Sorry I'm late.
I had to stop by the Whites Museum again and give the finger to FDR.
We know Al-Qaeda, Zawahiri is supporting the opposition in Syria.
Are we supporting Al-Qaeda in Syria?
It's a proud day for America and by God we've kicked Vietnam syndrome once and for all.
Thank you very, very much.
I say it, I say it again, you've been had.
You've been took.
You've been hoodwinked.
These witnesses are trying to simply deny things that just about everybody else accepts as fact.
He came, he saw, he died.
We ain't killing they army, but we killing them.
We be on CNN like Say Our Name been saying, say it three times.
The meeting of the largest armies in the history of the world.
Then there's going to be an invasion.
All right, you guys, I got Kevin Zeese back on the line from inside the Venezuelan embassy in Washington, D.C.
Of course, from the website popularresistance.org.
Find much of what he writes at antiwar.com as well.
How you doing, Kevin?
Good.
Good to hear from you.
Yeah, man.
Good to talk to you.
So it's been a week.
What the hell's going on over there?
Well, we're still here.
And we, you know, there's challenges, but people are very steadfast and are planning on staying and not giving the embassy up voluntarily.
They'll resist any effort by the police, the Trump administration to remove us and give the embassy over to their fake government.
We, I'm just about to eat lunch, so we have food.
But, you know, the police are stopping people from bringing food into the building, so food could become a problem.
One person yesterday tried to throw up some food toward a door and was arrested for doing so.
There's a lot of pressure on the police to let one bag of food come through so you have some food.
But people here feel like if they have to fast or go on a hunger strike, they will do that because we're not going to allow U.S. imperialism to conduct a coup.
And the coup has failed in Venezuela multiple times, just most recently on the last day of April.
Yeah, another time since we last spoke.
That's right.
That's right.
And then the next day, the fake ambassador, Carlos Vecchio, came here hoping to take the embassy, but instead was shouted down and ran away, almost like Guaido ran away.
Another failed coup, this one in Washington, D.C.
We are surrounded by organized right-wing people who support the coup, and they've been out constantly all day and all night with loudspeakers and noisemakers and sound cannons, threatening us with everything from attacks and murder.
They've attacked the building a few times.
They've destroyed a door into the garage that we have now barricaded.
Sorry, did you say attacks and murder?
Threatening murder.
Threatening attacks and threatening murder.
Oh, I see what you mean.
There's all sorts of threats and racist and anti-woman and all sorts of just misogynist, horrible.
It's just really vile people.
There's been a major mobilization called for tomorrow at 1 p.m. outside the embassy.
They're going to be setting – our allies will be setting up an alternative collection outside, an embassy protection collection outside, a collective outside with tents, and we'll be planning on staying outside throughout.
So we'll have both a collective inside and outside the building.
And so if people can come to Washington, D.C. or in Washington, D.C. or spread the word to people they know in Washington, D.C., that would be very helpful.
The details are on the event page for our embassy protection collective on Facebook.
Please check that out.
The other way people can help is we have a declaration of the collective.
You can find it on Popular Resist in the slider on the top of the page.
There's an article with a link to the declaration.
You can read it, which lays out a lot of the rationale for this, and you can sign it and join the thousands of others who signed it to show support for stopping this U.S. coup.
All right, a couple of things here.
First of all, is the U.S. government saying that, no, because we've recognized Guaido as the new government, the old caretakers of that embassy had no right to give you those keys and they order you out and to let the rightful owners of the embassy in?
Are they even going that far?
There has been no official order for us to leave.
If such an order was made, we would reject it, because we know the official elected government, we are here as their tenants and guests, and they have stated that over and over.
Let me ask you this as a hypothetical.
Do you know the law as far as if, just saying that the hypothetical was the case that, say, he'd rigged the last five elections over there, and that at this point, the 90% super majority of all of Venezuela wanted this to happen.
What does the law say about what the United States government is supposed to do in those circumstances, or does it?
Well, yeah, of course, that's a totally inaccurate hypothetical, as you know.
But I mean, that's, of course, the way they're framing it.
They have the false premises that they stand on in order to then reach the conclusions they want.
So I guess that's what I'm asking is, if you accept their false premises, do you still even get to the same conclusion that it's up to us to decide who sits inside that house?
Us, the U.S. government, that is.
Decide who gets to occupy the place.
That's a good question.
And, of course, there are dictatorships and monarchies that are very unpopular in their countries that the U.S. recognizes.
There are coup governments that the U.S. has helped put in place that are not supported by their people that the U.S. recognizes.
So there are those false situations.
But that doesn't matter.
The Vienna Convention says that the host country is required to protect foreign embassies.
They can't create a fake government and say that's the new owner.
I don't think that's ever been done before.
And so this would be a unique situation.
