Secretary. What legal authority did the Pentagon invoke to strike that boat full of drug smugglers? We have the absolute and complete authority to conduct that. First of all, just the defense of the American people alone. 100,000 Americans were killed each year under the previous administration because of an [00:00:18] open border and open drug traffic flow. Was there an assault on the American people? I said we smoked a drug boat, and there were 11 narco terrorists at the bottom of the ocean. And when other people try to do that, they're going to meet the same fate. Not a good sign. Members of the Trump administration, including Secretary of Defense [00:00:34] Pete Hegseth, are struggling to explain what authority they had to blow up an alleged cartel boat leaving Venezuela, which killed 11 people. Now, the boat was allegedly carrying trend Aragua drug traffickers, which Trump has [00:00:49] designated as a terrorist organization. Normally, the U.S. Coast Guard would intercept suspected drug traffickers in international waters. Also worrying is the fact that our government hasn't even bothered to identify any specific targets. [00:01:05] So all of this begs the question was the US strike on that boat legal? Reuters reports that the United States can argue it was taking anticipatory self-defense action, and Trump said Tren de Aragua was under the control of Venezuela's president Nicolas Maduro. [00:01:20] However, that falls short of international law without evidence of an imminent attack or past attacks. By trend Aragua, according to legal experts. Now, the administration has not provided any evidence that the US was in fact an imminent danger or that the vessel was even armed. [00:01:38] Plus, our own laws here in the US indicate that drug trafficking is not punishable by death, and it appears that the administration is well aware that they acted outside the parameters of the rule of law that they purport to care so much about, [00:01:53] at least when it comes to democratically run liberal cities. In fact, they. The New York, The New York Times had this incredibly fascinating sentence in one of their reports recently, having to do with the strike. They wrote that Pentagon officials were still working Wednesday on what legal [00:02:10] authority they would tell the public was used to back up the extraordinary strike in international waters. Nonetheless, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, a known war hawk who inspired groans from the America First faction on the right when Trump nominated him for secretary of state, continues his saber rattling. [00:02:29] We destroyed a drug boat that left Venezuela operated by a designated narco terrorist organization, which is what these are. And, and he's been clear that the days of acting with impunity and having an engine shot down or a couple of drugs grabbed off a boat, those days are over. [00:02:46] Now we are going to wage combat against drug cartels that are flooding American streets and killing Americans. Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro has responded to the airstrike using an interesting tactic in recent comments. He decided to blame the escalation almost entirely on Marco Rubio and tried [00:03:06] to appeal to Trump's anti-war rhetoric. Mr. President, Donald Trump, you must be careful because Marco Rubio wants to stay in your hands with blood. South American, Caribbean, Venezuelan blood. They want to drag you into a bloodbath to tarnish the Trump name forever [00:03:23] with a massacre against the Venezuelan people with a terrible war across South America and the Caribbean. This would be a full scale continental war. But there are other signs of escalation. The U.S. Has significantly ramped up its military presence in [00:03:39] the southern Caribbean in recent months. The Amphibious Ready Group and roughly 2200 Marines from the 22nd Marine Expeditionary Unit are operating near Puerto Rico, in the northern Caribbean Sea. They're joined by two guided missile destroyers and a cruiser, [00:03:56] which are also operating in the Caribbean. And I mean, let's keep it real. Marines are usually deployed for boots on the ground. Aground. Not a great sign here. And just today, the Pentagon announced that it's sending ten F-35 fighter jets to the Caribbean to be used in operations allegedly targeting drug cartels. [00:04:15] And I say allegedly because, honestly, I personally don't believe this is about drugs for a single second. And Dave, you recently had Dave DeCamp on from Antiwar.com and he mentioned something that even I didn't know about in regard to the Trump administration blowing boats up. Let's take a look. [00:04:31] I mean, the US military just blew a boat out of the water and in the Caribbean claiming that it was carrying drugs. And actually they did something similar in Somalia a few months ago. They bombed a boat and claimed it was smuggling weapons. And I remember