12/1/25: MAGA Drive To Venezuela War, Trump Pardons Convicted Drug Trafficker, Stephen Miller Wife Owned On CNN

Krystal and Saagar discuss MAGA's drive to war with Venezuela, Trump pardons convicted drug trafficker from Honduras, Stephen Miller wife owned on CNN.

 

Juan David Rojas: https://x.com/rojasrjuand/

Seth Harp: https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/730414/the-fort-bragg-cartel-by-seth-harp/ 

 

 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
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show for everybody today.

Speaker 3 (00:37):
What do we have, Crystal, It's an interesting one today.

Speaker 2 (00:39):
So we've got a lot going on internationally, Trump saying
the airspace over Venezuela is closed. He did have a
phone call with Meduro though, so we'll read the tea
leaves there as best we can.

Speaker 3 (00:49):
Also a crazy election.

Speaker 2 (00:51):
In Honduras that we are just now getting the early
results of after Trump's intervention there. Jan David Rojas is
going to join us to break down everything that is
happening there. We've also got new reporting on potential Pete
Hegseth war crimes to dig into. New election issue just dropped,
of course we've been following it for a while, but
New York Times writing up how electricity prices are the
new price of eggs having massive electoral impact as data

(01:15):
centers spread and grow. Trump commutes the sentence of a
massive fraudster. The just the latest, honestly, of many that
he has done. So we'll dig into all of that.
Seth Harp is going to join us on the CIA
desk squads that that Afghan National Guard killer had been
part of, apparently recruited into when he was fifteen years old,
So he's going to break down all the details that

(01:36):
we know there. And we've also got a few updates
from Israel, including Netanyahu requesting a pardon.

Speaker 3 (01:42):
So a lot of interesting stuff the show today.

Speaker 1 (01:44):
Yeah, that's right. Thank you everybody who's been supporting the show.
We do hope you all had a nice Thanksgiving with
your family. Not too many arguments between all of you.
If you're looking for a place which has great discourse,
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(02:04):
please send an episode to a friend. It really helps
other people find the show. But let's go ahead and
start with Venezuela. As you said, some fast moving things
they are happening. President Trump declaring effectively a no fly
zone over Venezuela. No congressional mandate. There's a lot of
contray indicators as to why we would even want to

(02:24):
do this, but just deciding, you know, and just out
of the blue, like he did with Tehran whenever he
ordered the evacuation and just said the airspace over in
Venezuela is officially closed. Here's what you said on Air
Force one last night. Asked by reporters about this, Reporter,
can you tell us why the airsprace over Venezuela should
be considered close? Trump? Because we consider Venezuela not to

(02:45):
be a very friendly country. Reporter. Does your warning sign
mean that an air strike is imminent or we should
not read it that way? Trump, don't read anything into it, Okay, Well,
I will read a little bit into it because we're
talking about the president and the night state. It's military.
Let's go put a two up there on the screen.
This was Trump's initial tweet. By the way, he actually
is back on Twitter. Not exactly sure why, but he says,

(03:07):
to all airlines, pilots, drug dealers, human traffickers, please consider
the airspace above and surrounding Venezuela to be closed in
its entirety. Thank you for your attention to this matter,
President Donald J. Trump, obviously incredibly important. One of the
things in our last show that we did before Thanksgiving
was warned everyone that the United States military was on
high alert that Southcom many others had actually restricted the

(03:29):
travel of a lot of their personnel. They're flying B
fifty two's off the coast of Venezuela, an incredible amount
of firepower, carrier, missile strikes, I mean, all kinds of
stuff that has concentrated there in the Caribbean, the largest
concentration of force down there since the Cuban missile crisis
in nineteen sixty two. Let's go ahead and put this
up here on the screen as well. There are a

(03:50):
lot of moving parts, and this is absolutely the most important.
Trump did apparently speak by phone with Nicholas Maduro, Venezuela's
leader some time last week. Quote. They discussed a possible
meeting between the two of them, but nothing has been scheduled,
and the administration continues to increase the military pressure on Venezuela. Now,
let me tell you what I flagged as the single

(04:11):
most impart of this phone call. I think it's great
that they're on the phone. I think it's an important thing.
I actually do think of the two of them ever
got into a room together, that something would happen. But
the phone call included the Secretary of State Marco Rubio
to me, game, that's it. And the reason why is
that he in particular. I've described this on the show.
I've been doing quite a lot of work on this
from behind the scenes. What I can say is this

(04:31):
is that Trump is torn completely. You know, he loves
the drug thing, he likes the idea of the oil.
The Maria Machado's and the Rubios of the world have
realized that Trump doesn't actually care that Maduro stole the
election or any of this so called it's preposterous. We're
supposed to invade another country because it Stolene who gives

(04:53):
a shit, whether they stole alec this is not my problem.
The issue, though, is that they have convinced him couplefold.
Number One, they think the drugs right thing is gonna pull. Well,
it's not actually true, but okay, we'll put that to
the side. Second is they genuinely have convinced him that
overthrowing Maduro is gonna be better to get the oil,
the gold, and all the minerals from Venezuela. Again, though,

(05:14):
this is difficult because when Trump speaks with Maduro, Maduro's like, listen, man,
you can have it all. You can have whatever you want.
The only thing is you can't force me out of office.
I will leave, but just in a little bit, like
a little bit later on. I need to save some
face and all of that. For some reason, though, he's
drawn the hard line so much in the sand that

(05:34):
he actually is in a no win situation, like he
cannot cave at this point, or maybe he can't, but
at least in his mind. Rubio and them are like, oh,
it's sweet, bad for the credibility of the United States
if you don't end up in a deal where he
actually does end up where he actually does end up
like resigning and so it's one of those where if
the two of them could actually come together, it would

(05:55):
potentially come to some sort of a deal. But with
Marco Rubio and with many of the other people in
the NSC like Pete Hegsteth and others, they're all telling
they're sweet talking him. They're like, it would be a cakewalk,
it would be easy. We don't have to do any troops.
We just a couple of land strikes. We just have
to do this, We have to do that. And so
the information environment around Tromp and look, I'm blaming him too, Okay,

(06:17):
he's the person responsible and like he should seek out others.
I'm only explaining how there's a bottleneck here that makes
this very unlikely. The overwhelming could the overwhelming consensus of
the Rubio camp and others is that this will be
a cakewalk. This will be easy. It's good for credibility,
it's about sending a message. Congress as we're about to
get to, is all about in Lindsey Graham and everybody.

(06:39):
So everyone is aligned on this entire regime change up.
And the thing is the center of this is oil. Now,
the key point I do want to make is that
this is the really dumb way to get the oil,
because he literally said, you can have it if you
want it. You can have the gold, you can have
the minerals. We will happily sell it to you. We
just need to be able to preserve our regime in

(07:00):
some form and I can hond over office to my guy.
Why is that a bad deal?

Speaker 3 (07:04):
Exactly?

