Max Blumenthal on the real roots of Venezuela’s crisis
16 December 2025

Max Blumenthal on the real roots of Venezuela’s crisis

Max Blumenthal

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Trump’s Venezuela gambit leans on a manufactured “Cartel of the Suns” scare story, cooked up by U.S. intelligence when the CIA and DEA turned the country into a cocaine corridor under Reagan. Max Blumenthal, who has tracked Washington’s regime-change ops across Latin America for years, shows how a covert drug ratline was later repackaged as proof that Caracas is a cartel state, paving the way for sanctions, asset grabs, and military threats. Even many anti-Maduro Venezuelans reject this siege, knowing a U.S.-backed power play risks civil war, mass flight, and economic blowback in the U.S. itself—so the endgame is more likely a dirty deal than a glorious war.



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