Abby Martin goes on the deadly front lines of the anti government protests in Venezuela and follows the evolution of a typical guarimba—or opposition barricade.

She explains what the targets from the opposition reveal about the nature of the movement and breaks down the reality of the death toll that has rocked the nation since the unrest began, and how a lynch mob campaign came after her and the Empire Files team for reporting these facts.

Hearing from peaceful opposition marchers, to Chavistas to violent protesters at the guarimbas, this must-watch episode exposes the dark reality on-the-ground that is completely obscured from Western media.

Abby Martin Meets the Venezuelan Opposition

Venezuela has been painted as a failed state by both politicians and corporate media for years. With three months of intense protests in the country, this propaganda has only increased, with much of it romanticized and celebrated by U.S. mass media. To get an accurate glimpse of the situation and hear from Venezuelans engaged in and affected by these protests and the current political climate, Abby Martin spent three weeks on the ground in Venezuela.

Since Chavez was elected in 1998, the United States has paid over $50 million to the opposition movement, with Marco Rubio recently proposing an additional $20 million in aid to “defend human rights.” Donald Trump has referred to the current situation in Venezuela as a “very very horrible problem.” With millions of dollars in aid from the U.S., protesters in the streets calling for the ousting of their democratically elected president and the opinions of Venezuelans in the barrios being ignored, who are the players in this game and which, if any, narrative can be trusted?

Mass media is filled with images of violent protests, large crowds and data on deaths caused by government forces in Venezuela. To get to the bottom of this complicated political puzzle, Abby met with both protesters and the opposition forces responsible for violent confrontations. A common theme being that Venezuelans are living under an oppressive dictatorship- crying out for assistance from the U.S. and demanding a fair election.

As the sun sets on city streets packed with largely peaceful protesters donning yellow, blue and red, the scene quickly becomes more tense and volatile. In Caracas, the opposition sets up strategic roadblocks to interrupt the functioning of the area, burning wood and trash in the streets, using vehicles to block and shutdown highways and instigating violence with security forces. In fact, the opposition repeatedly pushes as far as they can until security forces are forced to respond. While the media shares a picture of a Venezuela in which free speech and protesting comes at a cost and is not widely accepted, there were no arrests the night Abby followed the guarimbas. Could this mean that there is, in fact, a right to protest in Venezuela?

Surprisingly, low income Venezuelans residing in the country’s barrios, are not the ones protesting their government and their stories and their opinions are rarely shared. It was in these places where Abby encountered many Chavistas, eager to dispel the opposition’s narrative that Venezuela is a dictatorship in which Venezuelans are oppressed, struggling and living in fear. Also, the protesting is not countrywide– the most volatile protests are taking place in the upper and middle class states, far from the barrios.

While in Venezuela Abby uncovered a shocking truth surrounding statistics being pushed by the corporate media. In a period of three months, 95 deaths and over one thousand injuries were attributed to the violent protests. Abby worked to unpack these numbers and investigate the real causes of these deaths.

Of those 95 deaths, 11 were of unknown cause. According to the Attorney General only 23 of those deaths can be attributed to state security forces. Assuming that number is correct, what can the additional 61 deaths be attributed to? Abby’s investigation, detailed in this episode, concludes that 23 of the 95 deaths from that three month period can be attributed to state forces while the other 61 can be linked to the opposition– including violent murders and the hindering of access to lifesaving services.

Because Abby questioned these statistics and reported her findings, opposition spokespeople quickly created a campaign of false hysteria surrounding her trip, her research and her career. A wave of social media propaganda claimed that Abby and Empire Files producer, Mike Prysner, were not, in fact, journalists but were contracted by the state to gather sensitive intel– taking photos for police rather than interviewing protestors in the streets. This campaign resulted in a virtual lynch mob, culminating in protestors gathering at an event where Mike was scheduled to speak, after publicly sharing the event’s location.

As Abby has clearly documented, the tumultuous situation in Venezuela is just that. It is not cut and dry– there are multiple players on multiple sides utilizing the streets, social media and corporate media to further their narratives in an effort to reach an end goal without much compromise or cohesion when it seems that may be what is needed most.

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Abby Martin: Venezuela, a country painted as a failed state by U.S. politicians and corporate media. One that is under a total dictatorship, brutally repressing free speech and the right to protest. The protests, which have been going on for three months, are across the board uncritically romanticized and celebrated by the mass media. Many outlets are openly calling for regime change.Since President Chavez was elected in 1998, the U.S. government has paid over $50 million to the opposition movement. Now, Senator Marco Rubio just spearheaded a bill pledging another $20 million to “defend human rights,” among other types of aid. Long wanting to overthrow the democratically elected socialist government, U.S. politicians are seizing the moment of unrest for regime change.

Donald Trump: The stable and peaceful Venezuela is in the best interest of the entire hemisphere. We will be working with Colombia and other countries on the Venezuelan problem. It is a very, very horrible problem, and from a humanitarian standpoint it is like nothing we’ve seen in quite a long time.

Abby Martin: With new U.S. sanctions, direct threats from the Trump administration to overthrow another sovereign government, and corporate media painting a one-sided narrative, I wanted to go see the reality on the group for myself. During my investigation in Venezuela, spending nearly three weeks in Caracas, one thing was a constant: traffic jams from guarimbas, or protest barricades, intended to disrupt life in the city. While most things carried on like normal, some parts of the city were always inaccessible, with police and military constantly scurrying to whatever streets were shut down that day.Knowing how much mass protests define life in Venezuela, as well as the media coverage, I attended an opposition protest in Miranda State near Caracas. The demonstration, which consists of thousands of people, was a peaceful gathering, with typical speeches and chants.What is your biggest problem with what’s happening right now?

