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Oct. 16, 2025 - System Update - Glenn Greenwald
01:00:40
Trump Escalates War Efforts Towards Venezuela; New Book Details Secret Horrors of Factory Farms

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Time Text
Trump's Venezuela Threat 00:03:15
Good evening.
It's Wednesday, October 15th.
Welcome to a new episode of System Update, our live nightly show that airs every Monday through Friday at 7 p.m. Eastern, exclusively here on Rumble, the free speech alternative to YouTube.
Tonight, the Trump administration has been openly threatening to engineer regime change in Venezuela.
It's a long, lifelong goal of Marco Rubio and many other neocons, especially ones from Florida, which Rubio was long represented.
The U.S. has, of course, been bombing boats off the coast of Venezuela and claiming, with absolutely no evidence whatsoever presented, that the boats they're exploding are filled with drugs headed toward the United States.
Today, the New York Times reported that Trump has authorized the CIA to engage in covert regime change activities in Venezuela, while the president himself, speaking at the White House, explicitly threatened to expand the bombing campaign from the water to Venezuelan soil.
We'll discuss all the latest, though it's all very familiar to anyone who has lived through any of these regime change campaigns previously.
The propaganda is the same, the framework and justifications are the same, and the results are likely to be the same as well.
Then, while Americans have images of very bucolic family farms in our heads as a source for where our food supply comes from, the reality is that almost all family farms in the U.S. are gone.
They've all been replaced by these filthy industrial monstrosities called factory farms.
Gail Isons, who is the winner of the prestigious Albert Schweitzer Medal for Outstanding Achievement in Animal Welfare, has been working for decades to document and expose the shocking underbelly of the U.S. meat industry, which provides most of the food in the United States.
She's the chief investigator for the Humane Farming Association and the author of a new memoir that came out this year that I've had the privilege to read, which is Out of Sight, an undercover investigator's fight for animal rights and her own survival.
And she'll be here with us tonight to talk about their book as well as her findings.
Before we get to all of that, a couple of quick programmes notes.
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now welcome to a new episode of system update starting right now all right we have a lot to get to tonight but before we get to all of it i just wanted to share with you a truly remarkable video There have been so many that have been courtesy of the book tour that Count McKamala Harris, remember her?
She was the former vice president for a while, then the presidential nominee in 2024.
She's on a book tour.
Kamala's Self-Assertion 00:03:45
The book is entitled 107 Days, which is a built-in excuse right in the title.
Like, I didn't win because I just didn't have enough time.
She'd be going around to a bunch of very Democratic partisan audiences saying all sorts of amazing things.
Just doesn't really make the news because she's not important.
And this wasn't particularly newsworthy as well, though.
It was just so remarkable that I have to share it with you.
So she was on a book tour in a stop, and she was being interviewed by Kara Swisher, who's a hardcore anti-Trump fanatic, a big supporter of the Democratic Party.
Obviously, Kamala Harris is not going to be interviewed by anyone asking her any sorts of adversarial or difficult or challenging questions.
That's not why she's there.
It's basically like a Democratic Party pom-pom squad, just a cheerleading squad.
And this is something that Kara Swisher didn't even really intend to ask.
It just sort of came up.
Kamala Harris just decided to volunteer this.
So I just wanted to share with you what Kamala Harris said about herself at this latest book tour stop.
That is a decent resume.
But go ahead.
Well, some people have actually said I was the most qualified candidate ever to run for president.
She had just gone through all her different qualifications.
Like I was the first woman prosecutor, then I was the first female attorney general, then the second black woman.
Like, I don't know why being white, the first woman this or the first black woman this would make her more or less qualified.
But she went through her resume, her very kind of mediocre resume.
It's perfectly fine.
No one said she was like unqualified because of not holding enough political positions.
But when I first heard this, I thought this formulation she used, like some say that I was the most qualified ever to run for president.
I actually thought she was satirizing Donald Trump because that's, of course, his formulation that he often uses.
He'll always say, you know, I don't know.
I mean, a lot of people say that we did the biggest, greatest, most beautiful job that could possibly be done.
People are saying they didn't think it could be done, but everyone's saying, no, not only did we do it, but it was beyond what anyone would have thought possible.
I mean, people are saying this is the biggest, greatest thing they've ever, I mean, that's what I thought quite obviously she was satirizing because she would never seriously assert, nobody would, that she really is the single most qualified person ever in American history to run for the presidency.
And Kara Swisher also thought that she was making reference sort of satirically to Donald Trump's formulation because she then brought it up several times, but it never clicked in for Kamala Harris because she actually wasn't at all intending to satirize Donald Trump.
She was extremely serious, so much so that she didn't even catch the reference.
Here's the rest of this.
I like this some people say very nice, but go ahead.
I'm just speaking fact.
Yeah.
So she tried to give her that out, like I like this and people say, you know, sort of the Donald Trump thing.
And she's like, no, I mean, it is true.
Some people, a lot of some people say that I am the, I'd like to know who has ever said that?
Even the most hardened partisan.
I've never heard anybody say, I've heard that about Hillary Clinton.
Oh, she's the single most qualified person.
She was first lady and secretary of state and U.S. Senator.
I never heard that said about Kamala Harris.
Who would ever possibly, other than Kamala Harris?
This book tour has really been a remarkable insight into how she thinks.
A couple days before, people showed up and protested her support for the Israeli genocide in Gaza, and she sort of scorned them and angrily screened for their removal and then kind of blamed them for her defeat, saying, oh, you're the type of people who told others not to vote for me.
Regime Change War Revelations 00:15:59
Still, that's what they always do.
Democrats, when they lose, they blame voters for not recognizing the importance of their victory.
These are just the most unlikable people ever.
And when they get pressured at all, or in this case, even when they just get a little pushed or something enters their brain, they really reveal what they are.
I couldn't let that go without sharing that.
Let's talk about this new regime change war in Venezuela, which absolutely is coming in one form or another.
And look, I wish I could come on the show and talk about other things than American wars.
