➡ Larry Johnson, a former CIA analyst, discussed recent developments in nuclear testing and international relations in an interview. He expressed concern over President Trump’s announcement of nuclear tests, suggesting it could escalate tensions with Russia. Johnson also discussed his recent trip to Moscow, where he met with various political figures who expressed a desire for dialogue with the West, but warned that any serious military threats from the U.S. could damage relations. He also touched on the complexities of new weapon systems and the potential implications for arms control talks.
➡ Russia plans to capture several Ukrainian territories and then conduct an election to let the people decide if they want to align with Russia or Ukraine. Despite the West’s belief that they can fight Russia to a standstill, Russia has a significant advantage in terms of weapons production and deployment. The delay in Russia’s actions is due to their reluctance to cause casualties among Ukrainians, who they view as relatives. The article also discusses the preference of Russian officials to deal with Donald Trump, despite his constraints, and criticizes the misinformation fed to Trump by the intelligence community.
➡ In the 1970s, Dick Cheney was hired by a political consulting firm in Washington D.C. after being recommended by Donald Rumsfeld. Cheney, known for his heavy smoking and drinking, later became chief of staff to President Gerald Ford. After Ford lost the election, Cheney returned to the consulting firm before becoming a congressman from Wyoming and later a corporate shareholder at Halliburton. Despite never serving in the military, Cheney did not hesitate to send others into battle.
➡ The Israeli Defense Force isn’t invincible, as shown by the damage Iran inflicted during a 12-day war. Iran is now accepting military assistance from China and Russia, strengthening its defenses. If Israel attacks Iran again, the conflict may not end until Israel is significantly weakened. The political landscape in the U.S. is changing, potentially affecting its Middle East policies, and military intervention in Venezuela would be risky due to the country’s challenging terrain.

Well, it’s a great privilege to be talking again with Larry Johnson, the former CIA analyst from Sonar 21. Larry Johnson, thank you for joining the Trends Journal. I’m here. The notorious has been. I wanted to get your opinion. I couldn’t have a better guest on right now we have a lot of developments as far as the nuclear testing. Trump spoke about that. The head of the nuclear department in the US Came out over the weekend and said there will be no real nuclear bomb tests. It’ll just be the systems involved and the kind of, you know, Trump indicated that it was going to be nuclear.

So you have also now Russia responding today. Medvedev came out and he said, you know, Russia has to take this seriously. And so did now Vladimir Putin. He said Russia needs to take Trump’s comments very seriously. Larry, what is Trump thinking by announcing these tests? And is this a serious escalation or is this just a little more gamesmanship here? Yeah, that word you use, thinking what I don’t believe. I don’t believe Trump’s acquainted with that word. It’s something he needs to learn. This is a classic example of some of a narcissist who is threatened and reacts emotionally.

Remember during the first Trump campaign back in 2015, 2016, Little Marco and Marco made a crack about Donald Trump’s hands being tiny, which implied he was. His manhood was tiny. No trouble, no look at the big hands. That’s exactly what this is. So I was fortunate to be in Moscow recently for 12 days, meeting with the International Unity Club. It really is a nonpartisan organization. And when I say nonpartisan in Russia, I mean it reaches across the political spectrum. I interviewed Gennady Yuganov, who’s the head of the Communist Party. They’re still. The Communist Party is still the second largest party political party in Russia.

And I met with two or three members of Putin’s own political party and a couple of members of other political parties. But they’re all in this international unity club because they say, look, we want to open a dialogue with the west, but we want to talk, not fight. But in the course of that, talking to these different people, the one common theme was if Trump is serious about sending tomahawks, that is going to seriously change the relationship between Russia and the United States, the goodwill, the desire to get along with the US Will be dissipated. And because Russia has to assume that those tomahawks are carrying a nuclear warhead.

