If Chuck Schumer & Hakeem Jeffries keep their posts, the billionaires remain in control of the Democratic Party.

13 November 2026, posted by Eric Zuesse. (All of my recent articles can be seen here.)

https://theduran.com/democrats-running-cover-for-iran-war-max-blumenthal-on-judging-freedom/

https://www.youtube.com/live/N64v5wufE4M?si=phJ1Rqm3A_SNLWBe&t=75

“Democrats running cover for Iran war – Max Blumenthal on Judging Freedom”

1:15 JUDGE NAPOLITANO: What is your understanding of how and why the Democrats failed to muster enough votes to prevent the brilliantly crafted by Thomas Massie and his team articles of impeachment against Pete Hegsth from being dumped into oblivion in the judiciary committee? MAX BLUMENTHAL: Okay, well, this is part of a broader series of actions that the Democrats under the leadership of Hakeem Jeffries and Chuck Schumer are taking which are a betrayal of their base and of the mandate that they received from voters to end the Iran war. Hakeem Jeffries said he was enthusiastic and all in on impeaching Pete Hegseth immediately as soon as possible. This was Thomas Massie’s revenge for Hegseth coming down to his district to campaign against him. And his revenge for an Iran war that Massie stood out among the Republicans for opposing. And among the articles of impeachment was one of the worst war crimes in US history, the bombing of the girls school in Minab, which left some 170 students and teachers dead. The Democrats had the votes to get this impeachment bill through this resolution, and they somehow couldn’t come up with those votes because there was a meeting of an organization called EDW which was very which is being run by the Massachusetts Representative Katherine Clark and uh Lois Frankel from California at a kind of food court on East Capitol Sreet that uh I’m I’m pretty well familiar with, and they were meeting with uh Dropsite just reported this. They were meeting with executives from Lockheed Martin, from Coinbase, from Blue Cross, Blue Shield. So basically corporate America and the arms industry. And this um the EDW super PAC has been previously used as a conduit for AIPAC to fund elections and Democratic candidates. And so 11 uh 11 Democratic members didn’t show up to the vote. One of them was Nancy Pelosi, by the way. Eight others who didn’t show up had been at that meeting and they complained that they were stuck in traffic behind a bus that had a police escort. But the fact is I know that area well. You can walk to the capitol from that food court. It’s like a, you know, big building that is I would say a 15-minute walk to the capital. There are bike lanes going up and down the street. I’m sorry it’s not East Capitol. It’s Pennsylvania Avenue. They’re going up and down Pennsylvania Ave. You could rent a bike. You could rent a scooter in that moment using your Uber app to get there. Among the representatives who didn’t show up, Haley Stevens, a Democrat who endorsed Mike Rogers, the Republican who has been heavily funded by AIPAC. And who didn’t whip those members and tell them, “You need to be here, This is super important. We need to get you here. Don’t go to that fundraiser.” Hakeem Jeffries, the incoming majority leader, who has been a pet project of AIPAC ever since he entered Congress. Look, they could have called Hakeem Jeffries and said, “You vote the other way and then you can call for a revote by the time we get there.” You know the way it works. They could have done any one of a number of things to have assured that eventually they were on the floor in time to vote. NAPOLITANO: Absolutely. But it could be incompetence, but from the perspective of leadership, there’s no excuse for not getting them there. and it shows uh, let’s say, a lacadasical approach to impeaching one of the key authors of the Iran war, and I am quite certain that Jeffries and Chuck Schumer do not actually want to end the Iran war, and there are elements within the Democratic party that are presenting themselves as anti-war that may not actually want it to end either, such as the uh Israel lobby organization J Street, which is actually sort of the last line of defense for the Israel lobby after AIPAC within the Democratic Party. J Street signed on to a very unusual statement. I think it was like on November 5th after the election along with some other groups that I don’t necessarily consider anti-war but are more just uh Democratic uh you know push push organizations like MMove On or indivisible and uh Win Without War, which is a fake anti-war group and they declared that they opposed uh funding the war through a congressional resolution uh sorry through uh defense authorization or defense appropriation bill. And they said that uh if this is in their statement, if Trump continues the war into next year, we urge returning members to pass legislation defunding the war. The problem is, that’s not how the war is going to be funded. It means they’re giving Trump at least two more months because the war is going to be funded through a continuing resolution. Um, and that’s going to be passed uh in December, next month. So they were giving Trump the latitude to continue funding the war. And now we’re hearing from the incoming chair of the appropriations committee from the Democrats, Patty Murray, that they might be open to funding the war for another year. So, this, this statement, triggered a backlash from Chris Van Hollen, the Senator from Maryland, who has been one of the few Democrats who’s been really outspoken against the Gaza genocide, against the Iran war, uh declaring that this is absolutely unthinkable. The war has to be defunded now. Hollen may actually run for leadership against Chuck Schumer. Um, and the statement, uh, has been changed to remove that line about if Trump continues the war. But there’s a larger issue here. As I said, Chuck Schumer and Hakeem Jeffries do not want to end the Iran war. This is absolutely clear. This is what everybody needs to understand right now, and it needs to be said, and it needs to be countered. And they don’t want to end the war for two reasons. Number one, they want the Iran war to continue to hurt Donald Trump politically and they want the Republicans to be held responsible for it. And as long as they don’t have to take responsibility for it because they don’t hold executive power, it’s convenient for them. Remember when Chuck Schumer released his video just prior to the war, warning that Trump was going to taco or Trump always chickens out because he might have negotiated an off-ramp to the war with Iran. Chuck Schumer was daring Trump to go to war with Iran before it happened. And now he wants to keep it going for political reasons. Number two, ideological reasons. These are the key assets of the Israel lobby in the Democratic Party in Congress. They’re very valuable. They’re very ideologically outspoken in their support of Israel. You can see uh Israeli aligned forces mobilizing between behind Hakeem Jeffries. For example, Van Jones just issued a statement supporting his leadership, and they don’t want to end the blockade, because it will allow economic relief to Iran. Iranians will come out into the streets and they’ll be you know playing Majid Tazami’s epic of Koramshar celebrating the defeat of Iraq and this will be a defeat of the empire. They don’t want to see that. They don’t want Iran to be able to uh export oil and obtain revenue. They actually want regime change in Iran. They want to starve the Iranian people. They don’t want Iran to be able to send uh money to Shia uh citizens of Lebanon who have had their homes bombed and removed uh been removed and ethnically cleansed by Israel in southern Lebanon. They don’t want to see them moving back there. This these these this is so, so what we’re witnessing actually is the most insidious kind of Israel aligned opposition to ending this war in a total betrayal of the Democratic party’s base. And that’s why Hakeem Jeffries has to be opposed along with Chuck Schumer at every turn. And it’s really disgusting for me to see Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez declare her support for Jeffries. And even Zohron Mamdani not issue a single statement opposing Jeffries even though Mamdani’s not in Congress. He’s been asked about this, and he hasn’t uh he’s actually said, you know, he’s fine with Jeffries being there. No, there needs to be total opposition to this, because Jeffries means continuing this war. You’re when you say Zohron Mamdani, you’re talking about the uh Democratic Socialist mayor of New York. Is is it feasible that Senator Van Hollen could defeat Senator Schumer? I don’t know. I mean, probably not, but it’s worth a try. Schumer needs to be opposed. Um there Van Hollen was always able to uh mobilize at least uh 27 votes among the Democrats or 25 or 27 among the Democrats in support of various bills to cut off weapons to Israel and then the Schumer faction would come in along with the Republicans to prevent those from passing. So, but there needs to be a battle, and Schumer needs to be put on the spot over this and Jef, Jeffries, needs to be opposed at every turn because it’s very clear where this is going and what they’re going to do. And I think back to Congress in 2006 when the Democrats won a supermajority. Nancy Pelosi was the speaker and she made, she took the same exact position that Jeff is taking now. She’s speaker emeritus. She’s in his ear. She is a major recipient of AIPAC money. Uh she she once said that uh you know she’ll she she would do anything to prevent any harm to Israel, at an Israel lobby conference. Uh I think it was a crazier statement than that. But you know, she’s been in the tank for Israel for a long time. And in 2006 the Democratic base had been convinced that if they voted for the Democrats, the Iran the Iraq war would end and be defunded. Pelosi prevented that from happening. They didn’t, they wouldn’t get on the purse strings. So where are they now? Schumer, Jeff, Pelosi, the whole centrist faction that’s in the tank for Israel of the Democratic party [and that constitutes almost 100% of Congress] opposes shutting down the government to end the Iran war. They’re openly saying it in in in comments to the New York Times and other publications. And this is the only way to do it. This is the only way to get control of the purse strings. Shut down the war. Force the debate in the — it needs to happen and give the American people what they asked for when they voted Democrat. (12:44)

