| Speaker | Time | Text |
|---|---|---|
|
unidentified
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Division will join us to talk about the prosecution of Nicolas Maduro and his wife. | |
| And later, Ryan Berg from the Center for Strategic and International Studies will be here to talk further about the strikes on Venezuela. | ||
| All that and your phone calls, texts, and Facebook comments. | ||
| Washington Journal starts now. | ||
| We're there now, but we're going to stay until such time as the proper transition can take place. | ||
| So we're going to stay until such time as we're going to run it, essentially, until such time as a proper transition can take place. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
| It's Sunday, January 4th, 2026. | ||
| Deposed Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro is in the United States this morning following the dramatic military operation that led to the capture and extraction of the South American leader and his wife. | ||
| Now, President Donald Trump says the U.S. will run Venezuela for the time being. | ||
| We're taking your calls and comments on this still developing story this morning. | ||
| Our phone lines for Republicans, 202-748-8001. | ||
| For Democrats, 202-748-8000. | ||
| And for Independents, 202-748-8002. | ||
| If you're active in former military and have thoughts on this, you can call us at 202-748-8003. | ||
| That's also the number where you can text us, but please be sure to include your name and where you're writing in from. | ||
| We're also on social media at facebook.com/slash C-SPAN and on X at C-SPANWJ. | ||
| Now, we're still learning details of this ongoing story, but let's get a recap from the Associated Press, which reports here that Maduro arrives in the U.S. after a stunning capture in an operation that Trump says will let the U.S. run Venezuela. | ||
| Here it says, deposed Venezuelan leader Nicolas Maduro arrived in the United States to face criminal charges after being captured in an audacious nighttime military operation that President Donald Trump said would set the U.S. up to run the South American country and tap its vast oil reserves to sell to other nations. | ||
| Maduro landed Saturday evening at a small airport in New York following the middle-of-the-night operation that extracted him and his wife, Celia Flores, from their home in a military base in the Caracas, in the capital, Caracas, an act that Maduro's government called imperialist. | ||
| The couple faces U.S. charges of participating in a narco-terrorism conspiracy. | ||
| The dramatic action capped an intensive Trump administration pressure campaign on Venezuela's autocratic leader and months of secret planning, resulting in the most assertive American action to achieve regime change since the 2003 invasion of Iraq. | ||
| Legal experts raised questions about the lawfulness of the operation, which was done without congressional approval. | ||
| Venezuela's vice president, Del Codriguez, meanwhile, demanded that the United States free Maduro and called him the country's rightful leader as her nation's high court named her interim president. | ||
| Now let's have a look at those specific charges that Nicolas Maduro and his wife are going to be facing. | ||
| That includes narco-terrorism conspiracy, cocaine importation conspiracy, possession of machine guns and destructive devices, and conspiracy to possess machine guns and destructive devices. | ||
| Now, President Trump answered questions from reporters at his home in Mar-a-Lago, Florida, on the U.S.'s role in Venezuela in the aftermath of Maduro's ouster. | ||
| Let's listen. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Mr. President, does the U.S. running the country mean that U.S. troops will be on the ground? | |
| How will that work? | ||
| Well, you know, they always say boots on the ground. | ||
| Oh, so we're not afraid of boots on the ground if we have to have. | ||
| We had boots on the ground last night at a very high level, actually. | ||
| We're not afraid of it. | ||
| We don't mind saying it, but we're going to make sure that that country is run properly. | ||
| We're not doing this in vain. | ||
| This is a very dangerous attack. | ||
| This is an attack that could have gone very, very badly, could have gone very badly. | ||
| We could have lost a lot of people last night. | ||
| We could have lost a lot of dignity. | ||
| We could have lost a lot of equipment. | ||
| The equipment is less important, but we could have lost a lot. | ||
| And we're going to make sure that this is proper. | ||
| We're there now. | ||
| We're ready to go again if we have to. | ||
| We're going to run the country right. | ||
| It's going to be run very judiciously, very fairly. | ||
| It's going to make a lot of money. | ||
| We're going to give money to the people. | ||
| We're going to reimburse people that we're taking advantage of. | ||
| We're going to take care of everybody. | ||
| It's very important. | ||
| We couldn't let them get away with it. | ||
| You know, they stole our oil. | ||
| We built that whole industry there. | ||
| And they just took it over like we were nothing. | ||
| And we had a president that decided not to do anything about it. | ||
| So we did something about it. | ||
| We're late, but we did something about it. | ||
| Yeah, please. | ||
|
unidentified
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Were you explaining the exact mechanism by which you're going to run the country? | |
| Are you going to designate a justification? | ||
| It's all being done right now. | ||
| We're designating people. | ||
| We're talking to people. | ||
| We're designating various people. | ||
| And we're going to let you know who those people are. | ||
| Well, it's largely going to be for a period of time, the people that are standing right behind me. | ||
| We're going to be running it. | ||
| We're going to be bringing it back. | ||
| It's a dead, you know, I talk about a dead country. | ||
| A year and a half ago, we were a dead country. | ||
| Now we're the hottest country anywhere in the world. | ||
| We're a country doing better than any country anywhere in the world. | ||
| And it required leadership. | ||
| Venezuela has a lot of bad people in there, a lot of bad people that shouldn't be leading. | ||
| We're not going to take a chance at one of those people take over for Maduro. | ||
| So you can look at, and others, we have fantastic people, including people in the military. | ||
| So we're going to have a group of people running it until such time as it can be put back on track, make a lot of money for the people, and give people a great way of life, and also reimbursement for people in our country that were forced out of Venezuela. | ||
| Democrats in Congress have expressed strong opposition to the president's actions. | ||
| And in this case, the Senate is scheduled to vote next week to actually block Trump's military action against Venezuela, as reported here in thehill.com. | ||
| The Senate will vote next week on a bipartisan war powers resolution to block President Trump from continuing military action against Venezuela, a vote that takes on heightened importance after U.S. forces attacked the South American nation and arrested President Nicholas Maduro early Saturday. | ||
| The resolution to block the administration from engaging in further hostilities against Venezuela is privilege, which means the Senate Majority Leader John Thune cannot stop it from coming to the floor. | ||
| The measure is sponsored by Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, Senator Tim Kaine, Senator Rand Paul, and Senator Adam Schiff. | ||
| Now, Senator Tim Kaine said on Twitter, Maduro is terrible, but Trump put American service members at risk with this unauthorized attack. | ||
| The American people don't want more forever wars. | ||
| I urge my colleagues to vote for my war powers resolution to block further action and protect our troops. | ||
| Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer was on a phone call with the press yesterday and reacted to the U.S. strikes. | ||
| Let me be clear. | ||
| Maduro is an illegitimate dictator, but launching military action without congressional authorization, without a credible plan for what comes next is reckless. | ||
| Now, I was in this gift on three different occasions, as recently as December. | ||
| And I asked the administration, I said, I asked them, are you pursuing regime change? | ||
| Are you intent on taking military action in Venezuela, Venezuelan territory? | ||
| And they assured me that they were not pursuing those things. | ||
| Clearly, they're not being straight with the American people. | ||
| So I've been talking to so many members of my caucus today. | ||
| Everybody is very, very just totally, totally, totally troubled, worried about how dangerous this is. | ||
| Let me lay out just a few of the actions that have already been taken to hold the Trump administration accountable. | ||
| First, Leader Jeffries and I called on the Trump administration to brief the Gang of Eight immediately following, followed shortly by a briefing for the entire Congress in the beginning of next week. | ||
| We want to know the administration's objectives, its plans to prevent a humanitarian and geopolitical disaster that plunges us into another endless war, or one that trades one corrupt dictator for another. | ||
| There are so many questions that involve this. | ||
| Let's get to your calls. | ||
| We'll start with Dahlia in Miami on our line for Republicans. | ||
| Good morning, Dahlia. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| In Miami, unlike other places, people are very happy that Mazuro is no longer there. | ||
| What people do not understand is the Democrats have been trying to push us into socialism. | ||
| Socialism destroys places. | ||
| They did it in Cuba. | ||
| If people want to know what Cuba was like back in 1958 and what it is like now, they can look it up. | ||
| The Mazuro and Chavez, who was the one that started everything, has taken Venezuela to the ground. | ||
| Do you think they have used their oil for the benefit of the people? | ||
| No. | ||
| On the contrary, it's to line their pockets with the money. | ||
| And if you dare, if you dare complain, they throw you in jail or they kill you, whatever is next. | ||
| What has happened in Venezuela is that he's been taken over and he has given ground to China, to Iran, to Russia to have a foothold there. | ||
| Why do you think many of the other South American countries, all of a sudden, they're throwing out the people who are on the left out? | ||
| Because they're trying to destroy their country. | ||
| And now, Russia, China, Iran, Hezbollah, their foot on that country is out. | ||
| Next up is Marvin in Philadelphia on our line for Democrats. | ||
| Good morning, Marvin. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, I like what that lady said, but she don't understand that this can break out to a bigger event. | |
| You got Russia and China and Iran that's getting oil from Venezuela. | ||
| Now the United States is going to take over the oil. | ||
| I wonder if that money is going to go to the people. | ||
| And I wonder what Russia and China are going to do in retaliation of the United States doing what they're doing. | ||
| So that means that gives China a right to run into Taiwan. | ||
| And well, that money that Trump and his cronies is doing in the Venezuela to take over the government and the oil is going to go to the people. | ||
| First of all, he went over there for drugs. | ||
| What happened to that? | ||
| You know, he put our service members in bodily harm to line his pockets and his cronies' pockets. | ||
| I know Maduro is a bad president, but the way that we did it was not feasible by the United States belief. | ||
| He's supposed to run to Congress. | ||
| He's supposed to have congressional clarity to do something like this. | ||
| And he didn't. | ||
| He just went in and did it just to be doing it. | ||
| And now he's taking over the oil. | ||
| Several folks, the last two callers, mentioned the oil aspect of this story. | ||
| Here's a story about that in Fox News: that the U.S. capture of Maduro throws spotlight on Venezuela's massive oil reserves. | ||
