Useful Idiots with Katie Halper and Aaron Maté

*BONUS INTERVIEW*As the Trump administration turns the world into chaos, threatening to bomb Iran, killing Americans in Minnesota, kidnapping presidents in Venezuela, and gutting the nation’s already-terrible healthcare system, Israel’s genocide in Gaza has fallen out of the corporate news cycle.Our guest, Palestinian-American law student Ahmad Ibsais, joins Useful Idiots to explain that the reports from Gaza weren’t just pushed aside to get more views from higher-performing news stories, but intentionally buried for a much more pointed and, as always, nefarious reason.Useful Idiots: Why have we stopped seeing of coverage of Gaza in Western media?Ahmad Ibsais: Right before the ceasefire was a time where we saw so much public outrage that a genocide was taking place. And it wasn’t because Palestinian voices suddenly became credible in any way. It’s because the extremity of Israeli violence reached the Western consciousness in a way it could process. There were so many news stories about children starving to death, and people could conditionally recognize that Palestinians were dying in a way that was not their fault. And that’s where the ceasefire came. So now, any violation of the ceasefire or coverage of it, brings into question the fallacy that America was able to broker it. Like is America even a superpower anymore? Does the Israeli state even care what America says or does? Second, let’s keep up this illusion that America is not contributing to the genocide or that they’re in any way complicit. Coverage raises the question: Palestinians are still dying, so what are we doing and how are we enabling this? That’s why we don’t see it anymore. And they’ll wait, as they have done in the past, until Palestinians respond in a meaningful way. And that’s when the ceasefire ‘breaks.’Our full interview with Ahmad Ibsais is free to all. As an independent media team, we rely on your support to keep going, so please subscribe and join the Useful Idiots community!You’ll also get our Friday Free-For-All: Jeff Epstein, the Russian Spy. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.usefulidiotspodcast.com/subscribe

Watch our full, unpaywalled interview with Iranian-American Professor Afshin Matin-AsgariFor our recap of the week, including the new Russiagate conspiracy that Epstein was a Russian agent, subscribe to watch our Friday Free-For-All: Jeff Epstein, the Russian Spy.This week, amid volatile tensions, deadly protests, rumors of Mossad infiltration, and threats of war, the US and Iran are scheduled to have diplomatic talks, though one side pulling out would not be surprising as the US can’t seem to stop bragging about how sanctions destroyed Iran’s economy all while threatening to bomb them.For some much-needed clarity on the issue, we spoke to Professor Afshin Matin-Asgari, author of Axis of Empire, who participated in leftist protests during Iran’s 1978-79 revolution.He gives a history of Iran-US relations, mocks JD Vance’s obvious misunderstanding of how Iran’s government works, debates Aaron on which side is really responsible for the violence in recent Iranian protests, and analyzes Marco Rubio’s “unpredictable” diplomacy proposal.Useful Idiots: Secretary of State Marco Rubio laid out the terms for what he says would be ‘meaningful talks.’ Do you think that Iran will accept those terms?Afshin Matin-Asgari: To go back to the background of these talks, when Trump canceled the so-called Obama nuclear deal, he said that he did it to force a better deal on Iran. That was during his first term. And that never happened. All the pressure, sanctions, threats, and assassination of Iranian military personnel didn’t work.So he joined Israel’s war on Iran.What happens at this point? The Islamic Republic is in its weakest position it has ever been because of an accumulation of a lot of problems: it has domestic unrest, the axis of resistance, including Hezbollah in Syria, is gone, it’s more vulnerable than it ever was to military attacks. So Bahrain has accepted to come to negotiations. If Trump can make the Islamic Republic accept some of his terms, he could claim victory, impose the new deal on Iran, and kind of walk away from this, which may not be a bad thing because it at least averts a full-scale military confrontation, something that everyone knows would be a disaster. But it can’t be predicted.Our full interview with Professor Matin-Asgari is free to all. As an independent media team, we rely on your support to keep going, so please subscribe and join the Useful Idiots community!You’ll also get our Friday Free-For-All: Jeff Epstein, the Russian Spy.And stay tuned for a bonus interview tomorrow with Palestinain-American law student Ahmad Ibsais for an update on Israel’s latest attacks on Gaza. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.usefulidiotspodcast.com/subscribe

It was a crazy weekend, but as Useful Idiots know, a disturbing world means an action-packed Monday Mourning. Here’s what we cover:– A seemingly drunk Lindsey Graham begs Trump to bomb Iran– Mike Pompeo can’t stop bragging about Mossad’s covert plants in the Iran protests– Republicans are flailing to defend ICE’s murder of ICU nurse Alex Pretti– Karoline Leavitt parrots Nancy Pelosi’s paid protester line (with not even a thought about giving evidence of who’s paying them)– TRUMP EPSTEIN FILES– CLINTON EPSTEIN FILES– CBS’s anti-Maduro propaganda– And so much more ridiculousness. Mock it all with Katie and AaronPlus, catch last week’s Friday Free-For-All: Smug Man Accidentally Admits He’s MAGA NowAnd our interview with a civil rights attorney who exposes Dems’ complicity in ICE’s rise to power: Dems EXPOSED for Secret ICE FundingThanks for supporting independent media, join the Useful Idiots community here: This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.usefulidiotspodcast.com/subscribe

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.usefulidiotspodcast.comSubscribe for the full episode at the bottom of the page. Watch a free preview here:While the DHS is sending masked ICE agents into cities, rounding up immigrants and citizens alike, killing protesters, and creating chaos, Democrats are making a big show of being anti-ICE. They’re calling for reforms, body cams, accountability, and training.This sounds great, but civil rights attorney and Copaganda author Alec Karakatsanis reveals it’s actually “extremely dangerous.” Under the guise of reform, the Democrats are playing a key role in a centuries-old strategy of building an oppressive, high-surveillance police state used to target the most vulnerable communities in the country.And it’s all a plot.Useful Idiots: What are the most dangerous reforms being pushed by the Democrats and why are they dangerous?Alec Karakatsanis: One of the most important ones that you hear constantly from Democratic Party leadership right now is body cameras. Now, aside from how silly that is in this context, the officer who shot and killed Renee Goode literally filmed himself doing it, it’s actually much deeper.The evidence is overwhelming that body cameras do not make police less violent and they do not reduce police misconduct. So you have to ask yourself, why are Democrats proposing something that everybody agrees does not make police more accountable? And the history of this is that police agencies wanted body cameras for many, many years, but they couldn’t get the billions of dollars of funding for them.What they wanted is to link all this new footage and data into algorithms that train AI into massive databases. That’s why you see ICE with cameras. They scan people’s faces. Prosecutors also wanted body cameras so they could get guilty pleas really quickly, like trespassing charges against unhoused people and drug possession cases.So they had this problem: the industry wanted to make billions of dollars in contracts. The police wanted them for surveillance and to connect people to AI. But they couldn’t afford it.And then what happened was after Michael Brown’s killing in Ferguson, the Obama administration worked with local Democratic Party officials and the policing surveillance industry to just remarket body cams, not as police surveillance but as accountability and transparency for well-meaning liberals who were desperate for something to be done.That resulted in the greatest expansion of policing surveillance technology in modern history.Useful Idiots: So the Democrats’ current stance is that they’re threatening to block the funding of the Department of Homeland Security, where ICE is a component, unless there are certain reforms?Alec Karakatsanis: What the Democrats are basically saying is ICE needs to spend even more money on surveillance technology like body cameras and on so-called training.Anybody who knows what the police and military training industry is in the United States would not support more money going to that. It’s one of the most dark, violent, and fascist corners of our society.These training programs are where they learn to do the stuff that you’re seeing in these videos. That’s why in 2020 there were thousands of videos of police committing intentional, brutal crimes and violence, and it looked the same in hundreds and hundreds of cities. It wasn’t some one off mistake. This is what police are trained to do.The Democrats are saying, ‘if you do those reforms,’ which the police want anyway, because there’s huge industries behind them, ‘we will then give you this entire budget.’The main leverage Democrats actually have is reducing the ICE budget, but they’re starting the negotiation by saying we’ll give you everything you want. It’s really, really insidious.Subscribe to watch the full interview with Alec on why AOC and other Dems calling for the National Guard and police agencies to stop ICE is exactly what the police state wants, and why those videos of police playing basketball or handing out donuts evolve from colonialist tactics used by the French against Algerians.Plus, catch this week’s Friday Free-For-All: Smug Man Accidentally Admits He’s MAGA NowThanks for supporting independent media, subscribe to watch the full episode here:

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This weekend Border Patrol in Minneapolis murdered another peaceful protester, ICU nurse Alex Pretti. Trump officials are having such a horrible time trying to cover for this one that they’re resorting to the cancel-culture lingo they mocked for years:“It feels as though you’re blaming the victim here,” says CNN’s Dana Bash.Senior Border Patrol Official Greg Bovino whines back, “The victims?? The victims are the border patrol agents! I’m not blaming the border patrol agents! The victim are the border patrol agents! The suspect put himself in that situation.” And then one more time for good measure: “The victims are the border patrol agents!”Then deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche uses the word he learned from woke culture, complaining that the media needs to stop “gaslighting the administration about what happened.” What happened was seen by the entire country in footage filmed by protesters. It is not gaslighting to watch the video.And just to ratchet up the hypocrisy even more, they begin claiming that Pretti acted illegally by bringing a gun to the protest. Pretti had a legal permit to carry a gun. But that doesn’t matter:“You cannot bring a firearm to any sort of protest that you want,” says FBI Director Kash Patel.“He brought a gun!” adds Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent. “I’ve been to a protest. Guess what, I didn’t bring a gun. I brought a billboard!”So now these guys, the same people who lionized Kyle Rittenhouse for bringing an assault rifle to police-violence protests, are against the Second Amendment? And pro-woke culture? It’s hard to be surprised anymore, but this one’s a lot to take in.Join Katie and Aaron for all this, and so much more, on a wild episode of Monday Mourning.Watch the full episode for free and please subscribe to us here on Substack and for free on YouTube, your support keeps us going! This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.usefulidiotspodcast.com/subscribe

Kristi Noem did not do well on her Face the Nation appearance this weekend. And Katie and Aaron did not miss the opportunity to make fun of it.From accidentally calling her own agency’s statistics a fake news lie, to contradicting her claim that ICE agents aren’t using chemical weapons against protesters, to admitting the First Amendment no longer exists when it comes to ICE, to claiming that even mentioning the public case of ICE officer and alleged murderer Jonathan Ross is the same as doxxing, she dug herself into hole after hole.We feel bad making fun of someone so…intellectually challenged, but she’s currently in power running what this week’s guest Craig Mokhiber called “the modern day Brown Shirts,” so we’ve got no choice but to do our part in mockery.Also in this Monday Mourning: Republicans are tripping over themselves over the stupidity of Trump’s Greenland takeover plans, Democrats continue to only call out Trump’s regime change operations for being unsuccessful, mentioning nothing about their moral implications, and Israeli mega-donors Miriam Adelson and Haim Saban accidentally get outed by their own moderator.It’s Monday Mourning! Subscribe to Useful Idiots to support us and independent media! This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.usefulidiotspodcast.com/subscribe

In October 2023, Craig Mokhiber resigned as director of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights over the UN’s failure to act to stop the genocide in Gaza. Since then, he has been writing and speaking out about Israel’s crimes in Gaza as well as the other wars launched by the US-Israel Axis. This week, we’re focusing on Israel’s secret role in destabilizing Latin America, the Maduro government in Venezuela in particular, and in training ICE.Useful Idiots: Can you talk about the Israeli regime’s nefarious role in Latin America?Craig Mokhiber: It’s a long story, the history of the Israeli regime supporting far-right governments and death squads in Latin America and attacking or supporting attacks on progressive governments and movements in the region. And that’s why in her first address after the U.S. attacked Venezuela, the vice president, who’s now the interim president, Delcy Rodríguez, said that the attack on the country had “Zionist undertones.”People of the region are well aware that the hand of the Israeli regime in destabilizing progressive governments has been going on forever. We’re talking about Israeli weapons, Israeli equipment, Israeli surveillance technology, Israeli intelligence cooperation, spying on opposition, and so on. But what’s really sometimes missed in these conversations is that the Israeli regime has been exporting not just weapons and technology and tactics, but it also exports a kind of violent and racist ideology. Ideas that are very right-wing, very Zionist, very militarist, very anti-human rights, obviously deeply anti-Muslim and anti-Arab and anti-Palestinian and anti-left, and this general idea that tries to frame law enforcement as equivalent to military.That has been a big part of it. And that’s why, after the attack by the US on Venezuela, Israeli regime leaders were absolutely giddy celebrating the attacks on Venezuela and the abduction of the Venezuelan president.Useful Idiots: What about Israel’s role in U.S. crackdowns against its own citizens?Craig Mokhiber: This is what I refer to as the Zionist boomerang. This support for Zionism, fascism, apartheid, all of the crimes of the Israeli regime in Palestine, now it’s come back to our own cities. We’re talking about policing tactics that are entirely inconsistent with international human rights standards. You’ve got decades of the US underwriting apartheid, surveillance, repression, and genocide in Palestine. Those practices are now being brought home.We’ve seen it in the brutal persecution of student protesters. You see it in the distortion of US legislation by Israel. The official adoption of the IHRA definition of anti-Semitism as an Israeli tool to try to silence dissent about Israeli abuses. You see it in the wholesale suspension of the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution in the U.S. on behalf of the Israeli regime. This is blowback from support for Zionism in Western Asia and you now see it in the corruption of U.S. law enforcement with this continuous structured flow of Israeli weapons and equipment and surveillance technology. A lot of these things come out of Israel’s so-called counterterrorism tactics. And whenever you hear that word counterterrorism, I think we’ve all learned, human rights runs for cover. It’s surveillance, it’s brutal crowd control techniques, racial profiling, intrusive intelligence gathering that’s now touching all of us.That is a product of this Zionist boomerang. And that alone should terrify everybody who lives in the United States.Watch and share our full, unpaywalled interview with Craig Mokhiber.And don’t miss this week’s Friday Free-For-All: GOP Senator Accidentally Blows Iran SecretDown with corporate media. Support independent media here This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.usefulidiotspodcast.com/subscribe

“F***ing b****!”New bodycam footage shows that a male voice, allegedly the ICE officer who shot and killed Renee Good in Minnesota this week, yelled this out after the deadly shots were fired. When confronted with this thorn in the MAGA story that this was a scared ICE officer fearing for his life, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem unravels.In the days since the shooting, Noem, as well as Vice President JD Vance and Border Czar Tom Homan, have been attacking and blaming Good for her own murder, labeling her a domestic terrorist. As more and more footage of the incident comes out, showing that the car was not being “rammed” into the officer, audio of Good and her partner saying they were leaving the site, and now this, the domestic terrorist accusations are growing thinner and thinner.MAGA’s getting desperate.Katie and Aaron analyze this, as well as the unfolding chaos in Iran, where anti-government protests have erupted over a failing economy. MAGA senators like Lindsey Graham and John Fetterman are using this as an opportunity to push for strikes and sanctions against the Iranian people.And one comment by Mike Pompeo leaks that Israel’s Mossad may be involved in the protests.It’s a jam-packed Monday Mourning, laugh and cry at it all with Useful Idiots. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.usefulidiotspodcast.com/subscribe

Breaking News: it was just announced that for the first time ever, the 2026 winner of the Israel Prize will not be an Israeli. It will instead be Donald Trump.Netanyahu visited the Israel-firster this week to shower him with praise, and in response, Trump bent the knee to proclaim that Israel can have as many second chances as they’d like to prove they’re not committing genocide. In the same speech, Trump kind of lets slip that he’s maybe thinking of shooting missiles into Iran on behalf of Israel, but hey, the whole second chances thing, right?Katie and Aaron are covering everything happening in Israel-Palestine for one last blowout show of 2025 – but that’s not all we’re watching: a new right-wing childcare conspiracy has erupted in Minnesota after a YouTube prankster banged on daycare center doors, shouting “Where are the kids??” Somehow, this strategy led to people shutting doors in his face, which he, and GOP politicians, took to mean the daycare centers are all frauds. Now they’re cutting childcare funding in the state. Plus, Fox News’ Tomi Lahren gives a psychotherapy session on who you should really be looking to for personal inspiration.It’s all this, and so much more madness, on the Useful Idiots News Year’s Mockin’ Eve. Thanks for joining us for a wild 2025, we’ll see you in the next one. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.usefulidiotspodcast.com/subscribe

Get extended episodes, Friday Free-For-Alls, and TWO MONTHS of Useful Idiots FREE.The Epstein files are out…mostly. The Trump Admin seemed to think it could get away with yet another partial dump, but one of their redactions got leaked when a photo of a desk drawer filled with photos of Trump and young women went public.What was that about?Katie and Aaron analyze Deputy AG Todd Blanche’s Epstein performance on Meet the Press and debunk the lies after lies he tells.Also in this Monday Mourning: Bari Weiss has turned 60 Minutes into a propaganda joke, Lindsey Graham phones in from Tel Aviv to warmonger on not one but THREE different US wars, and Democrats Hakeem Jeffries and Jamie Raskin fail miserably in their response to the DNC refusing to release their 2024 election autopsy.The corporate politicians are running wild. Only Katie and Aaron can reel them in. Watch or listen to the full episode for free.And don’t miss last week’s Friday Free-For-All: Katie Halper & Aaron Maté React to Ridiculous ‘Melania’ Trailer This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.usefulidiotspodcast.com/subscribe

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.usefulidiotspodcast.comGet the extended episode, Friday Free-For-All, and TWO MONTHS of Useful Idiots FREE.Subscribe for the full episode at the bottom of the page. Watch a free preview here:For this week’s interview, we’re speaking with Francisco Rodríguez about the latest in Trump’s regime-change campaign in Venezuela. Rodríguez, a member of the Venezuelan opposition who formerly advised a challenger to President Nicolás Maduro, does not, like other members of the opposition, support the U.S. policy of starvation sanctions and military force to overthrow the government of Venezuela.Useful Idiots: You have warned that Trump’s naval blockade of U.S.-sanctioned oil tankers going in and out of Venezuela could lead to the first major famine in the Western Hemisphere. Can you explain what you mean by that?Francisco Rodríguez: The first thing to understand is that the Venezuelan economy runs on oil revenues. Oil is more than 90% of the country’s exports. It uses its export revenue in order to pay for imports of everything, including food and essentials.The Venezuelan economy doesn’t actually produce the food that it needs to feed itself. And that’s not atypical: that’s the case for many economies that are integrated into the world economy. But not many economies get blockaded. In fact, there’s really no precedent of a sustained blockade of any economy in the Western Hemisphere.Useful Idiots: Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro responded to Trump’s blockade announcement by ordering a naval escort for tankers that are carrying oil toward Asia. This obviously raises the risk, if Trump decides to enforce his social media post, of a military confrontation between the U.S. and Venezuela in the high seas.Francisco Rodríguez: The U.S. has essentially gone into this strategy of trying to scare the Venezuelan military into turning on Maduro, which is called the credible threat strategy. It’s the idea that if the US can credibly threaten that it’s going to invade, it doesn’t actually have to invade: the military is going to turn on Maduro who is going to give up power.Up until now, Maduro isn’t moving. You don’t have any sign of rebellion in the military, and this strategy has painted President Trump into a corner because now he’s almost forced to show that this threat is credible by carrying out a military attack.But on the other hand, there seems to be absolutely no appetite, at least in American public opinion and among the political leadership of both parties, for an actual war in Venezuela. So is President Trump going to pull the trigger? Is he going to go in and seize that tanker and fire on the Venezuelan ships that are escorting it? We don’t know. It’s highly unpredictable.But what we do know is that a lot of military conflicts begin this way. They begin with threats and then one side either miscalculating or believing that it has to enforce its threat in order to maintain its credibility.Subscribe for the full interview with Francisco Rodríguez for his thoughts on Venezuelan opposition leader and Nobel Peace Prize winner María Corina Machado calling regime change an “act of love.”And don’t miss this week’s Friday Free-For-All: Katie Halper & Aaron Maté React to Ridiculous ‘Melania’ TrailerWatch the full episode here:

This weekend, a mass shooting in Australia killed at least 16 people at a Hanukkah celebration. Australian lawmakers responded to the incident rationally: they’re creating new policy to tighten gun restrictions in the country. US politicians, who responded to their own mass shooting at Brown University with the usual “thoughts and prayers,” had a much more ridiculous takeaway:“My heart goes out to all of the Jewish citizens of America and around the world,” says Senator Jim Banks (R-IN). “In America we have to do more to deport terrorists out of the United States to make sure that something like this doesn’t happen in the homeland.” He then adds for good measure: “And our thoughts and prayers go out to all those affected.”Instead of dealing with the problem of gun violence, or assessing that the ethno-supremacist state of Israel waging a 2-year ethnic cleansing campaign is the leading cause for the rise in antisemitism, US politicians are using this atrocity to fuel Islamophobia and deport innocent people from the country, creating even more suffering in the name of Israel.But please, when you talk about the students killed at Brown, don’t politicize it. Just say thoughts and prayers.We cover this, and so much more, in this week’s Monday Mourning. Plus, don’t miss our limited-time offer to get 2 FREE MONTHS OF USEFUL IDIOTS. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.usefulidiotspodcast.com/subscribe

Time is running out: get this episode and 2 MONTHS of Useful Idiots FREE.This week we speak with Suad Abdel Aziz, a Sudanese-American lawyer and founder of the human rights advocacy organization Decolonize Sudan. The Sudan genocide is a topic we haven’t covered extensively at Useful Idiots, so Suad educates us with a history of the region, explains what’s going on now, and reveals how the US is involved.Useful Idiots: Can you give us a brief history of Sudan and how we got to where we are?Suad Abdel Aziz: Despite how mainstream media frames it, there is not an internal power struggle or civil war that’s happening in Sudan. What’s happening is a foreign-backed genocide, carried out by a militia called the Rapid Support Forces, or the RSF, as part of a colonial project to completely destabilize Sudan in order to seize land within a larger imperial scheme designed to extract resources, consolidate economic control of Sudan, and control Sudan’s foreign policy.Beginning in April of 2023, the RSF violently seized Sudan, and over the course of over two years now, destroyed and leveled the bulk of Sudan’s infrastructure and has displaced over a third of the population, which is over sixteen million people. They have waged a campaign of genocide and ethnic cleansing marked by mass killings, including killings of entire family lineages, sexual violence, and the deliberate starvation of entire communities.The RSF is only able to do this through the backing of the United Arab Emirates, who provide the funds, the fighters, and the weapons for this militia. In exchange, the UAE is extracting the resources of Sudan, with the main export that it’s smuggling being gold. And the UAE’s gold exports have increased by over 25% since this siege began.Useful Idiots: What is the connection between Sudan and Palestine?Suad Abdel Aziz: Sudan has historically been allied with Palestine and against Israel, which is key in understanding why the US seeks to align Sudan’s foreign policy with its own in order to serve its larger interests of domination of the Middle East. It’s very clear that if elections were to happen in Sudan, that the people would elect in anti-colonial Muslim governance. And this is a threat to US control of the Middle East and of Muslim countries.Listen to or watch our full interview with Suad Abdel Aziz, unpaywalled for all listeners. And don’t miss our limited time deal: 2 MONTHS of Useful Idiots FREE. Your support of independent media means everything.Plus, don’t miss this week’s Friday Free-For-All: Aaron Maté on Confronting Hillary ClintonGet your independent media here: This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.usefulidiotspodcast.com/subscribe

