Transcript included
“I always say ‘tariffs’ is the most beautiful word to me in the dictionary. And I was reprimanded by the fake news. They said, “what about ‘love, religion and God?’” I said I agree! Let’s put ‘God’ number one, let’s put ‘religion’ number two. ‘Love,’ I don’t know, we got to put that number three, I guess, right? And then it’s ‘tariff!’ Because tariffs are going to make us rich as hell!”
– U.S. President Donald Trump (January 20, 2025) [1]
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Last Monday, following his inauguration as the 47th president of the United States, Donald Trump made several pronouncements as to what he intended to authorize in the days and months ahead. [2]
On halting illegal immigration to the United States:
“First, I will declare a national emergency at our southern border. All illegal entry will immediately be halted and we will begin the process of returning millions and millions of criminal aliens back to the places from which they came. We will reinstate my remain in Mexico policy. I will end the practice of catch and release. And I will send troops to the southern border to repel the disastrous invasion of our country.”
On the economy:
“The inflation crisis was caused by massive overspending and escalating energy prices and that is why today I will also declare a national energy emergency. We will drill, baby, drill. …We will bring prices down, fill our strategic reserves up again, right to the top and export American energy all over the world… Instead of taxing our citizens to enrich other countries, we will tariff and tax foreign countries to enrich our citizens.”
On Panama:
“American ships are being severely overcharge, charged and not treated fairly in any way, shape or form. And that includes the United States Navy and above all, China is operating the Panama Canal and we didn’t give it to China, we gave it to Panama and we’re taking it back.”
Trump then signed a record number of Executive Actions in a single day which included withdrawing from the Paris Climate Accords, pardoning and commuting the sentences of nearly 1500 January 6 defendants, suspending the U.S. from the WHO, banning terrorist supporters, including pro-Hamas supporters, from the U.S., and establishing an “America First” trade policy, including reviewing trade with China and enabling tariffs.
But there is more to reviewing the designs of high power than watching an old man reading his “to do” list. One must also study the people with whom that figure surrounds himself. This includes looking at the characters of the Cabinet who will be advising him. And of course, if you are going to whistle, scout out the wealthy interests calling the tune.
They say that structure is strategy in slow motion, and we intend a thorough review of what that might mean for the Trump Regime on this week’s episode of the Global Research News Hour.
In our first half hour, Professor Rodrigue Tremblay comes on to guide us through the President’s financial roster and determine what his mighty tariff sweep, including on Canada will achieve domestically and on the world stage. And then in our second half hour, writer and researcher Timothy Alexander Guzman dissects Trump’s Cabinet full of war-hawks, and assesses the prospects for war in the very near future.
International economist Dr. Rodrigue Tremblay is the author of the book about morals “The code for Global Ethics, Ten Humanist Principles” of the book about geopolitics “The New American Empire“, and the recent book, in French, “La régression tranquille du Québec, 1980-2018“. He was Minister of Trade and Industry (1976-79) in the Lévesque government. He holds a Ph.D. in international finance from Stanford University. Please visit Dr Tremblay’s site or email to a friend here.
Prof. Rodrigue Tremblay is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG)
Timothy Alexander Guzman writes on his own blog site, Silent Crow News, where this article was originally published. He is a regular contributor to Global Research.
(Global Research News Hour episode 458)
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Transcript of Timothy Alexander Guzman, Thursday January 23, 2025
Global Research: Why don’t we just start off by talking about the cabinet positions, and I guess the most glaring for me right now is Marco Rubio, because he’s already got a reputation of not, I mean he’s a Cuban exile, somebody whose family left just in the time that Castro was waging his revolution, so he’s on the wrong side of that one, and he’s also been hostile towards Venezuela, and he’s also got a strange predilection for liking Israel, the Israeli flag alongside the American flag outside of his office. Could you tell us a little bit more about what Marco Rubio would mean as Secretary of State?
Tim Alexander Guzman: Well, it’ll definitely mean he’ll be more for interventions in Latin America, especially Venezuela, Nicaragua, they recently just took off Cuba. They put Cuba back on the terrorist list, which Biden removed in his last days, which, kind of looks like, everyone knew that the Trump regime was going to remove, put Cuba back on the terrorist watch list.
GR: Yeah, I figured that, just sorry to interrupt, but I mean Biden had just signed that executive order just about a week beforehand, right?
