Transcript: WHY Wage Their War For Them? Trump Strikes Venezuela Boats – Piers Morgan Uncensored

This is not even serious. Give us at least something that is plausible that we can cling to. What happened to the days where, okay, maybe Saddam Hussein at one point did have weapons of mass destruction. He didn’t then, but at least it’s plausible. There’s so little respect for the American people now that when they’re trying to march them into war, they don’t even give them something that they can even pretend to believe.

PIERS MORGAN: So what do you think they really want to do here?

Rubio’s Caribbean Sandbox

RYAN GRIM: Well, I think the Rubio wing, and I think we need to distinguish between President Trump and Rubio. In this case, Rubio has been boxed out of Ukraine, has been boxed out of Gaza. So he’s got his little Caribbean sandbox here, and what he is doing is playing out the fantasies of the Cuban right over the last couple of decades.

They want regime change in Venezuela, and they think that that’ll have the knock-on effect of creating regime change back in Cuba. That’s fine if the Cuban right wants to do that, but I don’t understand why the United States would have to wage their war for them.

The same kind of pressure was applied to President Obama when it came to Libya. And unfortunately for us, for Libya, for the region, Obama capitulated to that. And we now have this disastrous situation that the entire world is living with.

I think Trump is aware that this kind of attempt to just decapitate a regime is likely to lead to another Libya situation. So far, I think Trump actually deserves credit for standing up to this war hawk wing. And in fact, if he does stand them down and resist a war, I’d almost say you would give him credit for stopping a war. Because to have a hawkish element this committed to regime change and to be able to stop that even as president is not that simple.

The Political Risk for Trump

PIERS MORGAN: Ambassador Story, I don’t think politically that Trump is in a great place right now with his base because of the Epstein scandal, because of the Israel-Gaza war, to go and try and effect regime change in a place like Venezuela. I just think, never mind the sort of military operational side or even the ethics of it, just from a purely political perspective, it would seem to me to be an entirely self-harming act, wouldn’t it?

RYAN GRIM: And I think Trump understands—

PIERS MORGAN: Sorry, sorry. That was actually, sorry Ryan, that was for Ambassador Story.

The Ambassador’s Defense

JAMES STORY: Well, I’d be delighted if you wanted to answer the part of the Epstein files. To be honest with you, I’d rather say that I’d like to go back to why. What’s the cause here? What do we actually know to be the case?

And this isn’t an invention that the Cartel de los Soles exists. You can talk to Clíver Alcalá who’s in jail. You can talk to Hugo Carvajal who’s in jail. You can talk to the nephews of Cilia Flores who’s married to Maduro who were in jail. This is a criminal group masquerading as a government.

And regime change already took place. It took place in July of last year when there was a vote overwhelmingly against Maduro by the Venezuelan people themselves. So what is the president’s intentions? Certainly, our first panelist today said that this is much more than counternarcotics. That’s correct. There’s pressure on the Maduro regime, the dictatorship. It’s additional pressure than that which the Venezuelan people gave when they voted overwhelmingly to get him out of office last year.

Now where we go from here? What’s the next step? That remains to be seen. But the president certainly has a number of options at his disposal.

PIERS MORGAN: But you don’t believe it’s purely a war on drugs?

More Than Counternarcotics

JAMES STORY: Absolutely not. Absolutely not. I ran counternarcotics in Colombia for two years. I ran counternarcotics in the Western hemisphere for three. I can tell you that these are the types of resources and military hardware that are frankly a little heavy-handed when it comes to counternarcotics.

Generally speaking, we use white hulls. Those are Coast Guard vessels. We judicialize the cases and frankly the kind of unilateral action we’re taking in the region will have knock-on effects, negative knock-on effects, undermining intelligence sharing across the region.

Out of Key West, Florida, we have Joint Interagency Task Force South and that has 20 liaison officers from the region, as well as from the UK, France and the Netherlands. The intel sharing will dry up. And I’m most interested in chasing the money and the organizations down that are building apartments in Medellín and buying apartment buildings in Miami.

I think that going that judicialized route gives us more intelligence, helps us shore up our regional relationships, and is a better approach. Certainly this will have an impact on drug trafficking. But drug traffickers are transnational. They don’t pay attention to borders. They also aren’t democratic and they don’t work by committee. So they will change their route.

