War With Venezuela? - September 1, 2025

**Cenk Uygur** (0:00)
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**SPEAKER_3** (0:27)
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**SPEAKER_4** (0:55)
Welcome to our trash revolution.

**Cenk Uygur** (1:29)
All right, welcome to The Young Turks. Cenk Uygur, Jordan Uhl with you guys. Jordan's on RebelHU, another TYT channel on YouTube and elsewhere. We got a lot of heavy stories. So we have apparently attacked potentially a country. We're potentially at war with Venezuela. You probably didn't hear about it, it just happened. We'll get to that in a second. And then we're potentially taking over Gaza and turning into the Riviera. But don't worry, the Palestinians will be able to return later. Okay, so more sick jokes from the Israeli government. And a lot more where that came from. So let's get started.

**Jordan Uhl** (2:08)
Take a look at this.

**Donald Trump** (2:11)
When you come out and when you leave the room, you'll see that we just, over the last few minutes, literally shot out a boat, a drug carrying boat, a lot of drugs in that boat. And you'll be seeing that and you'll be reading about that. It just happened moments ago and there's more where that came from. We have a lot of drugs pouring into our country coming in for a long time. And we just, these came out of Venezuela and coming out very heavily from Venezuela. A lot of things are coming out of Venezuela, so we took it out.

**Jordan Uhl** (2:47)
Donald Trump confirmed earlier today that the US had carried out a strike in the southern Caribbean against a vessel that departed from Venezuela and allegedly was carrying drugs. It is a massive escalation by the Trump administration against drug cartels. And now Venezuela is promising not to back down. So far we have very little details, but here's what we do know. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said on X that the vessel was being operated by a designated narco terrorist organization. The secretary described the operation as a lethal strike. Rubio later told reporters he believed the drugs that were allegedly carried on the boat were probably headed toward Trinidad and Tobago or some other country in the Caribbean. When you're doing things like that, details and specifics don't necessarily matter, do they? Details on the strike, including who operated the vessel and whether it was carried out in international waters, are still unclear. This escalation comes shortly after the Trump administration announced plans to boost its military presence in the waters off Venezuela to combat threats from Latin American drug cartels. Seven US warships, along with one nuclear powered fast attack submarine, are either in the southern Caribbean region already or are expected to be there soon. The US has not signaled any planned land incursion by the thousands of US personnel being deployed. Still, President Nicolas Maduro's government has responded by deploying troops along Venezuela's coast and border with neighboring Colombia, as well as by urging Venezuelans to enlist in a civilian militia. Maduro on Monday told reporters he would constitutionally declare a republic in arms if his country was attacked by US forces to the Caribbean. And I just want to point out, Cenk, this also just broke minutes ago. Axios is reporting that the US killed 11 narcoterrorists in this strike. What do you make of this?

**Cenk Uygur** (4:54)
Yeah, this is the Israelification of our foreign policy, and it is disastrous. So let's break it down. First of all, if it turns out that they're in waters that belong to Venezuela, that is an act of war against Venezuela. Now, you can say, we don't care. We're above the law. Well, that's exactly what I mean by the Israelification of American foreign policy. So what does Israel do? Anyone they don't like, they label a terrorist. That's step one. Step two is they murder them. Step three is they say, we're above the law. We don't have to follow any international law at all. That's your territory, what is, I don't care. That's your citizens, I don't care. Get to murder anyone I like unilaterally. Okay, so that's a disaster for law and order. And yes, international law and order makes a difference because at some point, someone's going to retaliate. And I know in the case of Israel, they want that because the minute anyone fights back, they go, that's it, we know they're all terrorists. Now we bomb the hell out of them and take their land on top. Here we have no aspirations to take Venezuelan land, it doesn't make any sense. That's not the direction we're going. And yeah, in the Middle East, Israel is so militarily dominant while pretending to be the victim that there's usually very little blowback because they've destroyed the militaries of almost all the nations in the Middle East. But in the rest of the world, militaries exist, and by the way, unexpected events exist. So I remember, I'm old enough to remember, and this show is old enough that it was on the air before the Iraq War. And everybody told us the Iraq War was gonna be a cakewalk, we're gonna win it easily. And we said, note of caution, sometimes it doesn't work that way. Same thing for our expedition in Afghanistan, whatever the hell that was. And did we win those easily? No, we did not.