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.usefulidiotspodcast.comGet the extended episode, Friday Free-For-All, and TWO MONTHS of Useful Idiots FREE.Subscribe for the full episode at the bottom of the page. Watch a free preview here:This week we’re speaking to Pulitzer-Prize winner Greg Grandin about the Trump Administration’s regime-change war in Venezuela, which now is mired in controversy not just because we’re trying to overthrow a foreign government yet again, but also because Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth presided over a blatantly unconstitutional strike on a speedboat in the Caribbean.Useful Idiots: Can you walk us through what Trump is doing right now in Venezuela and what is motivating him?Greg Grandin: The big picture is the America First movement, which imagines that the United States no longer superintends a global liberal political economy in which everybody plays by the rules. That’s happened in the past, and Latin America is key to that.But then, of course, there’s Venezuela and there’s oil. There was a split within the Trump administration between so-called moderates, who are tied to Chevron, and the war party, Miller, Rubio, and Hegseth. I think those speedboat attacks were the war party’s attempt to preempt any normalization of relationships with Venezuela.And with Rubio, it’s a confluence of two different strands. One is he was a neocon before he became America First. But he’s also from South Florida, and he’s got deep ties to the Cuban community. And Venezuela is seen as the first step towards taking out Cuba, denying it its oil. So he’s doing it under the rubric of the War on Drugs, which of course is not Donald Trump. That’s a fifty year war. Behind every single horror that Donald Trump represents exists a long train of U.S. presidents that had first put in the policies that make what Trump does today possible. And that’s nowhere clearer than in the Drug War, which started formally with Richard Nixon in 1973. So there’s many things flowing into it.Useful Idiots: Do you think Trump will succeed with these plans in Venezuela?Greg Grandin: The momentum to get Maduro out is quite strong and surprisingly orchestrated, which included the Nobel Peace Prize Committee giving María Corina Machado the prize, and she immediately fulfilled her role as everybody’s worst expectation of what could possibly happen. I can’t imagine any other Peace Prize winner immediately embarking on an alliance with Donald Trump to stage a coup. But that’s where we are.I think that Trump wants Venezuela settled. That either means Maduro’s gone and some provisional government favorable to the United States is in power, or it means the Chevron faction within the Trump administration keeps Maduro and establishes some semblance of normalcy and keeps the oil pumping. Now deportation flights have restarted after being halted for a little while. That’s where I’m a little bit dubious about whether Trump is going to go all in on Rubio’s visions. They don’t have enormous support in the United States. It doesn’t have support in the MAGA base. And obviously Hegseth is having all of these problems. The leaking of the footage of that double-tap speedboat killing suggests there’s deep discontent within the military…Subscribe to watch the full interview with historian Greg Grandin. (Or watch it free with this deal. You’ll also get our Friday Free-For-All: Stephen Miller Says What He’d Do With Pete Hegseth’s Children)

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This week’s interview with Jasper Nathaniel is free to all. For our news of the week segment, check out our Friday Free-For-All: JD Vance Can’t Stop Laughing at Trump’s al-Qaeda Joke. Thanks for supporting independent media!If you’re wondering about how the so-called ceasefire in Gaza is going, look no further than this BBC News headline:Some ceasefire. And if you want to know about the even-less-reported-on West Bank, where settlers are committing unwatchable atrocities as you read this, listen to this week’s interview with Jasper Nathaniel, a Jewish-American journalist who is just back from the olive harvest, where IDF soldiers set him up for a violent mob attack from Israeli settlers. The videos he took are horrifying.We asked Jasper about the situation in the West Bank, to describe the settler attack in which he caught on video the moment where a settler beat an elderly woman in the head with a stick, and the US State Department’s response to his plea for rescue.Useful Idiots: Tell us about your own government’s response to the settler attack. You contacted the US Embassy, what have your elected representatives told you?Jasper Nathaniel: They immediately sent out Marines to rescue me from the oil fields and put me on a private plane back to... No, they did nothing. I actually did speak to two people at the US embassy who saw the video and they expressed horror and sympathy and fear. And when I told them we needed protection, one guy says to me, ‘Unfortunately there’s nothing we can do to protect you. It is the responsibility of the host government, meaning Israel, to protect you.’And then I point out that it was the host military that led us into this ambush. And he says, ‘Well in the instances where the host government can’t protect you we pull our embassy, like Venezuela and Syria.’ So I say ‘Okay, so you’re pulling the embassy from Israel?’ And that was the last I heard from them.Senator Schumer, Senator Gillibrand, all completely ignored me.Useful Idiots: It’s not surprising, it’s kind of predictable, and yet it’s still shocking. Can you talk about the outcome of your reporting on this and what effect it had on the people living there?Jasper Nathaniel: People started to tell me that this might be one of those rare instances where something so heinous is caught or documented that Israel can’t spin it and might have to issue some sort of a response.And sure enough, the next morning, there was a story in the Times of Israel where the chief of police in the West Bank, who is a far-right Ben Gavir acolyte, said ‘We must arrest him and demand justice.’ The next day I was back in the oil fields and there were Israeli soldiers there patrolling, protecting the Palestinians. And it was clear to me and to all the Palestinians that they didn’t suddenly grow a conscience and decide they wanted to protect these people. They understood that they had a PR disaster on their hands and they had to save face by preventing another attack.Thanks for supporting independent media. It’s moments like Jasper’s video that couldn’t happen without your support.To join the community and get our analysis on Bari Weiss, John Fetterman, JD Vance, and Trump’s al-Qaeda Oval Office visit, please subscribe for $6 a month. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.usefulidiotspodcast.com/subscribe

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This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.usefulidiotspodcast.comSubscribe for the full episode at the bottom of the page. Watch a free preview here:*Don’t miss our new segment, the Friday Free-For-All: Elon Musk Short Circuits on Joe Rogan Over Zohran Mamdani*In 2018, Ross Barkan ran for New York State Senate. His campaign manager was Zohran Mamdani.This week, after an unprecedented surprise campaign, which began polling at 0% on announcement day, Zohran Mamdani pulled off an upset to become New York City’s next mayor. Ross Barkan explains how this happened, the forces and money working against Mamdani, and why this signals a tailspin for Israeli influence campaigns over US candidates.Useful Idiots: The ADL has announced that they’re launching a comprehensive, citywide initiative to track and monitor policies and personnel appointments of the incoming Mamdani administration. And earlier, Jonathan Greenblatt said that Zohran wasn’t meeting with “the right Jews.” What is your response to the ADL’s effort against Zohran Mamdani?Ross Barkan: It really backfired on them. They made this a referendum on Israel. And that helped Zohran.Zohran himself did not make this election a referendum in Israel-Palestine. He did not talk about it in his campaign ads. He was not talking about it on the stump. It really was a locally-focused affordability campaign. And again and again, because he is pro-Palestine and has a long history in activism, he was attacked on it. And they lost the referendum bad.They lost the primary by 13 points, they lost the general election by 9 points. Put into context the amount of money spent against him by the super PACs from the primary and general and you’re talking almost $60 million dollars, plus Cuomo’s own money. So they poured in $70 million dollars against him collectively and they were beaten.Useful Idiots: Let’s look at what happens when Zohran takes office January 1st. Governor Kathy Hochul endorsed him, but yet she’s opposed a centerpiece of his campaign, which is a bit of a higher tax on the ultra wealthy to help fund some of his social programs: free buses, universal child care, and other measures. What kind of challenges is he facing on that front to actually push his agenda through?

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This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.usefulidiotspodcast.comSubscribe for the full episode at the bottom of the page. Watch a free preview here:This week, Trump made a dangerous announcement on Truth Social: “Because of other countries testing programs, I have instructed the Department of War to start testing our Nuclear Weapons on an equal basis.”Chemical engineer Ivana Nikolić Hughes joins Useful Idiots to debunk Trump’s claim that other countries have conducted tests, and more importantly why doing our own tests could lead to catastrophic disaster. Or, in her words: “Nuclear winter.”Useful Idiots: What if someone were to say, ‘What’s wrong with a nuclear test? It’s just a test. And shouldn’t we know whether these systems are working? What’s the problem?’Ivana Nikolić Hughes: The word test, actually, is just the wrong word for what took place in these more-than-2,000 full-blown nuclear explosions. The largest test that the United States ever conducted was called the Bravo Test. And it had the energy yield equivalent to a thousand Hiroshima bombs. So Hiroshima flattened the city, this thing was a thousand times more powerful and had a mushroom cloud twenty five miles high and sixty miles wide. There was nothing “testy” about this. This was a full blown monster .And the fallout was tremendous. There was destruction of cities, but the radiation has been absolutely devastating. Generations have been impacted by it in the US. We think of the Cold War as having had no victims. But in fact, the victims were created by their own governments. It wasn’t Soviet people being killed by US nuclear weapons. It was American citizens being killed.Useful Idiots: According to people like House Speaker Mike Johnson and Senator Tom Cotton, having a massive arsenal of nuclear weapons ‘keeps the peace’ and preserves global stability.Ivana Nikolić Hughes: My response is that nuclear deterrence might work until the day it doesn’t. I always want to tell people we’re not exaggerating this thing. It’s going to be the end of the world as we know it. People write comments when I speak about this, they go ‘Oh but Hiroshima and Nagasaki are just fine today.’Which they are. In 1945, one country had three nuclear weapons. Today, nine countries have twelve and a half thousand of them.Useful Idiots: So going back to Trump’s statement, he seems to confuse testing a nuclear-capable missile versus testing a nuclear weapon itself. But he also seems confused on what the powers of the Pentagon are. Because he says, I’ve directed Secretary Hegseth to carry out testing, but is it as simple as that? Can he just direct the Pentagon to test a nuclear weapon?