TAG: That’s correct, yes, yes, and remember Marco Rubio comes from the Cuban elite in Miami, and he’s an absolute war hawk, I mean he’s pro-Israel, anti-China, anti-Russia, he’s voted for all wars, even ones that Democrats started, including the one with Libya when they invaded, when they overthrew Muammar Gaddafi, he voted for that under the, US-NATO invasion of Libya that destroyed that country. I mean, he’s a war hawk, he’s definitely anti-China, if you saw his confirmation hearings, I mean he was, mostly about China, but also about Israel, right?
Marco Rubio is a war hawk neocon, I mean he’s a prime cabinet member, one of the hawkish, I think they’re all hawkish to be honest with you, Michael, but, Rubio is up there in terms of, interventions against all these Latin American nations, and I think, to be honest with you, if Evo Morales of Bolivia, gets re-elected or whatever, I mean he, they’ll try to overthrow him again, which Trump’s first term in office, when they overthrew Evo Morales, it was US-backed and Donald Trump congratulated that new government.
So Marco Rubio is an absolute neocon and he’s supported by AIPAC as well, he gets a lot of money from AIPAC, like many members of Trump’s cabinet.
GR: Wow, so, I mean, one thing that it’s quite possible that they would go, as you said, into Bolivia and Venezuela, like militarily, right?
TAG: I think they’re going to do an intervention. I don’t think Trump wants a war, directly, with Venezuela, now. I think they’re going to focus more on the Panama Canal, which I think is insane, and interestingly, I was in Panama, with my family a couple of years ago and, we visited the Panama Canal, we did the tourist thing and we were all around Panama and there was no Chinese troops, like Trump is claiming.
There was no, military Chinese people, patrolling the waterways or anything like that, that Trump is claiming. So, I think they’re going to focus more on trying to seize the Panama Canal and try to get it under US control, and that’s for, and that’s actually to stop the China’s Brick and Road Initiative, I think they, in a way, they want to stop, China’s influence in Latin America.
So, the Panamanians were really upset with this, with Trump announcing that they’re going to seize the Panama Canal. There was already protests in the streets. So, this is going to be very dangerous.
I think it’s going to be dangerous for two regions under Marco Rubio. I think it’s going to be dangerous for Latin America and I think it’s going to be extremely dangerous for the Middle East. No question about that.
GR: Well, where does Mike Waltz fit into this? Because he’s going to be the national security advisor. He’s also very much hawk leaning, right?
TAG: Oh, absolutely. Because Mike Waltz is, he’s going to be, elbow to elbow with Marco Rubio singing Kumbaya, because they, they both of them are, he’s another neocon war hawk.
He’s definitely anti-China and he’s also anti-Russia. So, he has spoken out before. I actually have a quote from him and I’m going to read to you if that’s okay.
Sure. His quote is, let me get it here, says, give me one second. And I saved it just for you.
So the administration, give me one second. I’m so, I’m so sorry. That’s okay.
There we go. Okay. I think a second Trump term will be energy policy.
And the fact is that sanctions haven’t been enforced on Russia. They’re selling more oil and gas through China and India than they ever did even before the war. Their war machine is flush with cash.
President Trump is, I think, going to get him to the table very quickly because if he enforces those sanctions, the old adage, Russia is a little more than a gas station with nukes, absolutely holds true. And this was Mike Waltz talking to Fox News. He was on Fox News and they were asking him about, what he thinks about Russia.
So he’s absolutely very hawkish on, on, on both of the major powers. So I think Mike Waltz is not, he’s definitely a war hawk. And, you don’t get into the, what it seems that you don’t get into the Trump White House, not being a war hawk.
GR: Pete Hegseth as the Secretary of Defense pick, he is, wow, I don’t know. I mean, this guy seems to be bordering on, on insane or something in terms of his, what I mean, to talk about his, his role on Israel and on the war hawk fence generally.
TAG: Yeah, well, he’s a self-admitted Christian Zionist. So he’s, he’s absolutely pro-Israel. So I think in the Trump regime, he’s going to be very hawkish on all these, on everyone in the Middle East.
And he’s going to be pro-Israel. I mean, he’s, he’s going to be giving them, he’s going to want more funding for Israeli weapons, and he’s going to want most likely to advance U.S. agenda in Israel. And who knows with a guy like Pete Hegseth, he’s probably going to want U.S. troops on the ground in Israel to help Israel.