Speaker 1 (07:05):
Why should we care? But that's the table. That's the
table for where we're at, and it will be I mean,
first of all, obviously I think it'll be a colossal failure.
But second it reveals, as we're about to get to
with Honduras where it. I mean, the way that they
can cartoonishly undercut their own justification is amazing, because the

(07:25):
entire legal justification for this is that Maduro is a
drug dealer. And at the very same time they want
to pardon a convicted drug dealer here in the United
States of America, former president of Honduras and say, well,
as long as he's good for us, it doesn't matter
whether he deals drugs or not. And so, guys, none
of this is about drugs. Maybe for the courts, and

(07:45):
they can litigate that if they want to. But brass
tacks it's about oil, and with the oil, Maduro's willing
to sell it to us. So even in terms of
the deal stakes, it makes no sense whatsoever. This is
a pure South Florida Miami operation. We have a Miami
occupied government, Okay, and yeah, it's true. It's true. We
have Miami occupies the White House. We need to free

(08:07):
ourselves from the shackles of Miami. We need Hurricane to
come in here, okay and actually do something about it.
It's driving me crazy, but nobody wants to say anything
about it. From the right. The Maga folks. Tucker's did
one episode. There's a few others who have been willing
to speak out, but they're a freight because they're like, oh,
what are you a week on the issue of drug dealing,
and it's like, well, it's not about drugs. Even Trump

(08:28):
doesn't believe it's nobody believes that it's about drugs. Yeah,
and then apparently, outside of a few voices on the left,
I mean, the entire democratic establishment is yeah, cool, all right, Maduro,
he's bad, Right, we don't like bad guys. We've learned nothing.

Speaker 2 (08:43):
Yeah, And watching a lot of them, what they'll do
is like, oh, well, it shouldn't be shouldn't.

Speaker 3 (08:47):
Be removed this way, but agree in principle. It's like,
I mean, it's just put that.

Speaker 2 (08:52):
Like Hakeem Jeffries, of course, the leader of the Democrats
in the House, has not said one word last week
checked about Venezuela at all. I mean, just think about this.
You are supposed to be the opposition party and you
have nothing to say about a potential war that the
supposed anti war president is threatening to drag us into.
Like that is completely insane, frankly criminal, Like they've got

(09:15):
to go. You need real opposition in there. But just
to we're going to get war to Honduras with one
David Rojas. But just to spell this out for you, guys,
Trump is pardoning this former Honduras president, one Orlando Hernandez,
who was convicted here by a jury of actual like
drug trafficking and was said to be involved in, you know,

(09:37):
trafficking some four hundred million tons of cocaine into this country,
was probably involved in the murder of a witness in
a Honduras prison who who produced evidence against his brother.

Speaker 3 (09:51):
I mean, just insane.

Speaker 2 (09:53):
And by the way, just so you know, like prior
to his conviction, multiple bipartisan American presidents had been willing
to work with the Sky. But then once they were
done with him, then I said, all right, it's time
to lock him up. But you know, I mean, let's
be real about how much Trump cares about any of this,
not to mention that the amount of drug trafficking convictions
and investigations have dropped dramatically as they've decided instead the

(10:14):
priorities like want at home depot, you know, so that's
gone away as well. We know about the deals that
they also struck with Bukelly in order to lock up
a bunch of innocent people in Seacott. In exchange for that,
they sent him a bunch of actual gang leaders and
drug dealers. So you know, I mean, you just cannot
take seriously that this is a priority for them whatsoever

(10:37):
if you're actually looking at their actions.

Speaker 3 (10:39):
But to Soger's point, they've sort of thrown.

Speaker 2 (10:41):
Every justification scattershot against the wall for well, let's just
throw everything out there and see what sticks.

Speaker 1 (10:47):
We've got.

Speaker 2 (10:48):
Lindsey Graham here as a perfect example of this. He's
still he's melding together the war on terror and the
drug rhetoric. Here he says, I very much appreciate and
respect the determination by President Trump to deal with thee
Listen to this terminology drug caliphate countries that inhabit our backyard,
chief among them Venezuela. For over a decade, Maduro has

(11:10):
controlled a narco terrorist state. This poisoning America has created
alliances with international terrorist organizations like Hesbula. He's an illegitimate
leader who has been indicted for drug trafficking in the
US courts, maintains control of Venezuela by a reign of terror.
President Trump's trunk commitment to end this madness in Venezuela
will save countless American lives, will give the beautiful people
of Venezuela new lease on life. I hear Turkey and

(11:31):
Iran are lovely this time of year. One of these
South Florida congresswomen was, you know, going on some crazy rant.

Speaker 3 (11:38):
Ryan and Emily covered it last week.

Speaker 2 (11:39):
Did you see this where they said that he was
sending uranium to Hamas. I mean, it's just like completely
insane shit here, right.

Speaker 1 (11:47):
For anyone who's been around the block. There was a
nice Iraq war angle to that too, with Niese Air
and the Yellow Kki Ring. Oh yeah, it always nice
was back.

Speaker 2 (11:56):
And then you can see the cases being made from
Scott Bessen and from this, I think same South Florida
congressman to Trump about like, oh, but we're gonna you know,
this is going to be great for you care about affordability, right,
you see, this is an electoral prom fore, this is
going to be great for energy prices. Got to go
forward with it so that we can deal with these,
you know, with these up rising prices and get the

(12:17):
price of oil down further. So you know, they're pitching
that and just like none of it makes any sense.
The American people, to their credit, are not buying any
of this shit. Right if you look at the polling
of this, the idea of you know, military action against Venezuela,
let alone invading Venezuel's dramatically unpopular.

Speaker 3 (12:37):
Like what in the world.

Speaker 2 (12:38):
It's insulting that the case is so like scattershot and
just slap together haphazardly, like they have complete disrespect for
the American people. We don't even get good propaganda anymore.
It's all just pathetic. But ultimately they don't feel the
need to make the case. They're going to do whatever
they're going to do now, it's very possible. I think
it's very possible that either Trump sort of saber rattles

(13:02):
and then ultimately, you know, makes some sort of deal
with Maduro. There's talk of maybe they're going to get together.
I think it's unlikely. I think Soarer's probably right about
Mark or Rubio and the other Florida contingent and the
White House just continually pushing and pushing and pushing this.
It's a similar dynamic to the dynamic we've seen with Israel,
where over a long enough time period or with Ukraine frankly,
over a long enough time period they get their way.

(13:22):
They just keep wearing you down, keep coming up with
new explanations. And because Trump has no ideological core, he's
very susceptible to that. He's very susceptible to whoever is
around him who has the strongest ideological viewpoint, and we
know who that is in this White House when it
comes to Venezuela. Another possibility is that you have a
situation sort of like what happened with Iran, where he

(13:45):
decides to go along with what the the Zionists wanted
to do and to participate in this bombing of Iran
could have a similar thing here where he decides, Okay,
we're going to strike this in that target. But it's limited.
It's not a wholesale invasion. It's not a wholesale it
doesn't go on all the way through with regime change.
I think that is a possibility as well. But everyone
should be very concerned about the developments that we've seen

(14:07):
here and certainly the rhetoric that is coming from you know,
so many parts of the Republican coalition that are all
pushing in this direction, and how little, how little resistance
you see, even from the MAGA coalition is supposed to
be anti war about going in this direction.

