicly flirted with the idea of
invoking the insurrection act to deploy the guard. Um, how concerned are you about that? And how would that affect
the state's legal challenge? Well, I believe it to be unlawful and unconstitutional. There is not a
rebellion going on. It's called the Insurrection Act for a reason. There is not an insurrection going on in Chicago.
Um, and you've heard him move around his reasons for calling in uh the National
Guard. Uh, think about his first discussion was crime is rampant, Portland is on fire. Um, you know, he
exaggerates everything tremendously. Uh, and then and said that was the reason.
And then of course I think there were a few people must have been in the White House who told him actually you can't
call in the National Guard for that reason. uh but possibly you can call in federal troops, National Guard uh to
protect federal facilities. And so what do you know when they were challenged
that was the reason that they gave for calling in the National Guard. Uh those facilities are not under threat. Uh
there is no need to call in the National Guard. We have local law enforcement, state law enforcement. ICE and CBP are,
you know, clearly capable um of protecting their assets. And um so I I
yeah, I'm concerned, of course, that it doesn't seem like the president of the United States cares much about the Constitution or the laws of the country.
He's broken them well, 34 times he's been a convicted felon. Um so he doesn't
much care about the law. Uh so yeah, I am concerned that he will just ignore the law and try to enact the
insurrection act and and use his people who seem to be sick of uh to the end to
uh defend him as he's carrying out unlawful acts. Governor, sorry. Um yeah, I think uh Sarah in the
back. Um kind of a followup to that. Um on Tuesday on the as you know on the southeast side uh ICE agents deployed
pepper spray after people threw eggs and rocks. So do you think that type of
scene and chaos just gives the president you know for the lack of a better word more ammunition to to call to to invoke
the insurrection act. Look, anybody who's protesting and not doing so peacefully
uh and is committing a crime in doing so shouldn't be uh you know should should
be held accountable for their acts but and you saw this in the decision of a
judge this morning uh in her TTRO case uh that that you know she's seen all the
reports as all of us have. They tend they take one small circumstance and
they blow it up into as if this is all of Chicago or it's happening everywhere. We have so many peaceful protesters and
so many places that people are protesting peacefully in neighborhoods. Uh you're going to see it on Saturday in
in Grant Park. Um, and so the the idea that there's any justification for
people, you know, tossing tear gas in the context of people's protests, uh, I
I think the judge reacted to that properly by ordering that now they're
the federal agents are required to have body cameras on them because they
clearly lie about what goes on. You saw this in the case of Sylio who was killed
in Franklin Park. You saw this in the case of the woman who was shot uh in her
car. Uh they put out a press release immediately uh at Homeland Security that
doesn't reflect the truth. And it's hard for us to know right away what the truth is. So it takes us a couple of days.
Often it's some of you in the uh reporter community in the media that discover what the truth is and talk to
people who are on the ground and then what do you know? It turns out they've been lying all along. So, um I'm glad
that the judge is is stepping up, doing the right thing. Uh I think we're going to see more cases brought against ICE
and CBP. Um and of course, we're going to continue our effort to keep the
military off of the streets of Chicago and across America. Thank you. One more in the
Vegas. I'm talking about Los Angeles. You saw Los Angeles County issue a state of emergency in an effort to combat
these federal immigration rates. Can you speak to whether we could see that here in Illinois? And I know it's typically
something utilized during bad weather. Yeah, listen um we would listen to the
local leaders in Chicago. I want to remind everybody what ICE and CBP are
doing and what they're planning to do uh if they can bring the federalized troops onto the streets is not just in the city
of Chicago. And people keep talking about Chicago and I know it's easy to just say Chicago and not include all the
suburbs and surrounding areas but this is a very it's a vast uh region at least
6 million people you know in the in and around Chicago not just in the city of Chicago uh and people are being affected
at this you saw the wkegan uh city hall where uh a young woman came out you know
she was doing no harm to anybody US citizen she's browns skinned she was trying to get in her car and she
detained, I mean, arrested, taken, put in the back of a car. Um, this is what's
happening all across the region. And it's it's deeply concerning to me. We
talk about just Chicago, but it's really happening uh everywhere around the region. But I think to any you you saw
the the city of of uh of Broadview mayor asked for help and we delivered it from
state police and from Cook County Sheriff's Office, but no plans for a state of emergency. I
we don't see a need for that uh here and I you know I'm not sure what the circumstances were that caused it in Los
Angeles um whether it was the city or the county there but um but obviously we
listen to to local leaders and local law enforcement and back them up when they need our assistance.
Thank you.
also if he's you like
right if he's putting down 10 million 10 million I'm going to play with I got a picture of them all standing on
there
I wasn't planning on asking them but I was just like all right 1.4 4 million is a lot. That's a lot.
But not to him. Oh, yeah. No, but like you know what I mean? Vegas.

[admin]

Judges issue BOMBSHELL ruling against Trump in CRITICAL case
Brian Tyler Cohen
Oct 16, 2025 Brian Tyler Cohen

INTERVIEW: Trump loses in Chicago troop deployment appeal



Transcript

I'm joined by Adam Klasfeld from All
Rise News. Adam, we have major breaking
news right now that will have massive
implications for Donald Trump's ability
to be able to deploy the troops around
the country. Can you explain what just
happened in the seventh circuit court of
appeals? That's the uh circuit court
that oversees Chicago, where of course
Donald Trump uh lost a case in his
ability to be able to deploy the troops.
A three judge panel, Brian, unanimously
slapped down Trump's attempt to deploy
the troops in Chicago. They've spoken
one voice in what's known as a procurium
opinion. That means there's there's not
one word of this, I believe, 18page
opinion that one of the other judges
disagrees with another judge about. And
it's there's a Trump appointee, a Bush
appointee, and an Obama appointee. And
they all said that Trump does not have
the legal right. He hasn't shown that he
is likely to prevail on having the legal
right to send in the troops on the
record that they've seen. And they stood
up for the findings of the lower court,
Judge Perry, who her opinion not only
blocked the Trump administration. It
began with this incredible piece of
historical trivia that hasn't gotten a
lot of attention, but she mentioned that
when the framers were kind of
considering how strong a central
government we want, Alexander Hamilton
apparently went out of the way, he
wanted a very strong central government.
and he said that it was incendiary and
crazy to think that someday a leader of
the United States would come along who
would send the militia of one state to
another state. And so she's pointing out
just how absurd and through the looking
glass we have gotten where Trump was
sending the Texas National Guard into
Chicago. So now, not only were her
findings that Trump did not show that
he had the legal right to do that, not
only were her findings approved, they
were they were affirmed by the seventh
circuit court of appeals. They did that
in this very resounding fashion where a
unanimous panel said that Trump just
didn't have the goods. Now, is there any
indication, not to be a buzzkill here,
any indication that the federal
government is going to appeal this thing
up to the Supreme Court now that we have
a ruling, a definitive ruling at the
circuit court level? I think it's
inevitable, and we'll see what happens on
the Ninth Circuit level. So, what we
have here very often, the Supreme Court
will hear a case when there's what's
called a circuit split. Now, the Ninth
Circuit still hasn't ruled on the case
in Oregon, but they did rule, at least
on the three judge panel level, on a
stay in California. The California
case came out the other way. Uh so, we
could have the now it's all in the
details here. the how they arrived at
it. Uh they they mention in the seventh
circuit the Newsome standard and the
court says it just doesn't even follow
that standard either. But I just want
to read some portions of this Ryan
because it's it says here the facts do
not justify the president's actions in
Illinois under the relevant statute
12406 even giving substantial difference
to the assertions. that was the
difference that the Ninth Circuit
mandated. So they denied the
administration's position. They
rejected the notion that it was a
rebellion. You know, to your point,
Brian, I think it's pretty much
inevitable that this is going to go all
the way up to the Supreme Court and
we'll see what happens. But at the
at for now, this is an order blocking
Trump's deployment of the National Guard
in Chicago. You know, you had mentioned
that the Ninth Circuit, which is
overseeing the case in California and
also will ultimately be overseeing the
case in Portland, both of those fall
into that circuit's jurisdiction, has
ruled only to stay the lower court
ruling. So, Judge Brier in California
ruled against the Trump administration.
The Ninth Circuit stayed that decision.
So, basically uh blocked the lower
court's ruling from taking effect,
but they haven't ruled on the merits
yet. And so, as we await a final
decision from the Ninth Circuit, does
the fact that the Seventh Circuit ruled
in the way that it did against Donald
Trump, might that have any bearing on
how the Ninth Circuit views this ongoing
case for a pretty damn analogous
situation?
Right. Well, the Ninth Circuit is also
overseeing the Oregon case. And I think
that's one where the Ninth Circuit's
very powerful 18-page ruling signed on by
every judge could have a very real
persuasive effect. All of these cases, I
should point out, are on the question of
a stay. The Seventh Circuit rejected a
stay as it proceeds to the merits and
there'll be more litigation. This is
hardly the end of the road. And even at
the Ninth Circuit level, you do have
this question about whether the Ninth
Circuit is going to have an onbunk
review where you have the entire court
reviewing the first decision that gave
Trump that much difference to the point
where the National Guard is still
allowed to be in Los Angeles. That could
be overturned. But what this does, it's
a it's a powerful ruling by all three
judges, including a Trump appointee. And
yes, that can absolutely uh be
persuasive. It won't be controlling.
These are different circuits, but they
can absolutely persuade uh other
appellet judges as they're considering
what to do. So, Adam, with these cases
that we've seen in Los Angeles, in
Portland, in Chicago, the Trump
administration is relying on the same
conditions being met uh uh to be able to
justify their troop deployment. And
those conditions have to be one of
either a a foreign invasion, uh a
domestic rebellion or insurrection or a
failure of the local government to be
able to effectuate its laws. We haven't
seen that in in any of these in any of
these places. Although they're trying
to make that case in Los Angeles, but
clearly in Portland, no judge was buying
it, including the judge who Trump
himself appointed said that was
untethered to the facts. Uh the judge in
in Chicago, Judge Perry said the exact
same thing. That's been largely
upheld now at the Seventh Circuit as
we've been discussing. Do you think that
there's any likelihood that the Trump
administration is going to recognize
that this is not a good vehicle for them
to be able to effectuate what they want
to effectuate? And so instead, they have
to figure out some new pretext to be
able to send in the troops that doesn't
rely on any of these three conditions
being met. Well, I think that's exactly
why you're hearing all that whispering
and and not even whisperings, talk out
loud about the insurrection act and
Trump cozying up to that. He knows that
there's a political cost to take that
really drastic step. So, I mean, his
poll numbers are underwater. He knows
that that is even more drastic than
trying to use this legal mechanism to
try to do his wishes. So, we'll see what
happens. Now, what we've seen to your
point about those three conditions,
every single court, including the Ninth
Circuit in the Los Angeles case, has
found no, it's not an invasion. No, it's
not a rebellion. Uh, under a highly
highly differential standard, the Ninth
Circuit in only the Los Angeles case
talked about the third prong of regular
forces. I want to read a passage of this
ruling that's just rejecting the in
really resounding language this whole
rebellion nonsense and it just puts it
aside by saying a protest does not
become a rebellion merely because the
protesters advocate for myriad legal or
policy changes are well organized call
for significant changes to the structure
of the US government use civil
disobedience as a form of protest and
get this Brian they add because this is
true in this jurisdiction or exercise
their Second Amendment right to carry
firearms as the law currently allows. So
even under all of those circumstances,
you have this three judge panel of the
seventh circuit saying that's not a
rebellion. A rebellion is something
entirely different. So you have all of
the courts rejecting this overheated
language from Trump and his surrogates
claiming that there's a rebellion going
on, that they're terrorists running a
muck, that there's an invasion
happening. uh the only one who's going
to lend any credence to any of the
prongs of the law that they need to
fulfill that you pointed out were able
to execute the laws with regular forces
and that was specifically in the Los
Angeles context and even that decision
is under review. Right? So, I think that
that's something that should really be
taken away from this opinion that even
beyond everything else, even beyond the
different outcomes that we're seeing in
Los Angeles and Chicago and uh Oregon,
that every single court thinks that this
overheated language of a rebellion and a
invasion is absolute nonsense. But if
this is the excuse that they used in all
of these states, in California, in in
Oregon, and in Illinois,
one has to assume that they thought that
this was their their best vehicle. And
so and so what do you presume they would
would defer to next? Recognizing that
that this isn't getting them where they
wanted to go, they've got to find some
other vehicle to give themselves a
pretext to be able to deploy the troops.
and and it would stand to reason that if
they didn't go with whatever that is
first, it's because it's not even as
strong as the the the excuse that
they're using right now. So, I got to
imagine if if this stuff isn't working,
their plan B is probably not going to be
much better. Right.
Right. Well, one of the things if we go
back to the very beginning of all this
when they just sent in the troops into
LA, uh the position that they were
putting was that courts can't review us.
You know, we the the president decides
to send in troops somewhere. You can't
question him. You can't challenge him.
And that was the point of view that was
rejected. So, I think that they're
trying to get away the sweeping vision
as far as they can bring it of executive
power of Trump cannot be questioned and
the same reason we're about to have no
king's protests this weekend. And that's
a kind of legal position that has been
rejected from every court. Will they try
to resuscitate it from the Supreme
Court and see what happens? I wouldn't
be surprised at all. Um I think that
they're seeing uh that they are going to
give the maximum legal position not
seeing hey what is likely to work what
is the judge likely to swallow. I think
that their reasoning that we've seen
throughout Trump 2.0 is let's see what
the courts will let us get away with.
And finally, on that point of of the no
kings protest, do you think that Trump
will use that protest in very much the
same way that he has pointed to uh these
minuscule protests against him in LA,
Portland, and Chicago as some
justification, some lame justification
to be able to say, "Look, this is some
mass rebellion against the government.
we have no choice but to send in the
troops right now and use that as some
pretext to do what he's failing to do
legally in all of these other states.
Right. Well, I remember No Kings 1.0
where Trump was saying that and he was
going to he that he and his surrogates
were already uh even back then trying to
frame this as a kind of terrorism
threat. and we're seeing folks like Mike
Johnson uh claiming that it's a hate
America rally and using overheated
terrorism language from it. One of the
interesting things about that is that
No Kings 1.0 happened at the beginning
of the deployment of the National Guard
and I could there's an argument that the
that the public protests the fact that
people went out there was an antidote to
that. It it held people in line. And it
showed people that uh they weren't going
to be afraid that to exercise their
first amendment rights to peaceful
assembly, to protest, to free speech,
and that I I think that it we're already
seeing Trump using the fact that he's
being protested as an excuse to try to
clamp down on those protests, but we
haven't seen that become a kind of
successful ploy. What in fact what's
happened is the the existence of these
protests have been a check on power and
that's what the first amendment is
designed to do.
Yeah, we'll leave it there. Adam, as
always, thank you for your help. For
those who are watching right now, if
you'd like to support Adam's work, uh he
is an independent journalist, not backed
by some major media conglomerate. So, a
great way to support his work and to
support independent media more broadly
is to subscribe to All Rise News. I'm
going to put that link right here on the
screen and also in the post description
of this video. It is a great way to
support him and independent media more
broadly. Adam, as always, appreciate
your time. As always, always a pleasure.
[Music]

