“I would support removing the regime,” says Oklahoma Senator Markwayne Mullin on CNN.

“So you’re in favor of taking out the Iranian regime?” responds CNN’s Kaitlin Collins, unable to believe he said that out loud.

“I am, at this point,” Mullin responds proudly, clearly not yet understanding the seriousness of a sitting senator calling to oust a foreign leader…. Until later in the interview when he suddenly backtracks.

“We’re not into regime change…”

“But you just said you are for regime change, there.”

“No, I, I said I’m for the strikes. I didn’t say––”

“You said before that you were for taking out the regime.”

“Yeah, absolutely! That’s different than regime change. We didn’t – we’re not going after the regime. We’re going after the people that are killing their own people, and that happens to be the regime.”

“But just to be clear, you support taking out the supreme leader?”

“If he’s the one…then absolutely!”

“But that would be regime change.”

That’s right, it’s circus day at the GOP!

And just when Katie and Aaron get into the really good ridiculing of Senator Mullin, we flip over to another Republican on CNN who is mad that ICE protests are happening in the streets, instructing them to write “a letter to the editor, or start a podcast.” Ah yes, just like Dr. Martin Luther King would’ve done.

Flip again! AG Pam Bondi is yelling on Fox News about how she gleefully fired six prosecutors who refused to attack the widow of the woman murdered by ICE. Flip again! Karoline Leavitt is yelling at reporters for asking why that woman was murdered. Flip! Flip! Flip!

It’s a crazy circus here at the Friday Free-For-All, and that’s not even getting into the Zio-circus from the ADL’s Jonathan Greenblatt and former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo. Hitch a ride with Katie and Aaron, they’re crashing through it all.

Thanks for supporting independent media, subscribe to watch the full episode here:

Subscribe for the full episode at the bottom of the page. Watch a free preview here:

The Trump Administration’s regime change operations in Venezuela are escalating rapidly, making it a challenge to keep up with the facts, lies, hypocrisies, kidnappings, and killings. That’s why we’re speaking with Professors Gabriel Hetland and Alex Aviña, two experts on the historical implications of US destabilization attempts in Latin America, who deep dive into why Trump is attacking Venezuela, the role oil and natural resources play in this, and the broader conflict it will bring with China and BRICS.

Useful Idiots: Despite the invasion, Alex, you’ve argued that this can be read as a sign of weakness of the United States. Can you elaborate on that?

Alex Aviña: The fact that they didn’t opt for a larger military operation could be read as a recognition of the difficulty of such an operation. The military assets that the US had moved in the Caribbean are not nearly enough for an Iraq-style invasion or even what they did to Panama in December of 1989.

If we think about the broader context, and thinking about the national security strategy that the Trump administration published late last year, they more or less have conceded that they can’t frontally challenge China and Asia. So one way that they are going to proceed in the future is to indirectly challenge China.

China is the largest trading partner for South America, right? Historically every time that the US “comes home” and starts taking it out on Latin America, it’s usually after a moment of defeat or an admission that the global designs of the United States have met obstacles. So they have to retrench their power within Latin America.

Useful Idiots: Gabriel, you have a recent article at The Intercept: “The U.S. Desperately Wants Back in the Business of Empire With Venezuela. America carried out a coup in Venezuela to plunder the country’s resources. But Latin Americans will have the last word.” So what do you mean by that, Latin Americans will have the last word?

Gabriel Hetland: Trump’s attempt to dominate Latin America doesn’t always work out the way the US wants it to. Specifically, when the US attempts to push Latin Americans around, it sometimes has an immediate or more long-term backlash. And we’ve seen this repeatedly in Latin American history just this year.

Trump went after Lula, the president of Brazil, because he was prosecuting Jair Bolsonaro for attempting a coup. He talked about slapping 50% tariffs on Lula, and that helped Lula’s popularity. We saw something similar in 2002 with Evo Morales in Bolivia. The U.S. ambassador called him a narco terrorist and he immediately went to number two in the polls.

There’s also going to be a backlash against U.S. imperialism in other countries. In Colombia, Gustavo Petro has had huge rallies all week. Santos, the conservative former president of Colombia, who’s not an ally of Petro, actually said it was good that Petro and Trump were having a conversation. So when the president of the United States goes after leaders in Latin America, it can put conservatives in Latin America on the back foot and force them to actually defend leftists. It can also provide an electoral boost for nationalists and leftists and anti-imperialism overall. I think that it’s very, very likely that we’ll see more of that.

Subscribe to watch full interview with Alex Aviño and Gabriel Hetland on the nearly-satyrical levels of racism in the Venezuelan opposition that MAGA is propping up, as well as a controversial question from Aaron.

Subscribing also gets you our Friday Free-For-All: Surprise! Dr Phil is in Israel’s Pocket

Watch the full episode here:

From the nation’s sage teletherapist Dr. Phil: “This has been one of the longest wars they’ve faced. The cost has been really high politically, humanitarian-wise, and has taken a tremendous toll on………”

Can you guess who he thinks the tremendous toll is on? Hint it has to do with the last two years of death, destruction, and torture throughout Gaza.

“…a tremendous toll on Prime Minister Netanyahu and the Israeli people.” Did you guess correctly?

It seems that Israel has now officially gained one more paid-off sycophant in pseudo-psychologist Dr. Phil, who as it turns out now runs Trump’s Religious Liberty Commission and has embedded with ICE. If deporting immigrants doesn’t scream empathy we don’t know what does.

This pro-genocide statement came in the intro to his recent fawning interview with Netanyahu himself. So Katie and Aaron are flaming him, as well as all of the other mental health professionals who have remained silent while a genocide is live-streamed across the world.

Also in this Friday Free-For-All: Jesse Watters’ hypocritical smears against the Minnesota mother murdered by ICE agents, Fox News thinks Nicolás Maduro is in awe of the US justice system, and US law enforcement literally arrests a peaceful protester during a live interview on ABC.

It’s as crazy as it sounds. Watch with Katie and Aaron so you can laugh instead of cry at all of it. It’s the Useful Idiots Friday Free-For-All. Subscribe to watch the full episode here: