S5: Episode 25 - Max Blumenthal

Hosts Rania Khalek and Kevin Gosztola welcome journalist Max Blumenthal, the editor of the Grayzone Project and co-host of the podcast, Moderate Rebels. He recently returned from a reporting trip in Nicaragua. Nicaragua has experienced violence over the past months, as opponents of President Daniel Ortega and the Sandinistas launched an insurrection back in April. The U.S. government, as Blumenthal reported, laid the for . He also Ortega. Blumenthal describes how he was shocked by the "extent of sadistic violence that was meted out against average supporters of the Sandinistas during the period in which the national police were ordered to stay in their barracks." He recalls meeting one person after another who was tortured, beaten, or kidnapped and how their stories were overwhelming. Blumenthal also outlines what he found out about the students who Western media have treated as leaders of democratic uprising, when that is not really the case. Later in the interview, Blumenthal breaks down how opposition groups set up roadblocks to establish zones of control and strangle the country economically. Blumenthal goes on to discuss how right-wing Republicans, like Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio, and Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, have helped meddle in Nicaragua, and the impact that U.S. sanctions have had.