It's not like I enjoy that.
It's not like I enjoy expressing grievance over the fact that we are a country that's an endless war, that no matter how many times the American people and polls and referenda and in every other way, including elections, express a desire to stop fighting wars, to stop messing around and interfering in other countries, to stop using our military to just kill people all over the world and instead focus our resources on our own country.
no matter how many times that happens, it just never ends up being what the U.S. government does.
We're about four seconds away from a temporary pause to a truly horrific war in Gaza that the U.S. paid for, which means the American people paid for it and armed it and funded it.
And now it's like we're looking for a new one again, and we see this one in Venezuela.
Just like when the war in Afghanistan finally ended, it was only about six months until we were heavily involved in financing a new war.
in Ukraine.
But at least then we had that six months pause.
Here we basically have none.
So we've been reporting about the fact that the Trump administration has been bombing boats off the coast of Venezuela.
There's no evidence at all about who's in these boats, about what their purpose is.
We're told they have drugs in them.
We have no evidence that there are drugs in them.
Even if there are drugs in them, there's no evidence that they're actually heading toward American soil to ply American communities with drugs.
And even if that were the case, there's been no congressional authorization to use military force for drug dealers.
We don't just kill drug dealers.
We're not at war with Venezuela.
We don't have congressional authorization to do that.
But obviously, this has never been about drugs.
That's the pretext.
It's like the WMD.
Might as well just say Nicolas Maduro has WMD and he was behind 9-11.
That would be a lot more persuasive than pretending it's about drugs.
We've gone over the government reports before.
We'll do so again.
Where the government says here's where drugs are coming from outside the United States and entering the United States, Venezuela barely rates even a mention, let alone as a primary source.
Oftentimes Venezuela isn't mentioned at all.
For example, for fentanyl or opioids, Venezuela has nothing at all to do with the flow of drugs inside the United States.
And even for drugs where they might, like cocaine, it's a very small quantity.
It's not like Nicolas Maduro is flooding American communities with fentanyl or other deadly drugs.
It's just a complete myth.
It's designed to give you a reason to cheer why we're going to go and engage another regime change operation at best and probably a regime change war.
I mean, you could almost say we're already in a regime change war, given that we're already bombing for that end.
And it is amazing to watch how easy it is for people to just start cheering it.
Like, yeah, this is the real bad guy.
You know, like we're always told, oh, this is like the worst dictator in the world.
This is Saddam Hussein.
This is Bashr al-Assad we're talking about.
This is Muamar Gaddafi.
These are the Iranian mullahs.
This is not like any other dictator.
This is Nicholas Maduro.
And if you don't support regime change and wars to get rid of those governments, to overthrow those governments, it must mean that you are on the side of those dictators.
You must be pro-Salam or pro-Gaddafi or pro-Assad or pro-Iranian Mueller or pro-Hamas or pro-Putin or pro-Maduro.
All of those standard weapons, our rhetorical weapons, are already being unleashed to try and demonize anybody who says, wait a minute, why are we engaged in another regime change war?
Why is it of great interest to the American people who governs Venezuela?
Okay, Maduro's a bad guy.
If you want to go and take out bad guys, people who don't believe in elections, you can go to Saudi Arabia or Egypt or Indonesia or the Emirates or any place on the planet that you want.
There's huge numbers of dictators, including ones way worse with the Maduro, with whom the United States is very close friends.
Oh, we're worried that he's suffocating the economy of the Venezuelan people.
Maybe we should lift sanctions on Venezuela then and let that country freely trade so that it can have a better economy, if that's really our concern.
And I guess we're supposed to believe that the fact that Venezuela is extremely oil-rich, filled with not just petroleum reserves, but all sorts of other vital minerals is just a massive coincidence.
We always end up fighting in wars to change the regime of countries that have crucial vital minerals or other geostrategic interests, but it's really just all a coincidence.
We're just interested in liberating the people of Venezuela.
We want to bring freedom and democracy to the people of Venezuela like we did to Iraq and Libya and Syria and soon in Iran.
I mean, it's almost like you can't even work up the energy to debunk this anymore.
At this point, anybody who believes this script is kind of beyond help is what it feels like.
And yes, they always have a reason why these dictators are going to do bad things to you.
Saddam Hussein is going to give nuclear weapons or biological weapons to Al-Qaeda, and they're going to come to the United States and use them against Americans.
The Iranian Moors are going to develop a nuclear weapon and shoot it into New York or Mar-a-Lago or wherever.
Suddenly, we're supposed to believe that fentanyl and other dangerous drugs comes not from China or Colombia or Mexico, but now suddenly Venezuela is the source, even though U.S. government reports have never said any of this.
And regime changing Venezuela is a long-term, lifelong, really, objective of a bunch of ID logs from Florida, like Marco Rubio, who come from that region and who never stop focusing on the region that they originate from and want to use the U.S. government to change the leaders of the countries that they have some sort of vested interest in that they either came from or that they are in some way invested in.
It's like using the U.S. government and the American workers to pay for it as their private militia.
That's all that's going on.
It's just like any other regime change war with all the likely consequences that will ensue.
Here from the New York Times is the latest Trump administration authorizes covert CIA action in Venezuela.
Quote, for weeks, the U.S. military has been targeting boats off the Venezuelan coast.
It says they're transporting drugs, killing 27 people.
American officials have been clear privately that the end goal is to drive Mr. Maduro from power.
Okay, so they're saying it explicitly.
So let's not engage in the pretext that even they really aren't trying to convince anybody they believe in.
This is about saving Americans from drugs.
This is about driving Maduro from power, putting in a pro-Western, pro-U.S. puppet who will allow U.S. oil company access to their petroleum and their other vital reserves, who will make sure that U.S. influence is greater than China's.
That's what this is about.
And at least admit that.
Like, don't go around saying, oh, we're freeing the Venezuelan people from this terrible dictator.
We don't care about terrible dictators.