Questions of Legality

PIERS MORGAN: Before I go to Max, I just wanted to ask you on the legality of these attacks on the boats which the administration says are drug smugglers. They’re not getting any prior approval from Congress for this. They’re not providing much information in terms of what evidence they’ve had to justify what they’ve done. In your opinion, is what is happening here with these boats legal?

JAMES STORY: Listen, I think that if you look at going after foreign terrorist organizations as we did under many of the prior administrations, going back to Bush, and you can look at Obama and you can look at Clinton, there was a methodology by which targets were assessed and went through a preview process, and then the President had the ultimate decision. I don’t know what the process is here.

What I can tell you is what the impacts will be for our cooperation regionally. And that’s a negative impact on our cooperation. So certainly the Congress has a role to play with AUMF, the Authorization for Use of Military Force. To the extent that Congress is back in session and wants to take up this issue, they may indeed need to do so.

PIERS MORGAN: Okay, Max Blumenthal, a lot to unpack here, obviously. First of all, on that point about the attacks on these boats, there’ll be a lot of Americans who will say, well, if they are drug smugglers, happy days. Why should we care?

The CIA and the Cartel of the Suns

MAX BLUMENTHAL: Well, I think Americans are sick of regime change wars for plunder. That’s why this is so unpopular. And just to quickly respond to two points the other panelists made. Mike Baker accused me of wearing a tinfoil hat. The truth about the cartel of the Suns being created by the CIA is not a conspiracy theory.

There are not a lot of Americans who believe that. Only 29% of Americans, according to a recent Reuters Ipsos poll, support these murderous attacks on supposed drug boats without due process that have killed citizens of Trinidad and Tobago as well as Colombian citizens and caused the British government to suspend intelligence cooperation.

As the virtual Ambassador James Story just acknowledged, this is all based, as Ryan pointed out, on a series of WMD level lies that haven’t even been explained to the American public. Which is why only 21% of the American public, according to that poll, supports this criminal regime change war in the making, which will negatively affect them. That’s what Story meant when he called, when he referred to knock-on effects, meaning more mass migration.

The big lie of this war is the cartel of the suns, as Ryan said. The cartel of the suns was literally created by the CIA, also known as the Cocaine Import Agency, to ship 22 tons of drugs into the United States in the early 90s through its main point of contact in the pre-Chavez Venezuelan National Guard General Ramon Guillen Davila. And he wore a patch on his arm that was a sun. And so they just called it the cartel of the suns as cover.

And they thought that they would use these drug shipments to gain intelligence on drug traffickers in the US. It wound up poisoning our own society. The CIA for doing that should be classified as a narco-terrorist organization.

Then there’s Tren de Aragua, the supposed gang that Nicolas Maduro is said to control by the Trump administration. That’s another WMD level lie that US Intelligence exposed in a declassified April report from this year. And you know what happened? Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard came out and fired, presided over the firing of the two officials who exposed the lie that Maduro controls TDA and is invading the United States.

The Root Cause of Migration

Why are migrants coming to our shores? It’s because of the coup program, the regime change program that virtual ambassador and coup manager Jimmy Story and other US foreign policy apparatchiks oversaw, which brought Venezuela’s economy to its knees by 2020, reversing all the gains they had made when Hugo Chavez slashed extreme poverty by 50%. This caused mass migration.

And it’s not just according to me. It’s according to Thomas Shannon, who was Under Secretary for the State Department in Donald Trump’s administration, who said US sanctions reduced Venezuela’s economy to dust. He told this to the Washington Post and it caused out-migration.

So if Donald Trump is going to fall into Marco Rubio’s selfish games, we are going to see another massive wave of migration to the US-Mexico border. And whether you’re on the right or the left, you do not want that. And you cannot fall for another WMD series of lies that will produce a Libya in the Western hemisphere.

PIERS MORGAN: Okay, Mike Baker, your response to that?

The Need for Transparency

MIKE BAKER: Well, apparently I forgot to wear my tinfoil hat for the panel today. There’s nothing I can say that’s going to change Max or Ryan’s position. I’ve talked with folks like this before who, you know, great. I don’t know where to go with that. I would say that, you know, from my perspective—

MAX BLUMENTHAL: But what do you know about what the CIA—

MIKE BAKER: The problem here is, as usual, is a lack of transparency. And whether it’s from the Trump administration or a previous administration, I am a big proponent of transparency here on something like this. This is a serious matter. I’m also a big proponent of counternarcotics operations. I spent a lot of time in the drug wars.