In a way, it's sort of a political question, right?
Those facts are totally false.
But isn't it kind of a political question?
Like, well, we still say that Chiang Kai-shek is the legitimate ruler of all of China, even though, factually speaking, he no longer has a presence on the mainland at all.
They stuck with that for 20 years, you know what I mean?
Well, yeah, no question.
It is a political issue.
And so if we were going to go to court, I would expect the court would, no matter what the facts were, even though the facts are totally on our side, a court would say it's a political question that's up to the president, not up to a court or Congress.
And so that's why we haven't gone to court, because the court system is so weak here and so sided with abusive U.S. foreign policy that we didn't want to give Trump more power by having the court make that obvious ruling that it would make.
So, yeah, that would be what a court would say.
But the facts even laid out, I just want to say again, are totally false.
That was a legitimate election last May.
150 international election observers have said it.
If you go to that declaration I mentioned in the slider at the Popular Resistance page, in that declaration we list, linked to, an open letter sent by 150 election observers to the EU telling the EU, no, you're saying falsehood.
It was a legitimate election.
It met international standards.
There was no fraud.
Maduro won.
There's no question.
Maduro was democratically elected.
Guaido, on the other hand, violates the Venezuelan constitution over and over.
It is a totally false claim of the presidency.
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You know what's funny is on CNN and on Fox, and they've gotten, you know, the talking point to say it exactly this way.
I don't know exactly from whom, but presumably on a recommendation from the White House or the State Department, that they are now referring to Guaido as the duly elected president of Venezuela.
They don't say that.
They don't say that, do they?
Huh?
They actually say that?
Yeah, that's what they're calling him.
You know, like white separatist Randy Weaver.
He's duly elected president, Guaido.
Duly elected?
Duly elected, yeah.
I can see Randy Weaver saying that, because he's an ignorant guy.
But I can't believe that even Fox would say that.
I just would be shocked.
I actually bet Weaver would see right through it, to be honest.
But yeah, no, I just meant the way they tag people with a name.
They can just tag you with whatever they want, for good or for ill.
Of course.
Like little Marco or lion Ted, or duly elected president Guaido, if that's what they say.
And then it's really what it is, Kevin, right?
It's arguing past the sale.
And so if you're new on the topic, it sounds like they said he won an election.
But the guy that lost refused to seat him, you know?
That's why in that declaration I mentioned in that slider, which I hope people will read and sign, that's why I mentioned that we go specifically through the election.
We go specifically through Guaido's political history and how he violated the Constitution of Venezuela.
And we go specifically through the requirements of the Vienna Convention, because all those facts are on the side of this collective.
We are here lawfully.
If the Trump administration enters this building, they will be violating international law.
They'll be entering unlawfully.
They will be trespassing, and they'll be sending a message around the world that the U.S. does not apply the Vienna Convention to embassies.
And I don't know what that will mean for foreign governments thinking about the U.S.
I don't know what that will mean for U.S. embassies around the world.
But the potential implications of the Vienna Convention being violated are very significant, which is why I don't think we've been removed.
They could easily remove us.
They have the military law enforcement power to come in and take a bunch of nonviolent protests and unlawfully arrest us.
You know what?
I wonder whether they're actually putting you guys in danger.
I quit Twitter.
I really did.
But it's also true that I was trolling Max Blumenthal's Twitter looking, and I saw some tweets and some retweets there from these right-wing protesters outside, who you would think that they would think better of acting like such thugs deliberately and being so provocative.
They're supposed to be looking like the civilized ones and making you look like the clowns, but they're certainly going about that all wrong.
But, I mean, what I saw there was one guy broke in, another guy's really tried to, and that the Secret Service, I guess they have a monopoly on that job of protection there.
It's not local cops.
It's them in charge, but that they're just really standing there and not doing anything to keep these people back from the door.
In fact, I saw one clip was a lawyer saying to the Secret Service officer, like, hey, you're supposed to be standing between this guy and this building, and you're not doing your job.
What's going on here?
That was probably our lawyer.
We did have one guy break in through a basement floor.
He got up to the third floor, locked himself in a room, and we had to negotiate with the police how to get him out.
In order to do that, we went through the embassy, our landlord at the embassy, and they went through the foreign ministry, and the foreign ministry approved a limited waiver of inviolability, a limited entry that was allowed.
That was then sent to the messenger, the liaison between the Venezuelan foreign ministry and the U.S. State Department.
So that limited entry was allowed.
Police came in, two police came in.
We went up to the third floor with them, videotaped them as they came in and went out, and they took the guy out with no problem.
But it's interesting.
They relied on the Venezuelan foreign ministry giving them a waiver.
So let me ask you this, then.
Their rhetoric may say Guaido, but their actions say they recognize Maduro as the president.