Now, I understand that Putin had a conversation with Trump sometime over the last seven to 10 days, prior to that period Trump was talking about, I could send a Tomahawk. You know, he was leaving it open since the announcement of the Barefnik cruise missile. This is a cruise missile with has. Is fueled by a miniature nuclear reactor. So it’s atomically powered. Us so far, doesn’t have anything comparable to that. In the aftermath of that, Trump, when asked about the Tomahawk, said, no, no, I’m not sending it. I wouldn’t be surprised that President Putin had a talk with Donald Trump, a respectful talk, but made him understand very clearly that any introduction of the Tomahawk missile into the system would mean that Russia would be in a position to potentially respond militarily against the United States in the continental United states, against Washington, D.C.

if D.C. would be hit. So it’s interesting that after that conversation, Trump came out and said, no, no Tomahawks. So. So that, you know, that’s the good news. This talk about, oh, yeah, we’re going to test nukes. Well, you got to say, what do you mean? Are you talking about testing delivery vehicles? Are you talking about testing warheads? You know, what is it that you’re going to test? Are you going to actually blow up a warhead, do an underground test? Because we’re not doing any more of those above ground. Well, my understanding that’s going to take three years to pull that off.

Now, they have a variety of techniques for testing, doing systems tests on weapons to make sure that they would detonate if ordered to. You don’t need to set off an explosion. You don’t need to go underground. But if we start doing that, that’s sending a message to Russia that we’re thinking about doing it, which is why Putin is now announced they we’re doing the systems checks we’re going to test to show that we are ready to go. What’s so fascinating now about the Bureveshnik missile is it’s powered by a nuclear reactor, so we don’t know how long it can stay up.

You know, I’ve heard some people say, oh, you know, a day, two days, a week, six months. Yeah. Nobody knows. Maybe CIA has been able to access some technical data and has a good solid prediction whether it’s classified and I’m not privileged privy to it. What I do know, though, is this kind of weapon system now completely changes the whole realm of arms control talks. Because in the past, we’d sort it out. We do arms control talk for intercontinental ballistic missiles, missiles that could travel more than 5,000 miles. And then we had the intermediate range Ballistic and nuclear missiles.

Those could travel up to 2,000 miles. Well, this thing can do both. And in fact, it’s the kind of thing you can, theoretically, you can equip it with a nuclear warhead, launch it, and, you know, could it stay up for six months? Could it stay up for a year? Could it loiter. You could have it loitering in a particular area, but it maneuvers randomly. And then they also have the Poseidon submarine. Right. And so I know last week had two significant. Or maybe the, the Barojnik missile was the week prior. But no, they went, they came, like, back about the same.

Yeah, back to back. I mean, and this one, they said could take out the entire United Kingdom or something. At least that’s what Russia says. Like, this thing is like a game changer. Also, this submarine launched. Yeah, it can, it can be launched in the ocean, just like the Barefnik. It’s got a nuclear reactor on board, so you don’t have to worry about the fuel and you don’t have to worry about time. Now, the, the, the. Some of the Western reports have emphasized it could be used to create a tidal wave that would swamp, you know, London, New York, Miami.

But I, I don’t think that’s tactically how the Russians would use it. I think it’s designed more to be used against a carrier task force group. It would wipe out the carrier and the destroyers and the cruisers and any other ships attached to a task force group. That’s how it would be used. It’s going to be used against military targets, not against civilian targets. Is Russia wrong, Larry? Is Russia wrong thinking that Ukraine will negotiate to end the war? Does Russia need to win on the battlefield? Are they waiting for this kind of diplomatic resolution to a war that will never come? Is it.

What, what do you feel? Are they going too slow? Because I heard someone mention earlier this week that Russia’s miscalculating at this point, that the west is not going to negotiate and they need to win on the battlefield. They should do it fast because it’s being perceived as weakness by the west that they’re not winning war. What’s your take on that position? If you look at Mike Tyson now and you say he’s a weak old man, I can take him. Good luck with that. I’d be willing to bet you’re going to come back with a flat nose and a swollen eye and maybe a cauliflower ear.

So this is just more silliness out of the West. The, the Russians would like to negotiate with the west but the terms that they’re going to negotiate on have been laid out very clearly by Vladimir Putin multiple times since June 14th of 2024. And the essential elements of that is that the five new republics of Russia, Crimea, Zaporizhzhia, Kherson, L, those are permanently part of Russia. The Russia Federation, there’s no territory there that’s going to be given back. There’s nothing that Putin can offer to say, I’ll give you half of it back. No, all of that is Russian.

Ukraine and the west must recognize that as Russian, that’s non negotiable, that Ukrainian troops need to become pulled out of there voluntarily or Russia will kill or capture them until they are fully expunged from those territories and that NATO ends all relationships with Ukraine. No more nothing. No more exercises, no more military cooperation. That’s been Putin’s position. That’s, that’s non negotiable. There’s not in there. There’s not room in there where they can give a little bit. Now, CIA, we learned recently, had been arguing, oh, yeah, yeah, Russia will make some concessions on that. And we’re told that the State Department Bureau of Intelligence and Research said, oh, hell no, they’re not going to relent on that.