Speaker 1 (14:22):
Let me continue, shall we? All right, let's put the
next one there up on the screen. This is from Maduro.
His government rejects the Trump claim of closing Venezuelan airspace.
But one of the things I do want to underscore
is what do we hear about Maduro? He is a
psychotic communist, pro China stole the election. He must be

(14:42):
this nefarious guy. Now here's the thing. Do I think
Maduro is a murderer? Yeah? Do I think a stole election? Yeah?

Speaker 3 (14:49):
Probably?

Speaker 1 (14:50):
Has he destroyed his country? One percent. Now, all that
being said, these people you can still deal with them.
And let me give you a perfect example, A six.
Let's put that one up here on the screen. What
they don't tell you is that this entire time since
Trump has been in office, Venezuela has been accepting huge

(15:10):
migrant repatriation flights. In fact, this entire time, while Trump
has been saber rattling against Maduro, who supposedly invaded US.
He will remember all of that, with the Venezuelan and
the migrant situation, with all of that, all this entire time,
while we're threatening to overthrow them, threatening to invade flying
Bee fifty two's, Venezuela has been accepting migrant flights from

(15:33):
the United States that we are sending them directly. They
accept them, no problems, no questions even asked. In many cases,
do you know why? Because they want to keep diplomatic
channels and goodwill open with the United States government. And
so now after the US says that they are going
to stop, Venezuela says that the US actually unilaterally suspended

(15:58):
these migrant repatriation flights after Trump called for the airsplace
to be viewed as clothes. So let's again understand that
is that we were sending migrants there to porting them
who are in our country illegally to Venezuela. Maduro's government
is like, yeah, well, it's like, I'm sure you know
there are citizens. We then suspend it because Trump tweets

(16:18):
out that the airspace is closed. Does that sound like
a guy who's difficult to deal with. He's like, they're like,
we want you to take your migrants. He's like, ok, okay, yeah, sure,
all right. And so if he says we'll give you
the oil, why wouldn't we believe him. Why wouldn't we
believe him. Why wouldn't we believe him if he says,
I'll give you this, this, and this as long as
we work out some deal in the future. It's you know,
they do this with everybody. They paint these people as insane,

(16:41):
as psychos, and like, yeah, there's something to that, but
you can reason, or you can at least strike deals,
you know, with these types of people. Kim Jong und
he's a madman. He's like, is he as nukes? He
wants to die in his own bed of old age.
That's actually not that hard to understand. YEA, yeah, he'll
kill a lot of people. That's not a good thing.
Not justifying it, but as if you can understand somebody's

(17:01):
motivation here, Madureau is like him, he wants to live.
That's it. Is he a socialist kind of you know,
is she's also a Catholic like super hardcore social conservatives.
Nobody fits into a box.

Speaker 2 (17:13):
That's where there's a lot of our hawkish policy towards
Venezuela and Nikara, to Cuba, Iran, like it props up
these regimes, you know, towards I mean Putin and Russia,
Like it gives them legitimacy. It gives them an excuse
for why things aren't going the way they should be
in their kind.

Speaker 1 (17:29):
Madua is executing people who are his opposition or throwing
them in prison because he says that they're part of
a ciop to overthrow him. Again, the Iranians did the
same thing after the whole Israel campaign. That's why they're like, oh,
anybody who's against us Mosad right, because they it's so penetration.
So yeah, if you're so concerned about the liberals in

(17:49):
Iran and all that, yeah they're fucking dead. Okay, I
mean same down in Venezuela. There's a reason that we
have to spend all this money on the Venezuelan opposition.
And at the end of the day, everyone's like, oh,
always regime is weak. Yeah, I don't think so, all right,
anybody who survives for some like twenty years, who successfully,
you know, according to them, stole an election. There's been
no massive uprising. Like we always try to presume that

(18:12):
we know what's best for these people. They have chosen
their destiny or at the very least they're kind of
okay with it. That's not for me to decide. What's
for me to decide is somebody willing to send me
sell me oil, and also who's willing to take our
who's able to take back their own migrants? Seems quite reasonable.
Somebody that you can deal with. They don't want to
do it.

Speaker 3 (18:32):
Now.

Speaker 2 (18:32):
To mention that all of these you know, interventions and
the sanctions and all of this, you know, I mean,
this is part of what displaces people like sure, well,
don't you know just want to It's not a small
thing to leave your home and go somewhere and cross
the border illegally. I mean, these are all very difficult, dangerous, painful,
traumatic things, and you know, you can look at our
intervention in these various countries, hunder US being another one

(18:55):
that we're about to talk to Je Davide about, where
you know, when we get involved and we create chaos
and lawlessness and partner with actual narco traffickers like the
guy who was president of Honduras, this is part of
what leads to these states being miserable, violent places to live,
with poor economic prospects and which does cause the displacement
of people. There's one more factor here that we just

(19:15):
have to mention, because you always have to keep your
eye on this. There is another group a eight let's
put up on the screen. There's another group very interested
in always being at war. Trump's focus on drug war
means big business for defense startups, which of course it does,
so you know, this is pretty self explanatory. But in
any case, the US military has turned this attention south,

(19:36):
where the defense industry is lining up to sell it
the tools for a different kind of war. Defense tech
companies and artificial intelligence startups have found a vital new
market in Trump's rapidly escalating drug war. Weapons and AI
platforms that were designed for a future conflict with China
or struggled to prove themselves on the Ukrainian battlefield, have
found a niche in the administration's tech enabled crackdown on

(19:58):
drug trafficking. Drone and imaging companies are assisting the US
Coast Guard and Navy with interdiction operations in the Caribbean.
AI companies from Silicon Valley to Dubai are pitching platforms
that promised to map the hidden networks of Fentanel traffickers
on the southern US border. Counter drone system developed in
Ukraine is being repurposed to deflect incursions from Mexico. As
Washington has revived the rhetoric and legal tools of the

(20:20):
global war on terror, more companies large and small have
staked their claims to the emergency market, at times retooling
to fit the latest mission. They've rebranded their drone sensors,
AI tools and data platforms as custom tools for Trump's
fight against narco terror. And so basically, you know, now
that the Afghanistan war is over and we've actually fully

(20:41):
withdrawn there, you know, that was the biggest cash grab.
I mean, it's one of the biggest cash grabs for
these defense industrial complex companies in history. And so you've
got to have something, you know, you got to have
something to fill the void here. So what are you
going to do now? They're jumping on board with this
quote unquote Narco terrors, the drug Califate countries, whatever. So
this is the new cash cow for them. And you

(21:02):
know Trump is close with a bunch of these guys.
You've got Sax has investments in this. You've got Peter Thiel,
of course, Palmer Lucky like all these characters are either
directly in the administration or close allies, and so those
folks are in his ear as well, who also want
to move forward with this. So you got a lot
of forces that are pushing for more war.