| Story going on to say that Venezuela, that Trump accused Venezuela's socialist government of seizing American energy assets and dismantling an industry built with U.S. investment. | ||
| Venezuela unilaterally seized and sold American oil, American assets, and American platforms, costing us billions and billions of dollars. | ||
| Trump said during a news conference at Mar-a-Lago in Palm Beach, Florida. | ||
| They took all of our property. | ||
| Roughly twice the size of California, Venezuela holds the world's largest proven oil reserves, an estimated 300 billion barrels, about 20% of the global total, and nearly four times U.S. reserves. | ||
| That endowment dwarfs that of any other nation. | ||
| Much of that oil, however, is difficult and expensive to produce. | ||
| Venezuela's reserves are dominated by heavy and extra-heavy crude that requires specialized equipment, constant maintenance, and advanced refining capacity, much of which has deteriorated after years of underinvestment and skilled labor losses. | ||
| Kelvin is in Joppa, Maryland, on our line for Republicans and is a veteran. | ||
| Good morning, Kevin. | ||
| Kelvin. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes, good morning. | |
| Thank you for taking my call. | ||
| And this is a wake-up call for all of us. | ||
| You know, if we believe that we can invade a sovereign country and not have the rest of the world stand by and let us get away with it, we're mistaken. | ||
| This is going to allow Putin to continue to do what he's doing in Ukraine. | ||
| It may, like China and other countries, Iran, our adversaries, North Korea, to do things that may create more of a domino effect. | ||
| So all I can say is as a veteran, we definitely need to be praying for our servicemen and be praying for the leadership here because this is definitely a troubled season that we're getting ready to move into. | ||
| And with that, I'll pass it back to you. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| Robert is in Chesterfield, Virginia, on our line for independence. | ||
| Good morning, Robert. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Thank you. | |
| The two previous callers said a lot that I would have liked to say. | ||
| I agree with them. | ||
| But look, Donald Trump and Hedgehog, all of them, they're indoctrinating the armed forces in this country. | ||
| They're praising them up so big. | ||
| They want to control this country, and they're not going to have. | ||
| Donald Trump said there'll never be elections again if he was elected. | ||
| He really thinks he's going to take this country over and run it as a dictator. | ||
| And I can tell you one thing: it could be a lot of tremor all over this right here. | ||
| Donald Trump is a crook. | ||
| He's probably getting paid from the oil companies to go down there and take back this country because of the oil. | ||
| And The drug dealers that he's let out of prison. | ||
| He'll let Maduro if he's got enough money in a few months, probably. | ||
| But look, America, wake up. | ||
| We've got to get rid of this guy one way or the other. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| Chuck is in Pauley's Island, South Carolina on our line for independence. | ||
| Good morning, Chuck. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hi. | |
| Good morning. | ||
| I appreciate you finally taking my call. | ||
| Adi, I have degrees in finance, and I can tell you point blank, America, that capitalism is the root of all evil. | ||
| And so long as we have a capitalistic society, there's going to continue to be greed corruption. | ||
| You know, I don't understand. | ||
| Obviously, I mean, I like what everybody has said. | ||
| You know, Trump has no reason now to go after Putin. | ||
| They've been battling for the Ukraine since World War II. | ||
| I mean, Hitler went after the oil fields. | ||
| The only thing that really gets to me is: I mean, obviously, the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor. | ||
| We had a reason to go after the Japanese. | ||
| It's just one, as Schumer said, it's one dictator trying to take over another dictator in control of the American. | ||
| I mean, control of the world. | ||
| And that's basically all it is. | ||
| And as long as we continue to vote, I mean, I would say don't vote, period, America, for any politician whatsoever. | ||
| Because obviously, the politicians that we put in office, I mean, they're not there to serve the people. | ||
| They're there to serve themselves. | ||
| And that's what we have to live with. | ||
| So, I mean, I don't understand why we're not going after Mexico. | ||
| They're one of the largest producers of cocaine coming to the country. | ||
| The last five presidents for Mexico have been run by cartels. | ||
| But yeah, we're not taking, you know, no, we're not going against Mexico. | ||
| We're not going against China, who's bringing in large amounts of Sentinel, you know, continuously. | ||
| So I don't understand the logic here. | ||
| I mean, obviously, Noriega, we got him out of power at one point, but it's just until we go after the true countries, Mexico, China. | ||
| I mean, if we really, you know, want to take on the drug war and defeat the drug war, you know, those are two countries that are bigging question. | ||
| And I don't understand why we're not going after them if this is all about, you know, illegal drugs coming in and destroying our country. | ||
| So. | ||
| Next up is Gary in Berlin, New Hampshire on our line for Democrats. | ||
| Good morning, Gary. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| Well, you know, this goes back, you know, first of all, Trump should have gotten congressional approval to do this. | ||
| That is clearly stated in the Constitution. | ||
| If anybody wants to look it up, look it up. | ||
| It states very clearly that a president to authorize war against any country or adversary has to get congressional approval. | ||
| This goes back to the Supreme Court giving him the immunity to do whatever he damn well pleases. | ||
| And this is a sin. | ||
| He should not be allowed to get away with stuff that he feels like doing. | ||
| It's not right. | ||
| He should have clearly, clearly gotten approval from the United States Congress to do this. | ||
| I clearly think he should be impeached. | ||
| Next up is Gerald in Dalton, Michigan on our line for Republicans. | ||
| Good morning, Gerald. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hey, good morning. | |
| How are you doing? | ||
| Fine, thank you. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I was wondering why it is that, you know, the administration down there under Maduro was shipping illegal drugs across the ocean in order to get them into the United States. | |
| And all they're about is just making money off those drugs. | ||
| And it's killing a bunch of citizens in the United States. | ||
| Now, all these citizens are taking these drugs. | ||
| They, you know, knowingly are doing the drugs. | ||
| But still, to make them accessible, you know, Maduro was shipping these drugs in. | ||
| And as many of those ships as we took out, he continued to do so. | ||
| So why not take a dictator like him out and arrest him? | ||
| He has just destroyed our country, our young people, and influenced them in a way that really is terrible. | ||
| I mean, it's terrible. | ||
| But oil is their chief investment and drives their economy. | ||
| And so I can understand why Trump would want to take out their oil. | ||
| Now, it just, anyway, I'll let you go. | ||
| Thanks. | ||
| Thanks for letting me talk. | ||
| Mike is in Sydney, Montana on our line for independence. | ||
| Good morning, Mike. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Oh, hello, Kimberly. | |
| How are you? | ||
| Happy New Year to you. | ||
| Let's not forget if Taiwan shipped dope to China, China would literally wipe out Taiwan overnight. | ||
| I mean, we have the Monroe Doctrine, and it's to protect our country. | ||
| But we've had very weak administrations in the past, all the way to President Reagan, that are not going to do anything about the dope on our streets, our young children bent over with their fingers touching the gutter in a zombie-type position, laying everywhere on our streets. | ||
| All our major streets now are ruined. | ||
| They're so filthy and full of homeless. | ||
| And my dad worked in Venezuela for many years after World War II. | ||
| He grew up in Panama, but he told me about Venezuela, how beautiful it was, and we had friends down there, and it was awesome. | ||
| Local 798 welders out of Oklahoma welded every inch of their refineries, as well as Arabia. | ||
| And our military's goal plainly states to get the mission is to get in harm's way, to protect Americans, to destroy and be destroyed. | ||
| And the Monroe doctrine is still in effect. | ||
| And I think Trump has made a great Southern command center for us to control the Gulf of America, which is going to basically control the whole Western hemisphere. | ||
| This is fantastic, long overdue. | ||
| And one thing, Hugo Chavez was right about, President Bush did let off a smell of sulfur. | ||
| Thank you, Kimberly. | ||
| All right. | ||
| Next up is John in Eastern Pennsylvania on our line for Democrats. | ||
| Good morning, John. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hello. | |
| Your callers are spot on. | ||
| He was right that from Reagan on, they really screwed Republicans really screwed this country up. | ||
| And the worst part is that Trump wants to become a dictator. | ||
| And the way to do that is to take a dictator out. | ||
| That's exactly what he did yesterday, the day before. | ||
| Okay? | ||
| And that's dangerous because they got a oil reserves and gold reserves that he's interested in because of the money. | ||
| Okay? | ||
| And the other part is that other caller was right about the children. | ||
| The youth today, they do not have any hope of finding a job because we sold ourselves out to the Chinese to build them up. | ||
| And now they're all built up. | ||
| And what are they doing? | ||
| They're building warships. | ||
| And they're pushing everybody around. | ||
| Are we not for something or not? | ||
| Republicans don't think one minute about what they're doing. | ||
| All right. | ||
| A previous caller referred to the Monroe Doctrine, which was something that the President also mentioned quite a bit during his press conference yesterday. | ||
| Let's listen to him talking about the attack on Venezuela and reasserting the Monroe Doctrine and now talking about a Donroe doctrine. | ||
| Under the now deposed dictator Maduro, Venezuela was increasingly hosting foreign adversaries in our region and acquiring menacing offensive weapons that could threaten U.S. interests and lives. | ||
| And they used those weapons last night. | ||
| They used those weapons last night, potentially in league with the cartels operating along our border. | ||
| All of these actions were in gross violation of the core principles of American foreign policy, dating back more than two centuries and not anymore. | ||
| All the way back, it dated to the Monroe doctrines. | ||
| And the Monroe Doctrine is a big deal, but we've superseded it by a lot. | ||
| By a real lot. | ||
| They now call it the Donro document. | ||
| I don't know. | ||
| It's Monroe Doctrine. | ||
| We sort of forgot about it. | ||
| It was very important, but we forgot about it. | ||
| We don't forget about it anymore. | ||
| Under our new national security strategy, American dominance in the Western Hemisphere will never be questioned again. | ||
| Back to your calls on the U.S. actions in Venezuela and the President's statement that we will be running the country for the time being. | ||
| Kevin is in Malden, Massachusetts, on our line for independence. | ||
| Good morning, Kevin. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes. | |
| Yeah, please give me a minute. | ||
| It was all about the oil. | ||
| Guyana has a lot of oil. | ||
| And they have a puppet government there. | ||
| Guyana have about 800 and something thousands of people. | ||
| And they have trillions of dollars worth in oil. | ||
| And the people are in poverty. | ||
| The guy from South Carolina, I think he put it over the best. | ||