So there was, there was a difference of opinion. And that was publicized in March of this year as a dissent where the Presidential Daily Brief said, oh, this is what most of the intelligence community believes, but according to State Department inr, they think the rest of us are full of crap. They said it in more diplomatic terms, but that was the essence of it. Well, State INR was correct. So the Russian attitude right now is, yes, we’d like to have the terms we’ve laid out accepted and then we could proceed from there. But we don’t think that’s going to happen.

So the war will continue. We’re going to take the Dnipropetrovsk, Kharkiv, Sumy, Potava, Kiev and Odessa. Those are going to be captured. Militarily, whether it happens this year or happens next year or even happens the year after, Russia is going to take those. And once they occupy those territories, they will then conduct an election. Give the people a chance to say, hey, we want to go with Russia or we want to go with Ukraine, you know, one or the other vote, do it. And whatever the, whatever the people decide, Russia will respect that and they will say, okay, you want to stay with Ukraine, be our guest, but you’re not going to have a military unit here.

Or we will, you know, we’ll take control of it. So, you know, that’s where it stands. The west, the west foolishly believes that it can, it can fight Russia to a standstill. And I, I did a piece two days ago pointing out that when it comes to building modern battle tanks, Russia in 2024 built 60 to 80 NATO, all of NATO built 0, none. The only one that was described, if you do the AI search on it, is that Poland got 56. And that’s because South Korea built the tanks for them. But they’re still shy of what Russia’s building.

And then we haven’t even talked about refurbish tanks, take old tanks, upgrade them, you know, put new counter drone technology on them, give a new barrels, etc. Right now it takes the United States two years to upgrade just one M1 Abrams tank. Russia is upgrading these tanks at a rate of one every three months. Okay, so they got an advantage there with respect to artillery shells. Russia is out producing the west 3 to 1 or 4 to 1 depending upon the source. That’s not going to change with drones. Russia has a 2 to 1 to 3 to 1 advantage.

Hypersonic missiles. Russia has them, NATO doesn’t. So I mean it’s just, you go point after point after point after point. There is no area in terms of weapons production or deployment that the west, NATO, all of NATO, and Ukraine included is a de facto member, have any advantage over Russian. None. So why is Russia taking its time? Is it holding out hope that the west will come to its senses? No. Or so what’s the point of Russia not completely just thrashing Ukraine, minimizing casualties? Number one. And remember, the Ukrainians are Slavs. They, the Russians view the Ukrainians as relatives.

So they’re not really keen on killing the relatives as quickly as possible. Yeah, they could do it, but this is not about taking land. And you know, everybody keeps pretending, thinking of this as if it’s like, you know, a World cup final match, you know, in the soccer or the super bowl. It’s the fourth quarter, there are two minutes left to go. Ukraine is down 14 points. Can Russia hold on? That’s a good point. That’s a good point. That’s how it is proceeding. That’s how it’s being presented. And it’s, you know, this is, this is more like a cricket match.

Okay? Those things go on for days. But Larry, I want to hear your opinion on this. Who, who’s what administration did a better job, in your opinion, in dealing with who do you think Russia would rather deal with the biden administration that didn’t want to talk or the Trump administration that talks but says one thing and then two days later does another. What do you think is a better administration as far as that goes? No, there’s no doubt about that. I mean, I heard this from several, I mean, I, you know, I met, I met with the number two guy in their, in their legislature, fellow named Babakov.

You know, I, I don’t want to insult him by calling him the Chuck Schumer of Russia, but, I mean, occupies sort of the similar position as Chuck Schumer, but, but he’s in the majority party. The, the, they all would prefer to deal with Donald Trump. They think Donald Trump is more pragmatic, but they also recognize that Trump is, he’s not free to make decisions and he is operating under a number of constraints. But they’re, you know, they’re pragmatic about it, I think. But you’ve seen, although with the recent state that you pointed out with at the outset with, with respect to recent statements by Putin and toughening position with Medvedev, I mean, Medvede is always tough, but Putin has always tried to leave the door open.