And one thing that I think we need to insist on from the current administration is more explanation. I’m not comfortable saying with a blanket authority that, yeah, sure, we’re going to trust the credibility of the intel on these various targets. I’m not talking about legality. I’m not talking about—I’m not going to go into the things that Max and Ryan are talking about because from my perspective, that just lends it credibility if I try to refute that. It’s like, when was the last time you beat your wife, Senator?

So I think I would argue that there’s two things happening here. They’re operating on a dual track. They are going after narcotics. The ambassador is absolutely correct. Colombia has already shut down intel sharing. This will have ramifications that I don’t think the State Department or the White House understand.

And I think at the same time, they are pressuring. There’s no doubt about it. Look, are they after regime change? Sure. That should not be a goal here. I think if we can pressure internally the advisors around Maduro to say it’s time for you to step down, that would—in fact, I don’t know whether Max and Ryan agree with me, but that a change in government in Venezuela. I’m not saying regime change. I’m just saying if Maduro stepped down, that would be a wonderful thing for the Venezuelan people, I think, unless they’re big proponents of the form of socialism that Maduro is pushing. Anyway, that’s what I got back to the story.

The Legitimacy Question

PIERS MORGAN: Obviously, the United States doesn’t recognize Maduro as the president after the outcome of that last election in 2024. It’s been dismissed widely internationally as well, and by the opposition in Venezuela. The opposition leader of Venezuela just got the Nobel Peace Prize, which many think was not a coincidence.

That election is deemed to have been neither free nor fair. And they believe the opposition party won the election, but the Maduro government stole it. So you have that as the backdrop to the legitimacy of the Maduro election.

But history also shows us that when the United States tries to enforce regime change anywhere in the world, it’s rarely anything but a bit of a mess, often with extremely bad repercussions. You know, is it not better? I mean, Trump’s instincts have always been America first, fewer foreign wars, don’t go and rattle hornets’ nests.

He’s got the Israel-Hamas war, which is thankfully now reached a point of ceasefire. At the moment, he’s getting nowhere in Ukraine. I just don’t think that his instincts will be telling him that going in there mob-handed to effect regime change would be anything but a potential disaster. Maybe not militarily, but politically for him.

A Criminal Regime

JAMES STORY: Well, I want to kind of turn your—you asked five questions in one here. And I want to try to pull it apart a little bit without going after the ad hominem attacks by one of the other panelists.

I think we need to recognize a couple of things here. One, this is a criminal group masquerading as a government, without a doubt. Two, this is a group of people, Maduro and company, who have crimes against humanity charges against them in the ICC. They have narcotics trafficking indictments in the United States.

They are responsible for the mass migration which started in 2017 before the oil sanctions began to be even instituted. Therefore, 9 million people have already fled that country because they’re fleeing torture, dictatorship and death. What happened to Captain Acosta Arévalo, what happened to General Baduel, what happened to Fernando Alban?

And what we have is we have people who continue to make excuses for a murderous regime because they don’t like the politics of the current administration in the United States.

Now, the president has a number of options. I do not believe that Maduro—Biden’s policy will end in Haiti or Libya or Iraq. That’s simply not true. Now, Maduro likes to talk about Afghanistan and Vietnam, and it will be—we’re going to enter this terrible moment. It’s not true.

And it’s not true because they have the resources to rebuild their country. They don’t have the same level of sectarian or ideological divide. Heck, most of the people, from the leadership of the opposition to the leadership of the Maduro regime, they went to college together. They’re first cousins. They know each other.

This is a country that’s set to be, once it regains its democracy, really an economic engine for the whole region. I have a much more optimistic view of the ability of the Venezuelan people to create a transitional government, fix the institutions that have been destroyed, and become a normal part of society again.

The Resource Question

PIERS MORGAN: Ryan Grim, a lot of people think the big play here is that the United States under Donald Trump, they want to get their hands on Venezuela’s resources. Max actually posted last week, “Trump has folded Dick Cheney’s fake war on terror into Ronald Reagan’s phony war on drugs to justify a war to steal Venezuela’s resources.”

Do you share that view that this is the bigger picture here? And you know, how do you argue when you try and sort of argue against any action against Venezuela, how do you argue that much of the international community does believe it’s an illegitimate government? There shouldn’t be an office to start with.

RYAN GRIM: Well, yes, I think Trump himself has been pretty transparent and open that the main objective here is Venezuelan resources, in particular Venezuelan oil. I don’t even think that he would deny that. I’m sure if you ask him that directly, he’d say, “Yeah, that’s precisely it.”