Speaker 1 (21:23):
There's a lot of money in this. I mean, even
if you read look the same thing happened with the
guy which the Wall Street Journal accurately describes, is that
the war on Terror was a bonanza for them, These
new defense tech startups. I mean, they don't have a
bad pitch, which is that the prime defense contractors are inefficient,
bad too expensive. But that doesn't mean that we need

(21:44):
to gin up wars and other policy in order to
justify some purchases of all of this AI boat. It's like, guys,
it's a fucking boat, it's a small fisherman. Do you
really need like AI targeting systems to take it down? No,
all right, we've been doing for you. You don't need
any of that. And in fact, there are a lot
of different ways that we could deal with it. So

(22:05):
this campaign, this entire thing, it makes no sense whatsoever
strategically on the merits in terms of what they're saying.
It is preposterous. And luckily we have a great guest
standing by Juan da vid Rojas, to talk specifically about
the Honduras angle to this. Let's get to it, all right,
Very excited now to be joined by Juan da vid

(22:26):
Rojas to talk about this developing situation with Honduras so on.
At the very moment that we are going to potentially
invade or overthrow the Maduro regime for drug trafficking, President
Trump has announced that he will pardon Juan Orlando Hernandez,
the former president of Honduras, who is extradited to the

(22:47):
United States and convicted for drug trafficking. When asked about
this contradiction, let's put this up here. Let's say on
the screen, reporter says, you've made clear how you want
to keep drugs out of the US. Trump, right, can
you explain why you would pardon a notorious drug trafficker? Trump,
I don't know who you're talking about, Reporter, Juan Orlando Hernandez. Trump.

(23:10):
Many of the people of Honduras said it was a
Biden setup. I looked at the facts and agreed with them. Reporter,
what evidence can you share it as a setup? Trump?
You can take any country you want, if somebody sells
drugs in that country, that doesn't mean you arrest the
president and put him in jail for the rest of
his life. You know, you might take that same logic

(23:30):
and apply it to Manduro. But here with Honduras, apparently
it is not applicable. Much of this is because Trump
intervened in the Honduras election, of which we now have
some results of Juan. Your general reaction to all.

Speaker 4 (23:44):
Of this, it's really stunning. I mean, this is definitely
one of Trump's lowest points. I had been following this
story with for years. I thought it was terrible, extremely undercovered.
In twenty eighteen, during Trump's first term, his brother, the

(24:06):
President's brother, was arrested here in the US for trafficking charges,
but despite that, he continued to be buddy buddy with
multiple US administrations, going back to Obama, Obama, Trump, Biden
is super embarrassing photo ops of all of them with Hernandez.
And he was super close actually to Trump's former chief

(24:29):
of staff John Kelly. They had like over twenty meetings
and all of the all this praise that it's like, oh,
this guy is a huge US ally and so it's like,
what the heck. This guy's a clearly like a narco
state kingpin. And so he was eventually extradited to the
US in twenty twenty two, convicted last year. And look,

(24:51):
the truth is a lot of these cases against like
politicians being connected to drug trafficking in Latin America, they
do usually boil down just the testimonial traffickers, which is unreliable, right,
because they just want better terms for their prison sentences.
The thing is with Hernandez, they really got him dead
to rights, Like there's really solid concrete evidence they found
these ledgers with the president and its brothers initials on it,

(25:15):
like for the kickbacks that they would get from different
drug shipments. Wow, and the DA also geolocated traffickers visiting
the presidential Palace. There was also matches Hernandez had in
his Google account the contacts of traffickers. So this is
a shutcase. Like, I mean, there's nothing you can say
about this. This guy funneled allegedly yet or not allegedly,

(25:38):
he was convicted for five hundred tons of cocaine to
the US. So it's yeah, like you said with Maduro,
it's hilarious. I mean, supposedly yesterday he had another phone
call with Maduro telling him, Hey, you have to leave
or else.

Speaker 2 (25:53):
Yeah, I mean, this guy appears to be what Trump
is pretending that Maduro is. Appears that like he's the
actual thing that he Trump is pretending the Maduro is.
And now Trump has made this extraordinary intervention into the
elections in Honduras. As of right now, we have partial
results that are returned. They're very slow coming in. We'll

(26:14):
get to that in just a second. But let me
put this Trump, these series of Trump truths up on
the screen to see the way that he is sort
of like both threatening and bribing Honduras, the people of
Honduras to vote for his chosen right wing candidate. So
he says, here, if Tito Asperro wins for president, of
Honduras because the US has so much confidence in him
as policies and what'll do for the great people of Honduras.

Speaker 3 (26:36):
We will be very supportive.

Speaker 2 (26:38):
If he doesn't win, the US will not be throwing
good money after bad because a wrong leader can only
bring catastrophic results to a country, no matter which country
it is. Goes on from there, you know, all kinds
of additional information, including going after the more center right
figure as well, saying that Nostralla, that's the center right year,

(27:00):
is no friend of freedom, a borderline communist, et cetera,
et cetera. So really throwing in behind this world right
wing candidate, and you know, it was very reminiscent of
the successful gambit that he pulled in Argentina as well
on behalf of Javier Malay and his party, who you

(27:20):
know had direct ties to, you know, some of the
people in the Trump administration. So talk to us about this,
how extraordinary this intervention is, and how you think people
in Honduras are reacting to it.

Speaker 4 (27:33):
Yeah, I personally think that if Trump had well, I
guess it's hard to say, because the funny thing is
that that centrist candidate that looks like he's gonna win.
Currently as Florida, the right wing candidate is barely ahead,
but there's still over fifty percent of the results left.
I think probably in Nocerala will win, and he he's

(27:56):
the most interesting of the three candidates. I don't necessarily
say that in a good way. He was actually a
current president Sila Ma Da Castro's vice president. He stepped
down over you know, problems with corruption in our administration.
And the funny thing is that he was actually the
candidate of the leftist Leag party in twenty seventeen when
Hernandez went ran for an illegal second term and committed

(28:21):
he stole the election, he committed fraud. Nasanila was the
rightful winner. But anyway, and now he's the candidate of
the centrist Liberal party. So the funny thing also is
that he had conducted outreach with a ton of Miami neocons.
Our friend Maria Vide Sila sat and so she was

(28:42):
out like campaigning for him basically, so Trump when he
stepped in, he like backed as for that clearly because
of his good relations with Hernandez before. But in a
way like it probably divided the vote. Yeah, hard to
say exactly what.

Speaker 2 (28:55):
The impact was, Yeah, I means its a crazy situation
because look, Poles can wrong. The Poles had the left
wing candidate up significantly and the Trump candidate was, you know,
trailing behind in third place. The exit polls that were
coming out yesterday evening, Yeah, had the left wing candidate

(29:17):
also significantly winning. I saw local broadcasters like, oh, this
thing is pretty much over. It looks like she's going
to prevail. And then the results start coming out and
they looked dramatically different. Now we were both talking to
Ryan this morning, like what was going on here. He's
got a guy on the ground who's saying like, no,
I was at the polling places, and it looks like
the results are legit. One other thing to throw in

(29:38):
the mix here too, Polymarket, which you know is just
a betting website, but usually you know, at least somewhat
in the ballpark of what's going to happen. Originally had
the left wing candidates this massive favorite, and then once
the polls closed, it completely flipped in a dramatic way
in the other direction. So, I mean, it looks pretty
extraordinary what's going on here. The Poles, you know, certainly

(30:00):
we're wildly wrong. The other thing that I think is
worth noting is Trump effectively sort of comparing the left
winging even the center right candidate in Honduras to Maduro.
And I think people may also be like, well, I
to see what's going on with Venezuela. I don't really
want that for me too. So I don't know from
the outside, not an expert here, but it appears that

(30:22):
Trump may not get his chosen candidate, but appears to
me like his intervention had a huge impact on what
ultimately happened here.