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This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.usefulidiotspodcast.comSubscribe for the full episode at the bottom of the page. Watch a free preview here:New York Times investigative reporter Ken Vogel’s new book, Devils’ Advocates: How Washington Lobbyists Get Rich Enabling Dictators, Oligarchs, and Arms Dealers, unearths the shrouded power that lobbyists hold over the US government, from AIPAC, Soros, and Kushner to powers you’ve never even heard of.We begin with the president’s son-in-law, who was just revealed by Vice President JD Vance to be the “investor” behind the ethnic-cleansing “reconstruction” of Gaza.Useful Idiots: Jared Kushner doesn’t have an official role in this White House, but yet is overseeing arguably the biggest geopolitical issue in the world, and that is the crisis in Israel-Palestine. Steve Witkoff made a reference to a “master plan” for Gaza devised by Jared Kushner.Talk to us about how Kushner has gone from serving in Trump’s first term to his time out of the White House, making a lot of lucrative deals, including in the Middle East, and now being described by J.D. Vance as the “investor” in Trump’s peace plan in Gaza.Ken Vogel: You’ve got to go back even before he entered the first Trump administration when he was in New York real estate. And his biggest project was a massive boondoggle, giant building in Manhattan. And he got bailed out by the Qataris.And then he comes into the Trump administration and he’s helping to navigate this blockade that the Saudis and the Emiratis had on the Qataris. They don’t shy away from it. Maybe in the first term they were a little bit more bashful, but then as soon as the first term ends, Kushner hangs out his shingle, Affinity Partners, and gets a $2 billion investment from the Saudis.On 60 Minutes [this week], Leslie Stahl asked Kushner and Witkoff, “Isn’t this a conflict of interest? You have all this business in the region.” And Kushner said, “Well, we actually consider it a strength. We consider it experience and trusted relationships.” There’s certainly plenty of situations where there is US policy being set in a way that favors business partners of the Trump family or the Witkoffs or Massad Boulos and his family that is arguably not in the best interest of the American people and does seem to be a conflict of interest in the favor of the people who are putting money in the president’s family’s pockets.There are laws and norms that are intended to prevent that kind of thing. And the Trump folks in the second term seem to be fairly emboldened to just test those norms and openly defy them.Useful Idiots: Trump recently gave a speech at the Israeli Knesset where he openly flaunted the fact that he did the bidding of Miriam Adelson, who gave him more than $100 million. How does a group like AIPAC, whatever you think of them, how do they avoid registering as a foreign agent?

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.usefulidiotspodcast.comSubscribe for the full episode at the bottom of the page. Watch a free preview here:This week we’re speaking to two Useful Idiots return guests: Mouin Rabbani, co-editor at Jadaliyya and non-resident fellow at the Center for Conflict and Humanitarian Studies, and human rights attorney Craig Mokhiber, who resigned from the United Nations over its failure to act on Gaza.Useful Idiots: What is your response to Trump’s so-called peace plan?Mouin Rabbani: Well, just to say it’s not a peace plan. It’s a proposal to achieve a ceasefire. If you look at the proposal closely, it doesn’t include any enforcement mechanisms, even for those elements that have been agreed. And most importantly, it doesn’t say anything about Palestinian rights. And therefore, if it’s entirely successful, it will at best take us back to October 6 [2023].Craig Mokhiber: It’s not a peace plan. It’s not a plan for ending the conflict. It’s not a plan that responds to the genocide. It addresses none of the root causes of the situation in Palestine. It is absolutely lawless.This was created in the dark, back rooms of Washington. It makes no reference to international law, and some of the provisions of the plan actually violate international law. Things like conditioning humanitarian aid, implicit threats of collective punishment if Hamas doesn’t agree to something, the explicit denial of Palestinian self-determination, and restrictions on political rights for some Palestinians. It tries to return to a situation where Palestinians have to negotiate for their human rights with their oppressors. And it fails to seek any accountability for Israeli crimes, including genocide. This ceasefire has been repeatedly violated already by Israel. They immediately destroyed the water treatment plant, they killed several Palestinian civilians, and blocked some of the aid that’s supposed to be coming in.It is a certain relief in terms of the amount of bombs and bullets that are flying in Gaza, it allows some aid in, and it has allowed for some Palestinian prisoners to be released from horrific Israeli torture camps. But beyond that piece of the ceasefire agreement, there is nothing here to celebrate.For the full interview with Craig and Mouin debunking terrible takes from Katie Miller and Kamala Harris and explaining the real reason why Obama won the Nobel Peace Prize, please subscribe to Useful Idiots.You’ll also get our Thursday Throwdown: Cory Booker’s Israel Panic Flub Turns Into An ‘Arrested Development’ MomentWatch the full episode here:

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This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.usefulidiotspodcast.comSubscribe for the full episode at the bottom of the page. Watch a free preview here:Useful Idiots fan-favorite David Sirota returns this week with a new book that dives into the dark money plot for elites to take full and final control of mainstream media. Subscribe for the full interview with David on Bari Weiss’s takeover of CBS News, the rise of tech oligarchs in America, and David’s message for disgruntled leftists.Here’s a preview of our chat:Useful Idiots: You have this great new book out called Master Plan: The Hidden Plot to Legalize Corruption in America. It’s really relevant to so much of what’s happening today when it comes to media conglomeration, but it’s also relevant to a scary lawsuit that’s being headed by Vice President JD Vance that could have a damaging effect on some of the last campaign finance laws in this country.David Sirota: Master Plan tells the story of the fifty year secret plot to legalize corruption in a systematic way: deregulate the campaign finance system and make it nearly impossible to prosecute bribery. This plot started in the early 1970s with the Powell Memo, a memo written by Lewis Powell before he became a Supreme Court Justice. He was worried about corporations and oligarchs losing power, and he wrote this call to arms about how corporations, oligarchs, and the like had to invest in politics to make sure, essentially, that democracy didn’t continue to get ‘destroyed.’There were secret meetings in which some of the most powerful people in the country laid out how they were executing the Powell Memo. There was an effort to take over media, which we’re now seeing culminating in the Paramount-Skydance takeover with Donald Trump and Bari Weiss.Powell writes these memos that have never been seen before: he engineers a ruling extending constitutional protection for money as speech. Money is speech. Right now, as we speak, JD Vance is spearheading a low profile but huge case at the Supreme Court to try to give the now 6-3 conservative court an opportunity to eliminate all of the remaining limits on campaign contributions directly to candidates. Useful Idiots: So what’s the playbook for selling all this to the public? As a victory for the working class? For freedom? JD Vance fashioned himself as being pro-working class, but I don’t see anything in his record that supports that. So is this just an effort to push this through and hope nobody notices? Or is there a massive propaganda campaign to get people to buy into this agenda?David Sirota: I think their theory is: ‘We don’t care.’ There is no public-facing argument in the effort to deregulate campaign finance. They are making a straight up First-Amendment-legalistic-technical-argument to the Supreme Court, hoping the Supreme Court gives them what they want, because once they get what they want, then it unleashes unlimited spending for them.I don’t think they’re going out to the public saying, ‘hey, we’re deregulating campaign finance. We’re making sure the anti-bribery laws can’t be enforced. We’re doing this for some higher purpose.’ They’re doing this expecting that the media and the public will not follow the ins-and-outs of campaign finance law and anti-bribery law, knowing that if they’re successful, it will give them more power under the law to spend as much money as they want, making the political discourse and public policy whatever it is they want.Subscribe for the full interview with David Sirota. Order his new book Master Plan here.And don’t miss this week’s Thursday Throwdown: Fmr Congressman Reveals What Happens at Closed-Door AIPAC EventsThanks for supporting independent media, watch the full episode here:

