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CIA's Secret Drug War, Exposed
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December 05, 2025
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This week we’re speaking to Pulitzer-Prize winner Greg Grandin about the Trump Administration’s regime-change war in Venezuela, which now is mired in controversy not just because we’re trying to overthrow a foreign government yet again, but also because Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth presided over a blatantly unconstitutional strike on a speedboat in the Caribbean.

Useful Idiots: Can you walk us through what Trump is doing right now in Venezuela and what is motivating him?

Greg Grandin: The big picture is the America First movement, which imagines that the United States no longer superintends a global liberal political economy in which everybody plays by the rules. That’s happened in the past, and Latin America is key to that.

But then, of course, there’s Venezuela and there’s oil. There was a split within the Trump administration between so-called moderates, who are tied to Chevron, and the war party, Miller, Rubio, and Hegseth. I think those speedboat attacks were the war party’s attempt to preempt any normalization of relationships with Venezuela.

And with Rubio, it’s a confluence of two different strands. One is he was a neocon before he became America First. But he’s also from South Florida, and he’s got deep ties to the Cuban community. And Venezuela is seen as the first step towards taking out Cuba, denying it its oil. So he’s doing it under the rubric of the War on Drugs, which of course is not Donald Trump. That’s a fifty year war.

Behind every single horror that Donald Trump represents exists a long train of U.S. presidents that had first put in the policies that make what Trump does today possible. And that’s nowhere clearer than in the Drug War, which started formally with Richard Nixon in 1973. So there’s many things flowing into it.

Useful Idiots: Do you think Trump will succeed with these plans in Venezuela?

Greg Grandin: The momentum to get Maduro out is quite strong and surprisingly orchestrated, which included the Nobel Peace Prize Committee giving María Corina Machado the prize, and she immediately fulfilled her role as everybody’s worst expectation of what could possibly happen. I can’t imagine any other Peace Prize winner immediately embarking on an alliance with Donald Trump to stage a coup. But that’s where we are.

I think that Trump wants Venezuela settled. That either means Maduro’s gone and some provisional government favorable to the United States is in power, or it means the Chevron faction within the Trump administration keeps Maduro and establishes some semblance of normalcy and keeps the oil pumping.

Now deportation flights have restarted after being halted for a little while. That’s where I’m a little bit dubious about whether Trump is going to go all in on Rubio’s visions. They don’t have enormous support in the United States. It doesn’t have support in the MAGA base. And obviously Hegseth is having all of these problems. The leaking of the footage of that double-tap speedboat killing suggests there’s deep discontent within the military…

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Sanctions Are a Form of Warfare

“Sanctions are a form of war. They’re economic warfare. And they destroy people’s lives.”

Joshua Landis (https://twitter.com/joshua_landis), Sandra Mackey Chair in Middle East Studies at the University of Oklahoma, is one of the foremost experts on Syria. This week, as Syria, along with neighbor Turkiye, grapples with the aftermath of the devastating earthquake, Professor Landis joins the Useful Idiots to explain the deadly consequences that sanctions pile on to the damage.

“America likes to talk about all its precision bombing and hitting someone with a drone to avoid collateral damage,” Landis explains. “But sanctions? It’s all about collateral damage. Very little of it is targeted.”

But if you read corporate media outlets like the New York Times or Washington Post, you’d find a much different story. Both papers this week published headlines that were hastily changed when they realized they were being a little too truthful. See if you can tell the difference:

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"Shameful" New York Times Changes Headline to Protect Sanctions

“Sanctions are a form of war. They’re economic warfare. And they destroy people’s lives.”

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“America likes to talk about all its precision bombing and hitting someone with a drone to avoid collateral damage,” Landis explains. “But sanctions? It’s all about collateral damage. Very little of it is targeted.”

But if you read corporate media outlets like the New York Times or Washington Post, you’d find a much different story. Both papers this week published headlines that were hastily changed when they realized they were being a little too truthful. See if you can tell the difference:

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March 26, 2024

Good to be part of the community. I think that Aaron and Katie do a brilliant job in these hellish times when such great in - depth research and reporting are essential.

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Washington Post Columnist: "Kill the Iranian Leaders That Don't Want a Deal."
Plus, a Congressional candidate thinks saying "genocide" is as bad as the N-word

“What should happen if the Iranians don’t come to the table after 72 hours?”

This was asked to Washington Post columnist Marc Thiessen, author of such lines as “Iran is a death cult running a country,” who has previously campaigned for the use of enhanced interrogation techniques (AKA torture). You know, a real Washington Post type.

His answer: “If there are two factions in Iran, one that wants a deal and one that doesn’t, let’s kill the ones that don’t want a deal.” He pauses to laugh, and continues, “It’s that simple! We’ve killed over 50 Iranian leaders so far, let’s end the ceasefire and finish the job.”