Speaker 3: I think right, the biggest problem is, that the president don’t want us to go to election, because if we go he knows he’s going to lose.

Speaker 4: [In Spanish] There is no constitution, the rule of law does not exist. This is an absolute dictatorship in Venezuela. There’s repression, there’s a constant and severe tyranny. Out with the dictator in Venezuela; we don’t want him.

Speaker 5: [In Spanish] We’re suffering from hunger, misery, anxiety and desperation. We want this regime to get out, along with all of their followers, so that peace and tranquility is reinstated in this country.

Speaker 6: Seventeen years and some months, the country is every day falling down, down, down. It doesn’t work if you have money. Because if you have money, you need medicine, you don’t have work to buy.

Speaker 7: I have 27 years old and I’m married. And my wife, she doesn’t buy anything that she wants to.

Abby Martin: You said you’ve been fighting since 2002. What happened? Why have you been fighting so long in the streets?

Speaker 7: Because I’ve never been Chavista because I knew that, [inaudible 00:03:53], everything. Okay? Because they have a wrong idea what revolution is. My father took me to one riot, take me another, and it [inaudible 00:04:10] years.

Speaker 8: [In Spanish] They just want to plant communism, another Cuba, that’s all. Cuba won’t release us, because if they do, they can’t eat any longer.

Abby Martin: Is the United States doing enough to help Venezuela?

Speaker 3: No, I don’t think so. I mean like, a lot of Venezuelans live in the States, so we send like, the Green Cross, the one who help with medicine, like the ones who help with the protestors that get hit, they get a lot of help from the States.

Speaker 5: [In Spanish] I wish it was so, that the United States and the rest of the countries in the world would help us.

Abby Martin: Is the United States doing enough to help Venezuela?

Speaker 4: [In Spanish] Yes, they are doing fine, along with Luis Almagro [Sec. General, Organization of American states], but we need an outcome, we need a happy ending. We want international support from the United States. It is very important that they help us from New York. They need to help us, to help us non-stop. We need the United States to turn up their power towards us.

Abby Martin: We are very near Plaza Altamira right now, where the opposition looks like it’s setting up a barricade. This is a tactic that the opposition does to deter traffic, to cause a lot of problems here in Caracas. We’re going to go follow them right now and see what’s going on.As the sun started to set, things began to change. Smaller groups donning masks and shields starting forming up. While the majority of the crowd held a candlelight vigil to commemorate those killed in the protests, the others lit flames of their own. They poured incendiary liquid in the streets and began stopping traffic.We’re here in the middle of the plaza. There are thousands of protestors down there for the march of the torches. Right now, there are a couple dozen protestors right here with shields, helmets, masks. They’re lighting fires; they’re doing a blockade. They say their tactic is to get as many people out in the street as they possibly can.

Speaker 10: [in Spanish] Well, up to what we know, we are protesting because we want a better Venezuela like the one that existed before. Well, look, I…to our knowledge, there is a dictatorship. And we can’t live with the Cubans here in Venezuela because it’s bad.If you see the dictatorship we are going through, there’s scarcity of food and all that, we only want to retake how things were before.

Abby Martin: And how many people have the government killed, security forces, military police, so far?

Speaker 10: [In Spanish] There have been more than 200, or less, about 180 dead.

Abby Martin: And what are the demands, right now, for protestors?

Speaker 10: [In Spanish] What we want is mostly, well, ousting the president. We want elections. We fight for elections because we want to change everything and we need a new president.

Speaker 11: [In Spanish] The only message we can send from the resistance to the rest of the world is help us, that’s the first thing we ask for. Because, when you look at it we go to the streets and the first to repress you is the government. At the moment we cannot show you the bullets they shoot, these are large marbles, of iron. They have killed several in this way. The guy killed in Los Teques yesterday was shot with a marble. And it’s a lie, they don’t shoot tear gas or pellets. They’re shooting live rounds.

Speaker 12: [In Spanish] Gun shots! That’s a bullet and this is true. And Maduro says it’s a lie. This is true. They only shoot and shoot.

Abby Martin: Several times we were aggressively surrounded by masked protestors demanding to see what media outlet we worked for. Only when they heard that we were from the United States did they back down. But told me to only film repression against them, not their actions. As the crowd grew, they announced they would be marching a blocked major freeway. Protestors and squadrons of motorbikes began mobbing through the streets, setting fires and creating roadblocks along the way.So, we’re here at the highway right now. We just talked to some protestors who said that they’re blocking the highway. They just set up a barricade of fire. They’re doing it down there. The national guard is about to come, which they say they want us to see how they oppress them when they do come. Stopping cars leaving the highway, they trap drivers on the off-ramp. I talked to several in the heat of the offensive.

Speaker 13: [In Spanish] At the moment they have done nothing but we came to represent today, we won’t stay still, we are still fighting. Fighting for freedom, and fighting against this 17-year dictatorship.

Abby Martin: How hard is it to live under a dictatorship?

Speaker 13: [In Spanish] It is very hard, because as an entrepreneur, you don’t work for yourself, but for the government. You cannot be independent, all of your work and effort is for the government, and that’s what we don’t want here.