So that’s what I believe. I think that, Pete Hegseth is a very dangerous individual. If you’ve seen any of his, when he was on Fox News and his hawkish stance on, on everything, from Venezuela to, to Russia, to China, to Hamas and Hezbollah and Iran, all of these guys, especially Pete Hegseth, they’re for war.
So I think it’s going to be a very dangerous time.
GR: Yeah. Well, I want to go through some of the other things.
We’ve got Elise Stefanik as a U.S. ambassador to the UN, Kristi Noem or Neem as a Secretary of Homeland Security, Pam Bondi as the Attorney General. And one thing they definitely all have in common is, against protecting Israel, at all costs, even to the extent of wanting to deport those people who they say are pro-Hamas, as opposed to anti-genocide, or maybe misinterpreting the two things. And that kind of is pushing them, it basically pushes away the actual constitutional rights of your fellow Americans, if I understand that.
TAG: That’s correct. Pam Bondi wants to deport people.
GR: As attorney general.
TAG: As attorney general, she wants to deport people for criticizing Israel. So, and Kristi Noem, she’s another Christian Zionist as well. She was the former governor of South Dakota who attended AIPAC meetings.
And, she’s an extreme Christian Zionist. And she’s a very hawkish when it comes to Israel, right? I mean, she’s sort of like another, the other guy that’s, he’s the U.S. ambassador to Israel, Mike Huckabee. Now, this guy is another lunatic.
And I’m sorry to say, he’s absolutely insane, this guy. He belittles Palestinians to the point where he makes them subhuman. So, to me, I think Mike Huckabee, Kristi Noem, Pam Bondi, I mean, these people are tailor-made, and they were selected by AIPAC to join the Trump’s administration.
So, they were at, they all, all of these people are highly supportive, especially Elise Stefanik. She’s going to be the U.S. ambassador to the U.N., and she’s going to be another Nikki Haley, who is, and they’re both on the on the same page. And even the lady that used to be under the Obama administration, if you remember, the lady with the red hair, I forgot her name.
She used to be under the Obama administration.
GR: Yeah, I know what you mean. Paseco or something?
TAG: Something like that, yeah.
She was another pro-Israel. She voted everything in favor of Israel when she was at the U.N., and the same thing as Nikki Haley. So, Elise Stefanik is just following in the same path.
These people were selected by AIPAC, and they’re no doubt warmongers, and they’ll do anything for Israel.
GR: Yeah, I just, maybe one more point. On the cabinet, I mean, John Ratcliffe is the director, now the director of Central Intelligence, and Tulsi Gabbard, who many people believe to be anti-war, is the director of National Intelligence.
I mean, what are the points about those two that you would underline as a caution?
TAG: Well, John Ratcliffe is the same as Mike Waltz. I mean, they have the same ideology. He’s definitely pro-Israel.
He’s anti-China. I think one of his main adversaries that he fears is China. That’s one of his main enemies that he wants to focus on.
But then again, these people are all going to, ocus on Iran. Ratcliffe is a pro-Israel supporter. He’s anti-Russia, anti-China as well.
And Tulsi Gabbard is interesting, right? I mean, you remember when she was talking about how she visited Bashar al-Assad in Syria, and she was investigating the chemical weapons attack and she wanted to end the war in Syria. But then again, when it came to Israel and the attack after October 7th, she changed her tune and we got to protect Israel it’s Hamas. Hamas is a terrorist organization, and I fought against terrorism when I was in the army, and so forth.
So Tulsi Gabbard is a mixed bag. She’s peace on one side, but when it comes to Israel on the other, she’s technically pro-Israel. And she attended the AIPAC meetings, right? She received funding when she was a congressperson from Israel, from AIPAC, and she – anything that comes with Israel, Michael, unfortunately, every single one of these cabinet members is pro-Israel.
Israel has a hold on U.S. Congress, no question about that, every single one of them, and especially Trump. Trump is worried about his legacy, right? He wants a statue in Tel Aviv somewhere saying that he saved Israel that’s Trump’s plan. He wants his legacy to be remembered as the man who saved Israel, right? And this is no different, by the way, from Joe Biden.
Remember when Joe Biden said I don’t believe you have to be a Jewish person to be a Zionist. I am a Zionist, right? So all of these people are all the same. Israel has a stronghold on the U.S. Congress and all the senators and all the congresspeople.