Exactly.
That's what I was just going to say, was your lawyer now has this as further standing and proof, in a sense, right?
Exactly.
If we are arrested or evicted, there will be an illegal eviction because it will violate D.C. eviction laws.
It will be an unlawful arrest because we're not breaking any laws, and we will hold the decision makers and the police officers accountable.
If they unlawfully arrest us, we will hold them accountable.
That means they will be sued.
Our lawyer from the Partnership for Civil Justice has been very successful in suing police in the past for illegal arrest, and they know that.
So I think that there's probably some division inside the police and State Department.
There are probably some hotheads like John Bolton and Elliot Abrams as they go in, others with more sense saying, well, that could have some really bad reverberations.
And what's that going to mean for U.S. embassies around the world?
And, you know, raising lots of concerns.
The police are probably saying, look, this woman has sued us.
This lawyer has sued us multiple times and won big judgments.
We don't want that responsibility.
We don't want to follow any legal orders.
So there's probably all sorts of divisions going on.
They could easily have removed us.
They haven't because they are divided, not sure what to do.
We had a meeting.
Three of our people had a meeting with the State Department yesterday.
We expected them to say, you're ordered out.
They didn't say it because they still don't know what to do.
So this is a very, and it's going to escalate.
We're having a major mobilization.
We just announced it on our Facebook page, the Embassy Protection Collective Facebook page.
We look at the most recent event.
Tomorrow at 1 p.m. we will have people holding an Embassy Protection Collective event outside the embassy.
They'll be putting up tents, and they will plan to stay 24-7 outside the embassy.
So we'll have collectives both inside and outside to protect this embassy.
So this is going to escalate.
And again, to zoom back out to the larger reality, the coup is a failure.
Regardless of whether, if people agree with Guaido on his interpretation of the Constitution and the way things should be technically speaking, the fact of the matter is the entire government of Venezuela, including its military, have not switched sides.
So that's just a scientific situation, descriptive thing there.
So that's just the reality.
How could you have a system where you're going to put representatives of a government that, frankly speaking, are not the government of Venezuela into that embassy?
As part of a successful coup operation, at least it makes sense, right?
Again, not morally speaking, but descriptively.
But when the coup is, they might as well be saying that, yeah, we're going to put Kevin Ziss in charge in Venezuela, because that's how unrealistic it is.
Then how can they proceed with this?
At some point, it seems like they're going to have to call the thugs back and go ahead and, I don't know what they're, I mean, because otherwise, back to Venezuela, they're going to have to escalate, assassinate the president or carpet bomb the place or something.
I don't think that Trump wants to, it doesn't seem like he's interested in doing that.
The military told the New York Times that we are not reviewing options even, man, forget it.
And I believe that, at least for now.
So they've already lost.
So what the hell are we even arguing about?
A lot of good points in that.
First off, the big picture is really important.
I think you raised that at the beginning.
Yes, they've lost this coup.
Guaido has tried several times to do a coup every time it's failed.
The people are with Maduro.
He can't even call a rally anymore that gets anyone to turn out.
It's embarrassing how unpopular he has become.
So he can't win in Venezuela.
That's why this becomes so important in D.C., because the Trump administration needs to create a government in exile, a fake government in exile, and use this as the headquarters, this embassy as the headquarters.
Then they need to go to their right-wing allies in Latin America, they're under the control by military and economic force, Western European countries, and say they should do the same, let Venezuela's embassies be used by the opposition.
That would create a network of embassies around the world, headquartered in the U.S., of a fake government in exile.
They can't win in Venezuela.
They can only do it from outside.
And they can only do it from outside by threatening governments with economic and military power.
They can't do anything but that.
That's the only choice they have.
If they're going to escalate, that's the escalation that's needed.
So we're here to stop that.
So I hope you will check out that declaration on the top page of Popular Resistance, and sign on, and get educated on this, and spread the word.
Yeah, definitely.
Thanks very much for that.
And you know, it's funny the way they go, well, 50 countries recognize Guaido.
Well, are they just relying on our ignorance of the total number of nation-states in the world?
Because right around 193, 194.
So it sounds to me like the super-majority support the current state.
Is that not their case?
Or what are they trying to even say there?
As though it's up to a world vote of governments of other states to decide who gets to be the sovereign government of Venezuela in the first place.
What the hell kind of global democracy is that that I ever heard of?
I don't know.
The U.N. has said Maduro is the president.
That's the final answer.
But the OAS, the U.S. had to change the rules in order to get the OAS to recognize Guaido.
They couldn't get the two-thirds majority vote that was needed.
They had to change the rules to get a majority.
They barely got that.
They had to twist arms to get that.
And the people in the room when the vote happened were embarrassed.
This is going to be looked, again, the big picture.
