Mario Nawfal’s Interviews: w/ Max Blumenthal on Maduro Capture (Transcript)

But we haven’t been able to determine what the truth was about any deal. And even if there was a deal, I think things could still go south pretty quickly for the US plan.

The Stand-Down Order Theory

MARIO NAWFAL: Let’s talk about the first theory and one I’ve discussed with other guests of a potential stand-down order. So we do know the might of the American military and there’s been reports that the air defense systems were intercepted, the communication systems were disrupted.

There’s been precision strikes on the Russian air defense systems, the S-300s and the BUKs, and there were also anti-radiation missiles as well that were used, plus electricity, potentially through a cyber attack, was shut down in the region.

Why would you say though there’s a stand-down order? I think you’ve explained because there’s been no strikes on any helicopter. And if so, who would have given that stand-down order? Who has that capacity?

And when I mentioned that to other guests, one of the guests, Ian Bremmer, he said that he finds that possible but unlikely because it would backfire on whoever gave that order. It’s a very unpopular order to ask your military to stand down when an aggressor is attacking your country and kidnapping or capturing your president.

MAX BLUMENTHAL: Well, I mean he’s just speculating and I’d be doing the same. There are so many possible theories that by not aggressively resisting a US invasion, which was essentially a decapitation attempt to remove but not necessarily assassinate Nicolás Maduro and his wife, that you’re sparing the country from more horrific US violence, the kind that we saw Baghdad experience during Shock and Awe and beyond.

I mean, the US destroyed half of Raqqa during Operation Inherent Resolve, I think it was called, and this is called Operation Absolute Resolve. I mean they’re invoking all of these past horrific operations.

Delcy Rodríguez is the vice president and I’m not in any way speculating that she gave a stand-down order, but she has her own—I interviewed her in her office in 2021 and at the end of our interview we talked about her father, Jorge Antonio Rodríguez, who was a revolutionary militant in the 1970s under the US-backed Fourth Republic who was tortured to death in prison as a fairly young man.

She grew up without a father and that lingers for her. The notion that she could be assassinated is very real. She understands the threat of violence from the US and its local proxies who are represented in today’s opposition, which is a deeply undemocratic opposition.

So she may have taken measures to protect herself and her country from further violence. These are again all theories. I don’t know who could have issued the stand-down order.

Why Not Target Other Leaders?

Marco Rubio was asked in a pretty, let’s say, flawed interview with Margaret Brennan on Face the Nation about why the US didn’t take out Padrino López, the defense minister, or take out Diosdado Cabello, who is really—who represents another power center which is centered heavily in the military and the militant forces that would defend the government in the street.

And Rubio said, you know, you can’t just go in and take out five people at once. It was hard enough to kidnap one—he didn’t say kidnap, but to capture one. And I don’t totally accept that explanation, although it would have raised the stakes and the risk factor for US troops.

But you have to consider that if you start to collapse every power center within the Chavista political apparatus, that you have a complete power vacuum that can’t be filled with anything and it destabilizes the entire country.

Diosdado Cabello, again, he’s one of the most important figures within the pantheon of the PSUV. And he was out on the street after Maduro’s abduction with military figures behind him declaring resistance to this invasion and wearing on his vest, I think, an increasingly important symbol which is the flag of the Second Republic of Venezuela, essentially the flag of Simón Bolívar who ousted the Spanish colonists from South America and forged a vision of Gran Colombia, regional integration against imperial control.

And so Diosdado Cabello is signaling something there. And so again, I don’t think this is over. There may have been a deal, but Delcy Rodríguez, on her own, she doesn’t have the guns behind her. Someone like Diosdado, Padrino López, they do.

You see the radical Venezuelan opposition calling for them to be taken out next. But that would leave a massive power vacuum and it would quickly become a catastrophe for Marco Rubio especially, who sees himself as the sort of Viceroy of Venezuela.

Delcy Rodríguez’s Position and Support

MARIO NAWFAL: How much support does Delcy, the former vice president, now the interim president, how much support does she have in Venezuela?

And secondary, I would love to get your thoughts on the theory that she might have been the person in Maduro’s inner circle that was giving the CIA and the US intelligence information on his whereabouts and potentially, as you said, might have—you didn’t say that, but some are saying she might have been even the person that played a role in the alleged or potential stand-down order that was given.