Abby Martin: What is this? What are you carrying?

Speaker 12: [In Spanish] This is what they attack us with. With this they have killed our fellow fighters in the chest. And all those corrupt people and government officials, they have to go. They must go to prison. It is unbearable that people are killing each other, to buy corn meal or a packet of rice, when the government should provide all of this, because this is a human right, being able to work, and have food, and freedom of speech.

Crowd: [In Spanish] Venezuela, freedom, active resistance!

Abby Martin: Then the protest moved onto the highway itself, shutting down all lanes in both directions. Most surprising is how they did this, taking over two large trucks. So right now we’re on the highway. Every single entrance to the highway has been blockaded, lit on fire, and now we’re looking at two enormous trucks that have been somehow taken over and maneuvered in order to block the main thoroughfare of the highway right now.Protestors held the freeway like this for some time. According to them, waiting for state forces to respond. Then they commandeered a third truck, pushing it towards the edge of the freeway. Below is Miranda Air Force Base. They started hurling rocks and chunks of concrete at the base below. And that’s when soldiers guarding the base responded.

Crowd: [Spanish 00:11:29][inaudible 00:11:35] More, more, more.[inaudible 00:11:44] Right here. Right here.[inaudible 00:11:55][Spanish 00:11:59] Go back, go back, go back.

Abby Martin: They fired several tear-gas canisters that landed directly in front of me and my team. And the protestors quickly retreated from the freeway back to the streets above. Apparently there was an air force base there and they were throwing rocks.

Speaker 16: Yeah.

Abby Martin: And a big blockade. And then they hurled tear-gas canisters over the side and we got hit. But not really hard because it wasn’t that close. The protest regrouped at their fallback position. When national guard soldiers I couldn’t see fired more tear gas. This time, staying on the front lines hurt a bit more.

Crowd: Go this way.[inaudible 00:13:02][Spanish 00:13:14]Watch the holes.

Abby Martin: So yeah, right after I said I didn’t get hit hard with tear gas, we’re running away and, you know, there’s all these provocations with the police and the protestors and they just started hurling tear-gas canisters at us and we were just caught in a huge plume of tear gas. It’s extremely painful. My ears are really, really burning. I felt like I was blind for like, five minutes, so, that just happened.While soldiers had cleared the freeway, protestors continued to block several intersections in the area, with more trucks and barricades. What I had experienced was a typical guarimba, a few hundred or less semi-armed protestors ruling the streets, shutting down as much as they can. Using largely violent tactics. They push as far as they can go until security forces respond, then flee with new photos of repression. Given what the media has been saying, I was shocked to learn that there were no arrests that night. It seems like there certainly is a right to protest in Venezuela. And the curated images we see in the news are obscuring a much darker, deadlier reality. Since the beginning of the protest on April 6, through July 1, we found 95 deaths attributed to the protests, with over 1,000 injured. Of that 95, 11 have unknown or undetermined connections to the protests, and are murders that took place in the vicinity of a protest. So let’s look at the remaining 84 deaths. It is true that many protestors have been killed by police and the national guard. Several have been killed in shootings, and two killed by tear gas. According to Venezuela’s attorney general, one of the most outspoken critics of the government’s response, 23 deaths are attributed to state forces. Many investigations into alleged killings by state forces are still ongoing. In several cases, people were first reported in the media to have been killed by state forces, but evidence later revealed that they were actually killed by opposition weapons. But let’s assume that number is correct, 23. So if only 23 out of the 84 are attributed to state forces, what has caused the majority of the deaths? The remaining 61? Those 61 actually have been caused by opposition protestors. Many of those killed directly in murders and political assassinations. Let’s look at those numbers that so many unquestioningly attribute to state repression. We found 23 to have been indirectly killed by opposition violence, in a variety of ways. For example, six people have died in vehicle accidents while trying to escape opposition barricades. Three are civilians who died because opposition barricades prevented lifesaving ambulances from reaching them. Nine of those 23 are opposition protestors who accidentally killed themselves. One in an explosion from an opposition mortar. And eight electrocuted themselves to death while looting a bakery. In addition to these indirect deaths from opposition violence, 38 people have been directly killed by opposition violence. Sixteen of those 38 are seemingly random killings of civilians at opposition barricades or near a protest. Seven of the 38 are police and national guard members killed by protestors. Six of them were shot by protestors, and one national guard member was beaten to death by a mob of protestors. One would think these facts would be included in a fair report of force used by the state. But more heinously, 14 deaths are political murders and assassinations of Chavistas and government supporters by the opposition. Most were targeted for attending a pro-government demonstration or for being identified as Chavistas. Two were socialist figures who were kidnapped, tortured, and executed. Most chilling was the lynching of 21-year-old Orlando Figuera, who was brutally beaten, stabbed, and burned alive by opposition protestors. According to an interview with Orlando in the hospital, they yelled, “Hey black guy, see what happens to Chavistas” before throwing a Molotov cocktail on him and lighting him aflame. Orlando died from his injuries just days later. At least four other people have set on fire but lived, allegedly for being Chavistas. And many others brutally beaten by opposition mobs. So of those 84 fatalities associated with the protest movement, 23 deaths are allegedly from state repression, and 61 deaths from opposition violence. As surprised as I was to see that the reality of these numbers is so warped, I was completely unprepared for what would happen to me for simply reporting these facts. Because I questioned the validity of the fatality count being 100% due to state forces, prominent opposition spokespeople created a false hysteria over an outrageous lie, that myself and Empire Files producer Mike Prysner were not journalists, but in fact working directly for the government intelligence forces. And that we weren’t actually conducting interviews of protestors, but taking their pictures to turn in to police forces. And not only that, but the police had then arrested protestors based on our intelligence.The life-threatening lie was first promoted by a professor at Venezuela’s Simon Bolivar University and opposition activist, Jose Vicente Carrasquero. The rumors were echoed and exaggerated by several prominent opposition journalists, like Manuel Malaver, and Miami reporter Angie Perez. The disinformation campaign incited a virtual lynch mob against us for days, which translated into real-life stalking and threats, calls to find and kill us, doxxing of personal information, and more. Revealing their character, scores of opposition Twitter accounts specifically used the word “lynch” when calling for violence against us. More than that, this opposition hate campaign also posted the address of an event Mike was speaking at, inciting people to come confront us. And worse. Dozens of Venezuelans ex-pats actually showed up, chanting against socialism, and tried to physically force their way into the event to disrupt it. But the threats of violence were not empty. Just days later, a TeleSUR journalist was actually shot in the back by opposition protestors, when her and her team were viciously attacked with Molotov cocktails, bullets and explosives. Many other journalists have also been called infiltrators and attacked, like when a Globalvision crew was doused with gasoline by protestors at a recent demonstration, and told to leave or they would get burned. Amazingly, international human rights organizations like Human Rights Watch and the Committee to Protect Journalists have been silent on the attacks on journalists from the opposition, and have only condemned the government for press repression. For as much as Venezuela’s poor is used as the basis of the international media campaign to oust the government, the poor people from the barrios of Venezuela are not the ones protesting. The marches and violent guarimbas are concentrated in only a few states, where the middle and upper class areas are, most of them run by opposition governors or mayors. And the targets of the protestors speak volumes about the nature of the opposition: factories, public transportation, Socialist Party offices, hospitals, and clinics have all been attacked. Even the childhood home of Chavez was set on fire. They have also set fire to the government’s housing ministry, the supreme court, and more.In one case, a maternity clinic was raided and the facility besieged by opposition forces for two days. A cultural center I visited, which gave free music lessons to youth and provided space for art collectives, had also recently been attacked and vandalized by opposition protestors. Ironically, even though protestors use food shortages as one of their main grievances, they frequently attack food distribution centers. Most recently they burned a warehouse containing 50 tons of food intended for schoolchildren.The representatives of the opposition don’t denounce the violent guarimbas sustained by the small contingent of protestors. In fact, top opposition leaders have directly called for violence. But there is another side of this story: the millions of Venezuelan voices who are rendered invisible to the Western media.