The article goes on, quote, the new authority would allow the CIA to carry out lethal operations in Venezuela and conduct a range of operations in the Caribbean.
The agency would be able to take covert action against Mr. Maduro or his government either unilaterally or in conjunction with a larger military operation.
Obviously, Maduro has been planning this for a very long time.
It's just sort of like the reason the Cuban government has never been able to be deposed, despite the U.S. as this massive superpower, 90 miles from its shore, doing everything possible to suffocate it, to destabilize their government.
It's been six, seven decades.
We haven't been able to.
You think this is going to be easy?
John Bolton tried in the first Trump administration.
Trump gave him latitude to assemble a bunch of resources trying to destabilize Maduro.
And when it didn't work and Trump realized Maduro is a lot tougher than he was led to believe, that's when Bolton basically left the government.
I'm sure the United States could do it.
There's no question.
The United States can, of course, engineer regime change in Venezuela or most other places in the world, including Iran.
The question is, what is it going to take?
Here's Donald Trump casually musing about the fact that since we've been bombing their boats, now we might start bombing Venezuelan soil.
What's the next step in this war on cartels?
And are you considering options, or are you considering strikes on land?
I don't want to tell you exactly, but we are certainly looking at land now because we've got the sea very well under control.
We've had a couple of days where there isn't a boat to be found.
I view that as a good thing, not a bad thing.
But we had tremendous amounts coming in by boats, by very expensive boats.
You know, they have a lot of money.
Very fast, very expensive boats that were pretty big.
And the way you look at it is every boat that we knock out, we save 25,000 American lives.
So every time you see a boat and you feel badly, you say, wow, that's rough.
It is rough.
But if you lose three people and save 25,000 people, these are people that are killing our population.
Is there anyone, have you seen these boats?
We've shown you them before.
They're small boats.
They're small speedboats.
You actually believe that every time the U.S. explodes a boat, 25,000 Americans have their lives saved?
There's no other drugs coming to the United States to feed those people who would have gotten those drugs.
Suddenly now Venezuela, even though no government reports suggest it, is a major source of drug smuggling.
Here's, let's go back to back and play that.
Here's Donald Trump yesterday.
He's been posting multiple videos of various boats just blowing up.
There's no context for it.
No way of knowing who is on these boats or where they were headed.
We just hear afterwards, oh, cheer for this.
These are bad people.
These are people who are carrying drugs to American soil.
Here's the boat.
Here's the video.
You just see it there in the water.
We've seen many of these.
I think this is the fourth one now.
And there it blows up.
We're told that I think that there were six more people on this boat, which is a total of 27 that have now been killed in the last month since we've been doing this.
So I know there are important questions that I don't think many people care about for different reasons, like what legal authority or constitutional authority does Trump have to just start bombing boats in international waters using the U.S. military?
Is any military force, is any congressional authority needed at all to start wars to just bomb people?
And does it have to have an end?
Like, is there an end to it?
Is there a certain time when we know that this military action has the aim of it, whatever it is, has been filled in?
Like, what is the action?
What is the aim of this military action?
Are we going to stop the flow of drugs into the United States?
Also, if we're so worried about Americans consuming huge amounts of drugs, shouldn't we be asking why?
Why is there such a high demand for drugs inside the United States as opposed to who's supplying it?
I mean, if there weren't a high demand for it inside the United States, there wouldn't be a supply for it.
There are huge numbers of people inside the United States wanting to consume very addictive and dangerous drugs.
And the reason, I would think, should be why.
I mean, if Maduro is responsible for drugs being exported to the United States, doesn't it stand to reason that Trump is responsible for the fact that there's some kind of malady or disease inside the United States where huge numbers of people want to consume drugs?
And does anyone actually think that the blowing up of some ships or even the changing of regimes in Venezuela is going to have any meaningful effect on the availability of drugs in the United States?
We've been fighting a drug war now for 60 years.
Massive amounts of money, military action all over the world, huge erosions of civil liberties, the empowerment of police powers, entire new agencies, standing part of the standing armies and law enforcement, armed law enforcement agencies of the state.
Has there been any difficulty in obtaining drugs in the United States?
Do you know anyone who says, hey, I'm a drug addict or I like to do drugs, but I have a hard time finding drugs in the United States because for 60 years we've been waging a war on drugs?
Of course not.
It's everywhere in all of these communities.
In 1989, we went to war with Panama based on exactly the same script.
These scripts never changed.
The leader of Panama was Manuel Noriega.
He was a previous ally of the United States.
Suddenly, we decided that he was a drug dealer, flooding American cities with drugs, et cetera, et cetera, killing people.
We went to war in Panama, killed a bunch of people, at least 4,000, invaded Panama, took Manuel Noriega to the United States, put them on trial, convicted them, sent them to prison for life.
Who benefited from that?
Did the drug flow stop into the United States?
Did addicts start having difficulty obtaining drugs?
I grew up in the United States in the 80s and 90s.
I don't remember that.
I don't remember hearing anybody ever saying that.
This is all pretext to keep the war machine going.
And again, the Trump administration is being, I guess, admirably candid about their goals.
From the New York Times, September 29th, Trump, top Trump aides push for ousting Maduro from power in Venezuela.
The push by top aides to President Trump to remove Nicolas Maduro as the leader of Venezuela has intensified in recent days with administration officials discussing a broad campaign that would escalate military pressure to try to force him out, U.S. officials say.
It is being led by Marco Rubio.
And I have to say, I mean, let's just be honest, like, the fact that there are a lot of people who are inculcated from birth, American Jews, and a lot of evangelicals now, to love and focus on and be loyal to Israel obviously shapes our foreign policy due to the fact that there are a lot of people, primarily concentrated in Florida, I grew up there, who are from that region.
They come from Cuba.
They come from Venezuela.
They come from other countries, and they decide that the United States should focus on fixing their home country and taking out the leaders they think have ruined those countries.
Why is that the responsibility of the American worker, people who live in the United States, born in the United States, to go around fixing Venezuela, fixing Cuba, fixing all these other countries, taking out the leaders that we're told are the bad leaders?