So essentially, could she have been the US mole?

MAX BLUMENTHAL: Okay, I didn’t say that or speculate.

MARIO NAWFAL: You didn’t, no, that—

MAX BLUMENTHAL: Just to be clear, and I think we have to have—she has to be asked those questions by interviewers. I interviewed her just to go to your first question in 2021. So it was the midst of COVID, the COVID event, and she had taken control of administering the Venezuelan state response to COVID, which enabled her to be on TV every day addressing the nation in the same way that maybe Andrew Cuomo addressed New Yorkers or Anthony Fauci.

So in some ways she superseded Maduro because she was responding to the crisis every day with directions. She was the vice president, but she’d also taken control of other ministries and was presiding over Venezuela’s economic revival after years and years of sanctions, to the great chagrin of the US.

And this is something that was acknowledged in the New York Times today in a profile of Delcy. She stabilized the economy. And the economy has been growing at a fairly rapid rate over the past four years. I think they might have reached 8% growth last year, which is something that the United States would want to see.

Venezuela’s Economic Reality: Competing Narratives

MARIO NAWFAL: Can you elaborate on this? Because obviously one thing we both agree on is that we both don’t think regime changes are a good idea. Historically, they really haven’t worked. But I think one area we differ on is the state of Venezuela, under Maduro and even Chávez.

And I looked at the statistics, the economy, and you know, please do disagree with me with this as well, if you feel free to do so. But from the statistics that I have, according to various sources, the economy shrunk by 80% between 2013 and 2022, living standards by about 74%.

Oil production dropped by about 80% since the peak in the 1990s. It’s about a fifth now. 95% of the population lives in poverty, massive inequality, and a big chunk of the population left the country since Maduro took over.

And now post-2024 elections, 43%, according to a few polls, considered leaving due to repression. Now, the reason this is—situations like this, some people blame US sanctions, others blame the mismanagement by Maduro.

First, do you agree that the economy is doing that badly? Second, what do you blame for that? And third, could that change under the vice president or someone else taking the leadership, taking Maduro’s position?

The Economic Revival and U.S. Sanctions

MAX BLUMENTHAL: Well, some of the statistics you cited were flawed, but I agree generally with what you’re saying about just from a statistical point of view. Delcy Rodríguez had, as I was saying, presided over an economic revival in Venezuela which threatened U.S. hegemony. And China was central to this economic revival.

If you look at another statistic, I think it would be helpful: exports of barrels of oil, Venezuelan barrels of oil per day. And it was going up from a low point. And I’ll get into the question of why it was going up from a low point of like 400,000 to over a million thanks to China, which was becoming the main export center for Venezuela, which is why Trump imposed a quarantine. And China was buying like 75% of Venezuela’s oil, which was leading to growth.

Venezuela was able to begin to repair its aging and broken oil infrastructure with the help of China, Russia and also Iran was providing them with a lot of help, which is why you hear this hysteria about Iran forming this base on the American continent, on the South American continent through Venezuela. It was because Venezuela had normal relations with Iran and treated it like a normal country instead of a terrorist country.

Now, going back to the statistics you cited, 2012 was a pivotal year. It’s when Secretary of State John Kerry cut a deal with Saudi Arabia to go back and check out headlines around this time, cut a deal with Saudi Arabia’s royal family to increase oil production at Aramco massively in order to flood the market, which would thereby weaken Venezuela’s main source, its main economic engine.

And in exchange, Kerry promised support for the so-called “moderate rebels” in Syria to the Saudi royal family and to basically allow Prince Bandar to set up all these proxies like Jaysh al-Islam. It was a really dirty deal. It harmed Venezuela.

The Death of Chávez and Subsequent Destabilization

And around the same time, Hugo Chávez died under circumstances some consider suspicious. Nicolás Maduro came in and within one month after an election held in one month, and he was the legitimate uncontested winner of that election. And Venezuela then experienced two years of riots, just two years straight of guarimba riots overseen by U.S.-trained, U.S.-funded renter riots and their leadership who were completely funded by USAID and CIA cutouts like the National Endowment for Democracy.