I think you'll appreciate this, Scott.
This event at this embassy and this failed coup are going to be looked at in five years or ten years as part of the end of U.S. empire.
This is a turning point for the end of U.S. empire.
It can't control countries in its own backyard.
The Monroe Doctrine will be dead.
And this will be the U.S. empire will no longer have the power of hegemony that it once had.
The failure in Venezuela, the failure to even control an embassy in Washington, D.C.'s capital.
The U.S. government can't control an embassy in the capital with their fake coup government.
It just shows the incredible weakness of the United States.
We have made our point.
As I said, we will stay, and even fast if we have to, in a hunger strike if they deny us food.
And that will just make things worse for the United States.
If people start seeing nonviolent activists on hunger strikes, that will make things even worse for the United States.
And so they don't want that to happen.
They'd be smart to let the food in.
But if we go on a hunger strike, we are staying, and we'll be videoing it.
We'll be showing the world people not eating, and we'll show the world the steadfast determination of U.S. Americans standing up against U.S. imperialism and standing up with the Venezuelan people in solidarity for their independence and their sovereignty.
So the U.S. is in a lose-lose situation.
They let us stay, or they arrest us illegally, and the whole world watches the United States violate international law and violate the rights of U.S. Americans.
So I saw Tulsi Gabbard on Fox News last night, or two nights ago.
And at first I was disappointed because she didn't seem to really be grappling with the questions the way the Fox News host was putting them to her.
But the Venezuelans have decided that they want Guaido now and these kinds of things.
And she wasn't really getting into that.
She just kept saying the same thing over and over again like a talking point.
And in a way I was annoyed.
But then by the end of the interview, I thought that actually she really had it right.
Because what she ended up saying over and over again was, you know what?
Look at the record.
When we do regime changes in other countries, it only makes things worse.
And then Fox News lady couldn't say anything to that.
I mean, what are you going to do?
We've been living in the 21st century together here all this time.
And there's just no denying it when you put it that way.
So in other words, she was arguing not a bland talking point, but on a higher level.
She didn't want to get into the debate about the constitutional technicality or whatever inside Venezuela.
She was just saying, remember what happened in Iraq?
And maybe that really is the major point that we all ought to be repeating here.
That this thing could escalate if the Trump administration continues to exist on getting their way.
This could turn into a war.
I'm not that alarmist.
I really don't feel like that's what's going to happen here.
But that's a path that at least some powerful people would like to have us on.
And it would, there's no question, be an absolute catastrophe for the people of Venezuela and for the people of the United States if that were to happen.
So we really have to everybody get our act together and be great on this.
Very true.
And I'd encourage Tulsi to come visit us.
She'd be welcome.
I say this, that people in this embassy as part of this collective have all sorts of different views on Maduro.
But the bottom line is we all agree that U.S. intervention, U.S. imposing its chosen president who never ran for the office on the Venezuelan people is the problem.
We are against U.S. intervention, U.S. imperialism, U.S. regime change.
It's always a disaster.
Poor Libya, poor Syria, poor Iraq, Afghanistan.
The list is endless of countries that have been harmed.
The whole history of the world, the Middle East in particular, would have been so different if the U.S. had allowed the elected president in 1953, Mosaddegh, to remain in office.
He was a democratically elected president.
U.S. did a coup, and that changed the course of history in the Middle East.
If he had been allowed to be successful and run the country as a democratically elected president, we may not have any monarchies and dictatorships in the Middle East anymore.
We may have had all sorts of democratically run nations.
And all this war and catastrophe and this Arab Muslim extremism may not have ever occurred.
It occurred because the U.S. put in place its own dictator, the Shah, who was abusive, who was abusive especially of Muslims.
So the answer here is it's not right or left.
It's right and wrong, and it's wrong for the U.S. to conduct imperialism.
The people of Venezuela have the right of their own sovereignty and independence.
So it's not a right-left issue.
It's an issue of do you believe in imperialism?
If you don't, this is the place to be.
Please check out that declaration on popular resistance on the slider.
Learn the facts.
Sign on and share it, and tell people to come out tomorrow at 1 o'clock, on Saturday at 1 o'clock.
We're having a major mobilization, and the alternative collective is being put up outside across the street, a 24-7 outdoor encampment, to join the internal control of the embassy by this collective.
All right.
That is Kevin Zeese, popularresistance.org, on the line from inside the Venezuelan embassy in Washington, D.C.
Thank you again, my friend.
Thanks a lot.
Good luck.
Appreciate it.
All right, y'all.
Thanks.
Find me at libertarianinstitute.org, at scotthorton.org, antiwar.com, and reddit.com slash scotthortonshow.
Oh, yeah, and read my book, Fool's Errand, Timed and the War in Afghanistan, at foolserrand.us.