| It's all about capitalism. | ||
| And it's colonial behavior. | ||
| These people are criminal. | ||
| They're terrorists. | ||
| If they wanted to go after drugs, all they have to go after is the Italian cartel, the mafia. | ||
| They're the biggest drug dealers. | ||
| It was an excuse. | ||
| I'm sorry that the American public is so educated and they totally missed that, that it's criminal behavior. | ||
| Look at Libya. | ||
| Look at all the countries that America invaded. | ||
| Look at Africa, wealthy country. | ||
| They go in these countries, destroy these countries to steal all their wealth. | ||
| And they're claiming that people are terrorists. | ||
| When you want to look at terrorists, look at the United States president in the mirror. | ||
| All he has to do is look at himself in the mirror and he'd see the definition of a terrorist. | ||
| Sorry. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| You guys have a wonderful day. | ||
| Appreciate it. | ||
| Kylene is in Butte, Montana, on our line for Democrats. | ||
| Good morning, Kylene. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hi. | |
| I wanted to say that, God bless our military. | ||
| They did a beautiful job. | ||
| They do what they're asked to do. | ||
| Now, this is insane. | ||
| Do they really think that we have a team of people, our people, go down there and take over their government? | ||
| This is ridiculous. | ||
| And as far as drugs go, as long as the Americans will buy them, someone will sell them to us. | ||
| We started with prohibition trying to stop the flow of alcohol. | ||
| That was 100 years ago. | ||
| We keep doing the same thing. | ||
| And 70% of the guns the cartels get come from us. | ||
| If they could make as much money selling just chocolate flavor flip-flops, that's what they would do. | ||
| So thank you very much. | ||
| Once again, God bless the troops. | ||
| And the way he's rewarding them is to fire more doctors and nurses from the VA. | ||
| So I'm a little confused. | ||
| Anyway, like I said, thank you. | ||
| Let's look at a few reactions from members of Congress to the strikes in Venezuela and the extraction of Nicolas Maduro. | ||
| Senator Tina Smith says, this unauthorized strike will embolden our adversaries' competitors. | ||
| It's compromising our global economic and security interests. | ||
| Doesn't seem like America first to me. | ||
| Representative Jim McGovern says, big oil spent millions and millions to get Trump elected. | ||
| They're getting a great return on their investment. | ||
| And then both Donald Trump and JD Vance, JD Vance responding to President Trump's statement on Truth Social about the strikes, Vice President JD Vance said, the president offered multiple off-ramps but was very clear throughout this process. | ||
| The drug trafficking must stop and the stolen oil must be returned to the United States. | ||
| Maduro is the newest person to find out that President Trump means what he says. | ||
| And then Thomas Massey said, if this action were constitutionally sound, the Attorney General wouldn't be tweeting that they've arrested the president of a sovereign country and his wife for possessing guns in a violation of a 1934 U.S. firearm law. | ||
| And if you're interested in reading that entire indictment of all of the charges that Nicholas Maduro and his wife are facing, you can find that on our website, c-span.org. | ||
| Let's go to Patricia in Washington, D.C. on our line for independence. | ||
| Good morning, Patricia. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning, and thank you for taking my call. | |
| I was outraged by this effort of the president. | ||
| I mean, I don't even know where to begin. | ||
| First of all, everyone knows that cocaine and fentanyl come from Mexico and China, respectively. | ||
| How on God's green earth is the oil reserves of a sovereign country the property of the United States? | ||
| I mean, this is absolutely outrageous. | ||
| It is criminal, and I'm hoping that the Congress can do something about this. | ||
| The other point is other presidents have used diplomacy in an effort to avoid conflicts. | ||
| This can potentially result in World War III because it is antagonizing other countries. | ||
| You have Iran. | ||
| You also have Russia, which has had some undue influence over this president, as well as China and a number of other neighboring countries. | ||
| This is outrageous. | ||
| And people who are celebrating this, I think that they're very ill-informed. | ||
| I mean, one other point. | ||
| So if another country doesn't believe that Donald Trump is running this country properly, can they come up with trumped-up charges and remove him and install who they think should be running this country? | ||
| Think people, this is absolutely outrageous. | ||
| And I will land there. | ||
| Thank you for taking my call. | ||
| Jim Hines expressed something similar on X saying, so what lessons did the Chinese learn in the last 24 hours about the legitimacy of unprovoked military attacks on neighboring countries? | ||
| How about the Russians? | ||
| Bill is in Mart, Texas, on our line for Republicans. | ||
| Good morning, Bill. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, I'd just like to say, God bless Donald Trump. | |
| He did an excellent job. | ||
| I mean, beyond excellent. | ||
| Marco Rubio, the military, Donald Trump just give the military $1,776 checks, all the military, and God bless him for doing that. | ||
| God bless what they did yesterday. | ||
| And a lot of these people calling in are nothing but communists, radical left lunatics. | ||
| There's nothing but communists. | ||
| They hate America. | ||
| The people of Venezuela, down Florida and in the streets of Venezuela right now are celebrating. | ||
| They love Donald Trump. | ||
| They love him. | ||
| And I mean, so you got nothing but radical left communists calling in this morning. | ||
| That's what they do. | ||
| They line up where they go. | ||
| Then we have an election and the truth comes out. | ||
| And then Donald Trump won. | ||
| And if he was to have an election right now, then he'd win again. | ||
| But you got on these calls, you got a lot of left-wing radical communists that they hate America. | ||
| They want these drugs to come in. | ||
| These Democrats, just like at fraud up in Minnesota, they're fraud. | ||
| They cheat America. | ||
| They steal from America. | ||
| Just like a lot of these radical left communists, that's what they are, terrorist communists. | ||
| That's what they are calling in. | ||
| They hate America. | ||
| And just like them people up in Portugal. | ||
| Billy is in New York on our line for Democrats. | ||
| Good morning, Billy. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| If this was about drugs and he was blowing up those boats coming off of Venezuela, it seems to me they would at least capture one to find out whether it was drugs on it or not. | ||
| But my main point is, thank God for some of the people that is calling this station right now. | ||
| They're not radical left. | ||
| They're Americans, and we're proud to be Americans. | ||
| But I tell you this, yeah, we can't let this criminal keep doing what he's doing. | ||
| Watch out, Africa, because Africa is going to be next. | ||
| Nigeria is in its sights. | ||
| So be careful. | ||
| Bona Faso, Miley, all those countries are mineral rich. | ||
| So watched out. | ||
| This man be coming in there next. | ||
| So I'm just proud of everybody that's calling right now and talking against what this criminal is doing to us. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| Next up is Ken in San Diego, California on our line for independence. | ||
| Good morning, Ken. | ||
|
unidentified
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How you doing? | |
| Thank you for taking my call. | ||
| As a 20-year-plus combat veteran, served U.S. Navy, deployed numerous times to various parts of the world. | ||
| This is ridiculous. | ||
| The reason I'm saying that is the Coast Guard with legal enforcement operations always have done the drug enforcement and seizures, and there's always been press. | ||
| What we're seeing now is a total regime change. | ||
| How long ago did we go through this with Iraq, Afghanistan, with the same outcome? | ||
| This has to stop. | ||
| We are using the military, and I love my brothers and sisters, as pawns and corporate greed because 17% of the oil is in Venezuelan soil. | ||
| We have to stop looking externally and look internally and stop this communism, Democrat, Republican. | ||
| This is a problem we've been having since the Vietnam War, taking over countries that you seem weaker. | ||
| And we just have to just realize we don't own anything outside of the United States. | ||
| Stop being the policeman of the world and start being more of a leader showing what consensus and compromise and civil debate is about. | ||
| This country needs that within itself. | ||
| Thank you for taking my call. | ||
| Bill is in Ohio on our line for Republicans. | ||
| Good morning, Bill. | ||
| Bill, please make sure to turn down the volume on your TV and then please go ahead with your. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes, it is. | |
| I mute it. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| Yeah, I'm happy about what happened. | ||
| Maduro was nothing more than Manuel Norgiega, he's a drug trafficker, and the routes come up through Venezuela. | ||
| You know, when you have a crooked guy running the country like that, that's he's a drug trafficker, nothing more. | ||
| And as far as the people saying, oh, he did this, he did that, they also sent all their Tran Diagra criminals up here with Joe Biden's border open. | ||
| All these people calling in here complaining were fine with Joe Biden letting all these rapists and killers in here. | ||
| How many people died by illegal immigrants that shouldn't have been here in the first place? | ||
| Okay, so these are all the people that are crying. | ||
| If Donald Trump cured cancer, they'd be protesting that too. | ||
| We're just tired of it. | ||
| You know, it's enough already. | ||
| And then, you know, you got the people protesting ICE because of all this. | ||
| That's crazy. | ||
| You know, this guy took out a criminal that was allowing our enemies were right involved with him. | ||
| You know, they're arming. | ||
| They are arming Venice. | ||
| They were arming Venezuela and taking oil from there. | ||
| So, you know, it's everybody that's complaining about it. | ||
| You know, I guess you don't like America or you don't like, you know, security. | ||
| So this is what happens. | ||
| Wellesley is in Metairie, Louisiana on our line for independence. | ||
| Good morning, Wesley. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| My issue with this is that as an independent, I don't really care. | ||
| This man was an archoterrorist, and this is to make a point to other countries in the region. | ||
| Number one. | ||
| Number two, don't care about their oil. | ||
| That country has more mineral rights. | ||
| The one next to it, Colombia, has even more. | ||
| Mexico and Colombia better get their minds right because he's tired of their drug trafficking into the country. | ||
| Education is our biggest problem. | ||
| These people have Hezbollah in their country, Iran, China, and Russia. | ||
| Just by being 200 miles south of us, we really need to educate ourselves. | ||
| I mean, I started out as a Democrat, the Democrats left me. | ||
| Where they're at now, God bless. | ||
| So I became an independent. | ||
| But I'm from Louisiana. | ||
| So I'm what you call a compassionate conservative. | ||
| I have no right to tell another man what to do. | ||
| But we need to be realistic. | ||
| This man is bad news. | ||
| Get rid of him. | ||
| As far as Trump's concerned, let him serve on his term. | ||
| He's going to do the best he can in the four years he's there. | ||
| And get over the fact that the poor man is going to run forever. | ||
| He's 80 years old. | ||
| Thank you for taking my call, and you have a blessed day. | ||
| Paul is in Plantation, Florida, on our line for Republicans. | ||
| Good morning, Paul. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| So Donald Trump has become the wider of American presidents. | ||