We’re talking about Leopoldo López, Juan Guaidó, these characters, Carlos Vecchio. This set back Venezuela’s economy massively. And then Obama began to sanction Venezuela’s oil sector and individually sanctioned Venezuelan business leaders and Venezuelan political leaders in 2015, leading us to 2017 with Trump coming in and enacting a campaign of maximum pressure similar to what he did to Iran.

Then you have the regime change attempts under Juan Guaidó, when Venezuela’s largest foreign asset in Citgo was literally stolen by the U.S. regime which also presided over the theft of $20 billion in gold reserves held in the Bank of England. They just took the gold.

So Venezuela is just being subjected to international piracy by the most powerful empire in human history. Naturally its economy is going to experience a massive decline. And now you see these comments from groups of Venezuelans in South Florida, the base of the regime change lobby, who are saying, well, you know, we’re so happy we’re going to go back, maybe because Venezuela’s free, but we’re not so sure because the U.S. hasn’t relieved Venezuela of the economic quarantine, the economic blockade, because Marco Rubio wants to exploit it and in order to destroy Cuba as well.

Financial Terrorism and Migration

But the last waves of Venezuelan migration to the U.S. and the poverty of Venezuela has been directly caused by the unilateral sanctions, or what we could call financial terrorism imposed on Venezuela by the U.S. regime, which is doing the same thing to Iran, which caused legitimate protests in Iran’s bazaars over inflation directly caused by sanctions. And they’re using those protests as a vehicle for more rent-a-riots which, you know, U.S. and Israeli leadership has not even attempted to conceal, in which U.S. and Israeli leadership has not attempted to conceal their exploitation and desire for Mossad to increase the violence.

So that’s what Venezuela has been facing. And I don’t think there’s any way of denying that the U.S. played a role or that Venezuela was beginning to slowly extricate itself from the financial terrorism which posed a real threat to U.S. empire.

What is at the base of U.S. empire? What is the underpinning, the bedrock of it? It is the dominance of the dollar. And once a country manages to get out of sanctions, the dollar begins to decline.

The Question of Leadership

MARIO NAWFAL: How much blame do you put on Maduro himself and his lack of qualifications as a former bus driver appointed by Hugo Chávez? Do you think he is, you know, he’s capable of taking Venezuela back to its former glory, the pre-Hugo Chávez glory as one of the wealthiest countries in Latin America?

Or do you think if his political party remains in power, the Chavismo movement remains in power, could a different leader within that movement do a better job in rebuilding not only the economy but the entire institutional system that allows the country to function but also cooperate with the U.S. as other Latin American countries have done? Could that be an outcome?

Because we’re not seeing a regime change here. As you said, you were very critical in our last interview that María Machado should not, or the gentleman she’s supporting, should not be the leader of Venezuela if Maduro’s replaced. And that’s the case that seems to be happening. Trump distanced himself from her. So if this is not a regime change, if the regime’s still in power, could a different leader within that regime do a better job than Maduro?

Maduro’s Qualifications and Background

MAX BLUMENTHAL: Well, it was never a question of qualifications. And now there’s this very specious story being introduced that Trump really decided to invade Caracas and abduct Maduro because he didn’t like Maduro’s dancing. That’s the same Donald Trump who does the Trump dance every time he hears “YMCA” and it became a national sensation. I don’t know, maybe he didn’t want Maduro to one-up him because he was a slightly better dancer, was doing some salsa moves.

But it was never a question of competence. There has been corruption under the Bolivarian Republic launched by Hugo Chávez because Venezuela is a petro-state. You’ve had corrupt figures within the realm of Chávez and PDVSA, the state oil company who stole billions of dollars. And when the Venezuelan state attempted to prosecute them, they fled to Florida and found protection from the U.S. in exchange for squealing on Maduro.

Prior to that, Venezuela was extremely corrupt and it was under IMF management. And you had bread riots in the street. Maduro was the foreign minister under Hugo Chávez. He’s someone that I’ve interviewed and I’ve engaged with on several occasions, who considers himself a student of Simón Bolívar, who’s very well read, who is—watch his speeches, his press conferences, including engaging with the international media, and I’ve been to several of them.