I mean, they have all of these people in their pockets, right? And on top of that, a lot of these people including Pete Hegseth and Mike Waltz and Huckabee and all of them, they still want the U.S. to be the prime superpower in the world? It’s still following the, what the Bush neocons, the Project for the New American Century, right? They want to rule the world. And that’s what these people want. And that’s what Trump wants.
Trump wants to be number one. He wants to be the sole empire that controls everything around the planet. I mean, this man wants to change the name from the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America.
Can you imagine that? I mean, it’s, I mean, people voted for Donald Trump because they wanted lower grocery prices, everything’s inflationary, everything’s expensive. The first order of business, he wants to change the name of the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America. Now things like that tells you that he’s a follower of the Monroe Doctrine, right? They should call it, as they say, the Don Rowe Doctrine, right? He wants to take over Canada.
He wants Canada to be a 51st state, which will never happen. That’ll be impossible. And he wants to take over Greenland. But going back to the whole thing of making Canada a 51st state, that cannot possibly happen because you will have to change, the U.S. will have to change its constitution.
You will have to give up some senators and probably congresspeople in certain states. And what happens when you lose senators and congresspeople, you lose funding for education, infrastructure, and all that type of stuff. So, you will have to make room for Canadians for Canadian senators and congresspeople and that would create chaos within the constitution and the way the U.S. operates.
So, that ain’t going to happen. I think he’s just saber rattling.
GR: And you had a whole bunch of billionaires this time, unprecedented 13 billionaires in among the cabinet posts. Elon Musk, of course, who’s a major figure, Mark Zuckerberg, and Jeff Bezos, just a few examples.
What do you think that degree of influence and that degree of visibility is going to tell you? Is it just going to, is it just, it puts aside the pretense of concern for the plight of the common man over the bosses? That’s not the real focus here. I mean, what can you add to that? What more might it mean in terms of actual policies affecting ordinary working class people?
TAG: I think they want to control the narrative, first and foremost, right? That’s why Trump, well, Biden actually had banned TikTok, right? The whole thing with TikTok. So now Trump wants the US to control 50% of TikTok from what I understood.
And it’s about controlling the narrative, right? I mean, Mark Zuckerberg said, oh, now I’m not going to have censorship but they are going to have censorship somehow, some way, especially if it’s critical of Israel. So it’s about controlling the narrative at one point. And Elon Musk has his own plans to expand his empire especially with things like Starlink and his space exploration, and they’re going to Mars, and he’s promising people that one day you’re going to go to Mars, which none of us are going to go to Mars and I don’t think any of us want to go to Mars, to be honest with you, there’s nothing up there.
But I think there’s going to be a more or less a controlling the narrative on with these online platforms, and these tech companies became very powerful, especially Facebook when it first came out, it was a very powerful platform to voice your opinion. And then, once COVID came out, you remember the whole thing with the pandemic, they were censoring many news stories, and they censored many alternative media websites, and about opinions and facts about the vaccines. So I think it’s going to be more or less a control of the narrative where they don’t want people to know.
And in relation to that, with all of these oligarchs, Trump was talking about that he wants to have education and public schools to make about America, about America’s greatness. Right?
GR: Yeah.
TAG: Right.
So that to me, that’s, that’s saying, I want to control what the students learn. I don’t want them to know about the true history, what happened to the indigenous peoples, what happens to Israel, or what happens to the Middle East or Latin America. Right.
So it’s all about the narrative, I think, with all these oligarchs. And Jeff Bezos is another billionaire who I guess wants to have his expand that Amazon, which, I don’t think he needs any more expanding, he’s made billions. But that’s what it is, to me, a more control of the narrative on these platforms.
And these platforms became more powerful than mainstream media right? I mean, they get more viewers and then Fox News and CNN and MSNBC, and even Newsmax, right? So I think that’s what it’s all going to be about in the end.
GR: Yeah, well, you gotta also consider, I mean, it’s, it’s gonna be like you say, shaping the narrative, but you’ve also got to consider that, I mean, especially with the cabinet picks that you put together, it will actually legalize in some sense, freedom of speech like, the freedom to speak out against Israel. I mean, when you have a cabinet secretary, who’s actually an Attorney General, who’s actually threatening to deport people who have the wrong opinion freedom of speech doesn’t just mean, it also means freedom of speech that you don’t like, but that’s not going to be applying here anymore.
So I mean, this, this is ultimately a threat to civil liberties, I believe.
TAG: Absolutely. Yeah.
It’s a total contradiction. It’s a total contradiction. Yeah.