It’s mafia-boss mentality with a war crime twist. When the New Nuremberg Trials begin, remember to add Thiessen to the list of complicit journalists, under T next to Tapper.

Katie and Aaron are all over this, plus about a million other war-crime whispers strewn across corporate media this week: Bill Maher is devastated over Democrats turning on his beloved Israel, former Biden National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan can’t believe anyone (other than himself) would help Israel commit mass murder, a Congressman grossly refers to the US as a “dominant predator,” and more skincrawllers all over mainstream media.

It’s dirty work watching all this news. If you want to support the show, please consider subscribing. You can watch the full episode here:

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Alan Dershowitz Threatens Trump If He Doesn't Follow Israeli Orders
Plus, "Step Aside!": Chuck Schumer LOSES Dem Support as Israel Opinion Plummets

This week, two lists were published which outed the biggest Zionist tools in US office: one for Republicans and one for Dems, because here in the US we have a bipartisan array of political suckage.

First the Dems: Bernie Sanders introduced a bill in the Senate that would block the sale of bombs to Israel. It failed, in part because of seven Democrats who betrayed their base to side with the AIPAC lobbyists who own them:

 

The list includes arch-Zionist / Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer, who, as the the plummeting of Israel’s reputation spreads to the Senate, has begun facing calls from his colleagues to resign in shame.

The second list shows, after years of being called a foreign agent in the pocket of Putin by corporate spokespeople at CNN and MSNBC, that Donald Trump really is a foreign agent. It’s just not the Russians who own him.

 

Of this list of Trump owners, 4 of 5 are Jewish and all are radical Zionists. Which is how Epstein-lawyer Alan Dershowitz has now begun blackmailing the president, saying that Israel will “fight, even if it means confrontation with President Trump. We will take care of Trump. I met with him…and he was very receptive about Iran…and Miriam Adelson has met with him…”

Join Katie and Aaron for a deep dive into the Zionist lobby’s dealings with Trump and greedy Dems, plus Stephen Miller nearly slips up and calls for a “final solution” carried out by Israel, and Fox News’ Maria Bartiromo uses ChatGPT to get some questionable information.

Thanks for supporting our work, subscribe to watch the full episode here:

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Dana Bash's Obsessive Hatred for Hasan Piker Reveals CNN's Fake Journalism Mentality
Plus, NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte defends his 'Daddy' Donald Trump's disastrous war on Iran

Instead of reporting on the US and Israel’s mass assault this week on civilian infrastructure in Iran, Lebanon, and Palestine, CNN’s Dana Bash decided to give a rant about leftist Twitch streamer Hasan Piker, who has been campaigning in Michigan for Democratic Senate candidate Dr. Abdul El-Sayed.

"Hasan Piker is excusing sexual violence by Hamas terrorists,” claims Bash. “In 2024, he said, quote, ‘It doesn’t matter if f***ing rapes happened on October 7th. Like that doesn’t change the dynamic for me… the Palestinian resistance is not perfect.’”

As you can imagine, Katie and Aaron have a lot to say to this.

First, for the millionth time, Dana, there is no documented evidence of any rape by Hamas on October 7th, let alone the mass rape hoax that you’ve regularly used as atrocity propaganda. If there was, surely you’d have pointed out even a single verified case and broadcast it endlessly on CNN.

What there is documented evidence of, and a lot of it, is the rape and torture of Palestinian prisoners by IDF guards. One such instance was even caught on video and the guards were arrested for their crimes. This led to ‘Right to Rape’ protests across Israel, and the rapists were eventually cleared of all charges by an Israeli court. Has Dana reported this on her show?

She has not.

But second, more to Hasan Piker’s point, is that even if there had been sexual violence perpetrated by Hamas on October 7th, it would not justify committing a genocide against the Palestinian people. This is the law of proportionality under international law.

But Dana Bash clearly thinks otherwise.

Katie and Aaron flash back to a clip from 2023 where Rep. Pramila Jayapal tells Bash that “15,000 Palestinians have been killed in Israeli airstrikes, three quarters of whom are women and children.”

“And it’s horrible,” Dana responds. “But you don’t see Israeli soldiers raping Palestinian women.”

Katie and Aaron go all in on Dana Bash’s psychotic Hasan Piker rant, plus we watch Dems Chris Murphy and Chuck Schumer give the worst possible critiques to Trump’s so-called ceasefire deal, Trump’s top economic advisor accidentally admit that this war has been an economic disaster, and the funniest corporate media reaction to Trump claiming that he is going to “destroy Iranian civilization.”

It’s a crazy week on corporate media. Watch with Katie and Aaron to laugh instead of cry at all of it. Thanks for supporting our work, subscribe to watch the full episode here:

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