——

MY COMMENTS:

Numerous fully scientific studies have been done of whether the U.S. Government is a democracy or instead a dictatorship, and all have shown that it is a dictatorship and that it represents only the political megadonors, and virtually only billionaires. For whatever reason, practically speaking, the billionaires and the Israel-lobby have almost aways had the same priorities as one-another (and very different from the priorities of the American pubic), which are also the priorities of the military-industrial complex (actually just the Pentagon’s contractors) and the extraction corporations and the sickness industries. The brilliant investigative journalist Max Blumenthal has just explained here how they control both Parties by means of deceiving the public, and he named names of the leading traitorous individuals who especially must be replaced in order for the Government to have any chance of representing the public. He documented the way that America’s dictatorship works, and whom the megadonors’ top representatives (or “agents”) are. His having pointed out especially the traitorousness of Ocasio-Cortez (so famous she’s often called “AOC”), who is a likely ‘progressive’ candidate for the Party’s Presidential nomination, was especially bold. (Some of her votes in Congress have likewise indicated that she is, like Obama was, an extremely gifted liar.)

—————

Investigative historian Eric Zuesse’s latest book, AMERICA’S EMPIRE OF EVIL: Hitler’s Posthumous Victory, and Why the Social Sciences Need to Change, is about how America took over the world after World War II in order to enslave it to U.S.-and-allied billionaires. Their cartels extract the world’s wealth by control of not only their ‘news’ media but the social ‘sciences’ — duping the public.