Greg Palast talks about his recent investigation, “How Venezuela’s New President Will Save Us from Trump’s Crazy: The Radical Pragmatist versus Rubio’s Vulture,” explaining how billionaire and Trump donor Paul Singer is one of the prime beneficiaries of the U.S. military attack and abduction of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, as Singer is about to take over CITGO, the crown jewel of Venezuela’s oil empire.
GREG PALAST: Happy to be with you.
SCOTT HARRIS: So an important—
What you have here is what we do abroad is practice for what we’re going to do here. And I’m very concerned for ’26 and ’28. We’re getting used to the idea of troops in the street, of Americans being gunned down. We can’t get used to this. This is a very, very difficult moment. But you cannot go after Venezuela and kidnap their president and at the same time expect that that won’t come home.
SCOTT HARRIS: Yeah. Chickens coming home to roost, I think, as Malcolm X once said.
This is WPKN in Bridgeport. We’re speaking this evening on Counterpoint with filmmaker and journalist Greg Palast. And we’re talking, and we’ll get to right now, his newest investigative piece, “How New Venezuela President will Save Us from Trump’s Crazy, the Radical Pragmatist versus Rubio’s Vulture.” We don’t have a lot of time left, but Greg, I wondered if you’d summarize your story, which really provides some interesting answers to several of the mysteries about Donald Trump’s decision on the abduction of Venezuelan President Nicholas Maduro and his laser-focus on Venezuela’s oil, the largest known resources of crude oil in the world. But you reveal some important background information, which while a lot of what Trump does doesn’t make sense, at least we’re understanding some of the logic he’s using.
GREG PALAST: Yes. Well, understand that I’ve known Delcy Rodriguez, the acting president of Venezuela a long time. She’s a great … She’s very left-wing and very practical, unlike Maduro, who I also knew. Maduro came to visit me in my home in New York at the time some years ago, but he was not elected. I’m sorry for my progressive friend. The truth is no, he refused … I thought Trump would applaud it because he lost his election and refused to leave office. But Delcy Rodriguez, who I’ve known for decades, is very practical, very brilliant woman, speaks English perfectly and she clearly gotten Trump to realize that he ain’t getting no oil if it’s Iraq 2.0. We’ve had Delcy Rodriguez is supported by, not only, ironically, by the CIA, which said that she can’t be removed from office because if they try to put in Marco Rubio’s choice, this woman Machado, you’re going to have a civil war and then no one’s getting no oil.
Because Iraq 2.0, there’s going to be a massive insurgency if the U.S. tries to impose Rubio’s choice for president, that’s not going to work. And so the CIA, Chevron Oil, OPEC and the truth is that you cannot, you’re not going to get any oil if what you have is a civil war, which Rubio would like to have. … In fact, actually, it’s always been true that Cuban exiles have been the greatest danger to Venezuela. And so I’m just very, very concerned that we never know what Trump’s going to do. It’s the last person he speaks to, but thank God he’s been speaking to acting President Rodriguez. That’s important. And yeah, and here’s the awful thing, Scott, is that what Trump did with a gun boat diplomacy and killing a hundred people, they say, “Oh, it’s an easy…” He killed a hundred people.
What they could have done is had a contract. They would have done this by contract, not by murder, because Venezuela … I know Delcy very well, the acting president. They want to sell us oil. We were getting … The United States was getting over a million barrels of oil a day from Venezuela until Trump shut it down. The only reason we are not getting Venezuela’s oil is that because he embargoed it. He stopped the flow of oil from Venezuela. Even George W. Bush. I spent a lot of time with President Hugo Chavez. I knew him very, very well when I was working as a reporter for BBC and The Guardian. I was assigned to cover Venezuela and I spent a lot of time with President Chavez and for all the jives back and forth between Bush and Chavez, Chavez never stopped the flow of oil to America.
Bush never stopped receiving the oil from Venezuela. Trump is trying to claim credit. He says, “Now we’re going to get Venezuela’s oil.” We had Venezuela’s oil, sir. We didn’t have to kidnap their president. We didn’t have to kill 100 people in Venezuela. They’ve been trying to sell us their oil, but now because Trump stopped the flow of oil, it’s super heavy oil. When you stop the flow of oil, the equipment freezes because what happens is super heavy oil turns into tar and then literally, literally into asphalt and the machinery’s ruined, the drilling sites are ruined, everything is ruined, everything’s frozen into asphalt, and now he’s asking U.S. oil companies to put up a $100 billion to wreck the infrastructure to rebuild the infrastructure that Trump wrecked By the embargo. The oil companies have a right to say, I mean, I hate to say to defend the oil companies, but they say, “Excuse me, we didn’t have to spend … We had a $100 billion worth of infrastructure in Venezuela before you wrecked it, Agent Orange.” That’s the problem.
SCOTT HARRIS: As you said in your article-
He’s trying to grab this thing to make a quick profit of a $10 million profit right off the top, and that is because he’s got the support of Marco Rubio, but this will destroy any relationship we have with Venezuela. Okay. So Paul Singer can become rich. He can support Trump. He can support Rubio, but it doesn’t support the United States of America stealing this nation’s oil because then they’ll say, “Well, if you steal our oil assets in the U.S. then I guess we have no reason to send you the oil.” You and I pay for this, Scott. You and I pay for this type of smash and grab, and that’s the hidden story of the invasion of Venezuela is to let Paul Singer, not you or I, steal Venezuela’s oil assets.
SCOTT HARRIS: We’re going to have to leave it there. Greg, leave our listeners with a website. They can find out more about this story. We’ve just scratched the surface of and a lot more. They can go to your website, right?
