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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…

Subscribe to watch the full interview with historian Greg Grandin. (Or watch it free with this deal. You’ll also get our Friday Free-For-All: Stephen Miller Says What He’d Do With Pete Hegseth’s Children)

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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.”

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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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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Even Hillary Clinton is Turning On Israel
After Trump makes tentative peace with Iran, the walls crumble around Israel and Netanyahu

When you’ve even got arch-Zionist Hillary Clinton making fun of you and throwing you under the bus, the ride is over.

This week marked a historic moment as Trump finally struck a peace deal with Iran in which the US gives up a whole lot more than it gets in an apparent admission of losing the war they started. But somehow even more striking has been the turn against Israel.

After weeks of rumors that Trump’s relationship with Benjamin Netanyahu has become tumultuous, JD Vance came out and said what the admin’s clearly been thinking.

“You have seen people within Bibi’s cabinet who have come out and attacked the deal and in some ways very personally attacked the President of the United States. My message to them would be twofold.

Number 1: If I was in the Israeli cabinet, I might not be attacking the only powerful ally that I have left anywhere in the entire world.

Number 2: What is your exact proposal? You’re a country of 9 million people. You can’t just kill your way out of solving every single national security problem that you have.”

And after Vance shocked Israel and the world with this statement, other former Israel cronies followed suit. Even Hillary Clinton.

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Trump Accidentally Tells Iran He's Secretly Stealing Their Oil
Plus, a grown adult congressman pretends to be on the phone to avoid a question (and gets caught)

“Are you concerned, Mr. President, about the latest inflation number which came out this morning?”

A simple enough question from a reporter unravels Trump into first ripping off a line on inflation that is now haunting every Republican member of Congress in press conferences, and then into a somehow worse slip of international piracy secrets.

“No, I love it, the numbers were great,” Trump says. “You know what I really love? I love inflation. You know why? Because as soon as this war is over, you know I can say it now… something you didn’t know…”

At this point you can see in his eyes that he considers the moment. It’s not too late to stop himself, but the thrill of spilling is too good.

“Did you know we’ve been taking out millions of barrels of oil? Nobody knows it. You know who doesn’t know about it? Iran.” He thinks quick. “Until right now.”

And the fallout’s been immediate. Mike Johnson and Republican congresspeople all the way down are being forced to dodge questions from reporters about why Trump loves inflation (we watch one guy embarrassingly get caught faking a phone call while running away). And even worse for the MAGA camp, Energy Secretary Chris Wright got blasted in Congress when pressed on whether he was aware that the US has been illegally stealing millions of barrels of oil from Iran:

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The Most Antisemitic Event of the Year? Watch the American Jewish Committee's Global Forum With Us!
Plus, former Biden and Obama official Brett McGurk wants you to "put aside the horrors of Gaza" for a while...

Subscribe to support Useful Idiots and watch our Friday Free-for-All:

Did you know that Congress is working on a new plan to “distance” the US-Israeli relationship by slowing US aid to Israel and replace it with a “financial partnership”? A partnership which has the power to not only increase the amount of money and weapons the US sends to Israel but also future-proof it from being dismantled by future presidents and lawmakers?

And do you know who invented this plan that allows members of Congress to become more independent from Israel?

Let the words of GOP Rep. Marlin Stutzman speaking on CNN enlighten us all: “This was actually something that came from Prime Minister Netanyahu.”

This, and a whole slew of other remarks that will make your skin crawl were topics of what many people are calling the antisemitic events of the year! The American Jewish Committee’s Global Forum, where Zionists gave speeches on and cheered for things that, if we had said them, would get us immediately kicked off YouTube for being antisemitic.

From bragging that the “Jewish coalition” spent five million dollars to oust Thomas Massie and control US elections, to explaining that Jews can now use AI to “manage and control” social media content, to laughter at John Fetterman’s celebration of Israel’s pager attacks in Lebanon that killed and blinded children and civilians, it was one antisemitic trope after another.

And no condemnations from the Fraudfather over at the ADL yet…

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