[admin]

Part 1 of 2

Jordan Goudreau exposes US gov't role in disastrous Venezuela coup plot
The Grayzone
Oct 16, 2025 #TheGrayzone

Facing years in prison on federal arms trafficking charges, former US Green Beret and mercenary Jordan Goudreau presents his side of the story in this explosive tell-all interview with The Grayzone's Max Blumenthal.

Lampooned in the media for his failed "Bay of Piglets" plot, Goudreau insists he was the scapegoat for a clandestine 2020 "Operation Gideon" which was well known to and blessed by the highest levels of the US government.

Goudreau details previously unseen court documents and FBI files containing testimony of those involved in the plan to invade Venezuela and overthrow President Nicolás Maduro.

The files include FBI interviews with participants in the plot which demonstrate foreknowledge of the plot by Trump associates, leaders of the government of Colombia, CIA assets, and officials working directly under Vice President Mike Pence and Trump, and strongly suggest their support for it.

This interview provides a revealing backdrop for the latest phase of the US assault on Venezuela, as Trump directs a deadly naval blockade against the oil-rich country and authorizes "lethal" CIA action against its leadership.



Welcome to the Grey Zone. It's Max Blumenthal. Earlier today, I spoke to former US
Green Beret and mercenary Jordan Gudro, who led the failed Operation Gideon plot
to invade Venezuela in 2020 by sea and topple the government of Nicholas Maduro. It was a famously bungled
operation that is mockingly referred to as the Bay of Piglets. And if you've been following
our coverage at the Grey Zone for the past few years, especially our coverage of Venezuela, then you're very well
familiar with the details of it. Jordan Gudro is
treated as almost a laughingtock in US media, but as I've recently learned,
there's a lot more to the story. Gudro is currently facing federal arms
trafficking charges for transferring arms over the Colombian border. And he's now come forward to tell me in the gray
zone his side of the story. He's provided us with extremely valuable
court documents and FBI files containing details of those who were involved in
the covert 2020 operation Gideon plot to topple the government of Venezuelan
President Nicholas Maduro. These documents
provide details of the Venezuelan coup plan that the public has never seen
before. Uh they include FBI interviews with participants which demonstrate
foreign knowledge or at least suggest foreign knowledge of the plot by Trump
associates, leaders of the government of Colombia, CIA assets and officials
working directly under Vice President Mike Pence and Donald Trump and strongly
suggest their support for it. And in this interview, Gudro names these officials and also details potential CIA
support for the plot. Jordan Gudro, former Green Beret and the face of
Operation Gideon, which began as Operation Edgemont. Welcome to the Grey
Zone. Uh, thanks, Max. Appreciate it.
Uh Jordan, you currently face arms trafficking charges from the US government stemming from your
involvement in Operation Gideon, which was this high-profile
attempted coup in Venezuela that's colloally referred to as the Bay of
Piglets. It was sort of a mercenary operation gone wrong, at least on the face of it. Um, but as a result of your
trial, you have gained access to documents that the public has never seen before that you say demonstrate that US
officials, Trump administration officials and figures close to the Trump
administration and the CIA knew about Operation Edgemont, which was the plan
to invade Venezuela and arrest the country's president, Nicholas Maduro. And at the center of the story is a firm
called Global Governments. Um I want you to talk about
what Operation Edgemont is and tell us about the role of global governments,
who was involved in that group and what were their objectives.
Yeah. So let's so let me just take it one step at a time. So the actual
they operation in of itself I I didn't you know there there's a lot of media
and individuals and bad actors and whatnot. when the narrative came out, they were talking about how I
was trying to find a way to flip Venez I wasn't. They, you know, Keith Schiller
came to me, global governments came to me. Uh, I didn't even know there was an initiative to do such a thing.
Obviously, back then, the Trump administration had been pushing for the
CIA to find a way to get Maduro out. They were dragging their feet. This is
evidenced by uh there's a great wired article well sourced several CIA you
know um case officers were sources on that that article but essentially I get tasked
to do this op and ultimately you know when you when you look at the the very
first email I sent out to the global government's team which is in the discovery there's obviously a ton of discovery that's come out I even
outlined that this will not be a bloody thing. This will be Venezuelans basically, you know, retaking their own
country. Uh, and so I think my strategy and my certainly my intent for this op
was to have Venezuelans um, take back their own country, right?
And the way you do this, it's nuanced. I get it. You know, uh, on the surface and the the narrative is always going to be,
well, this was a coup. These dirty mercenaries with
This was not the plan. It was not the initial plan and it was never the plan.
And obviously to do something like this, it's it's actually called a military coup. And so you use units close to um
the president's well or the leadership in Venezuela. At that point, it was three different leaders. It was Maduro,
Cabo, and Tariq. and you develop access and placement to those leaders who have
access maneuver unit or uh task maneuver units. So these units you align yourself
with through their through the asset whether it's a general whoever has access and these individuals do the
heavy lifting. Now several factors made that possible although it took me about
a year and a half to get access and placement. the fact that the all the pressure that was on the Maduro regime
at the time was considerable. There was sanctions. There was, you know, launching of a carrier or a destroyer
group much like there is now. There was, you know, tremendous amount of saber rattling in
the news. There were uh popular rebellions. All such you all of this
designed to put pressure on the Maduro regime. I was able to, like I said, get
access to these these individuals because they were afraid. And I I think the audience needs to understand that
there's a tipping point when it comes to flipping a country. You know, people surrounding
a a tyrannical leadership aren't going to want to. It's not an easy decision
for them to make to betray that leader simply because they have families. And so if it's mistimed and they stay close
to the the tyrannical leader and another country comes in and a coup is successful then those individuals will
be treated just as badly by the incoming element as the uh the target which would
have been you know obviously Maduro Cabo Tariq and so it's really it's really difficult to get support.
Now, obviously, when Mike Pompeo shut down the embassy in Caracus, it was
virtually impossible for the CIA to run any meaningful human intelligence
operations, which means they would have done what I did, which is just gained access placement and loyalty among um
you know, Maduro, Cabo, and Tariq's generals or whomever, they would have
done the same thing. But the the fact that Pompeo shut that embassy down made
it impossible for the CIA. Um I didn't know at the time back then, but there was a civil war in the White House.
you can ev I mean that's evidenced by the Russia collusion hoax stuff and all the evidence that's come out on that and
then the uh the the Obama undermining you know the the Trump administration uh
as well as I mean the the FBI were tapping Senator Holly's cell phone I
guess so there there's these you know back then there were a lot of games being played uh trade crafty kind of
games that were being played in the White House that I don't believe that the Trump administration was privy to.
They didn't aware they weren't aware of the level of uh scrutiny and
um I guess battle that they were under. Um but it's pretty clear now. And so I
mean when when I look at the 302s more and more and when I look at the discovery uh it's more evident that this
was the case. Um it's it's just proves what I have I guess been saying since
the first discovery drop. And I mean there are several discovery drops coming
you know every month or so which are spaced apart for uh I guess the reason of of a time and distance. I mean that
plays to the hand of the the government but uh I think that's a that's a very weighty macro standpoint. Does that
answer any of your questions Max? Uh not not exactly. I mean, I wanted to
I wanted you to talk about global governments and what it was and who was
involved in it and where they fit into this plot. So maybe uh you know, thanks
for that macro perspective, but this is sort of the Yeah. As as AOC, this would be the micro to
the macro. Sure. Let's drill down in one of the
interested parties. Yeah. of which there are obviously you have the intelligence community folks with
the FBI and the DEA and uh Venezuelan opposition folks and then you have the
element like my team that was trying to actually do the work um
as being um you know hired by and directed by the Trump administration.
And then the third component is the global governments. These are the guys who hired me. Their intent or their
their piece in this was they wanted uh government they wanted uh business
contracts and so they wanted a way to monetize I suppose the aftermath of uh a
Maduro free Venezuela basically to exploit Venezuela's resources and get construction contracts
and drilling contracts and so on. Correct. Right. drilling, mining, as you
know, Venezuela's resourcerich. Um, also it needs to be reconstructed.
Uh, humanitarian efforts, things of that nature. So, global governments would have had the the contract for all of
this. I was brought in because the big hurdle
to this was the fact that Venezuela was still under the control of Maduro, the Maduro regime, and they needed somebody
to remove him. Right. In order to get that wealth, they
needed you to remove them. To remove it. Correct.
Okay. And so you have Rowan Craft who was a senior adviser to global governments who was an heir to the Craft
family fortune and you have Keith Schiller who was close to the Trump organization. I guess he was Trump's
bodyguard. Um you know what was his role and what were who who were these
figures? So Keith Schiller, I mean it's it's funny that he's the bodyguard. He was the head of of White House operations,
right? So and and sorry to interrupt, but he had an ex an arms export control license.
Correct. He did. Right. Absolutely. And so he was ahead of White House operations I think
until I don't know 2018 or something. And then uh and this is kind of you know
it's that position is a pretty heavy title. Keith Schiller basically could
come and go to the White House anytime he wanted. He's a very respected figure in the Trump administration.
And so he approached me. I guess he learned some of the other work I had
done um through maybe a mutual acquaintance. And so he contacted me and
asked me to come to a meeting which I agreed to. Um Rowan Craft, head of the Craft Dynasty,
is a well-connected guy. I mean, he was making phone calls to Admiral um Fer,
who was selfcom commander. This was in the very first meeting. He was um I mean you read about all this in the
discovery. He made a phone call to uh Elliot Abrams, which as it stands, I
mean, one of the one of the Venezuelan opposition uh people who worked for Leold Lopez had
a meeting with Elliot Abrams in the White House, right? As did he have a meeting, you know, several meetings. There were several,
you know, the these individuals I was dealing with on a firstname basis and, you know, coming up with tactical
operations and strategic operations were Venezuelan opposition guys. These guys seem to have the run of the white house.
They were able to have their uh some of their compatriots like Christopher Figueroa taken off the sanctions list.
Christopher Figareroa is the head of the was the head of the Sabine. He was a torturer and yet you know uh he was
given uh you know complete clean slate.
I think Forbes did an article on him and said this is the this is a real Venezuelan and and I you know I talked
to people who he had tortured. So these guys were brie with Mike Pompeo, Elliot
Abrams, John Bolton, all of these DC power players. And I was in, you know, I was in uh Colombia with these guys
trying to figure it out. But don't let me go too far down the rabbit hole, Max. Well, let's let's drill this down. So
Netor Science, this is someone who shows up in the Discovery documents that I've reviewed. Uh what role did he play in
this? because I believe he was the one who introduced you to global governments and promised to connect you to Elliot
Abrams and John Bolton who were in the White House about the plot. Yeah. So
Nester Yeah. Nester put me in touch with um global governments. He was in the room in the very first meeting as was
um you know was George Bettincort uh who was obviously
he's the guy you know Jorge Bettincourt was uh Venezuelan a
Venezuelan sort of expat opposition activist right and he
said he was he had contacts in the CIA yeah so he was meeting frequent the CIA
uh he was meeting with the the Colombian intelligence uh the DN Colombian DNI
and he would speak freely about it. Uh so he was an asset uh for these
intelligence agencies. He was in the room the very first uh meeting in in
I guess it was uh Miami as was global governance who were basically an envoy
for the Trump administration to try to get this uh you know the ball rolling on this entire thing. And so you had the
this setup. You had these two entities, right? You had the int this intelligence community and you had um you had the
global governments guys and then you had my team in the middle. So
and so your your team was basically the muscle. You were going to kick in the doors and get it done. And