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This episode is free to all. Please help us share Diana Buttu’s important message.Palestinian lawyer Diana Buttu returns to Useful Idiots, joining us from Haifa, Israel, where she’s based. Diana breaks down Trump’s “peace plan,” which is in no way a peace plan, debunks Israeli talking points, and urges us not to give up, but rather to “disrupt, disrupt, disrupt!” until Palestine is free.We begin our conversation asking about the Global Sumud Flotilla, which, once again, sailed through international waters in an effort to break Israel’s starvation siege on Gaza, this time getting closer than ever before! On Wednesday and Thursday, the IDF kidnapped over 450 Flotilla members including Greta Thunberg and former Useful Idiots guest Thiago Ávila.Useful Idiots: What is your reaction to this news?Diana Buttu: We’ve been spending the past two years watching a live stream genocide. And here we watched 450 people being kidnapped and acts of piracy! And still nobody is doing anything about it. It shows you the lengths to which Israel is willing to go to actually starve the people of Gaza.Useful Idiots: Polls in the US now show that more Americans sympathize with Palestinians than they do with Israelis. After decades and decades of pro-Israel propaganda in the US, which now is only intensifying with pro-Israel oligarchs buying TikTok, CBS, Paramount, and possibly even CNN, a majority of Americans oppose U.S. military support to Israel. But in government, there’s so much to overcome. This week, Trump unveiled a new so-called peace plan to Netanyau. It’s basically a complete surrender for Palestinians. And one of the demands that Netanyahu made was an end to what he called lawfare: no more taking Israel to the International Criminal Court. As a Palestinian attorney, what is your response to this?Diana Buttu: This model of thinking of putting conditions on freedom, there’s a word for that. It’s called colonialism.That model ended a long time ago and the fact that they’re still trying to revive it when it comes to Palestinians is really quite repugnant. The Americans have always treated Palestinians by patting us on the head, like, ‘if you’re good Palestinians, if you do exactly what we say, then maybe, just maybe we will give you the things that you want.’ It shouldn’t be a question of what the United States wants, what Israel wants, or what anybody wants. The fact that the country that has perpetrated genocide and the country that is funding the genocide have anything to say about what Palestinians do is so abhorrent. That’s number one. Two is I absolutely insist that these war criminals be held to account. It is step number one!Useful Idiots: I want to talk to you about Israel’s crimes. There’s a pretty scary statement that was tweeted out by Israel’s so-called defense minister, Israel Katz:The IDF has completed the capture of the Netzarim axis up to the Gaza coast, effectively dividing Gaza between north and south.This is the last opportunity for Gaza residents who wish to do so to move south and leave Hamas terrorists isolated in Gaza city itself, facing the IDF’s ongoing operations at full force.Those who remain in Gaza will be considered terrorists and terror supporters.The IDF is prepared for all possibilities and is determined to continue its operations. So this is ominous. What is your response to this statement?Diana Buttu: They’re openly saying that they’re just going to kill everybody.There are hundreds of thousands of people living in Gaza City. There’s a number of hospitals there. There are old people, there are young people, there are people who are ill, who are in hospital. There are people who are disabled. There’s just a whole range of society. And what he’s saying is, ‘if you remain, you are a fair target.’Again, it’s like flipping this idea of international law on its head, but they’ve done it now for the past two years. In the way that Israel has been operating, anybody in Gaza equals Hamas. They’ve said this. They’ve warned against this. We’ve been tracking their statements. That’s why it’s genocide. And now they’re coming out very clearly and saying, ‘if you remain in Gaza City, we’re going to treat you as Hamas, and therefore we are going to get rid of you.’ I don’t think they’ve made it any clearer than that.Please share this episode to spread Diana’s important words. Thanks for supporting Useful Idiots and independent media.And don’t miss this week’s Thursday Throwdown: “No More Beardos”: Hegseth’s New ‘Professional’ Military Standards Just Dropped This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.usefulidiotspodcast.com/subscribe

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This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.usefulidiotspodcast.comSubscribe for the full episode at the bottom of the page. Watch a free preview here:Useful Idiots: Let’s talk about what’s happening on the ground in Gaza. Israel bombed a food distribution site. Doctors at Al-Shifa Hospital in North Gaza are warning of total collapse. And this follows Israel destroying high-rise buildings in the last livable area left in Gaza. So amid all the atrocities that it’s currently committing, what is Israel’s strategy in Gaza right now?Norman Finkelstein: It’s perfectly obvious. It’s gotten the green light from the White House to try to empty out Gaza. The UN report that just came out two weeks ago did the right thing by [dispensing with] the language of the laws of war. The problem in Gaza is not that Israel is committing “disproportionate attacks.” The problem has not been that Israel is in even an egregious breach of the laws of war... The problem is that Israel is acting out the logic of genocide. And that’s very different because ultimately, if you use the framework of the laws of war, then what’s tacit in using that framework is that Israel ultimately wants to achieve a military victory.If you take, for example, the period from March 18th of this year, when Israel terminated the ceasefire, until the end of August, do you know how many Gazans have been killed in that period? The estimate is 12,000. You know how many Israeli soldiers were killed in that period? 50.The ratio is 1 to 240. Does that sound like a war, or does that sound like an extermination?Useful Idiots: That makes it striking how ridiculous it is to call this a war.Norman Finkelstein: Israel’s apologists have a funny argument right now. They say, ‘If you really believe there is a genocide in Gaza, then why don’t you advocate opening up the border [which would be ethnic cleansing]?’Well, I have another idea. How about if I really believe there’s a genocide in Gaza, how about taking out the…While we would love to share Norman’s idea with you, we worry it could get our entire YouTube channel demonetized or even removed… So we posted it exclusively on Substack HERE.

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This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.usefulidiotspodcast.comSubscribe for the full episode at the bottom of the page. Watch a free preview here:In the aftermath of the assassination of Charlie Kirk, we speak to Chris Hedges, the leading chronicler of America's slide into authoritarianism and how a society that's built around empire fuels an internal decay.Useful Idiots: Where are you seeing the country now in the response to Charlie Kirk's murder?Chris Hedges: As soon as Kirk was assassinated, he was elevated within the canon of his movement to the status of a martyr. That was instant. Even before they had apprehended Robinson as the suspect, you had Trump declare him a martyr. You had flags lowered and half-mast. He was given the Presidential Medal of Freedom instantly. I've watched this before in other conflicts, and it's very dangerous because the martyr is really the lifeblood of radical movementsAny kind of dialogue, any kind of compassion with the opposing movement is a betrayal of the sanctity of the martyr. It is to essentially collaborate with people who, through the eyes of the radical movement that you're in, have killed the martyr. And that's, of course, precisely what's happening. They are deadly serious, and they will use the death of Kirk to essentially sanctify this crusade against what is left of our open society.Useful Idiots: You talked about the sanctification of Charlie Kirk when it comes from the right, but I'm curious what you think of it when it comes from the liberal side. Ezra Klein, who is a prominent liberal columnist for the New York Times, the paper of record, wrote an article called Charlie Kirk Was Practicing Politics the Right Way.Chris Hedges: Well, that's why I don't read Ezra Klein. That's ridiculous.Charlie Kirk was fomenting hate and demonization. Let's begin with the kinds of things he said about Muslims, the kinds of things he said about people of color, in particular Black people, the kinds of things he said about the LGBTQ community, the kinds of things he said about feminists. This was really vitriolic hate speech. And it is, like all hate speech, giving license to people to act upon that hate speech. When I heard about the assassination, I was appalled and horrified, not because I have any love for Kirk, but because I know how it would be weaponized. And in all totalitarian states, vigilante groups are vitally important. And they serve this strange purpose: at once, the formal structures of power. They have a kind of deniability because it's not them. It's one step removed. On the other hand, the vigilante group carries out a lot of the dirty work that whatever police state or totalitarian state wants carried out.Useful Idiots: What do you make of the fallout on the right when it comes to the issue of Israel? A number of sources reported that Charlie Kirk was shifting a little bit on Israel after some unpleasant experiences with pro-Israel donors, including Bill Ackman, and Charlie Kirk was insisting that he was going to keep on giving space to people like Tucker Carlson. The Trump Administration is so completely beholden to the Israeli agenda, and Charlie Kirk, whether it's accurate or not, is being upheld now as a voice of dissent on that. What do you make of that?