| He may not read all the law books. | ||
| He may not always do things the right way, but he's going to clean up the town. | ||
| And that's what Donald Trump's doing. | ||
| Meanwhile, the town people, the Democrats, want to hide under the covers. | ||
| They actually accused Donald Trump of being an isolationist. | ||
| And now he's taking care of the world. | ||
| He's cleaning up these bad people. | ||
| And I don't know what the Democrats are saying now. | ||
| But getting back to Venezuela specifically, this is a lesson to people who might want to have a socialist government. | ||
| They do the same thing every time. | ||
| They promise the lower class wonderful things and that they'll be moderate and govern evenly and all of these great things. | ||
| And then when they get into power, it evolves and becomes strong then. | ||
| And then the population finds out about it at the same time that they've always found out about it when it's too late. | ||
| It was too late for the Venezuelans. | ||
| Somebody had to save the day. | ||
| Donald Trump and the United States came in and saved the day. | ||
| Actually, what broke the camel's back? | ||
| It's when, what's his name, Maduro, was going to start detaining Americans. | ||
| That was the end of it. | ||
| That was more than anybody could take or wait for. | ||
| So I honestly think that all of this criticism of Donald Trump boils down to one thing. | ||
| The people call in, you're not fooling me. | ||
| You don't care anything about Donald Trump. | ||
| What you care about is your government contracts and your freebies. | ||
| So I don't know who you think you're fooling when you criticize Donald Trump, but you're not fooling me. | ||
| Joe is in Springfield, Massachusetts on our line for Democrats. | ||
| Good morning, Joe. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, good morning. | |
| I just have to make a few comments here. | ||
| Just make sure your TV volume is turned down, Joe, but go ahead. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Happy New Year's to you. | |
| And I was just wondering, about, I don't know, three, four months ago, the Russian president flew in to Alaska, shook the president's hand, walked down the red carpet, and he's a war criminal, I think, right? | ||
| The United Nations has definitely criticized his actions. | ||
| I'm not sure what your point is, though. | ||
| Joe, go ahead. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| Well, Mandoro is what's the difference between Putin and him? | ||
| He could have arrested Putin right there and ended the war. | ||
| Thank you for my comment. | ||
| American people need to wake up. | ||
| Kareth is in, excuse me, Paul is in Kingston, New York on our line for Democrats. | ||
| Good morning, Paul. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hi. | |
| The aggression of America against Venezuela predates Maduro. | ||
| It actually began under George W. Bush when he invaded Iraq. | ||
| The then president of Venezuela went before the United Nations live on TV. | ||
| I saw this as it happened live on TV at the United Nations. | ||
| The then president of Venezuela did a comedy routine mocking George W. Bush for invading Iraq, also criticized him severely for his treatment of several Latin American countries. | ||
| And that president of Venezuela did a comedy routine on TV that would have been hysterical on Saturday Night Live. | ||
| After that, George W. Bush targeted Venezuela for economic destruction and twisted the arms of our allies to do the same. | ||
| And that's when it all began. | ||
| I don't know how many people remember a children's TV program that was Walt Disney-like, originated from Caracas, Venezuela before that when we were at peace with them. | ||
| Critics around the world said it was the best children's TV program that ever aired. | ||
| Disney would have been proud of it. | ||
| I still have some of the episodes on DVD today that aired in this country on Univision. | ||
| It was called Los Club, no, El Club de los Tigritos, which meant the club of the Little Tigers. | ||
| They had comedy routines. | ||
| They had singing and dancing and musical numbers that would have been great in Hollywood or on Broadway every week. | ||
| And I still have it on DV. | ||
| All those children singing, dancing, doing comedy routines, they were so happy. | ||
| And there wasn't one of them that was anti-American. | ||
| Kareth is in Florida on our line for independence. | ||
| Good morning, Kareth. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| This action is one of those that will continue to make America one of the richest third world countries. | ||
| And, you know, we get the leadership we deserve. | ||
| The president, throughout his business career, demonstrated that, you know, he's like, he's a bully. | ||
| He does things based on his gut. | ||
| He's reckless. | ||
| There's this bravado. | ||
| He's an ignoramus. | ||
| And he's a charlatan. | ||
| And I think the reason why we're having this action in Venezuela is because our strategic reserves are the lowest they've been, I think, in history. | ||
| And Venezuela has signed a contract with the BRICS nation and the Crinks Nation. | ||
| I think Crinks has to do with China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea to provide them with oil. | ||
| And these guys are trading in their currency and not in U.S. currency. | ||
| So this is a threat to us. | ||
| And this is a move by the government to make sure that they can somehow inoculate themselves against the consequences. | ||
| But I hope the American people are taking note and understanding the hypocrisy. | ||
| And we said we weren't going to be going around the world and be the police of the world. | ||
| But this is clearly what we continue to do. | ||
| And we have a whole lot of problems that are going on in our own country that are not being addressed. | ||
| And when you think about the hypocrisy of we in Venezuela, we have American companies or a American company that can still drill oil despite all the atrocities being committed against people. | ||
| We have the relationship with Russia, relationship with China that we're trying to forge. | ||
| And these guys, they do vile things against their people. | ||
| And we maintain relationships with them simply because of economic or financial reasons. | ||
| And we are not really concerned about what is the best interest of the American people who continue to struggle, can't pay their bills, work hard, and not seeing the fruits of their labor. | ||
| We have issues that we need to address in this country. | ||
| We shouldn't be participating or intervening in other countries because they're having the same kind of economic problems that we're having here in our country. | ||
| Thanks. | ||
| All right, that's all the time that we have for this segment. | ||
| But coming up later on Washington Journal, we're going to have more on Nicolas Maduro's ouster in Venezuela and the challenges facing the U.S. in the aftermath. | ||
| We'll speak with an expert in that part of the world, Ryan Berg, Director of the Americas program and head of the Future of Venezuela Initiative at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. | ||
| But first, after the break, we'll take a closer look at the criminal indictments against Maduro with Joseph Moreno, a former federal prosecutor in the Department of Justice's National Security Division. | ||
| We'll be right back. | ||
|
unidentified
|
July 4th, 2026 marks the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence. | |
| And tonight, on C-SPAN's QA, we're joined by former U.S. Treasurer and the chair of the America 250 Commission, Rosie Rios. | ||
| She'll talk about several of the events that will occur over the next year, including the U.S. Army's 250th anniversary parade back in June and other initiatives that the public can participate in leading up to the anniversary. | ||
| The movement and the moments. | ||
| And let me just say, there's a couple of moments that are unprecedented, that have never happened before in this country, that are being planned as we speak. | ||
| That is so unreal. | ||
| If I showed you the screenshot of what we're planning, your first reaction, as it was for our commission, was: you've got to be kidding, it's happening. | ||
| And it is happening. | ||
| So stay tuned. | ||
| Much more to come. | ||
| But again, what I'm most excited about is continuing our programming long after 2026. | ||
|
unidentified
|
America 250 Commission Chair Rosie Rios tonight at 8 p.m. Eastern on C-SPAN's QA. | |
| You can listen to Q&A and all of our podcasts on our free C-SPAN Now app. | ||
| On this episode of Book Notes Plus with our host, Brian Lamb. | ||
| Irish-American writer Frank McCourt wrote a book in 1996 that was on the New York Times bestseller list for over 100 weeks. | ||
| Over the next 20 years, Angela's Ashes sold close to 10 million books worldwide. | ||
| It was translated into 24 languages. | ||
| McCord, who was born in New York City, moved with his family to Limerick, Ireland for his childhood years. | ||
| Frank McCord died at age 78 in 2009 of melanoma cancer. | ||
| He was a guest on the BookNotes television program on September 19, 1996. | ||
|
unidentified
|
We revisit an interview with Frank McCord and his book, Angela's Ashes, a memoir. | |
| BookNotes Plus with our host, Brian Lamb, is available wherever you get your podcasts and on the C-SPAN Now app. | ||
| Washington Journal continues. | ||
| Welcome back. | ||
| We're continuing our coverage of the aftermath of the U.S. strikes in Venezuela and the extraction of Nicholas Maduro and his wife and their upcoming prosecution in New York. | ||
| To help us through the details of the legal aspect of this case, I'm joined now by Joseph Moreno, who's a former federal prosecutor with the Department of Justice's National Security Division. | ||
| Thanks for coming in and welcome to Washington Journal. | ||
| Kimberly, good to be here. | ||
| So let's talk about this indictment. | ||
| We've got a narco-terrorism conspiracy, cocaine importation conspiracy, possession of machine guns and destructive devices, and conspiracy to possess machine guns and destructive devices. | ||
| I see you have the indictment there with you. | ||
| Can you walk us through what these charges mean? | ||
| Sure. | ||
| So when you get past all of the intrigue about how Maduro was grabbed and whether or not there were international laws violated and whether he was an official head of state and all that, at the end of the day, this really comes down to a prosecution like anyone else. | ||
| Now he's sitting in a detention center up in New York. | ||
| He's going to face prosecutors from the Southern District of New York. | ||
| And this is the indictment as it currently stands. | ||
| It was initially brought back in 2020. | ||
| It was sealed. | ||
| And now we have a more modern version, a more revised version of it. | ||
| So the first one, this big one, this term narco-terrorism, this is kind of the term of the day, right? | ||
| The White House likes to use it. | ||
| The press office likes to use it. | ||
| It appears in the indictment. | ||
| It doesn't really have a legal meaning. | ||
| There is no law or statute called narco-terrorism. | ||
| What the administration has done here is a little circular. | ||
| What they're saying is that the FARC, FARC, which is one of the groups named in the indictment, was funded via the sale of narcotics, the illegal sale of cocaine. | ||
| This is the group in Venezuela that you're referring to, the FARC, yes. | ||
| Correct, right? | ||
| So drugs were sold to fund a terrorist group, but it's a terrorist group because it sells drugs. | ||
| So it's not quite what we think of when we think of al-Qaeda or ISIS or Hamas or Hezbollah, right? | ||
| Those were very different, right? | ||
| Those were fundamentalist jihadist groups that were engaging in illegal activities to foment a political movement. | ||
| This is different. | ||
| Narcotics trafficking is typically not considered terrorism. | ||
| It's a crime. | ||
| And it is dealt with by agencies, civilian agencies like the FBI and the DEA. | ||
| So what I'm getting at here is this is a little bit of creative charging. | ||