And he speaks in an articulate way, blending history, politics and his own kind of sense of humor and sardonic wit for two hours at a time, three hours at a time. He was not a stupid guy. They call him a bus driver. He was the leader of the bus drivers union, who comes from a working class barrio in Caracas and organized masses of people who became an important power base for PSUV, which led him into Hugo Chávez’s administration.

Hugo Chávez before him had two master’s degrees, was born in extreme poverty in the Venezuelan llano, the plains, and worked himself up through the Venezuelan military and gathered his own credibility through the ranks of the military.

Comparing Leadership Competence

So the idea that these are just dumb guys leading their nation to ruin is ridiculous, especially when you look at the figure of Donald Trump. Someone who dodged the draft in Vietnam, was born with a silver foot in his mouth, can barely make it through press conferences without blurting out impolitic comments, and is increasingly incoherent while Americans are facing an unprecedented debt crisis.

I don’t even personally blame Trump for the economic crisis. I blame the economic system that we’re in, which is something Venezuela has been prisoner to. So the question is, can Delcy Rodríguez, through her sheer brilliance, get Venezuela out of this and unite one of the most polarized countries on the planet?

Well, she’s a very smart woman herself, whether you disagree with her or not. She’s clever, she’s very good at working with the media. But that’s just not going to be enough, because Venezuela is like every other country in the Western Hemisphere right now, and territory, including Greenland, in the crosshairs of the most powerful empire in human history.

And so the message that the Trump administration and Trump world, this kind of business mob that Trump runs, is sending is if you want to actually have a sovereign country within our realm and you actually want to offer an economic alternative to our system of neoliberal capitalism, you have to have the guns to resist us or we will crush you. And that’s really what’s going to decide this at the end of the day. Not one singular personality and their sheer brilliance.

Assessing the Intervention

MARIO NAWFAL: So I understand you’re critical of the intervention that we’re seeing in Venezuela and just foreign intervention in general by the U.S. What do you think they did right? Obviously, militarily, it was a success. Would you give them credit for not considering—because I know you were critical, as I said earlier, of María Machado—not considering having María Machado come in and take power and trying to work with the existing regime? Also, what do you make of the threats that came in? Not sure if you saw the updates just before we did our interview, the threats on the former Vice President Rodríguez about Trump.

I think Trump said that if she doesn’t do what the U.S. wants, something worse than Maduro could happen to her, which is indicating that maybe—what could be worse than being arrested and taken to jail, maybe assassinated? What do you make of these threats and the way they’re approaching this?

MAX BLUMENTHAL: To the first question, what has been done right by Rubio is that Venezuela has not been destabilized. That would have been—

MARIO NAWFAL: That was a big concern of yours.

MAX BLUMENTHAL: When we spoke here, and it still could be. Iran was not destabilized by the U.S. attack, which appeared to be, I wouldn’t say symbolic, but it was a means to close out the conflict and actually salvage Israel, which was suffering more than I think the U.S. expected under Iranian ballistic missile attacks. So they’ve kind of closed one chapter and Venezuela’s streets remain pretty calm at this point.

Speaking to a friend who’s there now a few hours ago, there’s a lot of panic buying, but that’s it for now. So they’ve managed to avoid that for now.

Trump’s Threats and Strategic Interests

But Donald Trump, as he said, is threatening Delcy Rodríguez essentially with her life. I mean, that’s the message they’re sending, is we are just this global mafia and we’ll take you out. We will just take you out if you defy us.

Trump, in his press conference announcing the abduction of Nicolás Maduro, declared that Delcy Rodríguez will do whatever we want. That was wishful thinking. And what do they want? Trump has made a lot of promises to business cronies that they will be able to profit from Venezuela’s wealth and they’ve supported Donald Trump as a result.

I was just looking at photos from a recent event held by the right-wing outlet Breitbart in Washington and J.D. Vance was the keynote speaker. And then he was mingling afterwards with figures from a group called Tower Strategies, which is headed by the former CIA station chief in—one of their consultants is the former CIA station chief in Venezuela and they’re basically trying to recruit as clients U.S. corporations that want to plunder Venezuela. And J.D. Vance was right there mingling with them.