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This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.usefulidiotspodcast.comSubscribe for the full episode at the bottom of the page. Watch a free preview here:This week we’re joined by California Congressman Ro Khanna, one of the only members of Congress willing to appear on shows that are to the left of the Democratic Party. Our conversation spans from working with “bad guy” Republicans on releasing the Epstein Files, protecting Medicare, stopping Trump’s regime change operations in Venezuela, and taking on AIPAC:Useful Idiots: You've been spearheading an effort to get Trump to recognize Palestinian statehood. Can you tell us more about this effort and any new developments around it?Rep. Khanna: We have twenty six signatures to officially recognize a Palestinian state. Now people say, ‘Is this just moral preening? Why does it matter?’ First of all, it obviously matters to Netanyahu and it matters to AIPAC because they have been very opposed to it. So there is real value in recognizing the humanity of the Palestinian people and their national aspirations.Secondly, the Palestinians need some hope, a horizon of hope to overcome the destruction and extremism that they are seeing. And third, the reality is that the United States recognizing a Palestinian state, unlike all the other countries, really matters because we have the ability to have consequences based on our aid and our support.Useful Idiots: So when you bring this pitch to your colleagues in Congress, what kind of pushback are you getting? Why are they not on board with this yet, even though it's supposed to be U.S. policy to support a Palestinian state in just twenty two percent of their homeland?Rep. Khanna: The reality is that when you have the United States actually do it, it sets a marker that says ‘if Israel is not committed to actually taking steps to recognizing a Palestinian state, then there are going to be consequences.’ And that is a red line for AIPAC. It's a red line for Bibi. And so members of Congress have been reluctant to get on.Subscribe for our full interview with Rep. Ro Khanna on AIPAC ousting progressive members of Congress, why he’s teaming up with GOP Reps Massie, Mace, Greene, and Boebert to release the Epstein Files, and why even though he doesn’t support Maduro he is fighting Trump’s regime change operations in Venezuela.Plus, catch this week’s Thursday Throwdown: Putin-Xi-Modi Summit Causes Neocon PANIC on CNNWatch the full episode here:

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This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.usefulidiotspodcast.comSubscribe for the full episode at the bottom of the page. Watch a free preview here:Useful Idiots takes to the High Seas this week.We’re looking at two ships: the Venezuelan boat that was bombed by the Trump Administration (which the U.S. Government claimed was carrying drug-smuggling terrorists), and the US Veterans Boat which joins the Freedom Flotilla headed to Gaza in an attempt to break Israel’s deadly and illegal blockade.Calling in from the Freedom Flotilla, which took off for Gaza during our conversation, is former Army Ranger Greg Stoker, who relates what is happening in Gaza to what he saw as a soldier:“I did four combat deployments in the Seventy-Fifth Ranger Regiment, which is the U.S. Special Operations Unit to Afghanistan,” he tells us. “I was there in tactical operations centers watching Obama's drone strike campaign play out and kind of got radicalized into an anti-imperialist position.There was just no standard of proof for who we were killing. Basically if a guy ended up in the wrong contact list on someone's phone, could have been a Taliban sublieutenant's baker, he was probably going to eat a hellfire missile.And I thought that was bad enough. I just have never seen anything like what Israel's done. As horrible as what we did during the global war on terror, kill millions of people in five different countries, this is completely beyond the pale. And the entire world is less safe because of the precedent set in Gaza over the past two years, a complete disregard for international law and humanity.”The louder we amplify the voices in the Freedom Flotilla, the better chance they’ll have of breaking the siege, Greg explains:I hope everybody watching this supports us because we don't have any diplomatic, economic, or military support. We are a humanitarian effort and we will be confronted by a rogue genocidal actor. The only cover that we get is global engagement.What we're going to try to do is wage an information war against Israeli military propaganda to call out different actions that they will take in the global forum and try to make them politically non-viable. So we appreciate your support and engagement over the next two weeks as we try to break the siege. Because y'all's engagement is the only cover we're getting.But first we talk to historian and journalist Vijay Prashad after the White House posted a video this week allegedly attacking a ship in what they’re calling a huge drug bust against Venezuelan cartel smugglers.To find out why Vijay “scoffs” at the Trump administration’s “ridiculous” story and calls it a joke, please become a paid subscriber. Your support keeps us independent.You’ll also get this week’s Thursday Throwdown: David Pakman PANICS After Dark Money Dems Scandal RevealedThanks for being part of the Useful Idiots community. Watch the full episode here:

This episode is free to all. Please help us share Marwan Barghouti’s story:This week, we’re looking at the case of Marwan Barghouti, the Palestinian political prisoner widely regarded as the most popular Palestinian leader alive. And for this reason, Israel has kept him imprisoned for more than two decades.Useful Idiots is proud to be joined by his son, Arab Barghouti.Throughout an unimaginable 23 years in prison, Marwan Barghouti has been subjected to brutal abuse. In a recent video, fascist Israeli National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir went out of his way to visit Marwan Barghouti in his prison cell and film himself threatening Barghouti and the Palestinian people.Ben Gvir tells Barghouti that Israel is going to “wipe out” the Palestinian people.This is the first image that we've seen of Marwan Barghouti in many years, looking visibly gaunt from years of Israeli abuse and torture. This was a provocative move by Ben Gvir designed to further humiliate Palestinians at a time when they're enduring a genocide in Gaza and routine pogroms and terror in the occupied West Bank.Everyone in the world should know the name of Marwan Barghouti. He cuts through so many of the caricatures that we get of Palestinian resistance in the West: he's a longtime advocate of a Palestinian state, thereby accepting the fact that Israel stole Palestine, but he's willing to compromise and accept 22% of Palestine’s historic homeland. And even though he supports the Palestinian right to armed resistance against military occupation, Barghouti has advocated nonviolence as a tactic and opposes attacks that target Israeli civilians. The fact that Israel has made such a dogged effort to silence him, to keep him behind bars, and recently humiliate him, speaks to the power he has and the fear in the heart of the Israeli government of the Palestinian struggle for freedom. Check out the documentary Tomorrow's Freedom about Marwan Barghouti, and please share our interview with his son Arab Barghouti.Plus, catch this week’s Thursday Throwdown: Fox News Somehow Hits New Low on Israeli Hospital Strike Justification This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.usefulidiotspodcast.com/subscribe

Plus: our fundraiser for the Middle East Children’s Alliance is almost at $20k! Help us hit our goal to get aid to the children of Gaza. To donate, click on the video above and find the fundraiser next to the Youtube video.We love your support!!! This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.usefulidiotspodcast.com/subscribe

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.usefulidiotspodcast.comSubscribe for the full episode at the bottom of the page. Watch a free preview here:Useful Idiots has another Double Header this week as we look at Gaza and Ukraine.First up we speak with Dr. Omar Abdel-Mannan, founder of Health Workers 4 Palestine, about the State Department’s heartless decision to pause all visitor visas for people from Gaza. This policy shift came after Jewish-supremacist, right-wing-conspiracy-theorist, and self-described “proud Islamophobe” Laura Loomer took to Twitter (and tagged Secretary of State Marco Rubio) to expose the fact that “Islamic invaders” were infiltrating the U.S. from Gaza. Of course, what was really happening is that children injured in Gaza with weapons from (and/or paid for by) the U.S. were coming to the states for medical treatment (at no expense to U.S. taxpayers) thanks to the non-profit HEAL Palestine.Dr. Omar knows how important it is to provide children from Gaza with medical treatment in England, where he lives. He himself has worked tirelessly to bring children wounded in Gaza by UK weapons, into the UK.He also reacts to propagandist outlets like Bari Weiss’s The Free Press, which engages in the most disgusting whitewashing of Israel’s crimes: starving children to death isn’t that bad because most of the ones dying have pre-existing conditions. Phew! What a relief.Plus, we ask Dr. Omar: is Palantir selling your health data to Israel?Next we speak with Professor Richard Sakwa to discuss the latest in Russia-Ukraine after Trump’s controversial summit with Putin.We ask Sakwa: what are Putin’s true motives? Does he see Ukraine as a real country? Does he want revenge on the US and UK after Biden and Boris Johnson colluded to push Ukraine out of peace talks? And is Trump treating Putin as his equal, conning him into taking a worse deal, or bowing down to him just like he does with Netanyahu?