But the fact that they’re now both speaking almost in the same voice, Trump’s worn out is welcome. So it’s going to be more trust but verify. You know, it’s one thing to talk, it’s another thing to do. Show us by your actions what you intend. Who’s the adult in the room when Trump talks about Ukraine? Because I’ve seen various interviews saying that it’s Marco Rubio, Keith Kellogg. I mean, Trump, when he announced the test, the nuclear tests, he said the US has more nuclear weapons than any country on earth and it has more deadly arsenal. And that’s factually incorrect.

Russia has more nuclear weapons, more warheads. Warheads. So, so who’s feeding Trump disinformation And like, is Trump Trump’s ignorance on the matter? Is that a real problem? Is that developing into a real problem? Well, it’s not, it’s not entirely Donald Trump’s fault because as I referenced earlier, the, what the intelligence community was telling him as a majority was, oh, yeah, yeah, Russia will give in. They’ll make some sacrifices. They’ll, they don’t, they don’t really mean it, that this is their territory. That’s just a negotiating position. So Trump said, oh, okay, that’s what the intelligence community is telling me.

And you know, I’ve seen this before when, when he got read the what the State Department inr. You know, Bureau of Intelligence and Research said he got mad at the Bureau of Intelligence and Research. How dare you give me this kind of information. And reportedly some of those analysts were fired. So the word gets around. Don’t tell the President the truth because you might get fired. Tell him what he wants to hear. So it’s, that’s what’s going on. So Larry Johnson, former CIA analyst and from Sonar21. He has an article up on Sonar21 right now. Everyone should check out Dick Cheney’s legacy.

Dick Cheney obviously died yesterday, and he was the main architect, or one of them, of the war in Iraq. Yeah. And you mentioned in your lead that only the good die young. I’d love to hear your opinion on Dick Cheney’s legacy. And are we living in a country with more Dick Cheney’s than we know in, in power and government? What’s your take on that? Yeah, well, as I pointed out the article, I said Cheney proved that proverb true. Only the good die young because he died old and he was not good. You know, it was my way to use a little bit of sarcastic humor without launching a full scale attack on the man.

And what’s interesting is I had an indirect tie into him. One of my closest friends, who unfortunately is now deceased. He’d be roughly Cheney’s age, a fellow named Bruce Bradley. Bruce got his start in politics as being the horse handler for the vice presidential candidate Miller, who was running with Barry Goldwater back in 64. And Bruce got the job by lying about his age. He had the, they wanted to be like 24, 25. And he said, oh, yeah, that’s me. And he was like two years younger, but, you know, very smart, able person. That even at that young age.

I didn’t put this in the article, but he, he said, he said his principal job was to line up oral sex opportunities for Miller in various cities as they went around. Wow. Yeah. I apologize to Stephanie Miller. That’s her father. But, you know, that’s, that’s what Bruce told me. And he was, I don’t think he was exaggerating. Bruce then became the chief of staff to Robert Ellsworth, who was a Kansas congressman. But he got involved later, became like the head of NATO. And Ellsworth was the mentor of a new freshman congressman by the name of Donald Rumsfeld.

And turned out that Bruce and Rumsfeld played squash or racquetball once a week at least. So they developed a relationship. They became close. Then Bruce, after that, while he was pulled out of the Ellsworth staff to Work on the Rockefeller for President campaign starting in 67. And he was. One of his jobs was to supervise Henry Kissinger. Kissinger was the foreign policy advisor to Rockefeller. And then when Rockefeller dropped out, Kissinger moved over to Nixon. And Bruce told me that. He said, when Nixon won, Henry called him up and said, bruce, I want you to come work for me as my deputy.

And Bruce said, henry, look. He says, as a subordinate, you’re great. You kiss ass like nobody else. He. He said, but as a boss, you’d be a son of a bitch. You know, you’d be impossible to work for. So, no. And so then Bruce moved on and set up what was called Bradley Woods. It was one of the first sort of political consulting firms in D.C. and 1970, end of 72, start of 73, gets a phone call from one Donald Rumsfeld. Rumsfeld says, hey, Bruce, listen, I need a favor. I got this young guy, needs a job.