Speaker 4 (30:31):
Yeah. Yeah, it's hard to say. Pulling in on seems
to be pretty bad. Yeahhoretically it's possible that he drove
turnout for as Fuda. I'm generally inclined to think that
whenever he intervenes, voters will be inclined to vote for
against them.

Speaker 3 (30:49):
But having an Argentina though, you know, yeah.

Speaker 4 (30:52):
Yeah, yeah, the calculus could be different. I mean, Dudas
is a lot closer to the US. Maybe voters felt
that it really in their self interest to have a
candidate that was friendly.

Speaker 1 (31:03):
With One of the things though, is I was reading
this morning. You know, not everything is about us. A
lot of it is about us down in Central America,
but one of the voters that The New York Times
spoke with said, well, I was very disappointed with the
narco trafficking of the previous administration, and none of the
narco trafficking has gone down because they believe that the
current administration was in on it too. So it's like
they have still one of the highest murder rates in

(31:25):
all of Central America. They have plenty of their own
domestic problems. Potentially the sale there was, look, everybody's corrupt.
At least the US will extend us to helping hand
or something like this under the Trump administration. But more interestingly,
I think we have to come back to let's put
a eleven up there on the screen. Ryan's tweet here
is that, you know, the circumstances of this trafficking case

(31:48):
still seem to be so important for the story with Venezuela,
like Trump threatening to bomb Venezuela over the drug trafficking
while also pardoning this drug trafficker. I'm curious for your perspective,
now that we have kind of a mixed record of
Trump intervention in Latin America, how any potential Venezuelan invasion
or over or overthrow op or Cia operations that go

(32:10):
kinetic and end up killing Maduro or trying to force
him out of office. How would that affect the broader
like grand strategy of Latin America and the big powers
in the region.

Speaker 4 (32:22):
Gregor, Yeah, that's a great question, really quick. Yeah, I
love that you said that. Yeah, the truth is that
Sumar or Castro's government is super crubt has had our
own dealings with drug traffickers. So the truth is the
whole of under US's political class is extremely discredited. But yeah,
as for your other question, yeah, really, and this is

(32:45):
another thing too, that Richie Moncada, the leftist candidate, and
also cimar or Castro are open supporters of Nicholas Maduro,
which actually isn't that common among left wing leaders in
the region. A lot of them, you know, they have
like mixed feelings. A lot of them have been kind
of forced to recognize that Moduro is terrible, especially if

(33:06):
like they're neighbors with them, like Colombia and Brazil. You know,
Lula had this huge about face, he said, oh, there
was this. Maduro visited him in twenty twenty three, right
after he came back into power, and Lula said that, oh,
there was a fabricated media narrative against Venezuela or whatever,
and then over time they're the first like Venezuela, you know,

(33:28):
on paper, annexed two thirds of neighboring Guyana, and the
Brazilians are like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, wha, what's going
on here? And then they stole the twenty twenty four election,
and yeah, Lula really has turned on Maduro ever since. Similarly,
like with Petro, I mean, yeah, you have like three
million Venezuelan migrants that are live in the country. Now,

(33:48):
Moduro sponsors all these leftist gorillas that you know, attack Columbians,
even though Petro is also left wing right, so there's
a lot of animosities. At the same time, no one,
especially on the left, is cool with the US just
invading Venezuela. And Petro's even said that if, like, you know,
this is blessed, but he said that if the US
invades Venezuela, the Colombia would come to its defense. Lula

(34:11):
has also said that, you know, just kinetic action would
be unacceptable, and also that the boat strikes, which you know,
are very dubious legally and on various other levels, have
really pissed off a lot of leaders, even on the
right too. So yeah, I was just in Colombia and
people have a lot of mixed feelings about you know, Venezuela,

(34:35):
the bombings, all of this stuff. On the other hand,
for instance, while I was there, Petro said that he
would actually support a negotiated transition uh in Venezuela. And
that's a that's a pretty.

Speaker 1 (34:48):
Big I remember. The thing that I coming back to
on that is why is the thing is Maduro? As
you and I have talked about Moduro, he doesn't even care.
He's like, I'll give you the and I will leave.
I just won't leave today, right, Like I need some
face saving, I can need handpower off to my guy.
I want my regime to survive and all that. Everybody

(35:09):
else in the region seems to be bought in. But
Trump is demanding that he leave now, like tomorrow, right
and effectively allow not just him to be gone, but
say that the entire government and its apparatus, which obviously
wouldn't even be able to guarantee his safety like it
seems to the negotiating terms of this make it impossible
for Maduro to negotiate at all. Other than absolute surrender.

Speaker 4 (35:32):
Yeah, that's definitely a result of Rubio and the rest
of the Miami lobby. I mean, they they are just
fixated on this. They have a completely two dimensional view
of Venezuela and the other you know, the so called
Troyko terror. It's also funny because the similarities between Hernandez
and Maduro. I mean, it's it's really great. I mean, Okay, Maduro,

(35:57):
you know, stole the twenty twenty four election, Ornande stole
the twenty seventeen election for his reelection. You know, they're
both accused of drug trafficking, and we debate the specifics
of both cases. After their fraudulent re elections, they killed
a bunch of demonstrators too, like I mean, and actually,
when you think about it, the only difference really between
the Maduro is super socially conservative, so was Rnandez. You know,

(36:20):
both anti abortion, both super catholic. Maduro I told you
this in private before during the the past Olympics, he
said that the French desecrated Christ over the weird blue
people thing. So he has a portrait in his office
of Jesus in him steering the ship of Venezuela. So

(36:42):
the only difference here the matters is that, oh, you know,
Rnandez was in favor of Washington, Maduro was against it.
And that's like the two dimensional logic of neo cons
and anti imperialists respectively. It's like, guys, look beneath the surface,
there's really a lot in common here.

Speaker 2 (37:00):
Let's talk a little bit more about the pardon of
the motivations of the pardon of Wan Orlando Hernandez has
put a fourteen up on the screen. I mean I
just mentioned earlier how potentially some of the motivation for
intervening in Argentina and propping up Pavier Malay were financial,
because you have a bunch of like hedge funders or

(37:20):
either in the administration or tied to the administration, who
have a lot of money to lose.

Speaker 3 (37:24):
There.

Speaker 2 (37:24):
Here you have the pet, this pet project of the
Peter Teel libertarian tech ros of the world that was
coming to fulfillment in Honduras, and Hernandez was a partner
of this. So these economic development zones called zids were
heavily pushed as a means of stimulating economic development by
Castro's predecessor, former President Wan or Lando Hernandez, who was

(37:48):
extra out of the US on April twenty first, to
face drug trafficking charges, but fears over sovereignty and land
exproporation and legality all undermine legitimacy.

