Trump Targets Venezuela’s Oil, Intensifying Pressure on Maduro
We begin with escalating pressure on Venezuela with a “shadow fleet” supertanker carrying oil to Cuba and Iran seized by the U.S. further driving up the cost of exporting Venezuelan oil that is discounted to compete with sanctioned Russian and Iranian oil. Joining us is David Smilde, a Professor of Human Relations and senior associate at the Center for Inter-American Policy and Research at Tulane University. He has published five books on Venezuela and studied the country for over 33 years, living there most of that time, and he is the co-author of the new book, The Paradox of Violence in Venezuela: Revolution, Crime and Policing during Chavismo. He is the author of the Substack Venezuela and United States and has an article at Time, “Venezuela’s Opposition Is Using Misinformation to Promote Regime Change” and an article at The Dispatch, “How Operation Southern Spear Is a Threat to U.S. Democracy.”
Why Are Trump and Vance Trashing a “Decaying” Europe When They Have a Better Quality of Life Than We Do?
Then we examine why Trump and Vance hate Europe so much while they cozy up to the criminal and murderous regime in Russia, trashing Europeans for being in a state of “civilizational erasure” when the French, Germans and Scandinavians have a higher standard of living and quality of life than we do. Joining us is Harold Meyerson, one of the nation’s best-known progressive columnists and editor-at-large of The American Prospect. He’s also been a Washington Post columnist and executive editor of LA Weekly, and has written for a number of prominent magazines and newspapers. We discuss his latest article at The American Prospect, “Trump’s White Christian Foreign Policy.”