thinking like, how could you know that? [00:04:47] How could you know? Everybody on the boat is even aware that they're smuggling weapons. Like, how could you really know that? And they're probably just relying on, like, whoever their allies are, whatever they tell them about that boat. And now we see. We see it. I mean, this is a precedent has been set. [00:05:05] Now, if you want to get into this, by this us, I believe it was an airstrike. It hasn't been confirmed. Maybe a drone or something. The US bombing a boat, claiming that it's carrying drugs and killing. According to President Trump, 11 people, which he calls terrorists. Okay, so what the hell is going on here? [00:05:22] And how many conflicts is the United States involved in that most Americans don't even know about? So I opened it up to you, Dave Smith. I want to know what your thoughts are about what's really going on with Venezuela. Well, I like that you played that clip of, Dave DeCamp, [00:05:39] which I should give a shout out to him. He's the man, and he's really Scott's absolute best guy over there at Antiwar.com. And I read him every single day. And he's. If you really want to stay informed, read Dave DeCamp. Absolutely. At Antiwar.com because he's he's all over like every conflict and puts out like [00:05:55] multiple articles every day about it. Yeah. It's kind of like, you know, the, the war on drugs times, the war on terrorism. And they've both been such successful policies that why don't we merge these two things? And for some reason, this seems to be like catnip to a lot of [00:06:11] the the Trump supporters that they just. Yeah. All right. We're getting narco terrorists is all you need to hear for right wingers, I guess to get excited or at least some of them. And of course, you know, what does that even mean exactly. Like can we define that term? [00:06:27] Can you demonstrate in this case we haven't demonstrated that they were drug dealers or that they were terrorists. Like what act of terrorism are you accusing them of of committing? And of course, I mean, this policy is just you can see it's Trump just flirting with another disastrous idea. [00:06:43] We'll see how far he ends up going with it. But, you know, when they when when Pete Hegseth is mentioning that 100,000 people die of overdoses every year, what he's leaving out is that that's after 50 years of the war on drugs, [00:06:58] like this is the result of this big government, tyrannical policy of regulating what Americans can put in their bodies after all of these years and filling up so many prisons, with with drug offenders and drug dealers. [00:07:14] This is where we are now. And as Dave DeCamp also pointed out when I was interviewing him the other day, you know, when you're talking about, you know, say, drone bombing, narco terrorists, well, can you can anyone point to one example where that's worked [00:07:31] in the war on terrorism, like in any one of these theaters? Whereas, you know, it was in Afghanistan in 2009 when, general McChrystal, came up with the insurgent math, you know, that term and basically just being like, we're creating more and more, [00:07:48] terrorists with all of these, these, every time we take people off of our list, of course, as Scott has covered in his phenomenal book, enough already in in Yemen, before the Saudi invasion, when when Obama was fighting Al-Qaeda there from al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, from 2009 to 2015, he was drone bombing them. [00:08:08] And they just their numbers kept growing and growing and growing. And the same was true in Syria and Iraq. And so I guess we want to bring all of that success right into our hemisphere now. And as Dave Camp also pointed out, and I'll take it over to Scott after this, but if you really were even concerned about the the drug trade, it's not [00:08:26] as if Venezuela is the main problem. It's much more the stuff comes through Colombia and Mexico. And so it just happens to be the regime change that Marco Rubio has had a hard on for for many years, happens to be the target of narco terrorism. [00:08:42] I don't know, I'm going to need to see some evidence. I'm not buying any of it. Well, to your point, and I'm going to kick it over to you, Scott. You know, in Trump's first term for all of the, you know, celebrations that you'll see from the America First crowd in regard to Trump's, so-called isolationism in reality, [00:08:59] in his first term, he did attempt to topple the regime in Venezuela, I believe, twice, and essentially install Juan Guaido as like some, you know, puppet leader for the United States. So am I wrong to think that the drug war is really a cover story here [00:09:17] for what is really going to be a regime change war with Venezuela? Well, yeah, that's certainly my concern as well. And by the way, it was on the very bad advice of Marco Rubio back then to do that. And, and when, of course, Juan Guaido