| I got to think it'll withstand scrutiny, but you'll see a lot of litigation about this, about whether these groups are legitimately designated foreign terrorist organizations and what exactly is narco-terrorism. | ||
| So that's one thing. | ||
| The other three sets of charges, they're pretty standard, right? | ||
| The importation of controlled substances, right? | ||
| The manufacture and distribution of cocaine, right, in large amounts. | ||
| The possession and handling of machine guns, right, prohibited weaponry. | ||
| So I think once you get past all the flurry of what I've no doubt will be the initial spate of arguments by defense lawyers about how Maduro got here and whether or not it was legal to grab him out of Venezuela, I think what you're going to see is typical defense of these kinds of charges. | ||
| You'll see the challenging of the evidence. | ||
| You'll see the challenging of the charges themselves. | ||
| And you'll see a lot of back and forth of what you would see with any kind of high-profile prosecution of a drug kingpin. | ||
| You mentioned that this was originally indicted, and the indictment was originally in 2020. | ||
| Can you take us back to where those original indictments came from and why we're seeing, is this a new indictment or is this just the original indictment unsealed? | ||
| So virtually all federal crimes are subject to what they call a statute of limitations. | ||
| What that means is charges, which come in the form of an indictment, must be brought within a certain amount of time from when the offenses occurred. | ||
| Most federal statutes are subject to a five-year statute of limitations. | ||
| Terrorism charges are mostly 10 years. | ||
| And then there are some serious ones like murder, which has no statute of limitations. | ||
| So what prosecutors will typically do is, in order to stop the clock, they will file an indictment of charges, even though someone, the defendant, might not be readily available. | ||
| They might be unknown location. | ||
| They might be overseas. | ||
| Well, we know where they are, but we can't get to them. | ||
| So filing an indictment stops the statute of limitations from continuing to run. | ||
| In this case, it was sealed because indictments are typically public because the public has a right to know who is being prosecuted and what they're being prosecuted for. | ||
| So now fast forward from 2020 to 2025, you now have a superseding indictment. | ||
| And all that really means is that the government has the opportunity to basically enhance the facts, possibly change the specifics of the counts that it's bringing. | ||
| In this case, the counts are the same. | ||
| It's the same four counts in the 2020 original indictment that's now in the 2025 unsealed subsequent superseding indictment. | ||
| The one big change I would note for people, though, appears right in the caption. | ||
| If you look back in 2020, the name Celia Maduro was not in the original indictment. | ||
| She does appear in this one. | ||
| So a big difference is that Nicholas Maduro was in the initial indictment back in 2020. | ||
| The first lady is now in this one. | ||
| And of course, both of them were extracted yesterday and now sit in a jail cell in Brooklyn. | ||
| Do you have a sense of why the first lady was included this time around? | ||
| Development of evidence, development of sources that gave information about her involvement in the government in Venezuela. | ||
| It does seem like they had planned this for a while because these kinds of operations don't just take place overnight. | ||
| There were, I'm sure, weeks or months of planning that went into this in terms of grabbing both of them. | ||
| So I have to think this was planned for quite a while. | ||
| Why is this going to be handled in the Southern District of New York? | ||
| So those of us who served in other offices like Washington, D.C. or the Eastern District of Virginia don't like to admit this. | ||
| But the Southern District of New York is largely seen as one of the most aggressive and competent offices. | ||
| It's very difficult to get jobs there. | ||
| It's very elite. | ||
| And they've handled some extremely high-profile cases over the years, like organized crime cases like against John Gotti, terrorism cases like the original World Trade Center bombing and the blind chic. | ||
| High-profile politicians, including investigating President Trump himself during the Biden administration. | ||
| So a case like this, which is basically the importation of drugs to the United States in general, really could be prosecuted anywhere. | ||
| The fact that they gave it to the Southern District of New York, that's where they flew Maduro and his wife, and that's where he's sitting in detention, not a surprise, because the Southern District will typically be the first one that the Justice Department looks to in terms of high-profile cases like this that are not geographically specific. | ||
| Walk us through the next few days. | ||
| What are we going to see as this case develops? | ||
| You'll see Maduro appear in court, along with his wife, at what they call an arraignment, where he gets the initial opportunity to hear the charges that are now public, that are being brought against him, and then he'll enter a plea. | ||
| 99% of the time, you plead not guilty, just because that's what you do to buy yourself time. | ||
| You don't plead guilty at the arraignment. | ||
| So we'll see him on camera, most likely. | ||
| We'll see him enter a not guilty plea, and then things get quiet for a while. | ||
| He will get representation, most likely high-profile defense representation. | ||
| And you'll see then a lot of behind-the-scenes back and forth. | ||
| I think you'll see a flurry of motions made about how exactly Maduro got here yesterday, the use of the military, the fact that he was a sovereign head of a sovereign nation, and whether or not there's international legal implications here. | ||
| You'll get past all that. | ||
| We'll see if it's successful. | ||
| I doubt it will be, actually. | ||
| And then it becomes, like I said, a traditional prosecution of a defendant in the United States being charged with crimes against individuals of the United States, and then it'll kind of go from there. | ||
| What sorts of rights does he have in the U.S. justice system as either a foreign person or as a foreign head of state? | ||
| He has all the rights of any criminal defendant. | ||
| So he has the right to counsel. | ||
| If he can't afford counsel, one will be appointed for him in terms of the, there's a federal public defender's office. | ||
| We're also very, very good attorneys. | ||
| So if he does not want to get someone himself, then the federal government will provide it to him. | ||
| He has all the rights that are subject to constitutional amendments like the due process rights in terms of being able to see the evidence brought against him, witnesses brought against him, basically to see the prosecution's case. | ||
| So these cases, we don't do cases in secret right here in the United States. | ||
| We do them in public. | ||
| So he has all the rights that a U.S. criminal defendant will have. | ||
| Now, he will try to exercise the argument that he has some additional rights that he has. | ||
| The first one will be that he has immunity, right? | ||
| That he's a foreign head of state, that we recognize immunity, and we don't do this kind of thing. | ||
| We don't just pull out leaders of other countries, even if we say that they're illegitimate and they're dictators. | ||
| The U.S. will say he's illegitimate, that he does not enjoy that right to sovereign immunity because he's not the properly installed leader of Venezuela. | ||
| This will go to the courts. | ||
| The courts will most likely not want to get involved. | ||
| They're going to say this is a foreign policy matter. | ||
| And how he got here, the use of the military, that's between Congress and the White House. | ||
| And whether or not he was a legitimate head of state, that's up to the State Department. | ||
| We're not going to get involved. | ||
| So I think you're going to see all this litigation about what rights he's going to say he has as a foreign leader. | ||
| I don't think he's going to get very far with any of those. | ||
| Representative Thomas Massey tweeted this yesterday. | ||
| If this action were constitutionally sound, the Attorney General wouldn't be tweeting that they've arrested the president of a sovereign country and his wife for possessing guns in violation of a 1934 U.S. firearm law. | ||
| What do you think of that take? | ||
| I mean, the date of the law doesn't really make a difference. | ||
| It's a legitimate law. | ||
| So I don't know about citing the fact that a law is old doesn't make it legitimate. | ||
| But I think the larger point was what is the legal basis for arresting a foreign leader on foreign soil. | ||
| Right. | ||
| So look, it's a very gray area. | ||
| We do have a parallel here, which was the extraction of Manuel Nuriega from Panama in 1989. | ||
| Extremely similar circumstances, right? | ||
| You had a foreign head of state who was indicted in the United States. | ||
| In his case, there were some drugs. | ||
| It was mostly money laundering and racketeering charges. | ||
| He was considered by the U.S. to be an illegitimate foreign leader. | ||
| In this case, he was a military leader that had installed himself. | ||
| And the U.S. went in without authorization from Congress and took him out, right? | ||
| And then he faced trial in the United States and wound up going to jail for about 17 years. | ||
| So a lot of parallels there. | ||
| And Nuriega tried all these arguments about why he was exactly what I think Maduro will argue. | ||
| I'm a foreign head of state. | ||
| I enjoy immunity. | ||
| I was extracted illegally. | ||
| This was a military operation without congressional authorization. | ||
| And none of those got Nuriega very far. | ||
| The courts, again, they didn't want to get involved with those questions. | ||
| They said those are questions for the other branches of government. | ||
| Congress and the White House can fight over whether or not it was a proper use of the military. | ||
| We only care about him now as a criminal defendant sitting in court. | ||
| So I think Maduro is going to be basically treated the same way in New York. | ||
| If you have questions for Joseph Moreno about the legal aspects of this situation, you can call in. | ||
| Our line for Republicans is 202-748-8001. | ||
| For Democrats, 202-748-8000. | ||
| Independents, 202-748-8002. | ||
| You kind of mentioned this idea of whether if we think a leader is illegitimate, if it is legal to go after them. | ||
| There have been several critics who are arguing that using this same logic, Putin can go and arrest Zelensky in Ukraine or vice versa. | ||
| Some countries might want to go into Israel and arrest Benjamin Netanyahu or something else or even President Trump himself. | ||
| What do you think of these arguments? | ||
| Well, they touch on some legitimate points, right? | ||
| The White House is sort of making two arguments here. | ||
| One, they're saying that Maduro was the head of a terrorist organization and that under previous grants of authority by Congress, particularly the AUMF, which is the authorization for the use of military force, which let us go into Afghanistan, it was very broad and allowed the U.S. to engage terrorist groups. | ||
| So on the one hand, he's saying this was ahead of a terrorist group, and therefore we had the authorization to get him that way. | ||
| But he's also saying this was primarily a law enforcement operation, that this was head by the FBI and the DEA and the Justice Department. | ||
| And it was all about getting a criminal defendant, and the military was basically just a means to an end, that they were just assisting civilian law enforcement in getting him. | ||
| But it's really a civilian mission. | ||
| So, to the latter point, if we accept that's a legitimate argument, then the White House can basically bypass Congress all the time because they'll just indict people. | ||