Americans keep saying they're tired of regime change, they're tired of wars, and it doesn't matter how often they think they're voting for the candidate who promises that, these wars never end.
Quote, it is being led by Marco Rubio.
The Secretary of State and National Security Advisor, Mr. Rubio, argues that Mr. Maduro is an illegitimate leader who oversees the export of drugs to the United States, which he says poses a, quote, imminent threat.
The intelligence agency's director, John Ratcliffe, and Stephen Miller, Mr. Trump's chief domestic policy advisor, both support Mr. Rubio's approach, the officials added.
I mean, these are people who are, you know, longtime neocons, John Ratcliffe, Marco Rubio, Stephen Miller.
They fit comfortably, very comfortably in the Bush-Cheney administration.
There's nothing heterodox.
There's nothing America-first.
There's nothing new about any of this foreign policy.
It's pure standard bipartisan foreign policy.
In fact, Bush-Shaney foreign policy.
Supporting Juan Guaido 00:15:53
That's just an extension to the modern day era.
In fact, the whole war on terror legal framework is what's being used now.
That's why they're calling him anarcho-terrorist.
They're purposely using the language of terrorism and the war on terrorism to justify why they can just kill people the way Obama used to drone wedding parties.
Oh, we're doing it because we killed terrorists.
And then if you question it, like, hey, why are we droning wedding parties?
That people would say, what are you, a terrorist lover?
Why do you support the terrorists?
And you would say, no, no, the point is we just killed a bunch of people, and there's no way to know who those people were.
We don't know if they were terrorists.
What are you in favor of terrorists?
And you would go crazy.
Like, you would feel like you were in some sort of Kafka-esque tunnel that just had no way out.
And this is the same thing.
You say, hey, we're just blowing out these boats.
We have no idea who's on these boats.
What are you?
Like a drug trafficker supporter?
And then you say, like, why are we going to go change the regime in Venezuela?
And people say, what are you, pro-Maduro?
It's the same.
It's just the same games over and over.
This is pure neocon framework.
There were negotiations taking place with Maduro to try and reach some deal, but New York Times on October 6th reported Trump calls off diplomatic outreach to Venezuela.
So that was a pretty strong sign that we're not trying to resolve the dispute any longer diplomatically, and obviously the only other option is militarily or through CIA covert action.
The Latin Times on October 9th, which reports on personnel developments, the U.S. further beeps up the military presence in the Caribbean.
There are now 10,000 troops. deployed to the Caribbean.
So of course we have members, service members in harm's way as usual.
The Wall Street Journal, October 14th, since August, the Pentagon has deployed guided missile destroyers, five F-35 jet fighters, MQ-9 Reaper drones, P-8 Poseidon spy planes, assault ships, and a secretive special operations ship.
The buildup has occurred as the U.S. has carried out strikes on boats allegedly trafficking drugs, including six on Tuesday in the latest strike on a vessel.
The assets sent to the Caribbean have been deployed to American conflict arenas before.
Among them is the USS Iojima.
Its maiden voyage was to the Persian Gulf in 2003 for the invasion that ousted Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein.
Another is the USS Stockdale, a guided missile destroyer, often described as one of the military's most battle-tested vessels for its deployment to the Red Sea to counter Yemen's Houthi rebels' harassment of commercial shipping lanes.
Isn't it kind of odd that Trump is insisting that he should win the Nobel Peace Prize when he spent the first nine months of administration funding and fueling and arming the destruction of Gaza, continues to fund and fuel and arm the war in Ukraine, bombed Yemen out of nowhere after Biden had done so and then stopped, bombed Iran and now is threatening to expand the bombing operation from the sea off the coast of Venezuela onto Venezuelan soil itself.
Newsweek, October 15th, here's a map that shows where the USB-52 bombers are now deployed right on Venezuela's doorstep.
And they're basically surrounded here, you can see, by B-52 bombers.
I don't think the signal is particularly subtle.
It's possible that Trump is threatening regime change so that Maduro will agree to leave power on his own.
But I would again ask, like, why is that the business of the U.S. government?
I thought, I remember when Trump was campaigning and then when he gave his inaugural address and he kept talking about the Forgotten Man and the deindustrialized Midwest, remember all that?
And instead he's focused on bombing Yemen and the Houthis and running Gaza, threatening Hamas, changing the government of Venezuela.
I mean, you can support this, just please don't come and tell me there's anything new about this in terms of bipartisan U.S. foreign policy or neoconservative outlooks.
The opposition in Venezuela obviously understands how they're going to get into power, which is having the United States do it for them.
That's why, here's Politico October 10th, right, when the Nobel Prize was given to the opposition leader.
The first thing she did was dedicated it to Donald Trump in order to thank him for his, quote, decisive support.
I mean, I guess you can believe it's a coincidence that the Nobel Peace Prize was given right to the opposition leader of Venezuela, the person we want to install as president of Venezuela at the exact moment that we're ready to do so.
And yes, you can make the argument.
I haven't studied enough to know, but I'm sure there's a good argument for it.
I don't know for sure.
I'm willing to assume it's true, that the election in Venezuela was the byproduct of fraud, that Maduro didn't really win, that the opposition won.
But what is that the business of the United States?
We can go all over the world.
Show you half of the world where there aren't free and fair elections held, where there are elections held and they're manipulated, they're distorted, the opposition is banned from running.
I can show you Ukraine or Egypt or Saudi Arabia, all over the world.
Are we the enforcer now of free and fair elections?
Is that really what anyone thinks the United States is interested in?
Obviously, long before there was that election in Venezuela, we were trying to install the chosen leader of that country.
You may recall that both Republicans and Democrats united to affirm this utterly preposterous delusion that someone named Juan Guaido was actually the president of Venezuela, and we treated him as the president of Venezuela, not the Republican Party, not the Democratic Party, just all of Washington.