no, I'm not I mean maybe metaphorically, but I'm not interested in the you know invasion. that would be an Eric Prince
if if that was you know I had seen his perspectus and and his uh you know what
he was kind of trying to sell at that point and that was invasion I I didn't you know Eric Prince from Blackwater
who's very close to Trump incorporated was furnishing a prospectus and trying
to raise money for an armed invasion of Venezuela and you saw it right and so yeah and I so I think that
I am, you know, about half of my training in special operations is human intelligence, quite frankly. I mean, we
learn it very early on. We weren't we we learn to work by with and through people on the ground. And so, I'm not
interested in banging it out with Venezuelan regulars, right? Otherwise, it's it kind of defeats the purpose. And
so the the big the idea is I'm going to use Venezuelan units in order to
encircle and capture uh Maduro Tariq and Dest
Alisami Destre and Nicholas Maduro. Correct. You need Caracus. I mean if if
Chavez taught us anything with this first coup, it was you need Caracus. And
to be perfectly honest, this was a triumvirate. It was Cababo and it was uh Tariq and it was Maduro, right? And so
to be to be perfectly clear, I didn't care if anybody was captured. I just
wanted these guys out. I wanted to get my guys in um so that I could bring
about fair and free elections. In the interim, there would have been a huna which would have had uh you know Gaido
and a few others in there just to bring about these fair and free elections. And
that was that was kind of the you know that was that was the intent that I personally had going forward.
Um and so John you're telling me that
John Bolton and Elliot Abrams knew about Operation Edgemont your plot which would
become Operation Gideon and they had some involvement in it. I mean, c can
can we can can you be as clear as possible about that and how high this went?
Yeah. So, I think it's pretty obvious that Elliot Abrams
was contacted by Rowan Craft. He was also having meetings with the Venezuelan
opposition strategic, I guess, leadership in George Batten Court, which
to be honest, you can't find his name in the news anywhere. it's well protected. That said, I mean, it's I' I've read it.
Uh, and so because of that, you have National Security Adviser who knows full
well that this is happening. And then you have obviously Mark Esper who
alludes to this in his book. He alludes to a meeting between Claver Cardonz,
which again, Claver Cardone met with George Batten Court. Um and so when you have these highlevel national security
advisor meeting with delegations from other
countries and these delegations are talking to me and Trump's inner circle
about you know liberating or flipping whatever you want to say Venezuela.
It is at that point there there's no denying the fact that this was at the highest levels of government and that
there were opposing views on how what was going to be done with this operation.
And you mentioned Leapoldo Lopez as well. He is sort of the godfather of the
pushist arm of the Venezuelan opposition. The the part of the Venezuelan opposition that wants to
stage a military coup. He had actually been involved in a military coup. He's heavily backed by the government of
Spain and the US government. And you said that he had some knowledge of this plan as well.
Absolutely. So he his man is George Benton Court. His other man is Lester
Toed and these guys were greased in with um you know the US intelligence,
Colombian intelligence. And furthermore, they were greased in with the the uh the
Rendon group, which not to be confused with JJ Rendon, but the I think they call it uh
yeah, John Rendon, right? Yeah. TRG, the Ren the Rendon group. And these guys were doing they had been
doing infrastructure attacks or helping uh you know, facilitate infrastructure attacks in Venezuela for I don't know
decade or so. Um, and obviously, as you know, these are all TSSCI projects that the CIA oversees in these private
companies. Um, anytime you see the lights go out in Venezuela, there was I think there was a a big nuclear reactor
that or sorry, a um the the
it was a hydroelectric dam that went out in I believe 2019
and caused power outages across Karacus. There was, but there was something else, Max. There was a big attack and it
killed killed a lot of Venezuelans. Um, so anyways,
yeah. So, so these Oh, about the I don't I I don't know that it was in Marico.
I'm getting this wrong, but it was refinery that was attacked. Yeah, that's correct. um tens of ten I
want I don't I don't know the number of how many Venezuelans were killed but this attack was perpetrated by you know
US intelligence working with um Venezuelan opposition I guess you
could say saboturs um
so I there's go ahead yeah there's a longstanding history of
the the CIA working and I you know I have a secret recording with um the god
it's George Batten Court Lester Toed with one of there's a there's a guy that
I had had to take a secret recording they were talking about how they don't trust Donald Trump and that they only
trust the CIA they only trust Juan Cruz. Um and it's plain as day about the the
the allegiance where the allegiances are to these individuals. They're not aligned with Trump. their line against
Trump. And I think, you know, if I may, like fast forwarding now, when you look
at the dynamic with Maria Karina, how does anybody tr how does the Trump
administration trust any of the opposition leadership from Venezuela? So, you have a very a very detached
um relationship between these individuals. So,
you know, and I think the the the media narrative on all of this has been uh
you obviously have there's an individual who writes for the AP who's been gunning for me for a long time and you know he
comes up with the the he his word choice is pretty careful. He talks about tacit
approval. There was no tacit approval. There are no bones about it. I was tasked to do this. I was given verbal
authority to do this by several parties who were working for the government. Um,
but I I I do I do think that when when you look at when you when you
peel back the layers and you simplify it, there are sides to
this and the sides are quite clear. Yeah.
when you which side what what are the sides you have an intelligence community
that um has been obviously I mean I saw you reporting the other day in the '9s
cartel the Solless was stood up by the CIA this is no secret I mean this is the truth I mean I this is the cartel which Nicholas Maduro
is said to be in charge of but may be actually defunct
and you're confirming that it was set up by the CIA in the '9s Wow. Absolutely. This is not um we've
known this for quite some time. According to what the former head of the Drug Enforcement Administration told
Mike Wallace, this drug shipment got here courtesy of what he calls drug trafficking by the CIA in partnership
with the Venezuelan National Guard. Um yeah, the cartel of Sons is kind of a joke
among us because it's I mean they didn't name themselves that.
It's it's there's a there's a patch on their uniform that that there's a son and so the I I guess the DEA or whoever
named them this um but the facilitation of the drugs by the CIA from this group
is well it's well documented and so you have this side of it right you have you
have an intelligence agency that quite frankly they they're they will withstand
um changes in presidency and so they have their TSSCI projects running and
their ability to facilitate and to aggregate resources from drug trade. Um,
and this is what they're trying to protect. So, how does it benefit them to get rid of Nicholas Maduro, right? Like, it really doesn't. You can argue, you
know, well, Monroe doctrine, you have to have white space in Venezuela and
surrounding areas of the Caribbean so that Russia, China can't get a strategic foothold. But
um the other side of the coin is and this is obviously what the Trump administration is is,
you know, this is one of the reasons they're they're pressuring the Maduro regime and were back then or at least they should be. They should be falling
back on the Monroe Doctrine. I know that, you know, largely they're relying on the fact that Venezuela is a narco
state, but that's but that's the irony, right? I mean,
okay. Um, Venezuela is an ARCO state, but their partner is the CIA. Is it I
mean um I don't know how to square that, right?
Yeah. Yeah, I mean my understanding is it's more of a pro state and responsible for only a fraction of cocaine exports
to the United States, but it seems to be and this is I think extraneous to our
conversation or we can kind of cover it later but just for the purpose of context it seems to be a target because
of its oil wealth and its socialistoriented sort of nationalist resource government
uh being targeted undercover of a drug war. Um there's an official actually
who's been involved in the targeting of Venezuela for years who operated out of
the State Department but seems to wear a different hat uh potentially a hat at
Langley and his name is Juan Cruz and he's come up in the discovery documents through your case. Can you tell us about
Juan Cruz, who he is and how he fits into this story? Yeah. So, Juan Cruz was the go-to for
George Bancen Court and Lester Toed. He was, as far as I know, he was their guy
like uh you know, the the the face of the intelligence agency for these two individuals, which would have really
made him their handler. Uh they referenced him by name. and he uh he had
some strange things to say about me when he was interviewed after the fact after all
this went went down. And so he is uh one of the other evidences of uh US
intelligence involvement or sabotage. And you're you're saying Juan Cruz was
operating under State Department cover as a CIA handler of these two Venezuelan
opposition figures who were seeking to sort of finesse a
private regime change operation. Uh Jorge George Bettton Court and Lester Toledo.
Correct. what his capacity what what capacity he was working for for the
agency is unknown to me but it's not out of the realm of possibility that he was a knock or some other you know form of
agent obviously Juan Cruz been around for a while he has deep
connections indeed um so Lester Toledo introduced
you to this Venezuelan general who's a very
shady character who was controversial like Toledo and Bettin Court didn't like
him. His name is Clever Alcala. Correct. Correct. and you wound up working with
him in the jungle in Colombia um sort of to stage the invasion or intervention in
Venezuela with Alcala and his men who are who are um you know rebelling against the
Venezuelan military. Right. Right. And so this general was
trusted by a lot of the generalship in Venezuela. Um, Juan Gaido was not at
all. Yeah, this is why the popular rebellion failed miserably. They did not have the support
of the military. Yeah, Juan Gaido had the support of the CIA.
Um, and they were helping with that little, you know, April 19th thing, but they did not have the support of the
military. uh as a result this was in complete contrast to what I had you know
had set up as a result it failed and so the difference for for my op was that I
had I had essentially access and placement
and I had assets who trusted the general um they tolerated the fact that I was
working with Gaido but they did not trust Gaido they did However, trust General Alkala. General Alkala was a
strong opponent of Nicholas Maduro. Um,
checkered past. Sure. That said, he was from what and I I had
the opportunity to ops test him for about a year and he showed no signs of deception. uh he never lied to me and
his part of the operation really was this is this is the the nuance of when you're putting together an operation
like this. I don't need everybody to be playing in the sandbox nicely together,
but I do need certain pieces not to attack other pieces. And in this instance when the United States arrested
General Alkala, you can imagine the fallout in Kacus with my with my assets,
my trusted assets. The the man that they trusted was now getting taken by the
United States. And there were a lot of questions they had in their minds. It made them fearful. You remember before
when I talked about how people close to Maduro were fearful? I mean, you know,
we were bombing Iranian generals back then. We were saber rattling, but they
were fearful. They were fearful if Maduro left power. They wanted to be on
the right side of things. Anybody in that position who's in a position of power in the orbit of somebody who's a
target wants to be on the right side when something unfolds, if something unfolds.
And if it doesn't, then they still need to have the um the loyalty of that
person who's targeted this case, Maduro. Does that make sense? Yes.
So you were working with Alcala in Colombia at a
time when Colombia had a very pro- US government that was working with all of the US agencies, Pentagon, CIA, DIA, all
that stuff. Uh under Ivan Duk. Now Colombia's government, you know, at least the president is a leftist,
Gustavo Pro. But at that time, Colombia was sort of a base of operations against
Venezuela. I interviewed Nicholas Maduro. He told me, you know, the Colombian government was heavily
involved in plotting with John Bolton, an attempt on his life, the drone attack. So, what what kind of contacts
did you have with the Colombian government and what role did they play in
Operation Gideon? So I had um I had phone call which was
brokered by Lester Toledo. Um Yvon Duk basically promises for this operation
like camps and freedom of movement and then uh border ability to cross borders
things of that nature. The caveat being that we had to attack the ELN. Right.
And this this was a very strange request for
Yeah, it was strange. I was like, uh, I don't know that I never really was going to I'm never going to do it. Was it was
kind of ridiculous. Anyways, uh, Yvon Duk, you know, I went on W Radio and Yvon Duk I I said this on W
Radio and Yon Duk called into W Radio. Wradio is a probably the largest radio
station all Latin America. It's it's a, you know, tens million, you know, or
sorry, hundreds of millions of listeners. Yeah. and I'm in Miami like we're taping
and I say this and Ivon Duks into the studio and he says I don't know I've