Speaker 17: [In Spanish] There has been a very strong economic war on the part of the sectors of the bourgeois elite, and the entrepreneurs, towards the people, those who produce food, those who produce staple goods and have been hoarding them. Much like what they did to Salvador Allende in Chile.

Speaker 18: [In Spanish] Look, really for a process of polarization in which we are living in Venezuela, we’re reached a point of zero tolerance. Where to identify someone as a member of the Revolution or something that has to do, for example, with Comandante Chavez, they point us out, beat us, burn us, kill us. We are categorized by our skin color, by our hair, there are a number of factors that have caused us revolutionaries to be concerned about going to the streets. Because they identify us easily, because we are not afraid to wear clothing that identifies us with Chavistas. The situation in the streets is quite tense, quite complicated by the situation, by a group of people who don’t believe in tolerance and does not respect the other for thinking differently.

Abby Martin: And what do they do to you if they see that you’re a Chavista? I mean, what have they done to people who identify themselves as this?

Speaker 18: [In Spanish] Look, they point us out, corner us, threaten us. At least to me, in my house, in my building. I was given a car from the Revolution, and they threw human excrement on the hood. They scratched the car. They wrote things to my mother for being a spokesperson for the communal council, and for the new system of distributing food. My mom was pointed out and trapped in an elevator. So that is what happens to us Chavistas, for wanting to help others they point us out and mistreat us.

Speaker 17: [In Spanish] There are some people who are filled with hatred, and they want to divert it towards the people, hurting people, they want trouble. But they are a minority if we go to the statistics.

Abby Martin: Do you think that you live in a dictatorship?

Speaker 17: [In Spanish] No, not at all. Here you can see that the people have free transit, people do what they want, to participate, talk, even though the country is burning from the sectors of the fascist right. They are burning the country and have committed acts of vandalism, terrorist acts, and the full strength of the law has not been applied to them, like is done in the United States or Europe. These people are going around doing whatever they want. Here a person has free will, freedom to think, to believe in the political, the economic, the social, the cultural, the religious arenas. Whoever says that this is a dictatorship is completely mad. So in what kind of dictatorship are there elections, where people participate, where people do what they want? That is completely illogical.

Speaker 19: [In Spanish] I am 100 percent revolutionary, Chavista, and I think what the right-wing factions are doing is wrong. The problems can’t be solved in the way they propose, with violence and chaos in the streets of Venezuela, in Caracas, by attacking the police, the National Guard. I think things should be discussed in a dialogue to solve problems. And as long as they don’t have a plan and a leader, they won’t be able to oust a government as revolutionary as the one we have today.