And half of Europe decided that the real president of Venezuela, even though no one ever voted for him in Venezuela for that, even though he didn't actually run anything, was someone named Juan Guaido.
Here in the first Trump administration, 2020, February 20th, 2020, Trump gave his State of the Union speech to a joint House of Congress.
There you see Mike Pence, his then vice president, Nancy Pelosi, the Speaker of the House, sitting behind him, where he welcomed the legitimate and sole sovereign and president of Venezuela, Juan Guaido.
And watch how both parties responded.
The United States is leading a 59-nation diplomatic coalition against the socialist dictator of Venezuela, Nicolas Maduro.
Maduro, an illegitimate ruler, a tyrant who brutalizes his people, but Maduro's grip on tyranny will be smashed and broken.
Here this evening is a very brave man who carries with him the hopes, dreams, and aspirations of all Venezuelans.
Joining us in the gallery is the true and legitimate president of Venezuela, Juan Guaido.
Mr. President, please take this message back to you.
And there you see every single member of the House virtually giving a standing ovation to the true president of Venezuela who carries the hopes and dreams of the Venezuelan people with him.
Juan Guaido, there's Vice President Pence and Speaker Pelosi on their feet for the true president of Venezuela.
Juan Guaido, both Republicans and Democrats, standing and cheering him.
So there's been a long-term mission of the United States government.
It's just that we had other wars we had to go fight first, so we didn't really get around to Venezuela.
Now we have time.
The war in Gaza is over.
Sort of, maybe.
Probably not, but for a while at least.
So we have this like interval where we don't want to get bored.
We want to make sure we have a new war to entertain us to keep the weapons flowing.
Here is Marco Rubio.
This is when he was a member of the Senate in 2019.
And he went to Twitter in Spanish, which I don't know if he would be allowed under the rules of MAGA to speak in Spanish now, but back then anyway, he had no concern about proving that he was from that region, that that was a region of personal concern to him.
And he wrote, we support the group of military personnel who rebel against Maduro and subordinate themselves to Juan Guaido.
So he was saying that's who we support is the part of the military who accepts Juan Guaido as their president.
Here is Rubio in 2019.
He has a picture there of just reminding people of exactly the historical president, which is Panama.
He has a picture there of Manlinoriega Free being defiant and then a picture of him in Miami where the U.S. military was sent to get him.
Marco Rubio is very, very interested in Latin America, where he's from.
And here we have Marco Rubio as well threatening regime change.
There's Mumar Gaddafi free, and then there's Muma Gaddafi being raped to death as a result of U.S. intervention, something that Marco Rubio considers something to celebrate.
These are the people who are in charge of foreign policy.
They're pure neocons.
Marco Rubio, I know we're supposed to believe he's reformed or he's under Trump's thumb and he's like more anti-interventionist or whatever.
I mean, I don't know what else I can show you.
Here is NBC News in 2022.
And this is John Bolton talking about his time in the White House.
He's probably going to be indicted and arrested within the next few days, John Bolton is.
But here is based on accusations that he leaked, classified information.
But here's NBC News: former national security advisor John Bolton admits to planning foreign coups.
Pressed about his involvement, Bolton cited an unsuccessful attempt to oust Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro during the first Trump administration.
So there was an effort, as I indicated before, and when it failed, that was what led to Bolston's Bolton's ouster.
Political this week has a report on how Trump has a different plan to oust Maduro this time around.
Quote, the first time President Trump pushed to push Maduro out of power, he wasn't coy about it.
He accused the Venezuelan dictator of stealing an election, stripped U.S. recognition from Maduro's government, imposed sanctions on Caracas, and rallied other countries to pressure Maduro to quit.
Didn't work.
In his second term, Trump is targeting Maduro differently.
He has said, quote, we're not talking about regime change in Caracas.
Instead, he's emphasizing the long-standing accusation that the strongman is a drug lord and a dangerous criminal.
The plan, people familiar with the situation, say, is to force Maduro out as part of Trump's ongoing fight against drug cartels.
The campaign may not formally be about regime change, but if the pressure from the anti-cartel moves happened to topple Maduro, well, the president and his team would be delighted.
Quote, would everyone like Maduro to go?
Yes, a Trump administration official said.
We're going to put a lot of pressure on him.
He's weak.
It's quite possible he'll fall from this pressure alone without having to do anything more directly.
Here's Marco Rubio on Fox.
This was just this week, in case you have any doubt about what their real intentions are and who is behind it.
I just think it's so bizarre.
You have a movement calling itself America First, and then you have in charge of foreign policy, Secretary of State and National Security Advisor, somebody whose family came from Cuba and who has spent his whole life focused on the place that he comes from.
He wants the United States to go reform and fix the countries that are in the region that his family comes from.
Here's Rubio.
The United States has long, for many, many years, established intelligence that allows us to interdict and stop drug boats.
And we did that.
And it doesn't work.
Interdiction doesn't work because these drug cartels, what they do is they know they're going to lose, you know, 2% of their cargo.
They bake it into their economics.
What will stop them is when you blow them up, when you get rid of them.
The president of the United States is going to wage war on narco-terrorist organizations.
This one was operating in international waters, headed towards the United States to flood our country with poison.
And under President Trump, those days are over.
And it wasn't a one-off.
Rubio says strikes like these will happen again.
Now, the justification, as I said, is that this is a drug gang and therefore he's an arco-terrorist.
And that's why these war on terror authorities are being utilized in order to justify this.
But I just want to point to one thing we've shown you before: the reports about where drugs are coming from.
And only a small portion originate from Venezuela, if at all.
But this was all being discussed, as we showed you in 2019, 2020, when the Trump administration wanted to do it.
There was a person who was leading the way in warning about the dangers of regime change in Venezuela.
She was vehemently opposed.
Her name is Kulsey Gabbard.
She's now the Trump administration's director of national intelligence.
And in May of 2019, she went to Twitter and she posted this, quote, throughout history, every time the U.S. topples a foreign country's dictator or government, the outcome has been disastrous.