On the question of elections and human rights abuses, yes, sure, I’m glad to hear our fellow panelists uphold the virtues of the International Criminal Court. And I hope he agrees with applying those standards universally to other countries that are committing genocides and human rights abuses as well.

But you know, Gaddafi, I don’t think it was anybody’s favorite person around the world. But going in and launching a regime change didn’t benefit the Libyans, didn’t benefit us, didn’t benefit the rest of the world. So yeah, I just don’t think that it would be the cakewalk that people are suggesting.

The Quagmire Concern

PIERS MORGAN: Well, Max, that is certainly the concern, isn’t it? I mean, if you look at actually a lot of the regime change that happened during that whole frenzy, sort of Arab Spring period, you know, a lot of unrest was caused by it, a lot of deaths came as a result of it. It’s hard to see that much stability was brought through it.

You know, the Iraq war was pretty well a disaster and so on. You know, I can understand people’s concerns that just barreling into Venezuela, whatever the reason, whether it’s to affect regime change, whether it’s because of the drugs, whether it’s because of the oil—it’s probably a bit of all of that. I mean, it could just turn out to be another quagmire.

MAX BLUMENTHAL: Well, I think Americans are sick of regime change wars for plunder. That’s why this is so unpopular. And just to quickly respond to two points the other panelists made. Mike Baker accused me of wearing a tinfoil hat. This, the truth about the cartel of the Suns being—

MIKE BAKER: I said I forgot mine.

The CIA and Drug Cartels: A Historical Perspective

MAX BLUMENTHAL: Okay, fine. I just want to point this out for viewers. The truth about the CIA founding the cartel of the Suns to ship cocaine in the United States was exposed to a national U.S. televised audience by Mike Wallace on 60 Minutes in 1993, back when 60 Minutes reported on the CIA and not on behalf of the CIA.

And just quickly to respond to virtual ambassador story who accused me of ad hominem attacks. You are a government official, you are a veteran coup plotter and it is legitimate for a journalist to scrutinize the activities of a coup plotting government official who in February 2021 hosted an insurrectionist summit at the Marriott Hotel in Bogota. You with Leopoldo Lopez, the U.S. backed coup leader who staged multiple failed military coups and led violent riots that saw Afro Venezuelan citizens burned in the streets. Check out Orlando Figuera and Carlos Vecchio, the fake ambassador to Venezuela, who is actually the lawyer for Exxon Mobil, which seeks to regain its control of Venezuelan fields.

This is one of the most deeply anti-democratic opposition movements led by Maria Corina Machado, who has led several coup attempts in Venezuela. I mean, it’s basically like January 6th again and again with the sponsorship of the US embassy. Violent riots that have killed hundreds. I personally watched Maria Corina Machado attempt to take over La Carlota air base in Caracas while the US was trying to ram aid trucks into Venezuela, which the Venezuelan opposition subsequently burned and blamed on Maduro.

This is a corrupt opposition that stole millions of dollars from Citgo after the US stole it from Venezuela. This is a corrupt opposition that has paid millions to US mercenaries like Jordan Gaudreau, who I interviewed, who has personally described to me what the real agenda here is, which was for Trump Incorporated cronies to get their hands on contracts and to plunder Venezuela’s rich mineral wealth and oil.

Ambassador Story revealed the agenda himself when he appeared on a straightforward propaganda piece for regime change on 60 Minutes and said, “Nicolas Maduro is a bad actor sitting on the world’s largest oil reserves.” Well, that’s why you consider him a bad actor, because there’s plenty of bad actors in the world. And neither of you will condemn ICC wanted war criminal Benjamin Netanyahu or call for his arrest, will you?

Neither of you will talk about Ecuadorian President Daniel Noboa’s role in the international drug trade through Benita and his family shipping, his family shipping company. I mean, the list goes on and on. I could spend the next 45 minutes talking about US sponsored bad actors, but they’re our bad actors. The reason Maduro’s a bad actor is—

Ambassador Story’s Response

PIERS MORGAN: Because he’s only fair. It’s only fair that rather than giving you another 45 minutes to expand on that, let me ask Ambassador Story for his—I’m going to give you a right of reply to that. So respond.

JAMES STORY: I mean, of course. Max is often wrong and never in doubt. That’s his stock in trade. And he will never say anything bad about Putin because that’s where his finances come from. If you actually listen to what I’m—

MAX BLUMENTHAL: Excuse me, of being funded by—

JAMES STORY: I’ve been specifically talking about—

MAX BLUMENTHAL: A US official is lying about me being funded by Russia. This is all they have is lies.