Speaker 3 (37:55):
Of the project.

Speaker 2 (37:56):
Prospera pitched international investors this was this like crypto libertarian city,
utopian city that they set up. Pitched international investors' visions
of a beachside libertarian paradise replete with low taxes crypto
friendly regulation. The Zone recently made bitcoin legal tender pass,
legislation facilitating the issuance of bitcoin bonds for Spara's investors

(38:17):
include Silicon Valley heavyweights like Peter tal and Marc Andreesen
through Pronomos Capital ABC Fund, which invests in autonomous city projects.
So this is part of this like network state bullshit,
libertarian bullshit that these people are into, and so Hernandez
was a supporter of that. The current government was not
and was putting an end to this stuff. I mean,
this seems like you could see how these people would

(38:39):
be in Trump's ear about like, oh, you know, this
is a vendetta. It was a witch hunt against him.
It was so unfair. It was a Biden set up.

Speaker 5 (38:45):
Blah blah, blah, Yeah, this is crazy, and in my opinion,
it's the reason why Trump decided to intervene you because
its donors were in this year and told that, hey,
you guys have to get involved.

Speaker 4 (38:58):
We need to save our city. So in twenty twelve,
Hernandez was the president of Andoras's Congress it's a unicamera
or unicameral legislator at legislature, and before and the president
at the time, Portriedo Lobo, who also deeply involved in
drug trafficking. They tried to pass this law creating these

(39:19):
special economic zones. The Supreme Court said no because essentially
they said it was unconstitutional for the hunter and state
to seed sovereignty over its own territory because they basically
would forego control over these areas. So they staged a
kind of coup against the Supreme Court, removed forward the

(39:40):
justices at once and put in cronies that approved the
law and went against the country's constitution, created the so
called sais And immediately, yeah consortium and investors backed by
Peter Teel and Marc Andresen created this city called Prospera,
and that's what the investor group is called. On the
island of rot time, because it's really it's this famous

(40:03):
island off the coast of on Duras's Caribbean coast, beautiful
you know, Christine White sand beaches whatever. Today the city
controls around three percent of the island's territory, and they
also recently bought a port on the mainland. And it's
a libertarian wet dream. Everything is private. The police, the schools,

(40:25):
even the justice system is private. Apparently they have like
some former state Supreme Court chief justice among the people
they paid to, you know, rule on issue rulings and
stuff like that. And when Castro came in, she one
of her first actions was to suspend or to overturn

(40:48):
that law. And so now the city is stuck in
this kind of limbo. But they're fighting back and they
actually stand a chance of winning. They sued the government
under and duras Is free trade agreement, which by the way,
has been disastrous for hunters, the CAFTA Agreement Central America
Free Trade Agreement. Yeah, for almost eleven billion dollars. That's

(41:09):
around the same as Honduras's entire yearly budget. So they
really have them in a chokehold. Castro has been fighting back.
That's one of the good things that she doesn't she's done,
and there's a lot of popular discontent over, you know,
selling out your own country to these crypto billionaires.

Speaker 2 (41:31):
That's another thing, to give them this island to these
like tech, foreign tech.

Speaker 3 (41:36):
We're just going to do that. You have no say
over it.

Speaker 4 (41:38):
Crypto is legal and prospero. You can buy anything with crypto,
so it's yeah, it's crazy.

Speaker 1 (41:44):
I remember hearing about this year's back. I didn't. I didn't.
I didn't realize it became an actual thing.

Speaker 4 (41:50):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, crazy.

Speaker 1 (41:52):
All right, Wan, you're the best man. Thank you for everything.
Where can people find you? Where should they subscribe?

Speaker 4 (41:58):
Subscribe to my substack. It's called social democracy with populist characteristics.
And I'll have an article coming out about this the
election for Compact today or.

Speaker 3 (42:08):
Tomorrowyo, fantastic. Thanks onan.

Speaker 2 (42:14):
So, as you guys know, the Trump administration has been
randomly killing a bunch of people in the Caribbean and
the Pacific that they claimed to be drug traffickers with
very little or no evidence.

Speaker 3 (42:25):
We now have new reporting about the first of those attacks.
I don't know if you guys remember the details.

Speaker 2 (42:29):
That particular vote had eleven people on board part of
what made it very suspicious because normally drug traffickers wouldn't
have actually that number of people on the boat because
they would want to have more space for drugs on
the boat. In any case, the reporting indicates that Pete
Hegseth himself gave the order to quote kill them all

(42:49):
after the initial strike on the boat. There were two
survivors who remained who were clinging to the wreckage, and
that voice command from Pete Hegseth led to a double
tap strike that experts say is a pretty clear if
we're even accepting their legal rationale, that they could be
bombing these people to begin with is a pretty clear
war crime. In any case, Trump was asked yesterday about

(43:13):
that second stripe strike, that double tap strike from Pete Haigseth.
Let's put this up on the screen. I'll read it
because the audio is really bad. So the reporter said,
if there was a second strike that killed wounded people,
would that be legal? Trump said, I don't know what happened,
and Pete said he did not even know what people
were talking about. I would not have wanted a second strike.

(43:35):
The first strike was very lethal. It was fine. This
reporting also led to a rather explosive exchange on CNN
involving Stephen Miller's wife, Katie Miller, and Bacari Sellers. Let's
go ahead and take a listen to that.

Speaker 6 (43:49):
He said that those orders that were given on the
drug boats in Venezuela were illegal.

Speaker 3 (43:53):
Can you cite those statutes? Please?

Speaker 7 (43:55):
Yes, because it's actually called the due process Clause of
the United States of America. Because can you to one
of those boats that actually had drugs on them? Do
you know that? Do you know about the Trinidadians who
were killed innocently, who were just fishermen? Can you actually
kill those fishermen without due process? So the answer to
the question is yes, I can cite the Constitution just
as God did.

Speaker 6 (44:12):
If you if you go and say that those were
members of al Qaeda or Isis coming to our shores
with enough drugs or enough ammunition to kill one thousand,
one hundred thousand Americans, wouldn't you expect our commander in
chief to take action to stop that. That's what's happening here.
That is what's happened, by the way, That's what happens
in every war zone, whether you go to a Afghanistan
or Ran Somalia.

Speaker 1 (44:32):
Go there, let's talk about it.

Speaker 7 (44:33):
Give me one name of one individual that you can
compare to al Qaeda coming through that had enough fent
and not to kill all these Americans. Can you name one.

Speaker 6 (44:40):
Let's go to what the drug boks are talking about,
which is that we are actively ensuring that the war
on drugs that we've been doing for fifty years, which
has not worked, more successful.

Speaker 7 (44:50):
Yeah.

Speaker 6 (44:51):
Successful one day.

Speaker 2 (44:55):
The administration not sending their bus there. I would say,
let's go and put this reporting actually up on the screenside.