Civil war, military intervention in Venezuela will wreak death and destruction to Venezuelan people and increase tensions that threaten our national security.
She then went on Fox News to expand on her argument, and here's part of what she said.
You're now exclusively Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard of Hawaii, a combat veteran and 2020 Democratic presidential candidate.
What's your reaction to that?
You heard Kellyanne Conway, counselor to the president there.
What we are hearing is an increased saber-rattling and tension saying the United States needs to send in the U.S. military now to wage yet another wasteful counterproductive regime change war.
And once again, it's being done under the guise of humanitarianism.
When we look throughout history, every time the United States goes into another country and topples a dictator or topples a government, the outcome has been disastrous for the people in these countries.
That's why we should use our leadership in the world to try to broker a diplomatic solution, working with countries like Russia that have great influence over Venezuela so that there is a peaceful outcome.
Because I can tell you as a soldier, Martha, I've seen firsthand the high cost of war and pushing for this civil war, pushing for the use of military force, will only end up with more suffering and death and disaster for the Venezuelan people.
What to speak of increasing these tensions that threaten our own national security?
Anytime we're in this situation where you have tensions being ratcheted up and this conflict being pushed closer and closer between nuclear-armed countries like the United States and countries like Russia and China, this is something that poses an existential threat to the American people.
I mean, all of those arguments still apply with equal force.
And obviously, Tulsi Gabbard received a lot of support and applause for making those kinds of arguments, not just with respect to Venezuela, but to all sorts of countries for a very long time.
And yet, for whatever reason, every time there's a new war, a new regime change war that's on the table and that's packaged, people are ready to cheer for it.
Endless Regime Change Wars 00:07:41
It's sort of like people say, yeah, I'm really sick of these regime change war operations.
I'm sick of endless war.
We need to stop meddling in these other countries.
We need to stop fighting all these wars and we need to spend our money instead on improving our communities here at home.
And then every time there's a new war, someone says, oh, no, but not this one.
This one's like the real one.
No, we, of course, have to go fight in Ukraine.
No, of course we have to support Israel, our close ally.
No, of course we have to get rid of Maduro.
This is a really bad guy.
He's like a drug trafficker kingpin or whatever.
People support the abstract principle vehemently, but then every time there's a new propaganda package handed, the government and their media allies know exactly how to package it to get just enough people to support it.
One of the ways that it happens, I think it's such an important thing to realize because you're going to see this all the time now.
You're already seeing it.
Is that in pretty much every country in the world, you can find people in the country who would want the United States to come and invade their country and change their regime.
Why wouldn't they?
The United States is an extremely powerful country.
If you don't like the government and you can't get rid of it, and the United States wants to come and change the government that you dislike, yeah, of course, you're going to be in favor of it.
You can find people in countries, not just in those countries, but people who are from the countries who left or exiles or dissidents or whatever, especially.
You can always find people who are going to cheer U.S. support for, who are going to cheer U.S. intervention.
In the build-up to the Iraq war, I remember they had all these Iraqi exiles.
And if you would say, hey, I don't think the U.S. should go and invade Iraq and overthrow Saddam, they would come and they would say, how dare you?
You have no idea how evil this dictator is.
How can you be pro-Salaam?
And they would try and shame you, like, oh, we're from Iraq.
And we're telling you this is a terrible guy who deserves to be deposed, which, okay, maybe he does.
But Americans still have the right to say, I don't want my government going around the world invading other countries and changing the regime.
And then they just unleash these people who are from that country, who are from the region, who come and say, who are you to oppose the freedom for the Iraqi people?
What are you, pro-Saddam?
That's disgusting.
And same thing now with the people who want regime change in Iran.
You say you don't want the United States or any other country destabilizing Iran, changing the regime.
There are all these Iranian exiles who will get unleashed on you saying, I'm from Iran.
You have no idea the evils of the mullah.
We want the Shah back.
You're pro-mullah.
You want to keep the Iranian people suppressed.
Same thing in Syria.
You had all these Syrians saying, how dare you oppose the dirty war that Obama unleashed the CIA to fight to get rid of Assad?
Assad is an uniquely evil person.
You're pro-Assad.
We want to free the Syrian people.
How dare you stand in the way?
Obviously, same in Libya.
And now you have tons of people who are from the region, like the Marco Rubios of the world, who are living in Florida, who came to the United States, or whose parents are immigrants from Venezuela or Cuba.
And the minute anyone stands up and questions, why are we changing the government of Venezuela?
Why is that our role?
Why should the American worker continuously have to spend all of American resources to change governments from countries that don't have anything to do with us?
You're going to see tons of people from the region, Latin Americans, Venezuelans, come try and shame you.
What are you, pro-Maduro?
I'll just give you one example.
So earlier today, I started trying to make the argument that, well, especially once this New York Times story came out, and I tried to say, like, the argument, quote, we have to go to war to change the regime in Venezuela because Maduro has weapons of mass destruction is actually a more convincing one than saying we have to go to war to change the regime in Venezuela because that's where the drugs are coming from that are drowning American communities.
Because as I said, the evidence is overwhelming that drugs don't come from Venezuela.
That's every U.S. government report.
And so I'm an American citizen.
I'm saying, I don't think we should be spending our money to go and change the government of Venezuela.
I'm questioning the pretext for it, which I have every right to do.
And then someone named Emmanuel Ridson Roson, who's with a bunch of groups associated with Venezuela and regime change in Latin America, needless to say, it's like the Ahmad Chalabi Iraqi exile or the Iranian exiles who want the Shah back,
comes and says, let's just state, let's, oh, okay, let's just let the narco-terrorist Maduro who stole Venezuela's elections, killing thousands of Americans every year and sending criminals and terrorists to the U.S., right, Glenn?
And then here's somebody named Orlando Avendaño, same exact origin, same exact thing, same exact orientation, cares about Latin America, wants the U.S. to go.
So Glenn, are you really going to now side with the narco-terrorists?