| So, to your point, they're going to say, okay, we're indicting all these different heads of state for all these different crimes that we allege that they committed against the United States, and now we're going to use this mechanism. | ||
| We're going to use the military to get them and bring them back to the U.S., and we're going to bypass Congress. | ||
| That's the concern here. | ||
| So, I think a lot of people who very legitimately say this was a good operation, this was run very well by the military, Maduro's a bad guy, and it's right that he faced prosecution. | ||
| Those are completely legitimate feelings and arguments, and I share many of them. | ||
| But, us legal guys, we do get into the weeds about how this was done, whether it was done properly, and what does it mean for the future? | ||
| There were also actual strikes on Venezuela as part of this operation, which several members of Congress have said those strikes were illegal under both international and U.S. law. | ||
| Where do you come down on that? | ||
| I think it's a very gray area, right? | ||
| Those strikes, which have been going on for months now, were sort of culminated in the extraction of Maduro yesterday. | ||
| So, there's been a lot of debate for months now about what rules of engagement were being relied on there, whether or not the military should have been, again, effectively pursuing law enforcement means by engaging what they claim to be drug smugglers in open waters. | ||
| Historically, that was the mission of the Coast Guard, and they would protect the U.S. coast of drugs that were coming in. | ||
| And sometimes the military would support the Coast Guard, and that was very common and very considered non-controversial. | ||
| Using the military to engage foreign vessels in open waters, that's controversial. | ||
| So, again, these issues that have come up with the extraction of Maduro in the last 24 hours are not brand new because we've been building toward this for the last six months in terms of using our Navy to engage foreign vessels that are not flying a foreign flag on the allegation that they're criminals. | ||
| All right, let's go to our callers. | ||
| John is in Esopis, New York, on our line for independence. | ||
| Good morning, John. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, thanks for taking my call. | |
| I mean, let's say this gentleman, and he's your guest. | ||
| How would you ever invite somebody like this as a guest? | ||
| Do you have a question for Mr. Marino? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, no, I do. | |
| Say something good about the administration and our government today for what they did today, the military, and what they did today. | ||
| And are you defending this guy they captured? | ||
| Are you one of the former? | ||
| Thank God you're former because you don't belong. | ||
| You have nothing good to say about America. | ||
| Let me address that, John. | ||
| As a fellow New Yorker, originally, I am very proud to say that I have served in the Army for the last 25 years, both on active duty in Iraq and Europe and in Africa. | ||
| And I currently serve in the reserves as a JAG officer. | ||
| So I'm actually quite proud of our government, our president, and exactly how the Army and the Navy carried out this operation. | ||
| I think there's a tremendous amount of good here. | ||
| Maduro was a bad guy. | ||
| These are legitimate criminal cases against him. | ||
| And I'm glad to see him in a holding facility in New York. | ||
| As a lawyer, I think these are legitimate questions about what the basis of this operation was. | ||
| And there's good and bad arguments on both sides. | ||
| The White House has very good arguments about why they believe they were justified in doing this. | ||
| On the other hand, Democrats raised some significant questions about whether or not notifications were made and what Congress's legitimate role here is. | ||
| So, me personally, I mean, it doesn't matter what party I am. | ||
| I have plenty of good to say about the White House and the military, but I'll also note that the opponents on the Democrat side raise good points, and I think these are all legitimate points to discuss. | ||
| Another New Yorker has a question for you on X. Joe Delmonico asks, what happens if Maduro is acquitted by a jury? | ||
| I mean, great question. | ||
| Where does he go? | ||
| I mean, he's set free, right? | ||
| We don't keep people in prison who are acquitted of charges. | ||
| We're not going to send him to Guantanamo or something like that. | ||
| That's really off the table here. | ||
| He'll be released. | ||
| I guess the question is, where is he released? | ||
| Will Venezuela want him back? | ||
| Will another country like China or Russia, which seem to be backing Venezuela, will they provide him some kind of sanctuary? | ||
| I think it'll be a few years before we know this, because I think it's going to take a long time to get to trial and then through trial. | ||
| But it's a great question. | ||
| Another question from X. Do you agree that Congress should not be notified of U.S. operations involving strikes by the military in another country because they have leakers in Congress? | ||
| This is referencing what the President as well as Secretary of Defense said yesterday. | ||
| So you've seen a lot of reference in the last 24 hours to the War Powers Resolution, or sometimes called the War Powers Act. | ||
| And it precisely touches on when Congress should be notified of operations. | ||
| And it makes the point that if the President feels he must act imminently without notifying Congress first, he has to do so within 48 hours afterward. | ||
| So it absolutely recognizes that there are needs sometimes for the White House to act quickly and decisively, either because the window of opportunity is there and it could close, because of possible leakers, and the fact that you don't want to advertise operations in advance because then they could fail. | ||
| So it's not so much that Congress always has to be notified, but they are supposed to be notified and briefed truthfully within 48 hours of something like this happening. | ||
| And then there are further protections that give Congress the right to either approve continuing those operations or to shut it down. | ||
| Beth is in Florida on our line for Republicans. | ||
| Good morning, Beth. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hi, I've got so many questions. | |
| I'll try to limit it. | ||
| Number one, on September 2nd, when we bombed that first GoFast boat, we were told that was fentanyl. | ||
| Where is fentanyl in this indictment? | ||
| And number two, we're basing this gun charge on a 19, what is 34 law, and that was in what about machine guns? | ||
| But the Supreme Court has now ruled on bump stocks that virtually make a machine or a semi-automatic an automatic. | ||
| Where did the guns that they're charging them with having and conspiring about, where were they manufactured? | ||
| And if they were manufactured in the U.S., aren't we just as guilty of sending them guns as they are of sending us fentanyl? | ||
| And who has died in this country from taking fentanyl that was legal? | ||
| They've committed a crime by buying an illegal drug. | ||
| Beth, let me do my best with those. | ||
| First off, on the fentanyl point, you're right, there's no mention of fentanyl here. | ||
| We did hear a lot about that. | ||
| This is focused on cocaine. | ||
| And fentany comes over the border through other countries and we think largely originates from China. | ||
| So you're right. | ||
| This is apples and oranges here. | ||
| And whether or not that was a purposeful reference to fentanyl to kind of get it in people's minds or if it was a legitimate mistake, I don't know. | ||
| But you're absolutely right. | ||
| There's a discrepancy here between what we were told for a long time about one kind of illegal narcotic and then what was actually charged here, which is about cocaine. | ||
| Equally destructive, but you're right, not the same thing. | ||
| As far as the machine gun charges, again, I'm not really all that impressed with the fact that it's an old law. | ||
| We have lots of old laws. | ||
| And as long as they're legitimate and they haven't been struck down or repealed by Congress, I don't see the relevance in the fact that they've been on the books for a long time. | ||
| And as far as the origin of these machine guns, that I can't speak to. | ||
| I don't know if they're American originated or not. | ||
| I can tell you that the law does prohibit machine guns versus semi-automatic weapons, which are generally legal but controlled. | ||
| And so I'll kind of, hopefully I did my best there to address your concerns. | ||
| If I understand Beth correctly, the idea that if the Supreme Court allows bump stocks, why would machine guns not be allowed and be worthy of these charges? | ||
| That's a perfectly legitimate point for Maduro and his wife to raise in court. | ||
| Why not, you know, as part of attacking the prosecution, make that exact point about why these charges are not legit because of conflicting Supreme Court rulings. | ||
| Maybe he'll be successful, maybe he won't. | ||
| But if I was his defense lawyer, I'd make that argument. | ||
| Clint is in Arlington, Texas on our line for Democrats. | ||
| Good morning, Clint. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes. | |
| How are you doing, Mr. Moreno? | ||
| A couple questions. | ||
| I was just going to say, okay, Trump pardoned the former Honduran president, I think, in November for like the same thing. | ||
| So it's okay for him to do it, but I mean, it's okay for Maduro. | ||
| I mean, it's not okay for Maduro to sell drugs, but it's okay for the former Honduran president to sell drugs. | ||
| No, Clint, I fully get it. | ||
| It does seem really inconsistent. | ||
| And the pardon power, I mean, I've actually been pretty critical of it. | ||
| I think that presidents of both parties have really overused the pardon power, which was, I think, originally intended to be used very sparingly. | ||
| And now we've seen business associates, we've seen family members, and we've seen some pretty extreme cases which look awful, and yet they're pardoned by president, whether it's this president or the former one or former ones. | ||
| So I have actually been advocating for a while that this is an issue that I really do think Congress should take on about either putting some more controls or getting rid of the pardon power. | ||
| Now it'll take an amendment to the Constitution, which is not easy, but I think that originally, remember, the federal government was much smaller when the Constitution was created, and the law enforcement of the function, the law enforcement function of the federal government was almost non-existent, right? | ||
| I mean, crimes were prosecuted at the state level, and they've grown over 200 years. | ||
| So I think much as the law enforcement function of the federal government has changed, I think the concept and the use of the pardon power should also be subject to change. | ||
| You kind of touched on this earlier, but it's a question on X from Riddle. | ||
| What's the proof Maduro's wife did anything wrong? | ||
| Can other countries kidnap Trump and Melania? | ||
| This is from Jennifer in Oak Park, Illinois. | ||
| Well, Jennifer, as far as the First Lady, Maduro, I think that we'll have to find out in court. | ||
| You know, the indictment is very high level, right? | ||
| It treats them more or less equally, along with others that are named in the indictment. | ||
| So I think the details of who did what are absolutely fair game. | ||
| And I think as long as the Maduros plead not guilty and they want to fight these charges, I think they should put the prosecution to the test and say, okay, put your money where your mouth is. | ||
| Explain to a jury and a judge who did what and what the evidence is. | ||
| And I think that's completely fair game. | ||
| Oh, go ahead. | ||
| The other point was, remind me again. | ||
| Couldn't other countries kidnap Trump and Melania? | ||
| Well, I mean, you would hope that wouldn't happen. | ||
| But I guess, you know, again, You always run the risk when you operate in a gray area like this and you take actions that are largely unprecedented, not completely, but largely unprecedented, that you've now set a pattern that others can adopt and say, well, if the leader of the United States does something, why can't another country do it? | ||