never met Lester Toed. I've never met you know any of these people. I don't know this person. I don't know that
person. And I promptly produced a uh you know photos of Yvon Duk with you know
Lester Toledo and but the the just the fact that the president would call into
a radio station and he felt that strongly about it was uh I think that was
when was this interview? Oh it was I think it was about a year ago.
Okay. Yeah. Ivon Duk is now a sort of like a club DJ in Miami. So
he's probably listening at the time. Oh yeah. Uh and so so here's I guess the
nuance of the the Ivon Duk sort of piece of it. Yvon Duk was the president and he
was aligned with Juan Gaido, um Leo Lopez, CIA
and obviously Colombian intelligence. Um when everything went bad, Colombian intell uh there was a
Colombian intelligence there, two Colombian intelligence operatives who went into the AO
in Bogota and they had asked the green
suitor compatriots, the SCOPS, green suitors, uh American green suitors who
were working. They asked if the the green suitors would help them do a scop
against me. Uh to which the green suitors said, "No, we we don't do that against Americans, American citizens."
But the you know, and the the one of the other small pieces to them, it's not a
small piece. the shell game with all of the the guns and all of these things.
When this when the individual was arrested at a checkpoint and had a I guess a trunk full of guns,
there were two gentlemen in the back seat of the car. These two men were never identified. They were never
interviewed. They basically left. the driver of the car,
he ended up uh dying under mysterious circumstances a year later. Wow.
So, I think you kind of imagine um
how that that shakes out. Wait, wait. Uh give me the background on
this incident. Uh this this was in Colombia. Um
this was one of the first sabotage events that the Colombian intelligence uh uh you know under the probably
request from the US CIA/ you know Bettton Court to whoever they have these
guys actually you know do this um this is when we're in our final
corridor like I'm my my operation's imminent um this car is stopped at a checkpoint
point and two men, military age males, as it's reported, they get out of the
car. They are not, you know, and there's a there's a trunk full of guns. They are not arrested. They are not questioned.
They are not identified. They go about their merry way. The driver
dies of mysterious circumstances a year later. So I mean math on that is um
you know they didn't want anyone talking right
so you had some trouble with global governments
the codory of businessmen and consultants who wanted to get a regime change op
going in order to get contracts and resources es out of Venezuela. They basically weren't paying you as you were
doing the work. And so a figure named JJ Rendon
enters the picture. He's sort of the super consultant for the Latin American
pro- US factions. The pro- US more like right of center right-wing political
factions. Very well- paid person. And he comes forward with money for the
contract. Juan Guyaido's name is on this contract which specified the goal of the
operation to quote capture, detain, remove Maduro and the current regime from power
and install Wine Guyaido in its place. And you were given you were offered a
quote unquote success bonus of $10 million. Um, and the total project cost
was earmarked for something like well exactly $212.9
million. So, was this the main source of funding
for Operation Gideon? And did you ever receive the money from the figures?
Yes. Oh, sorry. Yeah. So, Rendone, he essentially put a down payment. There
was a retainer of 1.5 million. This essentially would have covered the first
part of the operation which was really just a link up. I had sent in um an
operative to do an OPE operational prep the environment, safe houses, uh you
know, trucks, things of that nature. This and this op was separate from the
Gideon piece, right? This was kind of the op within the op. I had uh three
boats ready to go to try to, you know, do this. One was a civilian boat, different landfall locations, but um
coming back to it, I don't want to drill down too deep. It's a pretty deep hole.
So, yeah. So, give me the initial question again, Max. Sorry.
Essentially, where did the money come from and what was the role of Rendone and Guyaido?
So the initial price tag for a linkup was was would have been well covered in
1.5. Um that said I needed to know that these
individuals were serious because global governments was they they weren't able to get the contract signed. Global
governments remained but it was now I got the contract signed and so they were
more working under my contract. I wasn't necessarily a massive services contract
holder, but I did hold the contract with the sitting president. This was very
interesting for Keith Schiller um and all of global governments to include Mike Pompeo's lawyer, Travis Lucas,
George Soral, Donald Trump's lawyer, everybody in this power circle in DC
that I had met right after I got the contract signed. the money was. I mean,
I'm a I'm a Green Beret at heart. I'm a special operations guy. Um, I will find
the money and I'm a business guy. I I have to be able to to traverse the tactical, the strategic, the logistic,
the business, the political layers of any operation like this. Um, and so I
put my, you know, I I I um I had investors and uh we were able to piece together
what we needed to do in order to move the operation forward
and and did you have any contact with Guyaido or Rendone?
Yeah. Yeah. So, absolutely. I had several meetings with Renone in
Florida. He insists that there's things in the contract. He says in the contract
it says that they could cancel any time and but the contract clearly states that there's no cancellation for convenience.
Furthermore, I never received an email to cancel any contract. Um I I had a Zoom call. I I recorded a secret phone
call with uh Juan Gaido and in that phone call it's you know basically
there's a lawyer um who you know he he facilitates the the
contract signing over Zoom and you hear one guy who clearly signing the contract several people in the room and so I uh
obtain the contract uh from the sitting president or the well the recognized
president in Venezuela at that point. I mean, when I took that
I the next day I had a meeting with several powerful people in in the you
know the inner inner circle Trump's inner circle
after that after that contract was signed a few hours later I have this meeting in Trump hotel uh and then a few
meetings after that they have a meeting in the White House.
Wow. Okay. So, speaking of the White House, uh you did have contact uh according to
these discovery documents with the vice president's office. Uh one name that
comes up a lot is Drew Horn, who was a policy adviser to Vice President Mike Pence. And then you mentioned Travis
Lucas, who was a lawyer working for Pence, and George Soral, who was a
lawyer for the Trump Organization. Um and I think right yeah so how did you make contact with
the vice president's office and what did the contact consist of?
Yeah. So, global governments, this is the part that's really funny to me, Max,
when when certain journalists try to claim that I'm claiming tacid approval.
The discovery um the discovery says otherwise. There was several meetings
with me and this individual. This individual is wellconed in DC. He um
horn he is obviously if you look where he is now he's working on a project with
Keith Schiller in Greenland through Greenmat. I mean these individuals are very close. Um
it's no secret that was one of the first initiatives that the administration started when when they took office this
time around. Um Travis Lucas is a Mike Pompeo lawyer. George Soriel, as you
said, is you know the the the Trump lawyer in charge of Trump uh foundation
and so these guys are uh the very trusted individuals in the circle.
Furthermore, they wanted not they but one of those individuals wanted me to meet with the
president which I refused. Um, I thought that was
any president requires deniability. They require a
certain level of distance from any operation of this. That said, I knew
there there was no doubt in my mind that I absolutely had approval to do this,
that I I was given the approvals by two individuals to do this. Um, and I'm a
soldier. As long as, you know, we don't, the general doesn't have to come down and tell us you, you know, you're
approved. Do the mission. We we see, you know, individuals working in that that
entity. And, um, we believe we believe it if it's if if
it's credible. And these individuals were credible. I had no reason to not
believe what they were saying. they're credible and they were high level officials or connected to high
level officials in an official capacity and right and and it's it's not just that
it's when in the middle of this it's you know I was sending several RFIs through this individual who these RFIs were
reaching the highest levels right because I I was asking things like I need to know if Juan Gaido has to you
know is he the guy because I'm there's a lot of push back on the you know I was
asking some very specific questions also these you know this this individual who
was working for the government was helping facilitate uh and get support for this operation so
it you know the whole task of uh that's like kind of ridiculous to me when I read the the discovery
and so the another group enters the picture uh late 2019 or I don't know exactly
when but it's called virtual democracy and they were um pitching plans to Drew
Horn who was the policy advisor for Mike Pence. Uh it was sent to his one plan
was sent to his White House email account on December 8th, 2019 and it
basically spelled out ideas for toppling Maduro. Can you talk about that?
Yeah, I mean there were several that that you know that individual was trying to find
initiatives to get this done. When I first met with him, who who you talking about?
Horn. Horn. Okay. He was incredibly excited that somebody was working on this. Um, and you know, I
I was obviously I was put I I was put in that position by global government.
But he was ex he was ecstatic and so he worked we worked together for several months to to try to push this forward.
He gave me um you know he relayed authorization at the highest level that
this was authorized and um you know things like we don't
care how bloody it is um when this is done the money will flow
you know this was exact quote right it's like so I I felt I was in good hands this guy he was greased in the national
security council I didn't trust them he was a fel he was a green beret um I had
no reason to think that he was not who he said he was. And he was who he said he was. Um, yeah.
We We don't care how bloody it is. When it's done, the money will flow. That's an exact quote. Is that in writing
somewhere? No, that's not writing. That's just that's something he told you verbally.
which to me, you know, like I said before, I don't I I never want for me, the more elegant the plan, the simpler
the plan. Um the easier it is to to defend the counter coup piece, right? If
there's lots of war and strife and if it's a invasion, a counter coup is
tougher because you you create a lot of hard feelings. If it is if it is as simple and as elegant as Maduro's
generals flipping because they see um Americans and uh we are force of
catalyst. It's much more seamless. And what's more is it's not it's not so much a coup. It's just you know a country um
taking control of its own a you know having agency of its own democratic
process. I guess um you know the moral implications of
Sorry, go ahead. No, I'm I'm just saying I know that I know that there's a lot of heartache
with and I I'm I'm certainly not a proponent of invasion for the purpose of
regime change just for you know uh exploiting resources. I do think that in
the case of Venezuela back then there a case could be made and certainly having
talked to a lot of the locals and spent spending time with individuals,
I do think the case could be made that um a strong case could be made that there is a there was a justification for
um removing Maduro in favor of fair and free elections. That said, the way you
do it is equally as important important as the fact and and sometimes more important as as what happens after the
fact. Does that make sense? Like I I would never invade a country and impose
um I I I think that is
I think that's a slippery slope. Well, this group Virtual Democracy was
proposing that in the email that Drew Horn received at his
official White House email account, they were calling for training up to 500 fighters at Camp Moyak in North
Carolina, which is run by Eric Prince and his mercenary firm Academy, which
used to be known as Blackwater. Um, but that plan never went forward. Prince doesn't have anything in the works to
your knowledge. Here's what I'll tell you about that.
Like when you look at the strategic that and everything at the strategic
briefs really well. I'm going to tell you that right now. when it comes down to the tactical level, 500 men versus a
concentration of say, oh, I don't know, 50,000 troops who have the run of a
city. Um, and pretty decent air support with their Sukcoys versus Eric Prince's
helicopters. I don't know that that would have ever scratched the paint. Do you understand?
The notion that I'm going to cowboy up with 60 dudes in fishing boats and somehow
I'm going to E and E through, you know, oh, I don't know, 100,000 regulars.
We're going to That's not realistic, right? What is realistic is what was
supposed to happen, which was a landfall of these two boats um along the coast,
low-level operations, no skirmishing with the regular Venezuelan regulars, and then my
civilian boat, you know, making its way into a civilian marina in civilian clothes, meeting
with, you know, high level assets in uh Venezuela. That's a That's an easy op,
right? What Eric Prince was calling for, I just
I I don't see the uh the viability of that. I don't know that it could have
worked. Well, I I want to I want to cover that
just a little bit later, but first I want to ask you about another reference to the Operation Edgemont/Gideon
plot, uh, which took place during a meeting with Venezuelan's opposition and