You have—I question why Elon Musk got so interested in Venezuela when María Corina Machado and then Edmundo González were running for election in 2024. But I know that he is interested in access to lithium and minerals and has said in response to a Twitter commenter, “We’ll coup whoever we want” in Bolivia, which has the world’s largest lithium reserves. And now he’s pumping up what just took place and algorithmically juicing every tweet, including fake AI videos of people celebrating what took place in Venezuela.

The Business of Regime Change

So Trump owes a lot to his donors. He has a lot to gain personally through his family and the various business entities they’ve set up, like World Liberty Financial through his sons and Steve Witkoff’s sons.

Venezuela also has crude oil, which the U.S. needs and from a strategic point of view, and I think Delcy Rodríguez was right to say this when she responded to the abduction of Maduro, that this assault on Venezuela has Zionist characteristics. Now you see major Zionist billionaires like Bill Ackman or Netanyahu himself or former Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett declaring that this was a giant victory, and that it means Iran is next.

If the U.S. can somehow, someway take control of Venezuela’s crude oil and begin refining it again in Louisiana and Texas, then it will weaken Iran. I mean, this is how the theory goes. I’m not speaking for myself. It will weaken Iran’s ability to close off the Strait of Hormuz because the U.S. will not be as dependent on oil delivered through that shipping lane.

So I can see so many reasons why Trump is interested here, but the first one goes to the heart of his administration and why he—what he wants to do, which is to make lots of money.

The Strategic Control of Venezuelan Oil

MARIO NAWFAL:

Another theory is it gives control, a lot more control for the US over the global oil market. China is the biggest exporter of Venezuelan oil. Russia obviously depends on, I wouldn’t say high oil prices, but at least oil prices above 60, 70 dollars. So with the US having control of Venezuelan oil, the largest known reserves, larger than Saudi, I think about 16% of global, 17% of global known reserves and capacity, significant capacity to export, more than they are right now.

As I said earlier, they’re producing about a fifth of what they were many years ago. So significant capacity there. So that gives the US a lot more leverage against China if they decide to take action on Taiwan. China imports all their oil. I think it’s about 80%. And it gives them leverage over Russia and those negotiations.

Now, it does take them time to up the production capacity of Venezuela, a lot of money and time. But that’s one of the theories floating around. And I’d love to get your comments on this theory. But more importantly, why get rid of Maduro? Why capture Maduro if you seem to be okay with his regime remaining in power, which is what you said earlier in the interview you predicted as well.

Why not keep Maduro? What’s the benefit? Is it just to get that military win, that political win? Because one mistake, one helicopter shot down could be, as you said, a massive political liability for Trump. So why take that risk? That could have gone horribly wrong.

MAX BLUMENTHAL:

Yeah, I mean, I think I answered, I tried to answer that question, which is that they think that they can get to a more pliable figure and begin to split. They think this is what Marco Rubio is saying through his proxies and may eventually say openly at some point. And it’s what Donald Trump is saying.

They think that Delcy Rodríguez can be someone they can work with more directly, and that Maduro was resisting whatever deal they wanted, which was obviously going to be extremely onerous. And was going to force Venezuela to give up its control over its own oil through the PDVSA managerial structure that was established under Chávez.

So that’s what they’re thinking, and I see it from Marco Rubio’s proxies in social media, like that’s what they think is going to happen.

The Future of Venezuelan Leadership

MARIO NAWFAL:

Do you think there is a long term, potentially long term plan to have María Machado or González Edmundo, Edmundo González to take power in Venezuela? Because right now, at least in the short term, no indicator of any such plans. But Machado did say, “Today we are prepared to assert our mandate and seize power.”

So she seemed very confident when this took place that she would return or she would gain power, not return to power. But you’re saying that’s completely off the tables, even long term.

MAX BLUMENTHAL:

I don’t want to make some prediction and then get embarrassed down the road when someone digs up a clip of me saying it. So I don’t want to even risk being wrong if I’m 99% sure. But here’s what I think is going on, based on a fairly cursory reading of the situation.

The Trump-Rubio administration is seeking to stabilize the situation under PSUV, possibly being delusional, and then set the stage for an election at some point when they think they can develop some, if they think they can develop an alternative power structure or institution to the one set up in the Bolivarian Republic, then fine.