Speaker 17: [In Spanish] They are violent people who tend to show only violence by screaming and hitting, all these characteristics. But no one is scared here. Actually here there are many people who are restrained from falling into the same violent game as the others do. Because we think that’s no way to solve problems. Dialogue and the achievement of a peaceful solution, as rational people within philosophy and the human Aristotelian though, but nobody is scared. Here there are groups on the left who are really radical and they would like to respond, but we have not done it, since the solution must be rational. We can’t fall for that reptilian behavior and hurt people, that’s their game.

FOLLOW // @AbbyMartin

WATCH // YouTube.com/EmpireFiles

Today in the corporate media, Venezuela’s economic problems are used to paint the country as a failed state, in need of foreign-backed regime change.

To get the Bolivarian government’s side of the crisis, Abby Martin interviews Venezuela’s Minister of Economic Planning, Ricardo Menéndez. They discuss shortages, oil dependency, the role of the US-backed opposition movement and more.

The Empire Files joined him in Cojedes, Venezuela, where he was speaking to mass community meetings, organizing the population to fight against what he calls an economic war.

Venezuela Economy Minister – Sabotage, Not Socialism, is the Problem

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FOLLOW // @AbbyMartin & @rmenendezp

WATCH // YouTube.com/EmpireFiles

Paul Jay and Abby Martin discuss Trump’s cabinet appointments, the Green Party effort to recount the vote, and who’s really producing the fake news.

Abby Martin & Paul Jay on Trump’s Appointees & “Fake News”

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PAUL JAY: Welcome to The Real News Network. I’m Paul Jay. Well, Thanksgiving is over, and for those of you who may have thought that after Thanksgiving it all would have been over and it would’ve turned out the world had moved into an episode of The Twilight Zone that actually had come to an end, in fact, no. Donald Trump is the President-Elect, and now to discuss all of that and the consequences with me are Abby Martin. Abby joins me from New York. Abby’s the creator and host of The Empire Files on teleSUR English, and a show that I was Executive Producer of. Thanks for joining us, Abby.

ABBY MARTIN: Hey, Paul. Nice to be on.

PAUL JAY: So, I guess it’s a little bizarre. I’ve said to some people that it almost feels like a 9/11 moment to me, and not not quite the disaster of 9/11, but the day after 9/11, if you didn’t live in the shadows of what were the Twin Towers, you kind of went back to kind of normal life, but knowing that everything had changed to a large extent. And I feel somewhat the same with the Trump presidency. This is not to in any way idealize the Obama presidency. Anybody that watches The Real News knows that we were mostly scathingly critical of the Obama Administration. On the other hand, as you and I have talked about before, this is… it looks like with Pence, the return of Cheneyesque politics. What do you make of it?

ABBY MARTIN: Oh, yeah. I mean, Mike Pence himself said that his… the person that he idealizes the most is Dick Cheney. He says that he wants his vice-presidency to be, quote, “very active”. We’re talking about a person who received the most funds from Erik Prince, the founder of Blackwater, and we’re looking at the administration now. It’s shaping up quite nicely for these billionaire Christian evangelicals, Betsy DeVos, Erik Prince’s sister, pioneer of charter schools, undermining of public education, and now she’s running the Education Department in the US.

So, Mike Pence is a very scary figure. Not only did he support the Iraq War, vote for it, he also was one of the main pioneers of the conspiracy theory that Saddam was involved in the anthrax attacks, and going out there selling that, not to mention his vehement anti-gay policies, public push for conversion therapy in Indiana. He is a pretty scary figure, Paul, especially when you consider that Trump asked him to run, quote, “foreign and domestic policy”, as we know from John Kasich, who was told and asked if he wanted to be VP, and he was told, “You’re going to run foreign and domestic policy.” That’s how insane the situation is.

So people who are telling me, “Oh, Trump is this mastermind. He’s just pulling together all these people. He’s really going to change things.” He is a puppet. He knows nothing. He has no insight on global affairs or policy plans at all. He didn’t even know the difference between Hezbollah and Hamas. He said, “I’ll worry about that when I’m in.” So, he is just getting sidelined. I mean, it is a fire sale right now in the White House of people who are the craziest outliers of the GOP that hitched their wagons on him — that were smart enough to do that, right? — that have been completely castigated and ostracized from mainstream establishment. They’ve hitched their wagons to Trump, and they are getting lavishly rewarded as we speak.

PAUL JAY: We’ve talked about before on The Real News, but I think one should keep repeating, the power that helped elect Donald Trump, in the final analysis, was the billionaire Robert Mercer. Working for Mercer was Steve Bannon, who Breitbart News Mercer’s the primary owner of, Kellyanne Conway ran Mercer’s super PAC for Ted Cruz. So, two of the critical people, one who now is going to be Chief Strategist in the White House, Steve Bannon, described by Jared Kushner, the son-in-law, as being a very good Zionist, and I think that’s part of what’s not being touched on enough by people commenting on all this, the extent to which all of the people in foreign policy are very, very strong — not supporters of Israel — supporters of Likud, supporters of the most right-wing politics in Israel.

ABBY MARTIN: Yeah. I think the mainstream media is missing the point when they’re focusing on anti-Semitism when it comes to Breitbart. Breitbart is a hardcore Zionist. Everyone on that platform supports Zionism, like you said, the Likud Party, extreme, extreme ideological, right-wing party in Israel. You know, just like Theodor Herzl said, the founder of Zionism, “Anti-Semitism is our greatest friend.” I mean, they know that that works hand-in-hand to legitimize the State of Israel.