Maduro isn't just a dictator.
He runs the largest drug trafficking cartel in the Western Hemisphere and is a major source of regional destabilization throughout terrorist activity.
His cartel moves more than 20% of the world's cocaine and is responsible for the death of thousands of Americans every year.
He has also enabled the spread of organized crime groups like Tendi Ahagua, which murders dissidents and civilians beyond Venezuelans' border.
The U.S. feels it firsthand, but so do countries like Chile and Colombia.
On top of that, Maduro has allowed Islamic terrorist Islamic groups to plan attacks from inside Venezuela and to move freely across the hemisphere.
All of that is happening just a few hundred miles.
Why not just say that he has weapons of mass destruction?
Honestly, I feel like it would just be shorter, it'd be easier.
We have already that framework in our head.
Somehow we've managed to survive as a country.
I really don't know how for all these decades with having Hugo Chavez and the Nicolas Maduro in power in Venezuela.
Somehow we've managed to survive with having the Castros and the communist government run Cuba.
Who knows how we survived as a country allowing that?
So now you're going to hear every single carousel of evil, every single major economic and social problem in the United States blamed on Nicolas Maduro as though that's the source of American problem.
And if you're somebody who is concerned about the consequences of it, of constantly ending, being in a posture of endless war, consuming more resources to go do war in Venezuela to change the government, who knows what kind of instability that will engender in the region.
We never know the outcome.
As Tulsi Gabbard said, every time we go and change the regime in another country, we produce disaster not just for ourselves, but for the people of that country in that region.
Anyone raising those questions, you're now going to be pro-Maduro.
You're going to be in favor of a drug trafficker and you're in favor of a narco-terrorist.
It's the same tactics every time.
Don't fall for them.
And don't be intimidated by these accusations.
They really don't have any force anymore or they shouldn't.
They're worn out.
These are neocon tactics.
And I'm sure Trump is relying on Marco Rubio.
It doesn't make Trump exonerated from blame.
I'm just saying that I'm sure the prime driver behind this is Marco Rubio.
And the reason is because he comes from that region.
He represents a lot of people who want those governments changed, not because it benefits the United States, but because it benefits those countries that they continue to maintain a great deal of interest in and loyalty to because that's where they come from.
Comet's AI Assistant Revolutionizes Browsing 00:03:41
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Take back your time online with Comet.
As most of you know, I have spent a good amount of time investigating the absolute horrors and atrocities of the factory food industry.
In the United States, it's a source, a major source, the major source of the food supply for the United States, and yet a great deal is done to conceal the realities of what takes place there because most people knew what was going on, they would be disgusted, either for on moral grounds or on health grounds or on a variety of others as well.
Gail Eisnitz is the chief investigator for the Humane Farming Association.
She's really renowned for her undercover work and exposés that have helped us learn about and discover the animal abuse inside the United States and the meat and factory farming industry.
She's the winner of the Albert Schweitzer Medal for Outstanding Achievement in Animal Welfare.
And among other investigations, she was the driving force behind a front page expose in the Washington Post documenting slaughterhouse atrocities, which was one of the highest reader responses ever published by that paper.
She's one of the most courageous investigators around.
She has a new book out called Out of Sight, which is part a deep dive into the benefits of animals, but also animal abuse inside factory farms.
And it's part memoir as well, detailing our own journey.
And we're really delighted to talk to her tonight.
I read the book and I'm thrilled to have you.
Gail, thanks so much for taking the time to come on tonight.
Thanks so much for having me, Glenn.
Absolutely.
So yeah, so before we get into kind of the substance of the investigations, which I want to spend the bulk of our time on, and that your book does such a good job of exposing.
So I want to kind of ask you, like, what was the, why, what was the kind of impetus for you to become so interested in animals in the first place, just kind of as a personal focus of yours?
Well, it started back when I was 14 years old.
But before I say this, I just want to tell you that the entire staff of Humane Farming Association just thinks you're the best.
We just have so much admiration for you because of all the advocacy and commitment and dedication you have for all animals.
Line Speeds and Animal Welfare 00:11:38
So I just wanted to say that.
Thank you.
It means a lot.
Because I know I'll forget to say it.
Anyway, it started when I was 14 years old and I watched a documentary on endangered species and it was really chilling.
It was about some polar bears and the mother polar bear was shot point blank and the two baby cubs were left behind staring at the mother in disbelief and they had such fear and they were frantic as they scampered away and it just touched my heart deeply and it changed the entire trajectory of my life because ever since that at age 14 I've always wanted to be involved in animal rescue in some form or another.
You know it's really interesting.
I think when people I know, like when people hear this topic raised, they kind of have mixed emotions.
Sometimes they think look, we're dealing with all these really pressing issues for human beings wars and economic suffering and disease and epidemics like what space do we really have to care so much for animals?
And, on the other hand, if you show, if there's some video that ends up appearing online of, like somebody abusing a dog.
In fact, right now there's a kind of controversy where where a famous influencer people think was abusing his dog with shock collars and the like and the whole internet is talking about it.
People are really moved by it.
Let alone, you know, you see some person who shoots some big game like some majestic tiger or lion or giraffe in Africa and the entire internet kind of, you know, unites in rage.
People have this like instinctive concern about the topic.
How do you respond when you want people to focus on issues of animal abuse or the factory farm issue and the like and people say, look, I, you know, I would want to care about animals, but I just, there's so much suffering going on that I don't think we could prioritize this topic.
I think they have to be concerned.
The numbers we're talking about are so outrageously high.
I mean, 55 years ago, we slaughtered 10 billion animals in the world.
And today we slaughter 10 billion animals in the United States alone.
It's just something that we can't look past.
We have to look at it.
And the media doesn't help us look at it because the media is captured by big ag and they won't let us expose these things.
At least the networks wouldn't.
So it's been a tough road to home because I worked with NBC, ABC, CBS.
They came out in the field with me.
Some of them interviewed my workers and full face on camera talking about the fact that they were skinning and dismembering cows alive.