And they would groom a candidate either from within who had come out of PSUV, who was willing to do the US bidding, or bring back María Corina Machado, since she does have her own constituency and power base, you know, in the eastern parts of Caracas and in some other more middle class parts of the country, they would then do so.

But Marco Rubio has said we can’t talk about elections now. Delcy Rodríguez is delaying elections herself by continuing to recognize, this is again a theory, continuing to recognize Nicolás Maduro, that will at least hold off elections for four months. Because according to the Venezuelan constitution, in a succession of power, you have to hold, in an unexpected succession of power, you have to hold elections within one month.

And that would destabilize Venezuela. And there’s no clear candidate. María Corina chose to leave to take her Nobel Prize. She has no support within any powerful institution in Venezuela today under the Bolivarian Revolution. And that is the real reason why she cannot come back and why Trump just ended her, probably ended her career with what he said yesterday.

Risks of Instability and Civil War

MARIO NAWFAL:

And I think it’s important what you just said. You cannot, at least in the current system, you cannot have power in Venezuela without the support of the military. Based on the development so far, you said one of the good things is that there’s no instability, at least not yet in Venezuela.

What are the risks of things changing? As we saw in Iran, people were talking about a regime change and people took on the streets when Israel was striking Iran, but everyone rallied around the flag instead. But what happened months afterwards, especially with the ongoing economic pressure as people took to the streets, could we see the same in Venezuela?

Could that maybe be the strategy to remove Maduro, start to impose economic pressure? And first, is that, could that be a strategy? And second, what are the risks from what you’re seeing right now, that we could see instability, even risks of a worst case scenario, civil war in the country?

MAX BLUMENTHAL:

I don’t see protests. That was something that was already tried during the Guarimbas and they were very violent protests that killed scores of Venezuelan citizens, people on both sides, but people including Chavistas, as well as innocent people who are just perceived as Chavistas. I mean, the opposition has been extremely violent and that was kind of crushed through the issuance or invocation of the Constituent Assembly by Maduro. That’s a past era.

So civil war? Yes, civil war is very possible. There are competing power factions in Venezuela. Venezuelans within Chavismo are extremely upset about what happened. There is more national unity than in the past because of the violence and the sheer gangsterism of the US.

Many Venezuelans who might not have supported Maduro are also nationalists and they’re offended by what’s taking place. So there could be resistance building. And if a leader is imposed on Venezuelans who wants to just allow the US business class to plunder the country, there could be resistance to that. I mean, it’s all pretty obvious.

And another point about the military and why it’s so unacceptable to the US that a figure like Maduro or Diosdado Cabello have the support and backing of the military and that they can’t just dislodge them through a phony color revolution as they used to be able to do in the post-Soviet satellite states is because the US insists on being able to train and control all militaries across Latin America and then to turn them on their people if the people protest IMF austerity packages.

That’s why they have the School of the Americas, which is now operating under a new title at Fort Benning in Georgia. And who was trained by the School of the Americas? One figure I can name was Manuel Noriega, who was paid something like $160,000 a month when he was a CIA asset throughout the 1970s.

And he was also presiding over the trafficking of drugs to the United States as well as weapons to US proxies. And the trafficking of drugs was being done directly under the watch of the CIA in order to raise money for black operations against supposed socialist and nationalist forces like the Sandinistas in Nicaragua.

And Noriega, as soon as he started to bristle at this level of US control or held a conference in Panama against continued US militarization in Central America, well, they took him out under an anti-drug pretext, which was so ironic given that George H.W. Bush, who presided over that invasion, was the CIA director for all those years when Manuel Noriega was allowing drugs to proceed across Panamanian territory directly under the nose of the CIA.

The Government Accountability Office of the United States government found that two years after Noriega was removed, the US puppet government of Endara had actually increased the level of drug trafficking to the US. And Panama had become a haven for money laundering in which the cartels were concealing all of their profits through shell corporations. That was really like what built Panama City.

So this is all history that needs to be considered in light of what’s taking place now. And it should inform our reading of the superseding indictment against Nicolás Maduro, who is being paraded around like some Roman trophy by the Trump administration and the DEA through New York when he goes on trial.