Look, I wanted to talk about Mike Pence again really quickly, because he said something insane, Paul. He said that right now we’ll have a President that will no longer tell the American people what he won’t do in regards to torture. Someone asked him if torture was off the table. And that was his bizarre, opaque response to that. As we know, Trump has already said that he would waterboard not only terrorists but their innocent family members. You know, Mike Pompeo. You look at all of these people, and I think there’s one common theme is that they’re all hardcore Islamophobes, which is very scary at a time when we are essentially bombing seven countries. Obama just increased the role of the drone campaign to al-Shabaab, I think, in Somalia, and he’s handing this over to a reality star game show host that knows absolutely nothing — he’s handing over the most vast, unprecedented executive power apparatus to Donald Trump.

And, so, yes, we have every right to be scared of what Trump is doing and everyone he’s appointing, and we should be on alert. But, like you said, no one should be apologizing for the Obama Administration and all the things that he failed to do that now Trump will be overseeing. Guantanamo Bay. I mean, are you kidding me? Bannon — you talked about Bannon — here, we’re talking about fake news all over the media, here’s the real pioneer of fake news. This is going to be de facto state media. Breitbart is now going to be the chair… you know, in the ear of the Commander-in-Chief, Breitbart. You know when you’re looking at Donald Trump tweeting and everyone thinks oh, he’s this… he’s this genius, right? He’s trying to, oh, he’s challenging safe spaces by saying that Hamilton should be a safe space. No, he is a moron. What you see on Twitter IS the real Donald Trump. Okay? These people are throwing him for a loop. I mean, they are getting in there and really running the show.

PAUL JAY: And Breitbart News was apparently created while Breitbart, the founder, was in Israel, and his idea, his vision was a Huffington Post that was an unmitigatedly pro-Israel. The slogan they had as the guiding line was “pro-Israel, pro-freedom”. The whole origins of Breitbart are in this ultra-ultra-right wing Zionism, and Steve Bannon, after Breitbart dies, Mercer comes in and becomes the main financier, brings in Bannon, and carry on that mission, and that’s one of the common threads that runs through all the people around Trump is bringing to Cabinet. Then there’s one other common thread: they all want to target Iran.

ABBY MARTIN: Look, there is one good thing: we’ve staved off war with Russia, potentially, for a couple of months. What no one is talking about is the insane fear-mongering and war-mongering against Iran. Donald Trump brought this up multiple times during his candidacy, which was all the Obama Administration was too soft on Iran. The deal was bad. He wanted to eradicate the deal. What is that going to do? And then you have people like John Bolton who’s obsessed with bombing Iran. I mean, all of these people are. So, yeah. This wasn’t a loss for the neo-cons, okay? This wasn’t a loss for the war hawks or defense contractors. Iran is as scary to me as the build-up in Syria. So, this is not a joke. These people are serious, and they are obsessed with Iran. So, yes, on one hand, we’ve staved off an escalation of the Cold War; on the other hand, Iran is right around the corner, Paul, and no one’s really talking about that.

PAUL JAY: Other than The Real News. But, yeah, you’re right. There’s very little talk about it. In fact, I see on some of the sites that are alternative, progressive, left, a kind of idea that maybe in Trump there might be some hope that there wasn’t in Clinton, that he’ll be more accommodating with Russia and such. And while there might be some short-term accommodation with Russia — and I think it will be in order to advance the targeting of Iran — the people that are around Trump that are really going to run the foreign policy are every bit as aggressive in their rhetoric about Russia as Clinton, and then some. In fact, when Pence was running with Trump — and he would speak, not Trump, but Pence — he was attacking Clinton for not being aggressive enough towards Russia. That was one of his main critiques of her at the State Department.

ABBY MARTIN: Yeah, and Pence also said that he wanted a no-fly zone in Syria, and when Trump was asked, he said, “Oh, I didn’t know that Mike Pence said that. I disagree with him.” Well, too bad. Mike Pence is going to be running foreign and domestic policy, so if he wants a no-fly zone, well, I guess that’s not off the table, either. And then you look at Jeff Sessions, it’s a complete disaster. I mean, here you have the NAACP coming out and saying, “This is the man who has, literally his entire career, lobbied against civil liberties and equality.” That’s not a good mark on your record, Sessions, to be denied as a federal judge because you were too racist, and now you’re Attorney General? Wow. And he’s horrible on criminal reform and drugs. He thinks that Obama’s biggest problem was being too lackadaisical on marijuana reform. I mean… It just gets better and better, Paul.

PAUL JAY: Yeah. I think one of the things — and a tell of where the Trump Administration is going — is that there’s virtually not a single appointment that’s a sop, a giveaway, to half of America, or more than half, that voted, that didn’t vote for him. There’s not even something symbolic, okay, the odd meeting here, like with Tulsi Gabbard. But no attempt at, quote-unquote, “compromise”. If this had been the Democrats in the Obama Administration, they would’ve made sure they threw in some hard-right Republican here and there just to appease that camp, because they were always about appeasing that camp. But no. This is unmitigated hard right from beginning to end.