Speaker 3 (45:00):
Can read you some of the details here.

Speaker 2 (45:02):
Hegseth order on first Caribbean boat strike officials say kill
them all. The longer the US surveillance aircraft followed the boat,
the more confident intelligence analysts watching from command centers became
that the eleven people on board were faring drugs. Defend
Secretary Pete Hegseth gave a spoken directive. According to two
people with direct knowledge, the order was to kill everybody.
One of them said. A missile screamed off the Trinidad coast,

(45:24):
striking the vessel, igniting a blaze from bow to stern.
For minutes, commanders watched the boat burning on a live
drone feed. As the smoke cleared, they got a jolt.
Two survivors were clinging to the smoldering wreck. The Special
Operations commander overseeing the September second attack, the opening salvo,
and the Trump administrations were on suspected drug traffickers in
the Western Hemisphere, ordered a second strike to comply with

(45:48):
Hegseth's instructions. Again, two people familiar said the two men
were blown apart in the water. Hegseth's order, which has
not previously been reported, as another dimension of the campaign
against suspected drug traffickers. Some current and former US officials
and law of war experts have said the Pentagon's lethal campaign,
which has killed more than eighty people to date, is
unlawful and may expose those most directly involved to future prosecution.

(46:12):
They go on with a quote from Seth Moulten here,
Actually they say the idea that wreckage from one small
boat and a vast ocean is a hazard to marine
traffic is patently absurd because that was the justification that
they used, that they were like clearing the way from
marine traffic and killing survivors is blatantly illegal. He went
on to say mark my words. It may take some time,

(46:33):
but Americans will be prosecuted for this, either as a
war crime or out right murder. And so you know,
there have been sober since then. Of course, we've had
I don't know how many boat strikes at this point,
over eighty people have been killed.

Speaker 3 (46:48):
At this point.

Speaker 2 (46:49):
We had another instance where there were survivors of the strike.
Instead of doing the second strike, they actually repatriated those
survivors to their countries, which again raises a lot of
questions over whether these are really drum traffickers, because if
they are, what you do is you get them and
you take them to the US and you try them
in court. Here that is normally the process that is

(47:10):
supposed to be followed. But this is almost like a
textbook example of a warcrime to do a second strike
on wounded survivors whom now pose zero risk, even if
you take it fest face value that these are drug traffickers.
And we've already talked about how the justification for this
is insane to begin with. So what you're really talking

(47:31):
about here is just outright murder ordered by the Secretary
of warpete Hegseth.

Speaker 1 (47:36):
Well, it's important to note is a couple of things.
Is number one one of the read things reasons that
this has burst into the air is about Hegset's non denial.
Is he explicitly has not denied it. What this also
kind of gets to and in my opinion, what this
is a good segue because we're about to cover the
Afghan thing. In some ways very unfortunately, this has been

(47:58):
the modus operandi for the that we have approached the
entire war on terror. And I think what people should
be afraid of, and this certainly I've had this as well,
is it was very easy in four to five to
be like, yeah, we're killing them all and all this.
But when you watch this stuff get normalized and institutionalized
in the US military and then be brought to the
western hemisphere and right off of the borders of the

(48:20):
United States, with a legal justification that could technically apply
to anyone, it should freak you out because that's what
the same thing with the FBI. Remember we talked about
the January sixth stuff. There's really nothing different from the
way that the FBI was goading the Gretchen Whitmer kidnapping
situation or the January sixth stuff from the way they
approach the war on terror. That's how they do business.
They infiltrate groups and basically encourage people. Here is the

(48:44):
same thing. This was a very common look. Yes, technically
they would say capture, kill. They would basically write the
rules of engagement, which made it so that it was
like kill them all. And if anything, hegxsas is an
idiot for explicitly saying the quiet part out loud in
this particular case. But what it means is that the
Southcom commanders and others they did not have the way
that you know, the legal justifications for the wars in

(49:06):
Afghanistan and Iraq. Here they're operating explicitly under so called
anti narco trafficking laws, and even with this designation of
narco trafficking as terrorists, the legal justification around that is
almost certainly what led to that Southcom commander resigning. Remember
we covered this at the time. We were like, hey,

(49:27):
this is a big deal. The fact that he just
resigned out of nowhere. He's been telling people behind the scenes.
Ryan and I have reported this that he was very uncomfortable.
Now we seem to understand exactly what it is, and
there's a reason why there's been all this legal wrangling
in the White House to find some sort of legal justification.
But you know, again just to bolster a real world example.
If you remember the Captain Phillips raid and one of

(49:49):
the pirates was brought on board the US Navy ship.
He was arrested actually and brought back to the homeland.
He's in federal prison today. We prosecuted him under federal
anti priority. Who's like the first person like two hundred
years to be convicted of piracy. But the point is
around these drug traffickers, if you repatriate them to your
own country, then what case can you possibly make that

(50:12):
this is actual drug trafficking? And even the designation of
the so called narco terrorists, this is about importing the
war on terror not just to the Western hemisphere, but
closer to the United States than ever before. And I
think that's what's really terrifying about the situation because Steel
Team six was involved here. Look, I'm not putting them
down like at the end of the day, like you know,
they are the one at the end of the day,

(50:33):
like their culture of the entire g Watt and everything
was shaped around these types of operations and the Pentagon.
In the Pentagon, the leaders and others, they've normalized this.
I mean, if you think about all the kill operations
that we've done over the last twenty years, we've basically
trained them and created the entire organization to be focused
on this one thing. It's really about the Pentagon opening

(50:55):
up this can of worms, putting a lot of them
in danger, you know, legally, but not just legally, but
like you're like, you're making them a target of investigation.
They're commanders and others. If anything, you know, it would
be a genuine case of like, yeah, maybe they should
have raised a concern or whatever. We got the Secretary
of Defense and they're saying no, this is the explicit
direction of the President of the United States. This is

(51:17):
the same thing they did this with Alwaki. They've done
this all out over Afghanistan, Iraq, Yemen, Somalia. This has been, unfortunately,
very normalized. I'm glad it's actually breaking out into the open.
And the reason why it's terrifying is because this is
in some country four three thousand miles away. This is here,
This is America, Like this is in our territorial waters.

Speaker 2 (51:36):
And there's nothing that would keep them from doing the
same thing here on our own soil. I mean that
I really want people to understand that that they are
claiming the ability to randomly murder whoever they want, wherever
they want, and just they were involved in drug trafficking,
like that's that's what they are actually claiming here. And
you know, I think that that is really horrifying. I mean,

(51:58):
they are saying there is no are no limits, zero
limits on what we can do on the violent murder
that we can commit if we just say, oh, it
was a drug trafficker, and we know from reporting there's
actually going to be a lawsuit. We know from reporting
that some of the people that they killed are alleged
to have just been innocent fishermen. And as Ryan is

(52:19):
pointed out, even if you accept I mean, I think
that some of these drugs, these boats probably did have
drugs on board them. You're not getting the you know
one Orlando Hernandez, this is one example.

Speaker 3 (52:29):
You're not getting the kingpins here.

