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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

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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:

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For this week’s interview, we’re speaking with Francisco Rodríguez about the latest in Trump’s regime-change campaign in Venezuela. Rodríguez, a member of the Venezuelan opposition who formerly advised a challenger to President Nicolás Maduro, does not, like other members of the opposition, support the U.S. policy of starvation sanctions and military force to overthrow the government of Venezuela.

Useful Idiots: You have warned that Trump’s naval blockade of U.S.-sanctioned oil tankers going in and out of Venezuela could lead to the first major famine in the Western Hemisphere. Can you explain what you mean by that?

Francisco Rodríguez: The first thing to understand is that the Venezuelan economy runs on oil revenues. Oil is more than 90% of the country’s exports. It uses its export revenue in order to pay for imports of everything, including food and essentials.

The Venezuelan economy doesn’t actually produce the food that it needs to feed itself. And that’s not atypical: that’s the case for many economies that are integrated into the world economy. But not many economies get blockaded. In fact, there’s really no precedent of a sustained blockade of any economy in the Western Hemisphere.

Useful Idiots: Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro responded to Trump’s blockade announcement by ordering a naval escort for tankers that are carrying oil toward Asia. This obviously raises the risk, if Trump decides to enforce his social media post, of a military confrontation between the U.S. and Venezuela in the high seas.

Francisco Rodríguez: The U.S. has essentially gone into this strategy of trying to scare the Venezuelan military into turning on Maduro, which is called the credible threat strategy. It’s the idea that if the US can credibly threaten that it’s going to invade, it doesn’t actually have to invade: the military is going to turn on Maduro who is going to give up power.

Up until now, Maduro isn’t moving. You don’t have any sign of rebellion in the military, and this strategy has painted President Trump into a corner because now he’s almost forced to show that this threat is credible by carrying out a military attack.

But on the other hand, there seems to be absolutely no appetite, at least in American public opinion and among the political leadership of both parties, for an actual war in Venezuela. So is President Trump going to pull the trigger? Is he going to go in and seize that tanker and fire on the Venezuelan ships that are escorting it? We don’t know. It’s highly unpredictable.

But what we do know is that a lot of military conflicts begin this way. They begin with threats and then one side either miscalculating or believing that it has to enforce its threat in order to maintain its credibility.

Subscribe for the full interview with Francisco Rodríguez for his thoughts on Venezuelan opposition leader and Nobel Peace Prize winner María Corina Machado calling regime change an “act of love.”

And don’t miss this week’s Friday Free-For-All: Katie Halper & Aaron Maté React to Ridiculous ‘Melania’ Trailer

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