We should read this indictment closely because it is basically a 25-page rant consisting of very sloppy claims. And it’s another phony anti-drug pretext for a straightforward imperial plunder and robbery of Venezuela’s resources, which it should control.

So as this process continues to play out, if anyone wants to continue to pay attention, you’re going to get a great education in how gangsterism works. And Venezuelans, I think, will close ranks in order to preserve what’s left of their nation, if Donald Trump really wants to go ahead with this plan to essentially own the country.

Comparisons to the Panama Invasion

MARIO NAWFAL:

The comparisons you made to Manuel Noriega, the former leader of Panama, who was also initially a CIA asset, but also deposed by the US military in 1990, I think it was 89, 90 was a two-week operation, more bloody than the one we saw on January 3rd. Obviously a few US casualties, a few, I can’t remember how many it was. And a lot more casualties on the Panamanian, Panama side.

And it was also on January 3, a few decades ago. What comparisons would you make to that regime change we saw in Panama? And also you’ve talked about the charges against Maduro. What type of sentencing do you think he’ll receive? Where do you think he’ll be held?

MAX BLUMENTHAL:

Well, he’s being held in New York and he’s going to be tried in the Southern District of New York, so New York City. And the same, this is the same court where former Honduran president and convicted narco-trafficker Juan Orlando Hernández was prosecuted and convicted.

And he was granted clemency by Trump after a lobbying campaign funded by Trump cronies who wanted to make money under a new Honduran government on the island of Roatán. I’m talking about Marc Andreessen and I think Peter Thiel might have been another figure. And you saw, you know, Roger Stone lobbying for Juan Orlando Hernández’s clemency.

Juan Orlando Hernández claimed, and Donald Trump repeated this claim in some form in his press conference yesterday, that he was the victim of lawfare, that he was persecuted. And Juan Orlando Hernández specifically said that I was prosecuted on the basis of one drug dealer.

The problem is his indictment, if you read it, was much more detailed than Maduro’s. It contained photographic evidence, including cocaine bags that were engraved with the initials of his brother Tony Hernández, whose spirit is still in a federal prison. There was video of an informant within the Los Cachiros cartel showing Juan Orlando Hernández on camera confessing and boasting about drug trafficking and drug shipments to the United States.

There’s physical evidence of it. There were also many murders from friendly elements. He stacked the national police with cartel leaders. But let’s go back to that allegation about one man. Well, Maduro’s indictment is largely based on allegations by one man, Pollo Carvajal, who is a high-level security honcho under Chávez, who did not support Maduro and then basically sang like a bird and said whatever he thought the US authorities would have wanted when he fell into their hands and faced prosecution, thinking maybe if I make myself a valuable asset, I can avoid a long prison term.

The beginning of the indictment starts out with a factual error. It reads, “For over 25 years, leaders of Venezuela have abused their positions of public trust and corrupted once legitimate institutions to import tons of cocaine into the United States.” I think they meant export. And that really hints at how sloppy the indictment is.

Tons of cocaine, they don’t cite how many tons. But later on in the indictment the prosecutor at the time, Emile Beauvais, concedes unintentionally that Venezuela was actually only exporting less than 10% of cocaine that went to the United States.

And then there’s a ton of slop in the indictment about activities allegedly carried out by Maduro’s family inside Venezuela or allegedly in Mexico outside the jurisdiction of the United States. So I think he has a pretty strong defense.

There are protests outside the prison where he’s being held, a large protest. And this is something you wouldn’t see for someone who had been a widely loathed totalitarian dictator to have supporters outside in another country. It’s different from the Noriega situation as well, in that the US did have boots on the ground in Panama. It destroyed an entire neighborhood in Panama City.

There was much more carnage. But we’re now learning that at least 80 people were killed. And Trump has said that he’s not hostile to the idea of boots on the ground.

China’s Role and the Message to Beijing

MARIO NAWFAL:

The last thing I want to get your thoughts on, and you mentioned it earlier in the interview, is the Chinese envoy that was in Caracas during the strikes, and they met Maduro hours beforehand. What does that say about China’s involvement, or lack thereof, in this entire operation?

And some are looking at the timing of this as potential. China said, and they don’t usually say this, they were shocked by the attack. They don’t usually use words like that. It’s some type of message that China was sending to China to essentially keep your hands out of our hemisphere.