then Secretary of Defense Mark Esper, who ran the Pentagon for a period under
the first Trump term. And in his memoirs, Esper said that one of Guyaido's colleagues told him, quote,
"We have some plans the US government knows we are working on that aren't
ready yet." Um, and Esper said he left the meeting after the plans were brought up. So, what do you make of Esper's
admission? It seems to be the most highlevel admission of fornowledge and possible involvement by the Trump
administration. Yeah, absolutely. I uh
I I think that um when I read through the discovery, it is
painfully obvious that the intelligence community knew,
National Security Council, everybody in those councils knew. Um furthermore, my
prosecution is really a cover up. It's, you know, the the my prosecution was
initiated from the national security uh component of the DOJ. Um that component
is run by a guy named John Eisenberg. John Eisenberg was placed in the initial
Trump administration as national security adviser by um Michael Flynn.
General Flynn, General that that you know John Eisenberg was National Security Council.
He was in the White House the time Keith Schiller was in the White House. So these two individuals were working
together. Um I don't like where I'm where I come from
that's a conflict of interest, right? And although you know John Eisenberg did not initiate
this prosecution, he certainly inherited it and he certainly knows who I am. So
it's interesting stuff. I don't mean to get off track but you know the connections in this are
pretty alarming. No, no, that is alarming and I I wasn't aware of it before. So, so John
Eisenberg was or no, he is the US assistant attorney general for the NSC.
Um, he was appointed or installed in that position in June 2025. And you said
he's overseeing your prosecution, right? And before that, he was deputy
counsel to Donald Trump himself and he was a legal adviser to the NSC in
Trump's first term. So he he was around he was in the room with
people who you say had direct knowledge of your plot and now he's trying to
basically put you in the slammer to shut you up. Right. Seems that way. Um, furthermore,
to go back to the room with Mark Esper, yeah, the admission because Claver Cardonas
was there, national security adviser back then and now, I believe he was in
the room. So, it is not out of the realm of possibility that the individual that Mark Esper is talking about is George
Betton Court because George Bettin Court had made similar statements to me. Uh,
and that is in black and white. So George Benort being someone you
described as a CIA asset, someone who was coordinating between the opposition and
US intelligence. Correct. Right.
And and so you had these backers um within global governments initially,
then Renon signs a contract with you. Um, did you have any potential backers
for the day after in the event of a success that would seek Venezuelan resources and
contracts in Venezuela the day after Maduro? Uh, yes, absolutely. This was global
governments, right? Okay. So once this moves forward and and then so the trunch of money which was the
promise by Horn and I think you saw back then I think the bounty was probably 15
million and if I might you know the that would have probably hit the account
pretty quickly. The the big fear of somebody like me is if
obviously the if everything goes to plan and we are
not sabotaged by you know the intelligence agency and the Venezuelan opposition.
Maduro and his his guys they flee the country captured whatever it is. But this is the point where in a coup where
you have to defend against the counter coup. I needed men on the ground. I needed Americans on the ground and this
would be the security component. I needed armed Americans who were uh
trained to a high level, special operations level on the ground um 60 or so in order to help defend against the
counter coup. Furthermore, these individuals would
have worked by with and through the local militaries the assets that I had
previously described these these individuals. So my men would have pieced in into these
um these units and essentially helped uh maintain law and order um and bring
about fair and free elections in I don't know say a year or so depending obviously after humanitarian aid is
restored or is uh you know orders restored humanitarian aid has been
distributed. Okay. It sounds like a hairbrain scheme
from my point of view. Uh it sounds like it never had any chance of success. And
you've described a potential larger operation of trained mercenaries in the
US as something that wouldn't even scratch the paint of the Venezuelan
military, which is, you know, a fairly they have some fairly well-trained
regulars. Caracus is encircled with various layers of security. There are air defenses, they have an air force,
they're, you know, they're able to compete with the Colombian military. So why would you have thought that your
operation would have succeeded? Why did you, in your own words, cowboy up with just a
small detachment of men? So I think you're missing it, Max. That's exactly what I was doing. Do you
understand? Explain. Yeah. Okay. So what I'm saying is it
would have been hairbrain if Yeah. We go in with 60 dudes. That's not possible. This is the counter coup. Do do you
understand? We're in a different phase at this point. Hypothetically, right? So, hypothetically, if Maduro,
if my units are alerted, I make my link up um and Maduro's
the highle assets activate Venezuelan regulars. These Venezuelan regulars now
take care of Maduro, Cabo, and Tariq. These guys are now off the table, but there's an element of chaos, right? And
so what I'm saying is I now need to establish some semblance of order. I
need to establish a hunda. I need a, you know, a leadership, a group of leaders
that can govern um a country without leadership. This is where I bring in 60
Americans just for security. This is they're not fighting anybody. They're basically tying in with Venezuelan
regulars and they're going to essentially uh work by with and through these regulars. Um the the the hard
part's done essentially. There's no fighting, right? There's no nobody's fighting anybody. Furthermore, um we
establish this ha in order to bring about
some semblance of leadership and fair and free elections. Does that is that
you tracking Yeah. I mean, this is your your theory on the operation and how it would ideally play out.
This is this is evidenced by I mean, this is essentially what they did in Bolivia, right? And this is largely
we're we're just there. We're not there to govern or do anything. We're not doing conducting military operations.
We're working kind of like you're trained to do, right, in any I guess
special operation capacity for a Green Beret, which is to train, advise and assist like the Iraqis, right? So in
Iraq, you you know, Green Beret units will work by with and through uh Iraqi
units. So in Venezuela it would have been similar but much easier because you
have generals who have now removed um
Maduro, Tariq and Cabo. Uh a temporary leadership has been established and so
now it's you know we have to basically survive 3
months of potential counter coups. The way we do that is we essentially try to
align the existing military under the temporary leadership.
Okay. And and you're coming in on on fishing boats. Uh no different Max, those are a different
group of people. So how you were going to come in on land
secretly and link up with No, this is generals.
So let's let's go back. Um so the first part of the operation is a link up. This
is the 60 people in boats, right? And then a small boat with Americans. The
American contingent with some Venezuelans gets off in a a marina and it's basically just a link up. We're
linking up with assets in Venezuela who have task and maneuver units.
Powerful people who are embedded with Maduro.
Does that make sense? I mean, it it doesn't make sense to me because I've been to Venezuela several
times and I kind of have seen a picture of the society that I don't think was
well understood or is well understood by the US, which is there that Maduro has a large base of support and that the war
for Venezuela is basically a class war. It's basically the middle class and the upper class want to oust Maduro and then
you have masses of people who literally weren't on the map before Maduro's
predecessor who was elected you know he didn't just steal power Ugo Chavez
uh they they support him and the military largely comes from that element and is supported despite heavy sanctions
and is supportive of the broader structure of what they call the Bolivarian revolution
um which has used oil wealth to benefit the population and the military.
I mean the military prior to Chavez was just sort of a neoc colonial military
was not very not not as formidable. So why would you or anyone around you have
thought that you could dislodge key leadership in the military for example
um you know the defense minister from this power structure like it didn't
it never made sense to me it doesn't seem like there's this popular ferment
for an armed revolution in which Americans would come in and advise it
seemed more like From an outsers's perspective, you were coming in there with the idea that you
and a group of Green Beretss could actually fight your way to Caracus. No, that's again that is not what the
plan was. I mean, you were grabbed by Fisher, so I'm kind of questioning. No, I think there's a lot of confusion.
So, I think there's some confusion for you about what the plan was. Um, I'm talking about the reality versus and
how the plan kind of ran up against the hard rocks of reality, which the plan ran up against Yeah, I
think the plan ran up against the hard rocks of the CIA sabotage, right? It's
like when you have people in boats who are giving your GPS coordinates, right?
It's that this is the this is the reality of it. the people in Venezuela. I mean, it's it's great to say that, you
know, Maduro has a lot of support. He does. That said, there were generals that were very close to him that were
not aligned with him, right? This was obviously
infiltrated from the beginning. Um, and so I I understand that, but at the same
time, it wasn't that hard to sell. Like, you know, Maduro was terrified of
getting bombed by the US. He was watching these Iranian generals and I was well placed. I I had access to all
three of those individuals. Uh and to be perfectly honest, it would have worked fine um if we had our link up because
ultimately back then the belief near Maduro was that
US invasion was imminent or some action was imminent. Uh and so it's not that
hard. It's a pretty simple it's it's happened several times throughout history. You know, you get access and
placement to people around the king and those people are the ones who do the heavy lifting.
And who who are the who are the generals? That's I'm not going to these people
have families. Um, so you it was said that Alcala's
fighters had been infiltrated by Venezuelan intelligence and that's how
they knew you were coming. U, but you're saying, let me just clarify something. You said that the CIA actually gave up
your coordinates. That's right. Can you tell me more about that?
Yeah. So, there was communication between Lester Toed and George Bettton
Courts. I guess there are compatriots in the camps. Uh, and obvious they're
obviously they're reaching back to DNI, but there were conversations between DNI
and men in the camps.
Okay. So, Nicholas Maduro, like the Maduro regime didn't really, they didn't have
to do anything. They just had to, you know, go to the have their Coast Guard
go to the right place at the right time. It wasn't the Maduro regime who
infiltrated us. It was the intelligence community of, you know,
Venezuela opposition/CIA.
Okay. And why did they want to sell you out? because they did not like Alcala
and they wanted to be the ones leading the operation down the road or was that
maybe I I think maybe the tactical level for the Venezuelans but they were getting a lot of money back then through
US aid. I mean it was I mean billions and this is evidenced by the lawsuit
that's going on right now with Juan Gaido in Delaware. So the CIA obviously has other
interests. They were not interested in um removing Maduro. Uh they were more
than happy to drag their feet. They just they didn't want to.
Closing the embassy. Mike Pompeo I mean basically made it impossible to close
the embassy in or it made it impossible for the CIA to operate out of Kacus,
which is typically how something like that would be done. They would have done the exact same thing I did. If the if
the CIA was going to flip the country, they would have done exactly what I did. They would have um gotten close to, you
know, generals close to Maduro Cabo Tariq. Do you understand? Like
my understanding is they tried to do that. Um many Venezuelan officials have
come out and said that they were offered loads of money to flip. Um, you know, I've interviewed one who
said his basically his family was being blackmailed to get him to flip. Uh,
Venezuelan generals, some of them have flipped. So, this was going on. But you're saying that
but it what what was missing from the CIA's plan or did they not actually seek regime change at that point?
I they absolutely did not seek regime change. I mean this is evidenced by the fact that the embassy was closed down
and so because they weren't seeking regime change. I mean that that why else would the
president or the you know president's inner circle come to me? So what what I'm what I'm telling you like the plan
that I I came up with I didn't come up with it. This is had a long history of
um use over the last you know whatever decades. It's pretty simple. you just
get close to you get people close to the king and you have them do the do the work. Uh it's their country. That said,
the CIA was never interested in regime change. And if you look at kind of what happens what's happening now in the
news, I don't know that they are now, right? And so what is incentivizing them
at the highest level? Well, they obviously have some sort of um apparatus, whether it's the drug
trade or whatever. I mean, there's a reason they don't want to facilitate change in Venezuela, unless now they are
aligned with the Trump administration, which I'm not sure.