| And so, again, I think this is where us lawyers do come in handy because we help, we try to help create some boundaries and some parameters about the use of these powers. | ||
| Because otherwise, yes, it becomes the Wild West and a free-for-all. | ||
| Richard is in Brazil, Indiana, on our line for independence. | ||
| Good morning, Richard. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| Mr. Marino, two quick questions for you. | ||
| The first being, from a legal standpoint, you referenced earlier the situation with the invasion of Panama and Myanmar Noriega in the early 1980s. | ||
| Now, my question with that is: under that particular instance, do you not agree that that instance didn't need congressional approval because the legislature of the nation of Panama declared a state of war against the U.S., thus enacting hostilities that didn't need congressional approval? | ||
| And secondly, do you not feel that a legal international precedent is now set that says that countries such as China can now go into Taiwan because Chinese sovereign law was violated and do as they please with regime change? | ||
| Hey, morning, Richard. | ||
| As far as the Noriega case, yes, Panama had declared hostilities against the U.S. and we had not reciprocated. | ||
| So there was no proper declaration of war or even a congressional authorization in the Panama operation. | ||
| Nuriega made all those arguments about why he felt his prosecution was illegitimate, and the courts weren't impressed. | ||
| So they're legitimate arguments, but he didn't get him a lot of traction. | ||
| I mean, those charges went forward like any other criminal defendant. | ||
| So he wasn't really helped by that. | ||
| And as far as international law, remember, international law consists of UN declarations, consists of treaties signed by countries. | ||
| But as far as who enforces them, it's kind of loose, right? | ||
| I mean, so if China were to invade Taiwan, you know, it can make the defense, well, Trump invaded Venezuela, so we can do it. | ||
| How countries react to that, there's no legally binding way to say, well, now it's okay. | ||
| Countries could feel it's okay, and countries could feel it's not okay. | ||
| And they will react accordingly. | ||
| And there's really no governing body to say who's right and who's wrong. | ||
| So sure, I think that when you do something, you give other countries the ability to say, well, you know, again, one country did it, so I can do it. | ||
| But at the end of the day, it's not so much a law or a precedent as it is how countries react on a case-by-case basis. | ||
| Don is in Brooklyn, New York, on our line for Republicans. | ||
| Good morning, Don. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I'm having a hell of a hard time trying to understand where you're going with this, because it's not like there's a law, a body of laws and a procedural mechanism by which this could have been done or should have been done. | |
| This is just something that Trump dreamed up. | ||
| And after the fact, they're coming up with this whole judicial process. | ||
| So it's America manifesting its power, not in favor of some international law, but really once again, simply because it can. | ||
| And the shoe can be on the other foot very easily at any time. | ||
| And we can regret that we set the precedent for this kind of business. | ||
| No, no, Don, I hear you. | ||
| There is no law the administration can point to that says this operation, this kind of thing, is allowed. | ||
| I mean, they're kind of, I used the word creative yesterday on another show. | ||
| They're kind of making it up as they go along. | ||
| You're right. | ||
| So whether or not another country can now say, well, you set the precedent, we're going to do it, they can say that. | ||
| And how the U.S. responds to that will be, again, what the circumstances are. | ||
| But you're right. | ||
| It does take away the sort of moral high ground that the U.S. can say, well, now we've done it, so it's going to be hard for us to say someone else can't do the same. | ||
| That's legit. | ||
| James is in Akron, Ohio on our line for Democrats. | ||
| Good morning, James. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes. | |
| Here, let me get you off of the speaker. | ||
| I'm sorry. | ||
| That's okay. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I have, I want to make a statement. | |
| I have two questions. | ||
| The statement I agree with you on the pardon situation, it should have to go before a court or some type of a committee before a pardon is accepted. | ||
| It should be a reasoning, I mean, serious reasoning why with that. | ||
| But my two questions is this. | ||
| This year, Donald Trump either fired or the great deal of the best attorneys that the federal government have resigned or quit or was fired. | ||
| So who's going to represent the United States in this case? | ||
| That's one. | ||
| And the other thing is this. | ||
| You know, Trump is saying now that he's looking at Cuba. | ||
| Well, you know, we have open relationships under Obama with Cuba. | ||
| And that was one of the first acts that Trump did under his first term as president was to close the relationships and made it more difficult for people to visit Cuba after 50 years of not being able to visit at all, other than going through England or somewhere and then going to Cuba and coming back. | ||
| I'm just wondering about those two things about the relationship with Cuba that he's pretty much appealed. | ||
| And he also, in the process, it kind of hurt the economy worse than it ever was. | ||
| Right now, they have a lot of difficulty because of our laws. | ||
| But I would like to know who's going to represent the United States in this case and his position on Cuba. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| James, quickly on your point about pardons, I actually really like the idea of a congressional approval process where the president proposes a pardon and Congress has to sign off. | ||
| So I think that's a great point. | ||
| As far as who represents the United States, I can assure you that there's plenty of us lawyers in plenty of cities in this country. | ||
| So there's never a dearth of us. | ||
| And yes, Trump has fired or has seen quit a whole number of lawyers from the government this year. | ||
| But believe me, there's plenty more that are happy to take on this case because if they win, it sort of makes a career for yourself. | ||
| You can brag for the rest of your legal career that I was on the team that prosecuted a high-profile case like that. | ||
| So I don't think there's going to be a problem finding attorneys to do this. | ||
| And as far as Cuba versus Venezuela versus elsewhere, you're touching on the fact that we have given the president, all presidents, a lot of latitude in terms of foreign policy, right? | ||
| And I think this goes to a larger question about whether Congress over decades now has gotten a little too hands-off. | ||
| Congress passes these very broad statutes that give a lot of latitude to then how the executive branch runs with them. | ||
| And regulations which are enacted on the executive side have just grown massively. | ||
| So I think whether it's this situation, whether it's the future of dealing with Cuba, or just foreign relations in general, this is an opportunity for Congress to say, all right, if we don't like the way things are going, if we think the president of either party has just too much power and too much latitude, this is the time to do it. | ||
| And it would be a great opportunity in one of those rare instances to see Republicans and Democrats maybe put their heads together and work together to kind of set some more parameters for what the president, this one, and future presidents can actually do. | ||
| Darrell is in Dayton, Ohio on our line for independence. | ||
| Good morning, Darrell. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hello. | |
| Yes, we can hear you. | ||
| What's your question for Mr. Moran? | ||
|
unidentified
|
I have a question on the war on terror. | |
| If you take the last 22 years, you got 9-11, Iraq, Afghanistan. | ||
| I'm going to give you about 8,000 people was killed. | ||
| Okay? | ||
| Now, fentanyl, fentanyl alone, because they don't even count Heron and Coke, you don't see them. | ||
| But fentanyl alone in the last seven years has killed about a million Americans. | ||
| Okay? | ||
| So what make you think that it shouldn't be a war on drugs? | ||
| Darrell, I'm old enough. | ||
| I'm dating myself here, but I remember the last war on drugs, right, under President Reagan in the 80s. | ||
| I think it's a noble cause. | ||
| I think that it's a scourge. | ||
| I have nine children myself. | ||
| I would be horrified if any of them were exposed to whether it's fentanyl or any other illegal drugs. | ||
| And I think it's an absolutely vital focus of our law enforcement system. | ||
| And I think there's been plenty of controversy about whether or not the war on terror was effective, whether or not we should have spent so much time in Afghanistan and Iraq. | ||
| I served there myself, as did my wife. | ||
| I have mixed feelings about the success of both those operations. | ||
| But I think you're touching on two obviously important things. | ||
| And again, this is where the president and Congress need to get together because resources are limited. | ||
| There's only a certain number of prosecutors, a certain number of FBI agents. | ||
| And so, again, where do we want to focus our resources? | ||
| War on drugs? | ||
| War on financial crimes? | ||
| War on terrorism. | ||
| All legit, but again, we have only certain limited resources and we have to focus them somewhere. | ||
| And we only had limited time, but thank you so much for sharing your expertise with us this morning, Joseph Moreno, who's a former federal prosecutor with the Department of Justice's National Security Division. | ||
| I appreciate your time this morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
My pleasure. | |
| Later on this morning, we're going to continue our coverage of this story with a closer look at the challenges facing the United States in the aftermath of Nicolas Maduro's ouster in Venezuela. | ||
| That conversation is going to be with Ryan Berg, Director of the Americas Program and the head of the Future of Venezuela Initiative at CSIS. | ||
| But first, we're going to take more of your reaction to yesterday's military action in Venezuela and President Trump's declaration that the U.S. will now run the country in the interim. | ||
| You can start calling in now. | ||
| Our phone line for Democrats is 202-748-8000. | ||
| For Republicans, 202-748-8001. | ||
| And for Independents, 202-748-8002. | ||
| Active and former military can call in at 202-748-8003. | ||
| We'll be right back. | ||
|
unidentified
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| Washington Journal continues. | ||
| Welcome back. | ||
| We're taking your calls and comments on the aftermath of the U.S. military strikes in Venezuela and the extraction of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro and his wife, as well as President Trump saying that the United States will be running the country in the interim. | ||
| We're going to start with John in Mansfield, Texas on our line for Democrats. | ||
| Good morning, John. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes, one of the things I struggle with today is even as a Democrat, I prefer to see any politician held accountable by the rule of law. | |
| In this situation, you have a president who violated the UN Charter. | ||
| He's violated several things, you know, ignoring federal rulings within our government. | ||
| What I struggle with, like with many of the callers, it's opinion-based. | ||
| People say this should happen because drugs are killing people in our country or these other various opinionated reasons. | ||
| What I would hope to see is even with Biden's withdrawal of Afghanistan, Bill Clinton lying to the American people, I would really like to see politicians get held accountable by the law no matter what the opinion of the day is, no matter what party you are. | ||
