00:00Let's now welcome U.S. Generalist Max Blumenthal to deepen the analysis following the U.S. Senate decision to block Trump from another military action against Venezuela.
00:11Welcome, Max, to From the South.
00:13Good to see you.
00:14It's a pleasure to have you with us, Max.
00:16So today the Senate decided to move on with this project that now moves on to the House of Representatives to follow up for approval, which is aimed to block President Donald Trump from taking any further military action against the Bolivar Republic of Venezuela.
00:30Is this a clear setback, a defeat for Trump's agendas?
00:35It would have been a defeat if this had taken place during the last War Powers Resolution vote.
00:41And now we've seen some Republicans begin to shift, like Josh Hawley, who is a major Trump supporter from Missouri.
00:49And I think it increases the risk of a strike on Iran because Trump is threatened with losing control over Congress in a major electoral wipeout in midterm elections coming in November.
01:05And so the Israelis are pushing hard for a joint U.S.-Israeli attack on Iran.
01:11And Trump's supporters and Trump's MAGA bloc are furious that Congress is asserting itself.
01:18So taking into account, we are seeing that Congress is trying to put a hold on Trump's militaristic agenda, but then we are seeing him pushing forward.
01:26Now, what can we expect from within the Congress, since these actions were illegal, since they had not the approval of Congress to carry them out, what can we expect coming from within the politics of the United States moving forward?
01:41Trump's agenda is increasingly unpopular, and Trump is under pressure, not just from the left, but from within his own party.
01:51The American public did not support the kidnapping of Nicolas Maduro, and while the numbers of supporters went up, that was purely within Trump's base among a contingent of people over 50 years old who watch Fox News all night who already supported Donald Trump.
02:11So Trump, as he becomes less popular, is increasingly likely to take extreme actions.
02:18He is recognizing his own popularity also by trying to pump $200 billion of bonds into the housing market to reduce interest rates.
02:28But it also means he could pull a Netanyahu and attack Iran at any point.
02:34This is a dangerous and increasingly unpredictable president who has cast his lot with the neoconservative wing of the Republican Party responsible for the invasions of Iraq, the destruction of countries across the globe, and anything can happen.
02:52We are also seeing Trump not only threatening Iran now with his latest rhetorics, but also threatening other Latin American countries such as Colombia and Mexico.
03:01What can we expect coming from that?
03:04Well, it's important to recognize the different forces that converged over the invasion of Venezuela and kidnapping of its president.
03:14You had the anti-immigrant forces represented by Stephen Miller, which Trump sided with, and the Cuban American Miami Mafia represented by Marco Rubio and his key advisor, Mauricio Claver Caron.
03:29And they made a move to sideline Maria Caron Machado and keep the Chavista government in power in order to impose Donald Trump's will on Venezuela without any concern for human rights or democracy.
03:45And this has infuriated, actually, many of the Cuban American lawmakers in Florida that they did this.
03:52And so what are they going to give them next?
03:55I'm concerned that Trump will push for action in Cuba.
03:59He's just moved the USS Iwo Jima and another amphibious assault ship to the northern coast of Cuba.
04:06And while he may not seek immediate military intervention in Cuba, the tightening of the embargo, pushing Venezuela to reduce oil shipments, pressuring Claudia Scheinbaum in Mexico to stop oil exports to Cuba.
04:22I believe Cuba is next on the target board.
04:25And as Senator Rick Scott from Florida, a major recipient of donations from ExxonMobil, has said, then Nicaragua is in the crosshairs.
04:34They want to wipe out the troika of resistance in Latin America.
04:39When this resolution, that project that the Senate approved moves to the House of Representatives, if it is approved, what can we expect coming after that approval?
04:51Well, it might be harder for Trump to go to Congress seeking war powers, but that's the point of the narco-terror designation.
05:02Donald Trump's administration has declared many Americans to be domestic terrorists, including a 37-year-old mother who was shot in the face by an ICE officer yesterday.
05:13They openly called her a domestic terrorist.
05:15So the application and exploitation of the terrorist term allows them to circumvent not only international law, but the U.S. Constitution that requires the president to go to Congress.
05:29And there's another important point I want to make, which is psychological.
05:34The U.S. has the most powerful military in human history.
05:38It's an unprecedented maritime power with the ability to wage kinetic warfare almost on a perpetual basis throughout the Western Hemisphere.
05:47But the U.S. has a psychological vulnerability.
05:51Its population is not accustomed to loss of life.
05:54The population does not support these wars.
05:57And if a helicopter had gone down in Caracas, it would have destroyed Donald Trump's entire Don Roe Doctrine agenda for intimidating everyone in his way in the Western Hemisphere.
06:10But that didn't happen.
06:11And so now Trump supporters are saying the Iraq War Syndrome is gone and we can march on to our next targets.
06:19And it's very likely that if Trump attempts to attack another country, whether it's Cuba or Iran, that U.S. soldiers will be lost and that will send Donald Trump spiraling to an approval rate lower than George W. Bush enjoyed during the worst points of the Iraq War.
06:38Max, to conclude, what actions could condition the decision making of Donald Trump taking into account what is happening around the globe and in the United States itself, like, for example, the protests that are taking place denouncing these illegal actions being taken by the president?
06:53Well, Donald Trump's able to excite his supporters most with the culture war at home, not with foreign wars abroad.
07:03And the younger members of Donald Trump's base are much more anti-war than their parents and grandparents.
07:10So it would work for Donald Trump if he could actually provoke a violent reaction to this ICE killing.
07:19And that's why I think he's sending ICE officers into American cities with bulletproof plates and tactical gear and large machine guns and masks on their faces.
07:29It's to provoke the local population to push them into a violent response and to get the kind of racial and cultural battles in the street that Trump could then exploit to frighten suburban voters and declare, as he did during the Black Lives Matter protests, that he's actually there to protect America from radical domestic terrorists.
07:54And so far, the people in Minnesota who are protesting ICE have not taken the bait.
08:00Thank you very much, Max, for your input here with us in From the South for sharing all your ideas.
08:06Thanks for all the work you're doing at Telesor. It's very important right now.
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