A Message to Global Powers

MAX BLUMENTHAL: It was a message to China, as was the attempted theft of the Bella 1 tanker, which actually got away, but was carrying Chinese oil and was not even sanctioned, as far as I know. This is not so. It’s not just about Venezuela. It’s a message to the entire Latin American left. It’s a message to Russia, it’s a message to China, it’s a message to Iran.

Trump is basically saying he can assassinate or abduct any leader he wants if he doesn’t get what he wants in a deal. Trump, however, did say yesterday that Venezuela can export oil to China, which suggests there might have been some negotiation that took place either beforehand or immediately afterwards, because he did not want to infuriate China and make it so clear that he was seeking to impose a de facto embargo on China as well, which is importing so much oil from Venezuela. It opens the door for retaliation in different geographic poles of the world by Russia, which it looks like has faced drone attacks in Moscow and possible attempts at assassinating its president, Vladimir Putin, from Ukraine, that Russia could escalate against Vladimir.

MARIO NAWFAL: Do you believe those claims by Russia that his residence was targeted?

MAX BLUMENTHAL: I would say I need to look more closely at that. But these are claims they’re making which set the stage for retaliation against Zelensky. And what could Ukraine say? Zelensky endorsed what Donald Trump did to Maduro, so he’s putting a target on his own back.

Taiwan, which is China, which is Chinese territory, I would say is more vulnerable now after what Donald Trump did. Greenland. Stephen Miller’s wife just tweeted a map of Greenland with a US flag imposed over it. Donald Trump has said, “Well, we need Greenland not only because of minerals, but because of national security. There are Russian and Chinese ships trafficking throughout Greenland.” And he’s referring to control of the Arctic, which is a priority of the Pentagon.

What can the Europeans do when they have just all bowed down and licked Donald Trump’s boots? The Greek prime minister, who’s a NATO tool, supported it. Keir Starmer refuses to condemn it. Emmanuel Macron, the billionaire banker in France, has bowed down before Trump and supported it. Won’t even use the term “international law.” Kaja Kallas, who heads the Foreign Office of the EU, has refused to condemn it. So they’re setting the stage for Trump taking Greenland because there’ll be nothing they can say about it now.

The Double Standard

MARIO NAWFAL: What do you think the world would do if Russia did the same thing? He said Zelensky put a target on his back. So Russia goes ahead and kidnaps Zelensky the same way Maduro’s kidnapped and shows them off, trials them like the US is doing so, having the photo ops that the US has done. How do you think the world would react to that?

MAX BLUMENTHAL: Well, it would be similar to how the world reacted to Russia invading Ukraine after the US attempted to NATO-ize Ukraine. And when we talk about the world, I think we should talk about the collective west, which has bowed before Trump even as they exude contempt for him and his personality and the conservative constituency that he controls.

The 50 or 55 or so countries comprising the collective west that vote together as a bloc behind the US and refuse to oppose in any meaningful way Israel’s genocide in Gaza and the holocaust of children that occurred there. They will react with righteous indignation to anything that Russia does and thunder condemnations about Putin.

I saw a ridiculous headline in some legacy publication today that what Trump just did in Venezuela represents the “Putinization of US policy.” No, this is classic US gunboat diplomacy. It is how the US has treated Latin America throughout its entire existence, going back to the U.S.-Mexico War. But now at this point, after what took place in Venezuela and after the whole two-year nightmare of witnessing the Gaza genocide which was supported in every way possible by the collective west, their protests and their condemnations will ring hollow.

The Multipolar World Order

And going back to your last question, we should ask if there is some larger negotiation taking place between the US, Russia and China to formalize the great power competition in which great powers are given more latitude to operate with impunity within their poles of geographic power, within their strategic realms.

And Marco Rubio made some comments that I thought were pretty stunning last year, but which make a little bit more sense now when he actually said we are living in a multipolar world. It’s not how I would envision a multipolar world taking place, but I can see it being a Rubio-centric interpretation of what one means.

MARIO NAWFAL: Max, always a pleasure to speak to you. Thank you.

MAX BLUMENTHAL: Thanks a lot, Mario.

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