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For nearly 40 years, journalist Tim Weiner has closely covered the CIA, speaking with retired officials and gaining the trust of people with classified information. And his latest book, The Mission, does something we’ve never seen before:It gives an in-depth history of the CIA without any anonymous sources. Everyone’s on the record. We don’t know how Tim did it, but he joins Useful Idiots to share what he’s learned from 40 years of digging.Useful Idiots: You spoke to former CIA Director Richard Helms, and you wrote: “He wanted me to understand that the agency hadn't dreamed up the idea of overthrowing Iran or killing Fidel Castro. Every president since Truman had commanded the CIA to intervene with guns and money to control the fate of nations when sending in the Marines was not an option.” Did you get the sense that the CIA was always just unquestioningly following orders?Tim Weiner: It took me a while to understand this simple but important point: the CIA is an executor of American foreign policy. It doesn't dream up coups and plots and other nefarious covert activities. With rare exceptions, it does what the president tells it to do.It's not like a couple of CI officers were sitting around drinking martinis in 1960 saying, ‘Hey, I got a good idea. Let's go kill Fidel Castro.’ Presidents Eisenhower and Kennedy and President Kennedy's brother, Bobby, wanted Castro gone.When it came time to investigate the first twenty five years of the CIA, the Church Committee in the 1970s dove deep into this: Frank Church, the senator who ran them, wondered aloud if “the CIA has become a rogue elephant trampling people and nations.”But, we later find out, after the hearings, Church amended his statement: “When the elephant tramples people and nations, it's not the elephant's fault. It is the fault of the mahout, the elephant driver.” And that was the President of the United States.The Church Committee, and even the torture report about CIA secret prisons that the Senate finally released ten years ago, really tiptoes around this question of presidential authority for violations of the laws of God and man and the Geneva Convention by the CIA. It's the president's outfit. And it is a unique expression of presidential power to order the CIA to go and kill people or torture them or throw them in secret prisons for the rest of their lives, never to see the light of day.Useful Idiots: Your book tells the story of the great lengths to which the CIA went to cover up for torture. You have this controversy over an attempt to destroy videotapes of torture at a CIA secret prison in Thailand. And then you also have the CIA spying on the Senate as the Senate is investigating the CIA's torture program.Tim Weiner: Two unhappy stories. The first is rather dramatic.The CIA set up this base in Thailand where two of its first so-called high value prisoners were taken and tortured. Present at the base for one of those prisoner tortures was Gina Haspel, who later became the CIA Director in the first Trump Administration.An order is written. Haspel transmits the orders. The videotapes are destroyed.And they are actually under a judge's subpoena to preserve all evidence concerning these matters. When Gina Haspel becomes the CIA Director ten years later under Trump, all anything anybody knows about Gina Haspel is that she was at the CIA base when the torture was conducted and she transmitted an order from her boss to destroy the tapes.Well, it turns out Gina Haspel, when she became the CIA director for the last three years of Trump, was pretty effective at defending the CIA from Trump. Trump hates and fears the CIA. He sees it as the capital of the deep state.Your second question about the torture report. It is a fact that the CIA launched a counterintelligence investigation into the Senate staff during the final year of the publication, before the publication of the torture report.Useful Idiots: Let me stop you there. Is that legal for the CIA to launch an investigation of Americans, especially American politicians?Listen to or watch the episode for our full chat with Tim Weiner. Plus, catch this week’s Thursday Throwdown: Bill Maher Goes FULL PROPAGANDA Bot For IsraelThank you for supporting Useful Idiots and independent media! This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.usefulidiotspodcast.com/subscribe

Useful Idiots is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.usefulidiotspodcast.com/subscribe

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.usefulidiotspodcast.comSubscribe for the full episode at the bottom of the page. Watch a free preview here:For nearly 40 years, journalist Tim Weiner has closely covered the CIA, speaking with retired officials and gaining the trust of people with classified information. And his latest book, The Mission, does something we’ve never seen before:It gives an in-depth history of the CIA without any anonymous sources. Everyone’s on the record. We don’t know how Tim did it, but he joins Useful Idiots to share what he’s learned from 40 years of digging.Useful Idiots: You spoke to former CIA Director Richard Helms, and you wrote: “He wanted me to understand that the agency hadn't dreamed up the idea of overthrowing Iran or killing Fidel Castro. Every president since Truman had commanded the CIA to intervene with guns and money to control the fate of nations when sending in the Marines was not an option.” Did you get the sense that the CIA was always just unquestioningly following orders?Tim Weiner: It took me a while to understand this simple but important point: the CIA is an executor of American foreign policy. It doesn't dream up coups and plots and other nefarious covert activities. With rare exceptions, it does what the president tells it to do.It's not like a couple of CI officers were sitting around drinking martinis in 1960 saying, ‘Hey, I got a good idea. Let's go kill Fidel Castro.’ Presidents Eisenhower and Kennedy and President Kennedy's brother, Bobby, wanted Castro gone.When it came time to investigate the first twenty five years of the CIA, the Church Committee in the 1970s dove deep into this: Frank Church, the senator who ran them, wondered aloud if “the CIA has become a rogue elephant trampling people and nations.”But, we later find out, after the hearings, Church amended his statement: “When the elephant tramples people and nations, it's not the elephant's fault. It is the fault of the mahout, the elephant driver.” And that was the President of the United States.The Church Committee, and even the torture report about CIA secret prisons that the Senate finally released ten years ago, really tiptoes around this question of presidential authority for violations of the laws of God and man and the Geneva Convention by the CIA. It's the president's outfit. And it is a unique expression of presidential power to order the CIA to go and kill people or torture them or throw them in secret prisons for the rest of their lives, never to see the light of day.Useful Idiots: Your book tells the story of the great lengths to which the CIA went to cover up for torture. You have this controversy over an attempt to destroy videotapes of torture at a CIA secret prison in Thailand. And then you also have the CIA spying on the Senate as the Senate is investigating the CIA's torture program.Tim Weiner: Two unhappy stories. The first is rather dramatic.The CIA set up this base in Thailand where two of its first so-called high value prisoners were taken and tortured. Present at the base for one of those prisoner tortures was

Your support keeps Useful Idiots alive! This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.usefulidiotspodcast.com/subscribe

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.usefulidiotspodcast.comSubscribe for the full episode at the bottom of the page. Watch a free preview here:This week we cover not only Israel's starvation siege of Gaza but also another area that has been overshadowed by the genocide: the West Bank, where Israel continues its campaign of terrorism and murder.Journalist Jasper Nathaniel, who has spent time in the West Bank, talks to us about a recent murder of a Palestinian activist. And Palestinian-American Human Rights Lawyer Huwaida Arraf and Jewish-American activist Bob Suberi join us from Palestine where they're planning what's next after having been captured and arrested while aboard the Handala, the civilian ship carrying aid for Gaza.Jasper tells us about Yinon Levi, who was sanctioned by the Biden Administration after repeated attacks in the West Bank. Trump lifted the sanctions, setting Levi loose on the people of the West Bank once again. And sure enough, on July 29, Yinon Levi murdered another Palestinian: Awdah Hathaleen, an activist and teacher who worked on the Oscar-winning documentary No Other Land. After a short house arrest, Jasper tells us, Levi was set free, once again.Huwaida and Bob talk to us about Israel's latest illegal interception of the Gaza Freedom Flotilla and why they refuse to stop sailing to Gaza. They also update us about the IDF's brutal arrest and beating of labor activist Chris Smalls who, not coincidentally, was the only Black participant on the ship. Coincidentally, Bob joined us from Umm al-Khair, the Masafer Yatta village, where Hathaleen lived and was killed. Hathaleen's friends and family are trying to mourn his death despite continued raids by grenade-throwing settlers.Subscribers get access to a chat in which Jasper who reveals what really happened to Shai Davidai, the disgraced Zionist Columbia University Business professor who left the school under mysterious circumstances, after harassing and doxxing pro-Palestinian students.Plus, catch this week’s Thursday Throwdown: Fox News Accidentally Reveals Anti-Mamdani Blackmail Plot Live on AirThanks for supporting independent media, watch the full episode here:

Your support helps us continue our reporting This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.usefulidiotspodcast.com/subscribe