[admin]

Part 2 of 2

Well, there's been competing factions. I
mean, you can see it play out through the conflict between Rick Grenell, who wants to negotiate with Venezuela and
reap uh, you know, oil deals with the US. The New York Times reported Venezuela was willing to give up
contracts with China and Russia in exchange for better relations with the US. And then you have Marco Rubio
representing South Florida who wants to go for
the full regime change and is it seems to be using the drug war as cover.
They're escalating from attacking fishing boats. Many of them heading to
Trinidad and Tobago supposedly with cocaine, basically extrajudicially
executing alleged drug traffickers on the high seas to Donald Trump's pledge
at Quantico to attack Venezuela on land supposedly to attack cartels who they
now identify as narcoterrorists. They're using a sort of terrorism designation.
So this really does signal a major escalation. It's said that Grenell is isolated, and Rubio's basically taken charge of the policy, and Maria Corina Machado is supposed to be the the US asset that will come into power after Maduro and grant "democracy contracts" to Trump connected businessmen on the day after she just got the Nobel Peace Prize. What are your thoughts on this whole operation? Does this make sense to you? And are they really aiming at installing Maria
Karina Machado? I guess I'm just generally seeking your thoughts on it.

I mean, listen, that briefs really well. But to be perfectly honest, the only reason my plan would have worked is
because of the connections that I developed close to the Maduro camp, and Cabo and Tariq.
If that is not done and that is not established, then it's invasion.
Yeah, it's invasion. There's nothing else. So, and then it would be just a blood bath
and another migration wave to the north, right? And how do you justify that, right? Like, how do you justify a
country invading a much smaller country, much weaker country, although we did it in
Iraq, um, Afghanistan, but and we went there for the resources, too. Um
but and you participated in both of those
wars and you you felt the moral injury presumably
of those wars. So I I think it's I think it's there
there's several merits to I'm a soldier, right? So at the
strategic level um or sorry the tactical level I understand that the certain
component of the United States is always going to look down on soldiers. I totally get that. Um but at the end of
the day we're really the only people who are going to defend this country against anybody. And so as a soldier we go where
we're sent and we win where we fight. um to disparage a soldier is
um it's easy to do that in a time of peace or when we're
you know when we're taking part in actions that aren't popular obviously with Iraq we were there too long um in
Afghanistan we were there way too long right one of my old units so fifth
special forces group we won Afghanistan in uh 6 weeks we teamed up with the
Northern Alliance and we actually decimated the enemy. Um that said, we
moved in after the fact in order to facilitate big business um and large
contracts. But what remains are the soldiers we still have to fight and we still have to defend and fight side by
side and protect each other no matter how demonized we are by uh certain American people. Uh I much see Venezuela
in similar light. Uh so you have told me that you have met with some of these men and and whatnot but so have I. One of
the individuals I met was tortured for um 2 years. Another individual I met who
was a captain, and he was tortured as well for much longer. And so when you tell me that, well, you know that Nicholas Maduro and the regime, they're they're kind of the good guys, have to be honest with you, there's really no good guys in this. The Maduro regime is a very brutal dictatorship. The opposition government are equally, if not more brutal.

And in my estimation, it's really the people who I
was seeking to help and defend when I decided to do this initiative. And the
way I did that obviously was to remove all of the bad actors from the equation.
um Maduro being one of them, but also uh obviously I had to work with Gaido, but
he was not trusted and he was not liked. I do the best I can, right? Uh and
that's what I tried to do with Venezuela. I do not think it was at all hairbrained. I think you are completely
misunderstanding the intent of the operation. uh it is nuanced but I do
think nowadays I I don't know how anybody can trust the
fact that Maria Karina is in any way illegitimate. Um I think the elections
in Venezuela have to be completely disounted. Um I think there has to be a
a separate entity that provides fair and free elections. And I think that outside
of all the opposition, all of these parties need to be younger leadership that step forward and actually take
center stage if there's going to be any kind of true um you know
freedom in Venezuela.

Why do you think Maria Karina Machado is
not legitimate? Because she's been involved in coups and potentially
violent activity, and has used undemocratic means to unseat the government, or is there another reason?

Correct. No, correct. And I think that when you look at Leap Lopez and Juan Guide and all of these groups, and any of the any of the opposition, Caprias, all of them. How do you as as a Trump administration even if you do bring about regime change let's say the CIA
gets what what they tried to get, what I got, which is access and placement at the highest levels, and somehow forcing
Maduro, great then what's the power vacuum, how do
you fill that power void, because I'm here to tell you if you don't and I you know I I had planned for this but if you
don't fill that power void then there's going to be civil war there's going to blood in the streets and this is what I
want to this is what I initially wanted to hope to avoid. Um
no I agree completely. I mean they would have to purge chavismo which means millions of people would who have
collect you know an organized social structure would have to be purged from society fairly violently and these these
are armed many of them are armed uh for self-defense. So, I don't see how you avoid an internal blood bath or a
massive migration wave if you just go ahead with an invasion. So, I I agree
completely with you about that. Um, just in closing, uh, what can you tell us about your prosecution and upcoming
trial? Um, and well, listen, I I would love to be able to get to trial. Um, that would be
amazing. Yeah. Well, what's happening instead?
It is lawfare. I mean, you know, for an administration that's kind of uh
hellbent on um Hold on a sec, Max. This thing's kind of acting.
Sorry. Oh, wait. I have to try. There we go. Sorry. Um
yeah, so for an administration that is, you know, ran on the fact that
we're going to fight lawfare and we're going to go after weaponization federal government. Uh, seems like I'm being
weaponized against pretty heavily. This is a political prosecution. It's pretty obvious. I think that I, like I said, I
would love to get to trial. That would be amazing if I could be, you know, stay on the outside and and uh be able to um
strategize with my lawyers, but the reality is the prosecutors are working incredibly hard and uh to put me back in
jail and they want me behind bars so that I don't get access to classified information. There's a ton of it. Um,
obviously if they put me in jail right now, it's it would be me fighting to get classified
information for years and years and years. Um, forcing myself to stay in jail. So, I
I'd rather stay out of jail and just force them to give me classified information. Uh, which it's taken oh, I
don't know, over a year to get just discovery that is not classified. So,
there is obvious uh government involvement here and um I don't know. Let's see your cards.
I'm ready to go to trial. Well, we will definitely be following up
with you and particularly if you go to trial and manage to obtain classified
info which will presumably corroborate and confirm many of the claims you've
made to me about highlevel Trump administration and US intelligence involvement in this plot. Um, is there
anything else you want to add before we close? Yeah, I I think that I don't really have
to tell you about it, Max. It's in the Discovery. You can read about it.
Well, we'll be publishing that discovery at the Grey Zone and featuring it right
here. Uh so, Jordan Gudau, former Green Beret and the face of Operation Gideon,
thanks so much for joining us at the Greyzone. Cool. Thanks, Max.

***

Comments:


@theacadogan7923
21 hours ago
This just tells me the US is run by terrorists themselves...sad

@EsW865
16 hours ago
The US isn't even a country. It's a terrorist corporation.

@disco4553
22 hours ago
"I wanted fair and free elections" - By installing CIA backed assets into power.

@JuliusGalacki
17 hours ago (edited)
While the information is valuable, his moral blindness makes me nauseous.

@drewbenavente3121
21 hours ago
Dudes still think invading a foreign nation and overthrowing its government is normal and nobel.

@carpediem44
20 hours ago
Jordan, you were not defending the U.S. in Iraq or Afghanistan. Be real. We had no "enemies" in Iraq or Afghanistan. Just because we didn't like their governments and aspects of their culture did NOT give us the right to slaughter them.

@TheShodan92
18 hours ago (edited)
The man says.." We won Afghanistan. Our unit teamed up with the Northern Alliance and destroyed our enemy in 6 weeks" .... Remember.. It took the United States 20 years, trillions of $$ , 4 U.S presidents to replace the Taliban with.....the Taliban.

@theacadogan7923
21 hours ago
This guy is talking in circles and to say hes a soldier to protect our country , it's only about destabilizing other countries for their resources, it's never about so called democracy, it's disgusting!!!

@thomasdorsey3227
20 hours ago
Terrorism is now called work

@terrygivens132
18 hours ago
CIA controls drug trafficking. I don’t even think Mexican cartels operate drug tracking without CIA.

@debralarson4323
18 hours ago
WOW he really believes his job is righteous , he’s a nutball machine

@billthecat3688
8 hours ago
"Free and fair elections" is such BS. They're installing a CIA puppet that will serve US and corporate interests, not Venezuela interests.

@user-lu8mc3wo3i
23 hours ago
“Take back their country” Most Venezuelans supported Chavez and Madura.

@robbieroy2179
18 hours ago
Maduro is a good guy. The US can't allow good guys to rule a country with resources the US wants.

@capitolpolice1504
22 hours ago
This guy should be in jail. They are the economic hitmen

@gerrychan5729
19 hours ago
"Defend this country [America] from anybody" What he meant to say is DEFEND US EVIL BILLIONAIRES and their interest!!

@ecclesiastes6542
22 hours ago
CIA drug traffickers! Whats news about that

@aabikrman
18 hours ago
“Help the Venezuelans take back their own country…”. How benevolent

@gabrieltreewolf4618
23 hours ago
He speaks of honest and free elections but omits that all the candidates will be American puppets! Thanks Grayzone for opening government windows!

@jazzocat
21 hours ago
This guy seems to have swallowed the US propaganda that Maduro is a tyrannical leader. He was elected by the majority of the population and all the opposition have links to the US.

@ohmydays5567
21 hours ago
It's all about getting their OIL!

@EsW865
15 hours ago (edited)
The weird thing about Americans is they act like they actually have a right to behave like this. The smirk on his face shown zero responsibility or remorse.

@neilfriedman
23 hours ago
Thank you Max, you are doing heroic journalism

@comradeJon629
18 hours ago
This guy is so hard to listen to. Hats off to you Max for keeping it focused.

@elianamckee
23 hours ago
Thank you Max and the Grayzone!

@ujean56
20 hours ago
This guy is terrifying. The US, threatened by virtually no one, tortures in defence of the nation. Venezuela, threatened by virtually every western power on earth, is a brutal dictatorship because it is eleged to be practicing torture. Very creepy. He's the voice of the monster coming from inside the belly of the beast.

@darrellernst5493
22 hours ago
Yeah, all they wanted to do was get people installed that would sell out Venezuela resources to foreign interests.

@a.sdoost
21 hours ago (edited)
What justifications he use to sleep at night!
There is no honor to be a US soldier. They are plain mercenaries.

@DSimonJones
22 hours ago
USA was born in genocide. Why the surprise when they progress elsewhere

@zacchamas6458
20 hours ago
No wonder why the world in this mess ! God bless you Max for all you do for humanity!

@icewendigo2320
22 hours ago
If the body that applauded War Criminal Netenyahou also applauds Juan Guaidó, that tell me everything. The US should leave Venezuella alone.

@nolanroberts9870
21 hours ago
Damn, only Max and The Grayzone could get this dude to agree to an interview. Amazing stuff

@bradbaker4679
23 hours ago
Why should overthrowing Venezuelan government be in the interests of ordinary US citizens???

@TheShodan92
18 hours ago
It is said, if you lay down with dogs you will get fleas. This guy is infested with flea bites from the filthy dogs he's associated with.

@chrisgreene2623
22 hours ago
Most Venezuelans want nothing to do with any American coup installed puppet. That is why they supported Chavez having had decades of being subservient and exploited by the declining paper tiger USA

@haraldisdead
20 hours ago
Only Max, when asked "does that kinda answer your question?" will be like "uhh... no, not really."