JAMES STORY: For supporting democratic actors. Nobody wants to talk about Fernando Aban being thrown off the tenth story. Nobody wants to talk about Captain Acosta Revolo clearly, clearly near death in court, begging for help, the human rights abuses, the killings, the destruction of institutions within Venezuela.

And then you have this democratic opposition which done everything. They’ve gone out into the streets and they’ve protested, they’ve run in elections, they’ve won elections, they’ve negotiated with military coups, they’ve organized coups. At the end of all of this, they win an election, and that’s still not good enough for people. So I’m going to stick with the Venezuelan people. And the Venezuelan people voted him out of office, and I believe he should be gone.

Senator Murphy’s Critique

PIERS MORGAN: Okay, Mike Baker, I want to play you a clip. This is Chris Murphy, the US Senator on ABC, when he was asked about this last week.

RYAN GRIM: Well, it seems pretty clear it’s just an effort to distract people from the rising prices and from the Epstein scandal. No one wants a war with Venezuela to the extent they’re claiming it has something to do with the drug trade coming into the United States. The majority of drugs don’t come through the Caribbean. They come via a land route, a land route that the President is ignoring because he is so focused on this absurd, illegal military campaign against Venezuela.

So I don’t think he’ll find much support amongst Republicans or Democrats in this country for it. And by the way, it’s wildly illegal. The President can’t start a war with a nation without a congressional authorization. It’s just another sign of—

MIKE BAKER: Of how out of control and how—

RYAN GRIM: Lawless this President is, and another signal to Democrats as to why we need to draw those firm moral lines in the sand right now to constrain his growing illegality.

The Question of Ulterior Motives

PIERS MORGAN: It’s interesting, Mike Baker, to me, to hear that, given that I don’t remember Senator Murphy being quite so vocal when Barack Obama was dropping bombs all over the world or running what many consider to be illegal drone program. So his insistence on congressional prior approval for this kind of thing seems to be singularly related to the Republicans. But given what he said there, do you believe there is perhaps an ulterior motive that Donald Trump wants to distract people’s attention? This is a good way to do it.

MIKE BAKER: I mean, it’s an enormously visible and costly way of doing it if that’s the case. I’m not saying it’s not. Look, I’m shocked that politics would play a role in here and that they would be looking for a reason to beat on the Trump administration. Every party in power does the same damn thing.

I would pick up on something that Ryan said that I agree with 100%. If anybody in the White House or anybody in the administration or the Pentagon or the State Department imagined somehow that a kinetic movement into Venezuela to affect regime change would somehow be rather straightforward, they don’t understand how complicated, how complex and how messy something like that would be.

So I go back to my original statement, which I suspect, and I don’t know, but I would suspect that their strategy, if there is one within the White House on this issue, is to exert sufficient pressure to get an internal change. Again, I don’t think it’s going to come as a decision from Maduro, but from people around him in one way or another. So, is that a form of regime change? Absolutely. Does it ultimately, as the ambassador mentioned, would that benefit the people of Venezuela? Well, one would hope so. I mean, they were once one of the wealthiest nations in the region and now they’re a basket case.

I know that our other panelists say that that’s because of US actions and certainly the sanctions have impacted the economy. There’s no doubt about that. Again, I can only speak to the operational aspects of this and the buildup there is outsized and doesn’t make sense if all you’re talking about is a counter narcotics situation. And yes, there are multiple routes for narcotics coming into the US. I would argue that Mexico is target number one. If that’s the problem, we should be going after that in a bigger way.

This I don’t think, though, to go back to your question, Piers, I’d have a hard time imagining that even the Trump administration, which sometimes seems operating in chaos, would look and say, “You know what, we need a distraction from higher prices in the U.S., so you know what, let’s do a massive military buildup in the Caribbean.” It seems like a bit of a stretch.

Closing Remarks

PIERS MORGAN: Yeah, I would say that’s probably right. We’re going to leave it there. A fascinating debate. Thank you all very much. I appreciate it.

Piers Morgan Uncensored is proudly independent. The only boss around here is me. You enjoy our show. We offer only one simple thing: hit subscribe on YouTube and follow Piers Morgan Uncensored on Spotify and Apple podcasts. And in return, we will continue our mission to inform, irritate and entertain, and we’ll do it all for free. Independent, uncensored media has never been more critical and we couldn’t do it without you.

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