ABBY MARTIN: And a lot of people I’ve heard will apologize for Trump saying, “Look, he said whatever he…” because they acknowledge that he’s a con artist, right? And they’re, like, “Look, he just said whatever he needed to to get elected.” Well, that may be true, but I think the one constant factor about Trump is his unpredictability, because he can blow wherever the wind blows. And that’s actually scary, because we have no reason to believe that he doesn’t mean the things that he said. We have no reason to believe, especially when you’re looking at the first hundred days of his agenda, and the people that he’s appointing, we have every reason to believe that he is meaning to go through with the most extreme, hawkish, anti-immigrant policies, anti-Muslim policies. I don’t see why people are continuing to apologize for him and saying, “Let’s wait and see.” I don’t think that we need to wait and see. We’re seeing right now with his agenda online and also his appointees. It’s very crystal clear. So I don’t see this whole, you know, “Trump is really a liberal. He’s a secret Democrat.” No, he…

PAUL JAY: Yeah. Give him a chance. Let’s see what… give him a chance. Let’s see what he does. Some people have called this normalizing the Trump presidency, and I agree with that, that you can’t normalize this presidency. Yes. All the presidents from World War II on are essentially… I don’t think there’s an exception that couldn’t be charged with war crimes, but this is a step in the Cheneyesque direction. This is an aggressive US foreign policy on steroids, and a policy that is already aggressive. But let’s move on a little bit. What do you make of this attempt by the Green Party to have a recount in some of the close swing states?

ABBY MARTIN: Well, I know that a couple of people, Green Party representatives, Chris Hedges, came out yesterday to publicly disagree with Jill Stein’s approach. Look, I thought it was bizarre. I didn’t really know what to make of it. I had no idea why Jill Stein was doing this on behalf of the Democratic Party, especially when you’re looking at 2000, completely stolen election, 2004, there were also discrepancies with the exit polls. That was never recounted. And we just got Bush again. So, I find it odd now to do this. However, I do support it, and I’ll tell you why. A, we don’t live in a democracy. We all know that. We live in an oligarchy. There’s a two-party dictatorship. We have the worst electoral system in the developed world — literally. Like, the Electoral College is so frickin’ archaic, it’s insane that we haven’t repealed that yet.

So, you know, that all aside, I take Greg Palast’s approach, where he’s saying, look, forget about the Russian hacking — that’s what I disagree with him, the statement kind of alludes like, gives legitimacy to that, that theory that Russia had something to do with hacking the election. I agree with Greg Palast where he’s saying there were millions of people not that voted illegally, like Donald Trump says based on Infowars as fake news, but he’s saying, yes, millions of people weren’t counted. Millions of provisional ballots, millions of absentee ballots, millions of people who were purged from the GOP scam Crosscheck. That is a fact. That happened.

So, at the very least, maybe we can start a conversation about how screwed up our electoral system is. And maybe at the very least we could talk about how there is massive election fraud on behalf of the establishment to squelch out minority voices in this country. And I, for one, would like to see the discrepancy with the paper ballots and hand-counting with the voting machines. Because I voted with a provisional ballot and I would like to see, hey, was that counted, or not? Like, this is a huge problem here. The Crosscheck is an insane thing. Everyone should watch Greg Palast’s documentary on that.

But, yeah, I mean, in that respect, I do agree with it. And let’s see what happens. But it is odd that, on one hand, you could see it as giving legitimacy to the Democratic Party, and we know that the millions of dollars to fund this is really coming from the Democrats, and I think it really speaks to their spinelessness that they refuse to lead the charge on any of the elections when there was clear, either election fraud or whatever, and now you have Jill Stein taking it upon herself. It’s an odd situation, but, at the end of the day, I do think our elections are horrible, and I agree with paying attention to them.

PAUL JAY: I don’t see how that helps the Green Party, to have this kind of critique. I mean, it is, it’s done, and she’s doing it, and I don’t know what the internal decision-making processes are. I mean, frankly, it’s… if you’re asking me, I don’t think there’s any much chance that this recount will change things.

ABBY MARTIN: It’s a pipe dream.

PAUL JAY: On the other hand, if there’s a wildest odds that it might, I mean, I’ve said all along, as aggressive and militarist as Clinton is, I think this is going to be worse in the same way Cheney-Bush was worse. So, we’ll see. But it’s not a good thing to wage this kind of fight publicly like this. I’m not sure it’s good for the future fortunes of the Green Party. But that’s not up to me. Let’s go on to fake news. A lot of big hubbub about fake news and some website came out with a whole list of websites that are supposedly echoing Russian propaganda, including some sites like Truthdig and Truthout, and some others that in my opinion are journalistic sites, and do not do that. The Real News is not on that list. I guess — I don’t know — if someone watches our coverage, they’ll see that, in fact, we have no… we’re not shy about critiquing the Russian oligarchy or Putin, although we always make sure we talk about American war crimes first, which make Russian crimes pale in scale, but at any rate, what do you make of this whole fake news thing?

ABBY MARTIN: I agree that fake news is a problem. Right? We have Breitbart de facto state media, we have Infowars basically in the ear of the President and he’s tweeting out insane, preposterous, outlandish, false, blatantly… things. Right? But on the other hand, you have Establishment media like The Washington Post and you have this anonymous propaganda finder account called Prop or Not, which is publishing this hit list — it’s essentially McCarthyism, right? — in the new era. It’s including very credible sites like Truthdig, Counterpunch, Black Agenda Report, Naked Capitalism, conflating it with fake news sites that you can say are legitimately fake or skewed or biased extremely, right? Like Infowars or Breitbart. And, of course, Breitbart, I don’t think is on there, which speaks to a lot.