@huepix
22 hours ago
With over 60% of the vote, Venezuelans have already made their choice

@cardanotony1097
19 hours ago
Thanks max
Viva Venezuela
Viva Comandante Maduro’s

@OpheliaPG
23 hours ago
Tell me MK Ultra is ongoing without telling me= Jordan Goudreau

Dude thinks he’s Jason Bourne but is nothing but another tool.

@robbieroy2179
17 hours ago
Of all countries in the world, Venezuela is the ONE that has fair and free, foolproof elections.

@DogloverTm
18 hours ago
They are fighting for GOD (gold,oil and drugs)

@tatokay4285
17 hours ago
Incredible how these type of guys have such underdeveloped minds that are capable of doing so much damage to society's they know very little about.

@teyizl904
23 hours ago
It is quite crazy to hear him still talking about Guaido and fair and free election. this is depressing.
Still thanks Grayzone for this interview

@hereticallyconscious
17 hours ago
Maduro was elected in a well documented fair election , more so than any US election ; who is this man to say he was a “ tyrannical “ leader ?

@darrellernst5493
22 hours ago
No one was paying him that much money because they wanted free, Fair elections.
The people he says he was working for didn't give two s** about the people of Venezuela they just wanted to steal the resources.
If memory serves me right Jimmy Carter supervised the elections of Chavez and said they were perfect, honest and fair.

@tamarahoneyman2295
20 hours ago
Capitalism = corruption = greed = human depravity.
Your amazing Max, the world needs brave men like you.

@PJPJ-s8j
23 hours ago
A lot of Cartel members get DIRECT training in Izreel by the IDF. Just saying.

@abdimohamed8640
20 hours ago
Max is a gem . Keep going Max

@Cataclysm123
22 hours ago
Guy's a jerk!

@VeteranfromOz
18 hours ago
Juan Guaido declared to be the president while never standing in the election. Convince me it's not about regime change to seize oil.

@dynamicsoulslayer
22 hours ago
High Value Journalism

oh they legitimized a “war criminal?!?” Ya mean a demon like Eliot Abrams?!?

@Blue-k7d4i
22 hours ago
6:35 typical coloniser talking points, we are not stupid. It was never to free or help the Venezuelan people, just to further the US own geo political interest.

@Nine-Signs
21 hours ago
"it's nuanced, i get it"
No mate, you dont, you were sent to kill people because the USA does not like left wing governments who try to direct the profits of their resources back at their own people via social, welfare, and educational programmes as that limits profits for US / western capitalist corporations. The Venezuelan people have control of their country and have among the most transparent and heavily internationally observed elections of any nation, their elections are vastly more legitimate than America's, yet with your head full of lies you tried to take control off them and give it back to your own country via a coup that would have then led on to a right wing puppet government being installed that would do Americas bidding just as it was before Chavez.

@PamDigiovanni
21 hours ago
Since I live in Canada we have been going to Cuba for years! My husband and I started going in 1990. The main tv channel was China English! I watched a most informative documentary on the different Coups and interference from the USA in South America for years!!!!Not a documentary you would ever see on MSM in North America!

@robbieroy2179
17 hours ago
Muduro is not a brutal dictator. This guy does not know Venezuela at all.

@robbieroy2179
18 hours ago
The worst is Machado who is worse than Trump. She wants to be president.

@Desyo-wn7ib
17 hours ago
Hopefully Venezuelans see this, it should be broadcast on a major channel so that the entire Venezuelan people will see it and support Maduro.

@wilhelmbeck8498
19 hours ago
I simply don't get how anyone will allow themselves to be drafted into CIA ( or FSB or Mossad for that matter) . Getting paid for morally sickening acts ? Come on - what kind of person would do such ?

@abies2000
18 hours ago
These special, meaning beyond the law, operatives are horrifying. What chance does peace stand when people like this are out there willing to enable the worst among us?

@SGQQui
18 hours ago
The world knows who the bad guys are

@jenniferfarber2700
18 hours ago
Everyone else has said everything I want to say about this stooge & they've said it better than I ever could. Just wow. This guy drank the entire jug of kool-aid.
And Max has the patience of a saint.

@gustavosanchez341
18 hours ago (edited)
There is nothing new under the sun. The elite run the country with their corporations and uses the military to protect their power (money) in the name of the state, while their citizens provide them with their tax money and their sons and daughters to die in foreing lands on behalf of their corporations.

[admin]

“Cold-Blooded Murder”: David Cole on Trump’s Boat Attacks & CIA Covert Action in Venezuela
by Amy Goodman
DemocracyNow
October 17, 2025
https://www.democracynow.org/2025/10/17 ... transcript



"Getting Away with Murder"

There are growing questions over the legality of U.S. strikes on suspected drug boats in the Caribbean. “These are sitting ducks, and we are simply engaged in cold-blooded murder of individuals who may or may not be drug smugglers,” says David Cole, professor at the Georgetown University Law Center. Cole says that President Trump is “committing homicide” by killing people without trial. “These individuals who have now been sent to the bottom of the sea by this president, if they were tried, at most, would face a sentence of some period of years,” says Cole. “There would be no death penalty authorized under the Constitution for these individuals, even assuming they’re guilty.”

This comes as Trump has authorized the CIA to carry out covert operations inside Venezuela aimed at regime change, raising fears of a military confrontation between the two countries.

Transcript

This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. I’m Nermeen Shaikh, with Amy Goodman in Santa Fe.

AMY GOODMAN: The Washington Post is reporting U.S. Special Operations helicopters and B-52 strategic bombers have been spotted flying less than 90 miles off the coast of Venezuela. Meanwhile, President Trump has authorized the CIA to carry out lethal covert operations inside Venezuela. The U.S. is also continuing to strike what they say are suspected drug boats in the Caribbean, despite growing questions over the legality of the strikes.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: In a stunning development, the U.S. admiral who commands military forces in Latin America, Alvin Holsey, is stepping down early from his post as head of U.S. Southern Command, reportedly because he had concerns about the U.S. attacking boats in the Caribbean. Holsey is the first African American commander of SOUTHCOM.

Earlier this week, President Trump was questioned by a reporter about U.S. military operations in the Caribbean.

REPORTER: Mr. President, on Venezuelans boats, I want to ask you: Why not have the Coast Guard stop them, which it is empowered by law to do? You know, this way, you can confirm who’s on the boat and ensure that they’re doing what they — what you suspect they’re doing.

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: Because we’ve been doing that for 30 years, and it has been totally ineffective. They have faster boats. Some of these boats are seriously — I mean, they’re world-class speedboats, and — but they’re not faster than missiles. But we’ve been trying to do that for years, and so much of the drugs, 25, 30%, would come in through the seas.

REPORTER: What’s the next step in this war on cartels? And are you considering options — are you considering strikes on land?

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: Well, I don’t want to tell you exactly, but we are certainly looking at land now, because we’ve got the sea very well under control.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: We’re joined now by David Cole, professor in law and public policy at the Georgetown University Law Center. He’s the former national legal director at the ACLU. His new piece in The New York Review of Books about Trump’s bombing of boats in the Caribbean is titled “Getting Away with Murder.”

Welcome back to the program, David Cole. If you could just start out by responding to these attacks and lay out your argument in The New York Review of Books piece, “Getting Away with Murder”?

DAVID COLE: Sure. You know, we have the power and the authority to make drug smuggling a crime. We have the power and the authority to interdict boats that are bringing drugs into this country. We have the power and the authority to try people. If they’re convicted by a jury, they can then be sentenced to a time of — a period of time in prison. What we do not have authority to do, what we do not have any legal authority to do, is to just execute people from the skies, without any evidence, without any trial, without any showing that they pose some sort of imminent danger to anybody.

And yet, that’s what President Trump is doing. He’s taken a metaphor, the “war on drugs,” and mistook it for an actual war, and is now engaged in premeditated execution of civilians. We’re not at war. No one even heard of this organization in Venezuela, Tren de Aragua, until President Trump declared that they were somehow attacking us, and justifying his use of military force. So, we’re not at war.

And even if we were at war, people on these boats are civilians. They are not attacking us. And under the international rules that govern armed conflict, you cannot target civilians unless they are actually engaged in hostilities against you, unless they are actually shooting against you. That is not what’s going on here. These are sitting ducks, and we are simply engaged in cold-blooded murder of individuals who may or may not be drug smugglers.

AMY GOODMAN: So, David Cole, you have actually Republicans, as well, who are condemning this, like Kentucky Republican Senator Rand Paul. And I want to ask: What if the situation were reversed? Right? What if a foreign country was targeting U.S. ships, saying, without giving evidence, that these were drug-smuggling ships and saying that their intelligence operations are now operating covertly in the United States? And there is, you know — and at least at this point, what, some 27 people have been killed. What do you feel U.S. — those in the United States can do to enforce the law? This is about the rule of law. It looks like Trump is imminently going to attack Venezuela. I don’t know if this is diverted tension from the possibility of the release of the Epstein files, but he has so upped the ante here.

DAVID COLE: No, absolutely. And, you know, there is a problem of drug smuggling across the Canadian border, from the United States to Canada. But does that give Canada the right to start executing Americans who it believes might be engaged in smuggling drugs? Absolutely not. And if Canada did that to Americans, we would be up in arms. We would be, essentially, treating that as an act of war, and an unprovoked act of war. So, this is — under domestic law, it’s murder. Under international law, it’s a war crime.

So, you know, it’s great that Rand Paul is standing up against it, but we should all be standing up against it. The notion that the president of the United States can order premeditated murder of individuals who do not pose any sort of threat, who are not shooting at us, are not attacking us, is completely outrageous. And, you know, what troubles me is that, by and large, it has barely caused a ripple. And a lot of things that Trump has done are deeply disturbing — weaponizing the Justice Department, pardoning the folks who were involved in January 6, cutting off aid to all kinds of needy people around the world and here at home. Those are outrageous. But there’s a difference when you start killing human beings without any process whatsoever.

You know, we have a death penalty in this country, but the death penalty can only be imposed, first of all, after a long and rigorous procedure to make sure that you haven’t gotten the wrong person. And secondly, it can only be imposed where the defendant is convicted of murder. These individuals who have now been sent to the bottom of the sea by this president, if they were tried, at most, would face a sentence of some period of years. There would be no death penalty authorized under the Constitution for these individuals, even assuming they’re guilty.

And yet, President Trump is just taking the law into his own hands, turning a metaphor into an actual war, and now suggesting that he’s going to authorize the CIA to use lethal force within Venezuela. It’s really just a completely outrageous action, and it’s very disturbing to me that there’s not more outrage within the Senate, within the House and within the American people.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: Well, David Cole, another issue, of course, that people have commented on extensively is that, first of all, Venezuela is neither the main producer nor exporter of drugs to the U.S., which has raised speculation about the motives of Trump targeting Venezuela rather than the countries who are either the biggest producers or exporters. What do you think explains that?

DAVID COLE: Yeah, no question, this is a political action by the president against Maduro, against a weak country that he can — he feels that he has the — you know, he’s a bully. He’s a bully at home. He’s a bully overseas. He feels that he can do this without significant pushback from Venezuela, and so he’s doing it. It is not about stopping drugs from coming into this country. Drugs continue to come into this country across the border every day in much larger amounts than come on speedboats from Venezuela. This is about his flexing muscle, acting the bully that he is.

But again, it is also about him committing homicide. There is a federal felony statute that makes it a crime to engage in homicide on the high seas. And that is what is happening.

The other thing I’ll say about it is it’s deeply concerning that the military is going along. You know, if this recent commander of SOUTHCOM stepped down because of concerns, that’s good. But what about all the other military people who are engaged in this action, which violates the most basic principles of the laws of war, which they are trained in and which they are obligated not to follow orders when they’re ordered to do something that is blatantly illegal?

AMY GOODMAN: David Cole, two quick final questions. One, isn’t the former Philippine President Duterte before the International Court on trial for doing exactly the same thing, murdering alleged drug traffickers?

DAVID COLE: Yeah, and President Trump has immunity from criminal prosecution in the United States because the Supreme Court gave it to him. He does not have immunity from international prosecution, and nor do those individuals who have participated in these murders. They can be tried in international tribunals, and they should be.