They were so sick of doing it that they went on camera to talk about it.
And then the program was killed because it was considered too disturbing for the public to know about.
So it's very troubling.
It's very frustrating.
You know, one of the things I try and get people to focus on, I'm curious about, like your book does such a good job of this.
It's one of the reasons why I wanted to bring attention to it is, you know, I do think there are a lot of people who feel good about family farms.
Like the image that we're given of family farms where, you know, families who are farmers take care of their animals, give them a good life.
They roam freely.
And then, of course, at the end, they are slaughtered.
They are killed in order to be turned into food for human beings.
But that, at least along the way, there's a pretty fulfilling or healthy life, at least compared to the life of factory farms.
And what I try and get people to understand is that the way our food is produced now barely has nothing to do with factory farms, factory farm, family farms.
Factory farms have all but destroyed family farms.
And that the values of factory farms are almost the opposite of family farms.
What can you tell us as somebody who has spent so much time trying to find out the reality of factory farms, how it contrasts with that image people are encouraged to maintain?
Yeah, I mean, the way animals are kept, like take breeding sows, for instance, as you well know, you know about this better than anybody.
But I mean, the fact that breeding sows are kept in gestation crates, which are two feet wide or less.
Some of them were 19 inches at the factory farms that we visited and seven feet long.
And the pregnant mother sows spend their entire lives living inside these crates.
I mean, that's not, that's how it's done on factory farms.
Millions and millions of breeding sows spend their lives in gestation crates.
And they get, they go crazy.
They engage in stereotypic behavior where they do head nodding and bar biting until their mouths bleed.
And they exhibit things that are associated with clinical depression and going insane.
And they get sores all over their bodies on their shoulders, on their faces, from constant contact with the bars.
They get them on their hindquarters and their faces.
And they have respiratory problems from living over waste pits and foot problems from standing on concrete.
That's definitely what goes on in factory farms.
They get arthritis and they collapse in the crates and they starve to death.
And we've documented this at many operations.
And then they're dragged, if they're still alive, they're dragged to a pile where they're left to starve or die of dehydration.
And one factory farm that we have figures from, there aren't many figures because this is secret information, but one factory farm, the dead boxes were overflowing so much that the Department of Environmental Quality cited them and in the process, because they cited them because they were afraid they were going to contaminate the groundwater.
And in the process, they gave up the number of dead pigs that died on farm, not in slaughterhouses in this corporation, in this mega hog factory.
It was 420,000 dead pigs in one year.
That's so different than a family farm.
Yeah, you know, one of the things that I'm so amazed by is there's these huge industries now in the United States encouraging people to care so much about their wellness and their diet and exercise.
And people are, you know, very obsessed with how they look and maintaining their youth and people go to gyms and people do plastic surgery.
And there's just everywhere you look, there's industries and internet content encouraging people to live healthy lives, to care about wellness.
And yet there's very little attention paid to what the reality is of our food supply because it's purposely kept concealed.
So you just talked about some of the suffering and horrors that the animals face, but in terms of the health risks to human beings from getting our food from these massive industrial factories, what are some of the dangers and concerns to the public health that come from this industry?
Well, it all goes back to lion speeds in slaughterhouses, and that my first book addresses.
My first book was called Slaughterhouse.
It addresses the massive increase in line speeds because thousands of small to mid-sized slaughterhouses have been forced out of business by these giant slaughterhouses that kill millions of animals each year.
And the line speeds in these operations are so fast, like 1,100 pigs per hour per line.
And that means 35,000 pigs a day, for example, or one hog every three seconds in one plant.
So it's virtually impossible to have inspectors inspecting the meat product to make sure that it's humanely slaughtered for one and not contaminated.
And the industry is taking a lot of responsibility for meat inspection now, whereas it used to be federal meat inspectors.
So you can't trust the meat inspection process anymore because line speeds are so fast that the line, because it's so fast, it doesn't stop for anything because a moment of downtime costs thousands of dollars.
So it doesn't stop for contaminated meat.
It doesn't stop for injured workers and it certainly doesn't stop for slower disabled animals.
All right, last question, and we're going to put the link to your book in the show notes and everything.
And I hope people will pick it up because, as you said, it's so hard to access a lot of this and so much media doesn't cover it.
And truth be told, sometimes I don't even like covering it because it is very difficult to have to face.
But at the same time, it's sort of like war.
We have the obligation to see the consequences of what we're endorsing.
But there's kind of a debate sometimes about reform.
Like, how much should people push for reform?
Is it better to just kind of insist on these maximalist solutions, like get rid of all factory farms or prevent the idea that we should be slaughtering billions of animals and torturing them along the way as the way to feed the planet?
Or are incremental reforms like some more spaces in these gestation crates or the lack of, or forcing companies to stop gestation crating?
And the like, where do you fall down on that in terms of how best people should think about pushing for solutions to this problem?
Yeah, that's a great question.
I'm not quite sure how to answer that.
I just know that Humane Farming Association, who I work for, has both vegans and vegetarians and meat eaters and a little bit of everything.
And all we do is work to improve conditions and teach people that conditions need to be improved for animals.
I mean, I used to say that they need to slow line speeds.
And the last two administrations just increased line speeds enormously.
So I don't know about improving conditions so much in terms of making things, making gestation crates bigger.
I don't think that that's a solution.
Yeah, it's a difficult debate, but I feel like any kind of incremental increase in the welfare of animals or the decrease of their suffering is something that I guess unbalanced is good.
But at some point, human beings are going to have to start to confront the realities of how we're feeding ourselves.
Okay, I'll congratulate you on the book.
I know it's not easy to do, to write a book at all, let alone to do one that involves all this investigation, to say nothing of the kind of personal story you interwove with the investigation.
So I really enjoyed the book.
I hope a lot of people read it.
And it's along the way, if you have investigations or things that you think we can work together on, we're happy to keep covering it.
Great.
Thanks so much, Glenn.
Absolutely.
Have a good evening.
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