had no, real charisma whatsoever, much less [00:09:36] a real base of support in the country to support him, except a very small faction. And then he called for military intervention on his own behalf, which, of course, is treason and the death knell of any domestic popularity ever could have and is, I believe, widely regarded as a joke now. [00:09:54] So I don't know who they have in mind to do it. But I think you're right that this very well could be a pretext. For that, as far as the war on drugs itself here and fighting it in this way. Senator Rand Paul came out today and said, this is illegal. [00:10:09] And the law says you just interdict these guys. If they have drugs, you prosecute them. But this is America. We should presume whoever's on that boat, who we know from that bird's eye view, from that drone's eye view, they don't really know who those people are. They should be presumed innocent. We're not at war with Venezuela. [00:10:27] That's a criminal matter. They should be arrested and, if necessary, prosecuted. But as Dave said, you know, all of that is essentially an endless jobs program for a bunch of DEA agents anyway who never accomplish anything. That's right. But why would why would Trump want to do a regime change war in Venezuela? [00:10:47] Like, what are the motivations, the possible motivations here? Well, they have a lot of oil and they've maintained their independence from us. And of course, they've been essentially a leftist regime, you know, to the left by leftists, I mean, to the left of progressive, you know, since Hugo Chavez [00:11:05] and Maduro has, you know, made himself no friend of the United States. And so they have a full sanctions regime on them. You know, people complain for good reasons about Venezuelan gangs in this country, but America's international sanctions regime has done as much to destroy [00:11:22] Venezuela as their, you know, pseudo Marxist economy that they've had because, you know, any national government can still hire some French company to come in and run their oil company for them or whatever like that, but they're not allowed to. The sanctions regime prevents that. [00:11:38] So America is I don't know what percentage, but roughly half the reason Venezuela is as poor as it is and why they have such crime and so many refugees and, and economic refugees and, and other, others emigrating from there in the first place. [00:11:53] So. Yeah. You know, and, and, you know, force is very tempting, and especially Donald Trump is a kind of guy who his people tell him, look, the solution to this is just make it go bang. Then he's listening. At least you know what I mean. Especially when it seems like, you know, kind of high benefit, low cost. [00:12:13] Like, what's the worst that could happen if he attacks Venezuela? It's not like picking a fight over in Mesopotamia or something. So you could see how for him, you know, like Bush senior in Panama, this is one that we could do and get away with, probably without too much trouble. You know, maybe I'm not saying that's true, but I, [00:12:28] I could see that being their thinking. You know, but my concern is that we're getting mixed up or we're making a lot of different enemies all across the globe right now. So, in regard to the interview that you had, Dave with DeCamp, he talked [00:12:44] a lot about what's currently transpiring in Somalia and how the airstrikes, the US airstrikes in Somalia have really ramped up under the second Trump administration. Most Americans don't know about that. You know, we're doing what we're doing right now with Venezuela. We are aiding and abetting a genocide in Gaza and the annexation [00:13:03] of the West Bank in the Middle East. I mean, there's a lot going on. And so it's very easy to kind of get caught up in this ideology of, well, were this military superpower and no one's going to attack us and no harm will come to the United States. [00:13:19] But we also know that the way wars are fought has really changed. And, you know, with the emergence of drones, I think that really does change the game in regard to U.S. Security. I'm a little bit concerned about what's going on right now and whether, you know, [00:13:34] our foreign policy is actually attracting a lot more hostility that could put Americans at risk. What do you think about that, Dave? Oh, yeah. I mean, I think it's a real concern. And of course, like, you know, the this is what this is what created [00:13:52] the terrorist problem to begin with. And the we I think what we've done here now, being completely implicated for facilitating the genocide in Gaza, all these military campaigns where there really is no clear threat to US national security, but the hatred that we engender from these campaigns [00:14:12] is a real threat to US national security. And I do think, you know, I get caught up a little bit, you know, like obviously like the war hawks are always trying to make