AMY GOODMAN: And finally, you have Pam Bondi, the chief enforcer of the law in this country, the U.S. attorney general — as we move into a segment now on “No Kings Day” — comparing how the U.S. is dealing with these so-called alleged drug traffickers, who they haven’t presented evidence of before they kill, to antifa, and saying that they are going to deal with antifa in exactly the same way. I mean, this is a key point, that they are going to take out antifa, as they’re bombing these boats and killing people. Your final comment, as a constitutional lawyer, on what this means, especially as we move into what could be the largest protest across the country in U.S. history?

DAVID COLE: Well, I think this is an opening wedge, right? You start by targeting the vulnerable. You start by acting overseas. You start by going after immigrants. And then you turn on your own people. And we’ve already seen him turning the military on his own people — in Los Angeles, in Washington, D.C., in Chicago, in Portland. He is turning the military on his own people. And the rationale that he offers for being permitted to kill people without any trial, without any process, on allegations, would — does not stop at the borders.

And when you have the attorney general suggesting that similar tactics are going to be used against our own people, that demonstrates the slippery slope that we are on. And I think, you know, the most important thing we can do in stopping that slippery slope is go out on No Kings Day, is show this president that we don’t want a president who kills illegally in our name.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: Well, thanks so much. David Cole, and we’re going to go to the No Kings protest after the break. David Cole, professor in law and public policy at Georgetown University Law Center and the former ACLU national legal director. We’ll link to your new piece in The New York Review of Books, “Getting Away with Murder.”

[admin]

Ex-Israeli negotiator EXPOSES Trump's Gaza plan

Declassified UK
Premiered Oct 15, 2025

Help Declassified expose the powerful by joining us: https://www.declassifieduk.org/join/

A former Israeli negotiator told Declassified that there needs to be 'accountability' for the genocide in Gaza before serious negotiations between Palestinians and Israelis can take place.

We spoke to Daniel Levy - currently director of the U.S./Middle East Project - just as Donald Trump announced that negotiations for peace in Gaza have reached 'phase two' after an exchange of Palestinian and Israeli captives took place this week.

Levy also said that Trump's peace summit and possible appointment of Tony Blair as administrator in Gaza are distractions designed to sideline the popular movements against the genocide.



Transcript

There's jubilation in Israel and
Palestine, as people are reunited with
their loved ones after years in
captivity. But what next for Trump's
peace plan?

[Trump] Well, see, now you can be a little bit nicer, Bibi, cuz you're not at war anymore, Bibi; ha ha ha ha.

Will Tony Blair become Governor of Gaza,
or will Netanyahu just resume his
bombardment? Joining me to discuss this
is former Israeli negotiator Daniel
Levy. Great to meet you.

Good to be with you.

Beyond this exchange of people in captivity, has
anything actually been agreed about
what's going to happen next?

So that's the thing. And let's start, as
you did, with huge relief, deeply
emotional pictures, people coming home,
being united with their loved ones, the
last 20 Israelis, military age males,
Palestinians who were put behind bars by
a military tribunal of an illegal
occupation, being released.

And of course, the overwhelming relief; Palestinians aren't being bombed,
displaced, starved, things aren't being destroyed.

And that's as far as it goes in terms of
what they've managed to agree on detail,
other than getting the aid in, also
hugely crucial. But that still
apparently will have an envelope of
Israeli oversight.

Tony Blair, he was in
Sharm El Sheikh for this summit with Trump, and he's
being touted as a Governor of Gaza.
What do you make of all that?

More than a century after the Balfour Declaration,
you kind of do a Scrabble word
remix where you throw the letters of Balfour
up in the air, you add one, and you get
Blair as the next Governor.
I think it shows (a) how divorced from
any interest in Palestinians this whole thing is, and
(b) I would say how unrealistic it is. If those who were at that Sharm El Sheikh summit
with Trump were being at all honest,
they would have told him it was "a really bad
idea, Mr. President. It's not going to play well with our publics,
with us." And I think it's just indicative of the dystopian reality we
all live in. Palestine has, in this last
period, been "Exhibit A" in the absurdities around the inequities of
of our lives today. Blair is doubling down on that.

And when you were an Israeli negotiator
in the 1990s during the Oslo peace
process, Yasser Arafat actually made huge
concessions. Now today, the Palestinians are in an
even weaker bargaining position. Do you
think they can get anything much out of
these negotiations? Can they get Israel
to really fully withdraw from Gaza?

The power dynamics that you refer to, at that time Palestinians made significant concessions, which didn't bode well for them.

What about now? On the one hand, that power asymmetry has been
exacerbated. The Palestinian national movement has largely collapsed. Israel is militarily where it is.

There's a flip side to that. The flip side is Israel seems to
be a lot more exposed, in terms of the layers of BS that people have peeled
off over the last two years. And so those who are pushing for
accountability, trying to get their governments to act, I don't think they are going to say, "Oh,
great. Fair enough. This is done now. We're going home. We can roll up that flag."

So I think the the potential Israeli vulnerability from
outside pressure is there in ways that
it wasn't. But that won't happen automatically. That's going to be a long hard slog.

Throughout the genocide, Netanyahu said
one of the goals was to defeat Hamas.
Hamas had to disarm. And Keir Starmer, when he
arrived in Egypt for these talks, said
that Britain would use its experience
from Northern Ireland to help disarm
Hamas. But the group have said that they
would only hand over their weapons to a
future Palestinian army. Is Hamas being
unreasonable?

The analogy is to Northern Ireland, to the
Good Friday Agreement. I mean, the Good
Friday agreement is 35-pages. It requires
referenda. It requires legislation.
There is detail there. There is the
buy-in of various factions. Sinn Féin is
acknowledged as a negotiating partner,
that you have to bring into the room.
And while, de facto, that's the case with
Hamas, still, the outside rhetoric is we
have to remove them!, destroy them!, they
must have no role!. Silliness.

The process in Ireland is not finished, it's
true. But it was credibly understood
by the Irish Catholic community, as being a
further stage in the rolling back of
British colonization. This paper reads more like an additional
stage in the entrenchment of Israeli
colonization, including the governance
structure that is on that paper for
Gaza, Governor Blair, and all of that
stuff.

Another thing that you might want
to draw attention to is
that agreement happens a century and a
half, approximately, after British
complicity in the Great Famine in
Ireland. This is happening literally the
morning after Israel has been conducting
what is a well-documented, by a UN
Commission of Inquiry, and others, what is
up before the International Court of
Justice, as a Genocide. You don't go from
one to the other. There needs to be
accountability in the equation. And none
of that is there.

The UK is trying to make itself sound useful, "Oh, do we have a
role?! Do we have a role?!" But it's also
an attempt to throw sand in the eyes of
the British public, to obfuscate, and
distract here by saying, "Okay, we've
moved on. We've turned a page. We're all
going to be helping to move forward."
Because they want this to go away. And
it's up to the British public to make
sure it doesn't go away, and they don't
succeed in throwing sand in our eyes.

One of the things that the British
government took credit for, I think it
was last month now, was recognizing,
finally recognizing a Palestinian state.
But very quickly, Middle East Minister
Hamish Falconer clarified that that
state would not have a right to an army
or an air force.

A Palestinian state should be
demilitarized. No army, no air force. It
should pose no threat to the Israelis
with whom it should live in peace.

Given what the Palestinian people have been
through, is it really realistic to
expect them not to have a military to
defend themselves? And is that even good
for Israel? Wouldn't a professional army
in Palestine be better than all these
different armed groups?

So, at the moment, you have Hamas, with whom the
Americans have been talking directly,
who were the kind of essential
counterparty to getting this deal. You
have them, an armed resistance -- they violated
international law on October 7th; I want
to make that absolutely clear --. Then you
have the Palestinian Authority, elected
over two decades ago, three decades ago,
excuse me, approximately, bleeding
credibility, with very little say in
terms of how their own people view them,
and they are deep in the business of
collaborating and cooperating with
Israel. They exist really at the
goodwill of Israel and its allies.

So what you don't have is a Palestinian,
unified, credible, political address. Because they should be the first ones to
adjudicate that question, right? This
should come from a legitimate,
Representative Palestinian movement that
can answer that question.

There have been calls for the PA needing
to reform in order to take part in these
negotiations. But when you look at what
Netanyahu's idea of reform is, it's
things like pulling out of the
international criminal court, and dropping
any kind of international legal cases
against Israel. Do you think that's
going to be an obstacle to the peace
process?

So there are two ways of understanding
the idea of Palestinian reform. (1) -- One, is
something owned by the Palestinians,
where the Palestinians
assume the agency that has been lacking
in their national movement, a Rebuilder
National Movement in a Unified Way; and
you have a Palestinian ability to
challenge the status quo,
to call "time" on
recognizing Palestine, and doing nothing
about it, being the thing that means that
you've done right by the Palestinians.
That's a Palestinian-owned version of
reform.

(2) Then you have the other version
of reform, which is to say, here's the
asymmetric reality of the Israeli
Palestinian conflict. Let's double down
on it. Let's make it even more
asymmetrical.

The Canadian prime minister said, "Let's
have a Zionist Palestinian state."

... what I've called a Zionist Palestinian
state, which is what we want.

But I think he was on to something,
because that's what the Palestinians are
being asked to do. That's what
Palestinian reform means. And let's put
it in the --

What what do you think he
means by that?

He means a Palestinian state that exists
to make things easy for Israel, so it's
not really a state. And therefore,
I think he put his finger on what
we're really talking about. When most
people say "Palestinian State," they mean
Banchustan, tiny islands of Palestinian
limited self-rule. And this is the
one hold out, I guess, of this Palestinian
leadership, is that they haven't yet in
any negotiation been willing to call
what is categorically, unequivocally,
overtly, a mini Banchustan, the realization of
their national rights, self-determination,
and aspirations. But that's what
the plan is.

There's a summit going on
this week at Wilton Park, which is a kind
of Foreign Office sort of a way day
kind of venue, and they're talking there
about the reconstruction of Gaza. Do you
have any insight into what might be
being discussed there, or what the UK's
plans are?

I think it's of a one with something we've discussed,
which is, "Don't look over there. Don't look at the
unearthing of yet more crimes of
genocide," the media perhaps doing its job, if
it's allowed in, and then goes and
tells us more about what's been going
on. Not that we don't know already.
"Don't look at the dead bodies being
pulled out of the rubble every day.
Don't look at the continuation of
Israel's military occupation. Don't look
at the continuation of apartheid. Please
definitely don't look at our complicity
in this. Look over here. Look at this
shiny thing that we're doing. We're
doing reconstruction! We're doing what's
right by them! "

That's the game they're trying to play in order
to put to sleep, to try and get this mass
movement, this shift in the cultural
zeitgeist, to hibernate, so that they are
not under pressure to do the things that
actually need to be done.
I hope people don't fall for it.

Daniel, thanks for taking the time to
talk to us today. If you like this
video, don't forget to subscribe to our
channel and hit the share button. Thanks
for watching.

[admin]

Gideon Levy: an Israeli journalist standing up for Gaza | VPRO Frontlinie
Frontlinie
Oct 16, 2025

Gideon Levy is an award winning Israeli journalist who brings to light the injustices faced by the Palestinian people. Dutch journalist Bram Vermeulen spoke with Gideon Levy a few weeks before the ceasefire. They discuss the destruction of Gaza, recognition of Palestine by European countries, and the ways in which the genocide is denied through daily life in Tel Aviv - where people in the streets can hear the bombs but choose to ignore them.

In the VPRO series Frontlinie, Bram Vermeulen delivers in-depth foreign journalism. Subscribe to the Frontlinie newsletter and receive extra stories, background information and reading, viewing, and listening tips in your inbox every two weeks: https://www.vpro.nl/frontlinie (in Dutch.)

#frontlinie #gaza #interview #bramvermeulen #palestine #gideonlevy

[admin]

Judge drops BOMB on Trump’s ICE agents
Brian Tyler Cohen
Oct 17, 2025

[admin]

No Kings organizers deal MAJOR BLOW to Trump
Brian Tyler Cohen
Oct 17, 2025