I’d offered him a job with me at NATO, but he wants to stay in D.C. his name is Dick Cheney. So Bruce hires Dick Cheney. In 1973, as he said, Cheney’s specialty was smoking two packs of cigarettes a day and three martini lunches. And then, you know, no wonder the guy had a heart attack at a young age. You know what’s interesting, Larry? You always look at these people and you assume that they take everything so seriously, that their whole life was just built up for that moment. But when you hear these stories, sometimes it’s like, no, they’re very, very much.

They’re human in every sense of the word. Yeah, very much so. Very much so. And, you know, the. Bruce said that after every three martini lunch, Dick would be at his office, feet up on the table, leaning back in the chair, taking a nap. So, you know, getting, getting accustomed to the water, the fast pace of Washington life. Then in 1975, Don Rumsfeld, who was it, started off as chief of staff to newly installed President Gerald Ford because Nixon had resigned. Don calls up Dick and says, hey, got a job for you. So Dick went in to tell Bruce, hey, I’m going to become chief of staff to the President.

So I’m leaving Bradley woods temporarily. And that’s what he did. He went, worked for ford for about 18 months. Ford lost the election in 1976 to Jimmy Carter. And then Cheney went back to Bradley woods, hung out, plotting his next move. They decided he would become congressman from Wyoming. Wyoming has only has one member of Congress. And then he parlayed that into a position within the Reagan administration. He and, you know, the rest is history. He then, you know, then becomes a corporate shareholder down in kkr, was it? Or Halliburton. Halliburton. That was it. Thank you.

He becomes a multimillionaire. And what did he do? I mean, he was just, he had the right friends and was in the right place at the right time. This. But he’s, he is the quintessential example of what’s been going on in D.C. and then on top of it, he was, he was one who didn’t hesitate to send other people’s sons and daughters into battle, have them killed, no sweat off his nose. He never served. He was too busy, you know, smoking two packs a day and sucking down martinis during the Vietnam War. So, you know, it’s always amazing, these war hawks who don’t put any sacrifice of themselves into it, but have no problem sending other people’s sons and daughters into harm’s way.

Yeah, I’m thinking of Lindsey Graham right now. When you, when you, when you mentioned that. Yeah, Ms. Lindsey, you know, it’s, I, I’d like to hear your take on Mondami being elected the New York City mayor. Now, now, look, it’s, it’s a local election, so, you know, whether or not it has, you know, national implications, you know, we don’t know. Trump said he wasn’t on the ballot, but what do you think, Larry? Is that, why do you think a candidate, a socialist, the Democratic socialist, like Mondami, wins in New York, and also Democrats won in New Jersey and Virginia.

Is this a repudiation of the Trump administration or why do you think we’re seeing this? And is Trump in danger at the midterms? Trump is potentially in danger at the midterms if he doesn’t turn it around. And the split that’s developed in the Republican Party between the Zionists and those who don’t want to be beholden to the Zionists, and we saw it on full display going into this election with the likes of this rant. Despicable, corpulent congressman from Florida, Randy Fine, you know, never met a donut he didn’t like. And then Ben Shapiro and others attacking Tucker Carlson as a wicked racist now, particularly because he’s an anti Semite, he’s vile.

He’s like Adolf Hitler promoting Hitler Youth. I challenge anybody to just go listen to his hour and a half conversation with Nick Fuentes, and you come away with that, where Tucker was doing the exact opposite. He was, he was condemning Nick Fuentes, but, you know, not, not, you know, calling Him, a son of A. And threatening his life, but doing it in a polite, adult way and just say, look, we’re know it’s wrong to demonize any group of people based upon some sort of ethnic marker or genetic marker. You got, you got to judge people by themselves, by their individual character.

But yet this has created a real split in the Republicans. Number one, I don’t think it’s going to be healed. And there is a growing, growing number of anti Zionists within that Republican movement. Now, with respect to Mondami, again, the term socialist is thrown about quite a bit. I’m not sure what that means anymore. Is he calling for the elimination of private property? Not that I’m aware of. Is he calling for redistribution of income from the wealthy to the poor? Yeah, but we’re already doing that in some measure with the current federal government. Does that make a socialist? Some would argue, yeah, that does.

You know, personally, I’d be better off. Let’s just have a value added tax applied across the board. Those who buy more, who spend more, pay more, and since the ones with more money tend to spend more and pay more, they would actually balance out and make a fairer tax system than what we have now where they can figure out all these loopholes and escape hatches so that it runs up being sort of the middle class that pays the heaviest tax burden. With respect to Madame’s attitudes towards Israel, Well, I think a majority of New Yorkers actually will support that.