Speaker 2 (52:31):
You're getting some low level yes, probably fisherman was paid
or threatened or whatever to carry this shipment of drugs.
In any case, you know, you've got look, you've got
a long track ggor with Pete Haig said he's involved
in trying to uh successfully getting off the hook these
convicted war criminals from the war on terror. Sager is

(52:51):
absolutely right that, you know, the way this starts is okay. Well,
al Qaeda attacked us. They genuinely did, so we need
to sort of suspend some of our normal protocol in
order to go after them, and that has just expanded
and expanded and expanded. This is one more extraordinary leap
in terms of what the powers that they are claiming
here and the violence that they are committing. To your

(53:12):
point about the hegsth non denial of the belief we've
got before up on the screen, you know, he says,
as usual, fake news, blah blah blah, but he doesn't
actually deny the details of what is reported. He denies
that it's illegal, but he does not actually deny the
details of what was reported by the Washington Post, which
you should essentially take as a confirmation the intercept. By

(53:35):
the way, just to give them credit, they were the
first to report that this was a double tap strike.
So there are multiple news organizations now who have confirmed
that particular detail. You have bipartisan committees in both the
House and the Senate.

Speaker 3 (53:48):
We can put B five up on the screen, who
have said they.

Speaker 2 (53:51):
Are going to investigate Chairman Usenaer, Roger Wicker, who is
a Republican chair of the Senate Armed Services Committee, and
US Senator Jack Read, Democratic ranking member, issued a statement
saying the Committee is aware of recent news reports and
Department of Defense's initial response regarding alleged follow on strikes
and suspected narcotics vessels in the Southcomb area of responsibility.
Committee has directed to inqurease the Department and we'll be

(54:13):
conducting vigorous oversight to determine the facts related to these circumstances.

Speaker 3 (54:17):
The House, as I said.

Speaker 2 (54:18):
Before, also saying that they are going to look into
this too, and it can put B six up on
the screen. You've got a bunch of former military lawyers
who are saying, you know, former JAGS. Working group unanimously
considers both the giving and the execution of these orders,
if true, to constitute war crimes and murder, or both
war crimes if you accept the you know the terrorists

(54:38):
and were at war justification, which again very very dubious
and outright murder. If you do not accept that justification,
which I think there is a little reason to accept
that justification. And we also know Sagur that you know,
Haig Seth fired a bunch of jags as well, that
he a bunch of military lawyers that he you know,
I apparently was concerned would not just go along with

(55:00):
him doing whatever it is that he wants to do.
And then the other thing that I'll say about this
is that the other context that there's whole dust up
going on right now about the slot Kin Mark Kelly
video saying Hey, if you're given unlawful orders, you should
not follow them, and Hegseeth and Trump were freaking out
about that.

Speaker 3 (55:17):
I mean, I think this is.

Speaker 2 (55:18):
Part of why that really touched to such a nerve,
because there is a real vulnerable ability here for the
people who were involved. Now, what Trump is likely to
do is just on his way out of office, blanket
pardon anyone was involved in this. You know, you're off
the hook, get on a jail free card. But if
you're one of the elites who is involved, you'll probably
feel like fairly comfortable that you'll probably be protected. You know,

(55:41):
the more rank and file meager in the middle of
the GOT Seal team, six guys like you really feel
confident that they're going to go to Matt for you
and make sure that you're protected as well.

Speaker 7 (55:49):
Well.

Speaker 1 (55:50):
The Intercept connection that you mentioned there is interesting. The
Intercept has long all the way, by going back to
the Bin Laden Raid, has had sources inside of Seal
Team six and has always reported some.

Speaker 3 (55:59):
Of the things.

Speaker 1 (56:00):
Yeah, they you got to give them credit a lot.
They blew a lot of the stuff open. And this
I mean, I don't want to get too deep into
the weeds, but like basically, they have long raised questions
about the official narratives of Seal Team six. So the
fact that they reported it first confirms some of their
previous connection there with the highest levels of that command.
And yes, I mean obviously they also they're going to
have to save their own ass if this ever comes

(56:20):
into an official inquiry. This has been blown open, and
I think the reason why is that Congress. Look, the
administration pulled a faster one on Congress. The Congress was
actually about to vote in the Senate where they were
going to try and center the administration over the Venezuela
War in particular. But what they did is that Trump
administration indicated, actually, we're going to back off things. Remember
there was like two three week period and so Senate said, Okay,

(56:42):
we're going to give you the benefit of the doubt.
Obviously that was incredibly stupid. What's happened in the interim, though,
is that with this so called double tap and more
Congress has the Congress actually has to also not just
declare war, but has oversight over all of this. And
this is the part where the administration and actually Republicans
are increasingly waking up to this the midterms as they

(57:03):
look right now, it's going to be a blowout when
all this stuff subpoena power in the House of Representatives
and oversight authority. Let's say some crazy shit happens, the
Senate goes democratic. I mean, if you're a Steel Team
six commander running of these other people, you know, high
level operator in the naval special warfare, your ass has
come into Washington and you're going to be testifying at

(57:24):
least at the very least behind closed doors before the
new House Armed Services Committee or the new Senate Armed
Services Committe, or they're not going to give you a
dollar whenever it comes to funding the government, like they
have no idea what is actually coming. And at that point,
I mean, putting these guys under the bus, causing huge
problems for them. I think I just want to underscore
this is about war on terror coming to America. That's

(57:45):
what's terrifying about it. And the fact is is that
these tactics and you know, modus operata, I know this largely,
it's been normalized. Unfortunately, I think in a lot of
our g wat and what people are really reacting to.
And I think this is part of the unfortunate thing
is that people are only really reacting because it's about
drug trafficking. But the ground has been set all LOOKI
we murdered a US citizen completely with no due process.

(58:06):
I mean they basically died that day it was over.
And then from that point forward we had all of
these captures, capture kill raids, which are just kill raids
all over Afghanistan, all over Iraq. And now so it's
like you set that ground over twenty years, you create
that culture, and that's now being imported here and that's
what's the scariest thing about it. And it's like that's
why you know, Look, I'd be honest, I didn't clock

(58:28):
it at the time. Only people like Glenn and others
really understood like what was actually had because it's easy
to justify, oh, they're killing terrorists, and it's like, this
is what it leads to. This is actually the logical justification.

Speaker 3 (58:39):
Yeah, it was just you know, I mean, it was
just convenient.

Speaker 2 (58:41):
It was it was Glenn who's like a really genuine, committed,
principled civil libertarian, and you know, and it was lefties
who were like, this is leading to a bad place.
Like you may be okay with this now, but just
you know, every president is going to take this power
and is going to expand it. And there's a direct
line between those power graphs and what we're seeing now,

(59:02):
even though this is an even more you know, brazen
and even more insane. So in any case, I mean, well,
I guess I'm glad to see Congress isserting itself a
little bit here. Never know what could happen, But clearly
Haig Seth than others feeling at least a little bit
nervous and uncomfortable, which is I guess a good thing,
even though this.

Speaker 3 (59:22):
Is you know, all completely insane.

Speaker 1 (59:24):
That's right, all right, Okay, let's get to data centers.