GR: Yeah. And also, right now, they’re, they’re issuing these ICE officers to go out and as I mentioned they’re stopping and deploying illegal migrants. And I mean, that’s happening as we speak.
When you consider that the economy is lagging a bit, inflation is up, and so on. I mean, you got two, two basic approaches, you could, as in the 1930s, could get the New Deal going as something like that, with the emphasizing employment and so on, or go to war, a world war. And that’s ultimately what they decided, I guess, with all these debilitating years in the pike, I’m wondering, which option this, this government, the Trump government is likely to go? I mean, because I mean, there are four major fronts of battle, China/Taiwan, Ukraine/Russia, Israel/ Iran, and US/Latin America.
So even if triggered by an accident, is there any other alternative, you can see this scenario, given the monetary players and the cabinet?
TAG: Sorry to be pessimistic, Michael, but I think there’s going to be war. It’s like the one guy I listened to, occasionally is General Celente. And he says this famous quote, when all else fails, they take you to war.
And I think since the US economy is slowly collapsing, and all these deals that Trump is talking about, he wants to make it, half of these deals are going to fail, he’s not going to end the war between Russia and Ukraine. He just threatened them. I don’t know if you saw the news yesterday that, he’s going to slap tariffs, that he’s going to continue the sanctions.
And we could do it the easy way or we could do it the hard way, in his last tweet on Truth Social. So, in that aspect, I think that war is going to continue, they’re going to get to the table, he said he was going to end the war in 24 hours, now it’s 100 days, then it’s going to stretch out to six months, and then it’s going to stretch out to two years, right, it’s going to keep going. So, um, and then the thing with Iran, actually, a couple of days ago, a new video just came out with Eric Prince, he was the former CEO of Blackwater.
You remember him?
GR: Yes.
TAG: Yeah. Right.
So he just they just there’s a video on YouTube. And I, I applaud your viewers and listeners to watch this video is called Iran’s next target, Panama Canal. Right.
And he’s talking about that Iran is is is is is is eyeing the Panama Canal for some reason, right? They were they want to control the Panama Canal and target the US interest with these type of people talking about war and about invasions and, and so forth. I’m very pessimistic. I think there’s going to be a world war with Donald Trump and his peace to strength.
And when you insult Russia and saying that, we’re going to do it the easy way or the hard way. If not, if you don’t do what we say, we’re going to give you tariffs and sanctions, and the thing is, what saying what, how much more can you sanction Russia? Right? They most I think they’re one of the most sanctioned countries in the world. And Russia’s economy is not doing too bad. It’s doing okay.
Right. I mean, it’s not it’s not collapsing in any way, but it’s it’s it’s doing okay. It’s moving along.
They partnered up with China, they doing business within with India, the BRICS nations, right, the BRICS nations is rising. And Trump said, any country that deals with BRICS, they’re going to somehow get sanctioned or tariffs. So they’re going to pay pay a price for for dealing with BRICS, right? Those type of threats to me is is a call for war.
Right. So all of these people that’s in this cabinet, they all get preparing for war. And that’s the bottom line.
I don’t think I’m not optimistic about the America’s future. I think it’s an empire that’s dying. And when an empire dies, when they start to die, you’re going to see a lot of these wars, right? They backed up against the wall.
And once that happens, they’re going to go after, they’re going to start with the small countries that they can they know they can beat like Panama. Right. If the U.S. were to send U.S. Navy ships to Panama, what Panama can do? They don’t really have a formidable military.
Right.
GR: Yeah.
TAG: So they can do it with a country like that.
But, as we know, Michael, countries that fight back, America doesn’t do too well. Right. Look what happened in Iraq.
I’ve written about this before. Iraq and Afghanistan, these people fought these wars for 20 years, 20 years and, fighting and the U.S. really didn’t accomplish anything in these countries. Sometimes I think that these wars that that America starts and they know they’re not going to win is not to win the wars is to continue the war for the military industrial complex.
So they could continue producing the weapons, continue producing the results of of what they want in these countries. Right. So I think that the the next war, unfortunately, I think it’s going to be against Iran.
The Global Research News Hour airs every Friday at 1pm CT on CKUW 95.9FM out of the University of Winnipeg.
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Notes:
- https://www.bloomberg.com/news/videos/2025-01-21/trump-says-tariffs-are-most-beautiful-word-in-dictionary-video
- https://www.globalresearch.ca/live-inauguration-donald-trump-47th-president-united-states/5877773
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