And that goes against the Zionist control in America. AIPAC’s not going to be happy. So. And we’ll see if he follows to on his rhetoric about defunding police or, you know, going soft on crime. If he does that, if, if the New York turns into a real hellscape like it was in the 70s prior to Rudy Giuliani taking over, then, yeah, you could be looking at some real significant problems in New York City. So, but, but again, the. When you offer up the likes of Mario Cuomo as your answer, you know, everybody looked at him, said, man, we’ve already, we’ve been there, done that.

We got a T shirt. Yeah, Andrew Cuomo. That’s right. Yeah, yeah, but, yeah, absolutely. And, and especially with his background with COVID and he left the office in disgrace in New York. It was amazing. I always, I’m stunned a city like New York doesn’t have better, better candidates for mayor. Like such a successful financial city, we have to, we need people like Andrew Cuomo. Yeah, but see, you’re laboring under the assumption that these people who are elected as mayors are the ones actually in control, calling the shots. Good point. That’s, that’s reasonable. I, I would maintain that, you know what, there is a powerful group of oligarchs.

Oh, I mean, capitalists. Yeah. That are billionaires and people like Bill Ackman and others that actually play, play a much heavier role and directing what can and cannot be done in that city. And you know, we’re seeing this, we’re seeing the same thing in Ukraine. Again, it’s not Zelensky, it’s the oligarchs. Because I saw Soros’s son post a picture with mom Donnie celebrating the win and I’m like, wow, look, even Mamdani’s with Soros’s head. It’s incredible. They don’t, they don’t try, they don’t try to hide it at all. It’s like amazing. Before I let you go, Larry, I wanted to hear your take on Netanyahu’s next move.

So Israel continues to bomb southern Lebanon. The Iran issues not over. Right. What do you think Netanyahu, in fact, Netanyahu had a meeting earlier this week to talk about the risk from Hezbollah. What do you think Netanyahu’s plans are? Because we have Gaza right now, that it’s almost like turning into Lebanon 2.0 where Israel has a ceasefire in place, but they get to bomb at will and attack Gaza at will, which is acceptable. What do you see Netanyahu’s next steps? What do you think he’s thinking of right now? Well, his long term objective is the extermination of the Palestinian people.

I think he’s actually doesn’t know what to do now because. Let’s think about this. Let me put it in perspective. Do you realize that Gaza is roughly the size of Portland, Oregon, the square area? If you do it in terms of square miles, Gaza is the size of Portland, Oregon. Israel has now spent more than two years, two years and one month to be precise, with 300,000 mobilized reservists trying to capture Portland, Oregon. They failed. I mean, they could bomb the hell out of it. They controlled the approach from the ocean. They had soldiers on the ground.

They blew up almost every house in Portland, Oregon. And Hamas is still there, still fighting. Think about that. So what? Number one, it explodes the myth of the invincibility of the Israeli Defense Force. They are anything but invincible. They are quite defeatable. That’s number one. Number two, Channel 14 in Israel came out within the last eight days with a report based on talking to senior military and intelligence officials who acknowledged that the damage Iran did to them during that 12 day war was off the charts. In fact, by day four, these military chiefs and intelligence chiefs were pressing Netanyahu.

We got to get away, we got to end this. We got to figure a way out of it. We’re taking some damage that we’re not going to recover from easily. Which is why by day 12, United States intervened to help save Israel from potential destruction. So going forward now, Netanyahu has fewer options with respect to Iran. Back in, you know, June 12, the day before the suicide attacks, the decapitation, Iran was facing the possibility of having to go back to sanctions, other UN Sanctions, and they, they were rejecting military assistance from both China and Russia. Now, since June 24, Iran is accepting all the military assistance they can get from China and Russia.

Iran has dramatically upgraded its air defense systems with the S400 throughout Iran. That’s from Russia right now. Previously the S400 was just at one, I think one nuclear site in southern Iran near the Persian Gulf. But that was because the Russians had a construction crew there and were working. So they brought in the S400 just to protect themselves, was never attacked it because they didn’t want to get into a shoot and match with the Russians. The Chinese have deployed systems, weapons, etc. And then on top of it, Russia and China have denounced the snapback sanctions as illegal and that they are not going to follow them at all.