So, I think it says a lot when we’re focusing and trying to conflate actual investigative journalism and journalism that goes against the grain with Russian provocateurs and the whole main thing that this account is trying to do: the premise of their argument is that these, quote-unquote, “fake news” sites actually shaped the election in favor of Trump. That they purposefully muddy the waters, poison the well, to make people believe all this fake stuff, and basically that’s how Trump won. I don’t think that’s the case at all. I think that they’re completely missing the point here. The point is — back to this Infowars thing — Trump tapped into this kind of conspiracy culture like no one else has ever, and I think that not enough people are talking about… everyone’s so shocked at all these white working class voters who came out to vote for him. No one’s really talking about the Alex Jones audience that came out in droves, that probably were never politically active before. And it stems back from the fake news thing.

Trump tweeted out that the protesters were paid. That they were professional. There is a serious problem on the Internet right now where people are either not fact-checking anything and they believe everything they read, and they conflate every alternative news site with these crazy blogs that are totally unfounded and have no credibility. And I think that that just comes back to media literacy. Don’t read a list on Washington Post, and take it with a grain of salt: fact-find for yourself. It’s not that hard. I mean, it took me five seconds even not knowing how to have any journalistic skills whatsoever, someone who is involved in canvass organizing in college, I knew immediately that that paid protester thing on Craigslist was just a canvassing job position. I mean, the bus picture where people said the protesters were bused in. Once again, it was debunked by the original tweeter. He took down the tweet.

So, these things, I think it comes back to media literacy, understanding what the truth is, and not just taking any website with a grain of salt, and understanding the agenda that places like Infowars has. Look, they hitched their wagon to Pamela Geller gravy train, long ago, when they knew that Islamophobia made money, and it’s basically a Fear Inc. operation. So, you look at credible sites like Truthdig and Real News, which has no corporate state funding at all, those are the sites that I think people should be looking at, and not sites like Infowars that sells penis pills in between their insane fear-mongering broadcasts. And, unfortunately, that’s who’s in the ear of Trump.

PAUL JAY: And if you want to talk about why Trump won, and then you want to connect that to fake news, you need look no further than all — almost all — of the corporate-owned news, which is the biggest fake news that helped elect Trump. And I’ll give you on three points: first and most important, why aren’t there screaming headlines every single day, both on corporate TV news and newspapers about climate change? If they had been dealing with the climate change crisis with the urgency it requires and what all scientists say, including recent reports that say we could pass the 2 degree threshold by 2050 — that’s 34 years away. And that model was before Trump was elected — who knows what that does to that model now, in terms of when we hit 2 degrees, given it just exploded most climate change policy around the globe, Trump’s election.

So, if people had been really educated and given the urgency that objective facts call out for, how the hell would so many people vote for a climate denier? Number two. Even now the coverage of the Cabinet, and the people, there’s almost no conversation about what we were talking about, that they’re all focusing and targeting on Iran, and they all have a strategy of regime change, weakening Iran — in other words, they’re talking about another war in the region. No talk about that. Yes, they talk about how crazy some of these people are and so on, but that issue, and certainly leading up to the election, that’s no surprise that that’s where this Trump Administration was going.

You look at Rudy Giuliani’s speech at the Republican Convention, he was crediting Iran with supporting terrorist attacks on the United States. Which is clearly there’s no evidence of, and if he’s going to talk about anybody doing that, it’d be the Saudis, but, no, Giuliani targets Iran, as did others that spoke at the Republican convention. And then, of course, the whole way corporate media has dealt with the economic crisis. And not dealing with the issue of who really is responsible for that crisis, and how the whole bailout of ’07-’08 made massive more money for the billionaire class, and so on. They treated Sanders as some kind of marginal outlier. So, yeah, of course, they can point to some small sites that supposedly are manipulated by the Russians, most of whom that accusation’s ridiculous. But it’s corporate news elected Donald Trump.

ABBY MARTIN: You just hit it right on the head. Here’s why people even believe this fake news, because mainstream media is completely distrusted. There’s an all-time distrust in corporate media. And we’ve known that for a long, long time, right? And I think that’s, to your point, that’s why Trump became president, is because the entire media Establishment lined up behind Hillary, and that was as clear as day, even during the debates, other than the Fox News debate, it was just every single question was for Trump, hammering Trump. And people saw that, and people absorbed that, and people already think the media is lying to them, and so when they think Trump is an ally to them, and that the media is lying to them, that sows a dangerous, dangerous sentiment where you have them kind of believing, and then you have it validated by the Commander-in-Chief, saying that there are millions of people voting illegally, the protesters are paid.

So, I understand why people are completely shutting out all of the establishment press and going to these sites. The problem is these establishment press is blaming the only solution, which is the credible, independent, grassroots journalism that is telling the truth, that isn’t fake news. So it’s a really, really dangerous conflation on behalf of the establishment media, instead, of course, look in the mirror, having some introspection. Why did we lose? Why don’t people trust us? Instead, they have to punch down to the people who are doing the real work.

PAUL JAY: All right. Thanks very much, Abby.

ABBY MARTIN: Thanks so much, Paul. Great to talk to you.

PAUL JAY: Thanks for joining us on The Real News Network.