people scared. And this, you know, back if you could remember Dick Cheney after nine over 11 talking about it's not a matter of if but when. [00:14:28] And so they're always playing up this like you have to be afraid and therefore give all of your, you know, give us additional power and kind of turn your brain off. But the policy of in immediately after the the terror wars, [00:14:43] having the Joe Biden de facto open borders and now just getting right back into the game of of wars of choice and of course, backing Israel's just horrific genocide of the the Gazans. It does just seem like I mean, like the this policy is just so insane. [00:15:00] And yeah, I'm very concerned about potential blowback terrorism from from all of these conflicts. So who knows? I know Scott said the other day, you know, I interviewed Scott on, on my show, about a week and a half ago. And even Scott was saying as, as upset as some of us are with Tulsi Gabbard and the [00:15:18] way she handled both the, the, bombing of the Houthis and, the the bombing of Iran. Scott was saying, man, I hope she really is focused on bin laden radicals every day because this is a real threat that we should be concerned about. [00:15:33] Yeah, absolutely. And, you know, it's interesting because there's this cover story when it comes to what's happening with Venezuela. The U.S. Is also, along with Israel, kind of threatening the government of Lebanon. You know, you need to disarm the, you need to disarm Hezbollah, or else there could [00:15:50] be some military action taken against you. You also have I don't think Iran conflict is over by any means. And of course, there's still pressure from Israel for the U.S. To go back in. But there's also like this other side of the Trump administration or Trump himself, [00:16:07] where he's actually very honest. So I actually want to pivot to what has just happened with a new executive order, because Donald Trump is expected to sign an executive order today, which would, in my opinion, accurately rebrand the Defense Department as the Department of War because it does [00:16:23] seem like the Defense Department does a lot less defending and a lot more warring. So, according to a document describing the EO, restoring the name Department of War will sharpen the focus of this department on our national interest. [00:16:39] I don't know if it's really in our national interest to start wars, but nonetheless and signal to adversaries America's readiness to wage war to secure its interests. I think that the international community is well aware that we're willing to wage [00:16:54] war pretty much over anything, but there are suspicions that this all stemmed from a single passing comment that Trump made to Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth. Hegseth has been discussing the issue internally since March, said a person familiar with the matter, [00:17:09] apparently inspired after a white House meeting at which Trump quipped you look more like a secretary of war in August. Trump also said defense is too defensive and we want to be defensive, but we want to be offensive, too. [00:17:26] If we have to be. He has argued that defense was too politically correct a term it's too woke, I guess, and that war and that War Department just sounded better. So, Scott, thoughts on that? [00:17:42] Well, look, I mean, there's some truth in what he's saying, that this always was a politically correct term for it. Right? They renamed it the Department of Defense in 1947 after they passed the National Security Act and really made it the Department of World Empire. Right. And the Department of Aggression. [00:18:00] Before that, they were at least honest enough to call it what it was. So as far as dumping the euphemism and getting back to calling things by their proper names, I am all for it. You know, in the spirit of George Carlin and the originators of this language, [00:18:16] you know, we deserve that. But if the whole point is to reinvigorate that martial spirit. Well, yeah. No, we've had enough of that. America first doesn't mean be George W Bush, the idiot, selfish jerk who goes around calling things America's national interest and then doing them. [00:18:36] It means defend America first, means we're not the world's policeman. Leave the rest of the world the hell alone with their own problems. And to solve them too, in their own way, makes no sense. A middle part of North America has got to be the world empire forever. [00:18:52] We clearly just cannot afford it anyway. Even if we had the mandate of heaven to do it, we which we don't so well. Luckily, there is a growing group of conservatives in America, conservative voters, who are speaking up more and more about how they don't want to intervene [00:19:10] and get involved in foreign conflicts. Every time you ring the bell below, an angel gets its wings. Totally not true, but it does keep you updated on our live shows.