Well, all of a sudden the door is open economically for Iran. Iran has now got some breathing space both economically and militarily that it didn’t have before. So if Iran is attacked again by Israel, I don’t think you’ll see Iran stop the war until Israel is no longer intact as a state. Would Trump get involved? And do you think this election from last night will change his approach to how he goes about business in the Middle East? Like, do you think Trump is now afraid to be over committed to Israel and even to go to war with Iran with American forces? Well, I don’t think the election had, you know, Mandami’s election had as much to do with that as what happened at that Republicans for Jews convention earlier this week in which people like Tucker Carlson, Candace Owens and Steve Bannon were routinely and roundly denounced by these Zionist nuts.

So the, the bloom is off. The rose Zionism no longer reigns supreme within the Republican Party in all parts. There is still a strong contingent there. And that’s what’s splitting the Republicans. It will break up the Republicans. So Trump right off the bat is starting with a weaker position, but then you get back, what’s he going to do militarily to Iran after he obliterated? I mean, he, he eliminated it, right? So that has to come out and say, well, maybe I didn’t know what the term obliterate meant, you know, you know, I looked it up in the wrong dictionary because we got to go back in.

That’s, that’s not going to sit well because it’s, it’s going to further undermine his credibility. Not like he’s hasn’t been doing a, a whole lot to undermine that credibility up to this point, but it’s going to do further damage to him. So, and if, if he decides that attacking Mandami, you know, makes him look better, I think it’ll, it’ll make, it’ll make Mandami more popular. Bandami will come off as, you know, someone being bullied by Donald Trump. The, my last question, Larry, Venezuela is another, obviously it’s another place where Trump doesn’t seem to have a consistent message.

He told 60 Minutes over the weekend that he doesn’t see Maduro lasting, but he doesn’t know if he’s going to go to war with Venezuela. So what do you, I mean, but then again, Trump, like, like he said with Iran, he said that he would give him two weeks before the attack to throw them off. So you really don’t know if you’re Venezuela, if this is some kind of subterfuge. What’s your take on the risks of us going to war with Venezuela? Do you think that that risk is a little bit less than it was a month ago? Venezuela is Spanish for Vietnam, okay.

And it’s, it’s, it’s bigger, far bigger than Vietnam. Land mass wise, it’s a third larger than Texas. Think how big Texas is, except it has jungle, triple canopy jungle, rainforests, mountains. I spent some time in Venezuela in the course of doing money laundering investigations and other things. And God help us if we decide to put any marines or even special operations forces. I mean, this, you know, this Hollywood nonsense about the prowess of Delta Force and SEAL Team Six. Now listen, they’re, they are quite, they’re very capable special operations units designed to do specific types of missions.

Getting engaged in full scale battles with conventional armies is not one of them. I recall I’m acquainted with Rick Woolard. He was a very famous Navy SEAL who now you can find him on YouTube. He plays the bagpipes. He learned how to play bagpipes, plays bag pipes at the funerals. Of Navy SEALs. But Rick, Rick, and when he was in Vietnam, made the mistake of throwing a hand grenade into a Vietnamese hut and then putting his back against the wall, not realizing it was bamboo. So he got peppered up in the back of his legs, his ass, his back.

So, you know, he got those scars. So he was in Grenada. He led the team in grenada back in 83 to rescue the governor of Grenada. And they got pinned down by some Cubans with a.50 caliber machine gun, you know, heavy machine gun. And so even though you had all these, you know, these great Navy seals, you could, you know, swim forever and do push ups till the average man would drop. They were hunkered down, they couldn’t do anything until the US Marine Corps came roaring up the road in tanks and armored personnel in armored, armored fighting vehicles to save them.

And you know, I worked for a retired Marine colonel at the time and he took great delight in telling that story. But, but the point is, you know, to go it’s one thing to run a capture kill mission, but that’s not going to bring down the government of Maduro. And so the United States has got real limited military options. Or if we decide to get invade, we’re going to, you know, if we’re going to really put troops on the ground, all of a sudden you’re going to be getting Americans killed in a way that they weren’t killed in Iraq, because the jungle provides far more ambush points than hiding out in the desert in Iraq or Afghanistan for that matter.

Well, Larry Johnson, thank you for joining the Trends Journal. I always appreciate you giving your insight. Hey, had to listen. Always welcome the invite. Thank you. Thank you.
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