| And in this case, it's ridiculous because you have somebody who violated the UN, and I really would like to see them hold him accountable. | ||
| He's basically taking oil reserves from another country for profit. | ||
| And I just struggle with the fact that people can't look at the law and they look at their opinions over the law. | ||
| And that's all I have to say. | ||
| I just struggle with that whole concept. | ||
| Calvin is in Winston-Salem, North Carolina on our line for independence. | ||
| Good morning, Calvin. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning, Kimberly. | |
| Thank you for taking my call. | ||
| So, January 6th, the Obama subsidies that expired on December 31st. | ||
| The Epstein files that have both parties united around what to do about it. | ||
| The first executive order, when the current president signs, is pardoning all of those who were involved in the January 6th revolt insurrection. | ||
| Now, I mention those things because if I were him and I'm not, and I'm glad that I'm not, I would do something that would take all the public's attention off of the things I just mentioned and start a debate and have this sort of controversy going where we're not thinking about health care, we're not thinking about the rule of law that applied to him on January 6th. | ||
| And the Epstein files, hmm, was he there? | ||
| Was he not there? | ||
| How involved? | ||
| So I think it was a very strategic political move. | ||
| And of course, the bottom line is he did it because we can. | ||
| If you're the most powerful nation in the world, international law and the UN, and sad to say, even the Constitution doesn't necessarily guide someone whose mind is made up to do whatever it is he wants to do. | ||
| And I'll say this in closing, Kimberly. | ||
| He wants to rebuild Venezuela. | ||
| He can't even build the part of the White House that he destroyed. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| David is in Atlantic Beach, New York, on our line for Republicans. | ||
| Good morning, David. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, Kimberly, I know you're very careful and guarded when people are off topic. | |
| That gentleman did not say one thing that was on topic, but I think that shows where your loyalty and stripes are. | ||
| As far as Maduro, he was a dictator. | ||
| He forged the last election in his favor after he was going to make sure that you're going directly into your another dictator. | ||
| He supports Cuba, one of the most wretched governments only 90 miles from our country. | ||
| And people are suffering in Cuba as a Cuban-American. | ||
| I can tell you that that is completely unacceptable. | ||
| So Trump, he did it to the way Democrats wanted to be cutting in and out. | ||
| He did the right thing. | ||
| All right. | ||
| Let's go to Jacqueline in Montgomery, Alabama, on our line for Democrats. | ||
| Good morning, Jacqueline. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning, and thank you so much. | |
| I believe that this falls in line with Trump, and the Republican is giving him this unlimited power, no Supreme Court checks, and he just feels that he can do what he wants to do. | ||
| This is a violation of the rule of law, lack of information, communication with Congress. | ||
| The big eight did not know anything. | ||
| They're totally laborgasted about this. | ||
| United States does not have a history of going in overthrowing leaders. | ||
| There's a proper way to do everything. | ||
| So we're no better at this point than Putin going into Ukraine. | ||
| And what about the people of Venezuela? | ||
| What do they really want? | ||
| What is right and what is fair to them? | ||
| It's all about diversion, chaos, and taking over all to taunt Iran and China. | ||
| This man is dangerous. | ||
| He's not stable. | ||
| He's unchained. | ||
| And he has no respect for our Constitution and no respect for the law. | ||
| Jacqueline mentioned the notification of Congress or lack thereof in this case. | ||
| Secretary of State Marco Rubio, as well as President Trump, spoke about notifying Congress before the attacks on Friday night during that press conference on Saturday. | ||
| Let's listen. | ||
| We call members of Congress immediately after. | ||
| This was not the kind of mission that you can do congressional notification on. | ||
| It was a trigger-based mission in which conditions had to be met night after night. | ||
| We watched and monitored that for a number of days. | ||
| So it's just simply not the kind of mission you can call people and say, hey, we may do this at some point in the next 15 days. | ||
| But it's largely a law enforcement function. | ||
| Remember, at the end of the day, at its core, this was an arrest of two indicted fugitives of American justice, and the Department of War supported the Department of Justice in that job. | ||
| Now, there are broader policy implications here, but it's just not the kind of mission that you can pre-notify because it endangers the mission. | ||
| Plus, if I could add one thing to that, Congress has a tendency to leak. | ||
| This would not be good. | ||
| If they leaked, General, I think it would have been maybe a very different result. | ||
| But I have to say, they knew we were coming at some point. | ||
| You know, a lot of ships out there. | ||
| They sort of knew we were coming. | ||
| But Congress, Congress will leak, and we don't want leakers. | ||
| Back to your calls. | ||
| Darryl is in North Dakota on our line for independence. | ||
| Good morning, Darryl. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning, C-SPAN in America. | |
| God bless America. | ||
| They did the right thing on what they're doing. | ||
| They were going after drugs. | ||
| They're going after to cut the oil off and everything. | ||
| But people aren't getting the whole story, and they're jumping on bits and pieces of everything. | ||
| Trump was right. | ||
| There are leakers in the government, and everybody fights. | ||
| Our judicial system has been weaponized with, we're broken in our judicial system. | ||
| We're broken on everything. | ||
| And what Trump did is for the drugs, if people take and be like a baker and everything. | ||
| Okay, cocaine, yes. | ||
| Fentanyl comes from China, yes. | ||
| All the drugs are coming over the border from Mexico, but everything is, you know, you bake a cake. | ||
| You need flour, you need sugar, you need salt, whatever, and everything. | ||
| You need different ingredients. | ||
| Cocaine is just one of the ingredients in the drugs that are killing our people. | ||
| You know, we have the freedom of speech, but now we also have freedom of choice. | ||
| Those people who are taking those drugs have the choice to take those drugs. | ||
| I agree with that. | ||
| But it's a money portion of it. | ||
| But if they take and they slip fentanyl in that cocaine that you're sniffing up your nose and everything, then they're killing you. | ||
| If your child or somebody gets a hold of it, that they slip it in different things. | ||
| We're going with it through the hemp, the drug portion of it. | ||
| So yes, I believe his Venezuela strike was good. | ||
| And we also got to realize that this country is a country of laws, but we're a one-law, not Sharia law. | ||
| And the military is apolitical, so they're not political. | ||
| So there's their portion of where they're at. | ||
| All this stuff started back in Vietnam, and it's continued for all the way up till today, and everything. | ||
| This is Ground Halloween Day all again. | ||
| Next up is Joseph in Daytona Beach, Florida, on our line for Democrats. | ||
| Good morning, Joseph. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes, I was wondering why we want to spend all this money, regardless of Maduro, trying to run another country and we've got so many problems over here. | |
| Why don't we just double down on enforcing the drug dealers over here and then try to get the addicts some help so they can have a better life? | ||
| Okay. | ||
| David is in Frenchlick, Indiana, on our line for Republicans. | ||
| Good morning, David. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, good morning. | |
| I was hoping to speak to Mr. Moreno, who I thought was very eloquent and thankful for his service. | ||
| The initial indictment was in, I think it was March 23rd, 2020. | ||
| That would be under the Biden administration. | ||
| Obviously, there had to be some investigations in the Trump years and probably prior to that. | ||
| Why I'm curious why the Biden administration didn't do anything in four years if they had an indictment. | ||
| Oh, wait a second. | ||
| They were too busy trying to put Trump in jail and worrying about that. | ||
| No succeeding there. | ||
| So in regards to notifying Congress, there's so much hate for Trump that, of course, it would be leaked. | ||
| And I would like to know the last time a president actually went to Congress for the War Powers Act. | ||
| All right. | ||
| Well, next up is Antonio in Worcester, Massachusetts on our line for independence. | ||
| Good morning, Antonio. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hi, thank you. | |
| Good morning. | ||
| Yeah, my thoughts on this are that I think that it was a warranted move, considering that we live in consequential times where the global order is moving from a unipolar to a multipolar structure with the rise of China, Russia trying to reassert itself, the Europeans trying to seek relevance, India trying to figure out how to take advantage of its demographic power. | ||
| And Trump and his team have been very clear in prioritizing reestablishing dominance in the Western Hemisphere as a foundation for the U.S. remaining one of the major poles in this restructure that's happening. | ||
| And Maduro and his regime, through their exercise of power, using the drug trade and suppressing its own population, has provided Trump with a theater of operation to unmistakably advance this hemispheric agenda. | ||
| And it is a major strategic advantage in these times to control the Venezuela oil reserves. | ||
| China and Russia were pursuing their own strategies to lay claim to this resource. | ||
| And all that is well in oil, soon will now be hit the market price of the U.S. dollars, create an upward trend for demand of the dollar, strengthening the U.S. dollar. | ||
| And so I'm okay with it. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| The previous caller asked about the last time that a president went to Congress for the War Powers Act. | ||
| And I was looking and I found a bit about this at the ConstitutionCenter.org, which says, since 1973, most presidents have ignored parts or all of the war powers resolutions. | ||
| According to the Congressional Research Service, presidents have taken a broader view of the commander-in-chief power to use military force abroad. | ||
| They have variously asserted sources of authority and other statutes that do not specifically cite the WPR. | ||
| Additionally, they have relied on the Commander-in-Chief power itself and the President's foreign affairs at their authority under Article 2 of the Constitution. | ||
| Next up is Lily in Red Bank, New Jersey on our line for Democrats. | ||
| Good morning, Lily. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| Thank you for taking my call. | ||
| I just want to say I watched the show yesterday morning, and I want to know where are all those people that said this had nothing to do with oil. | ||
| Yes, I agree if the guy did commit crimes on drug trafficking. | ||
| Yes, he should be held accountable. | ||
| But as far as the oil is concerned, I just think this is a whole bigger picture, and people need to wake up and smell the coffee. | ||
| Thank you and have a good day. | ||
| Richard is in Rural Hall, North Carolina, on our line for Republicans. | ||
| Good morning, Richard. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| Well, first thing, let's see. | ||
| I've been waiting so long, I kind of got messed up. | ||
| That's all right. | ||
| Okay, first thing is all the Democrats talking about Trump going into Venezuela and how China's going to go into Taiwan. | ||
| Well, Russia went into Ukraine, used sex as a weapon, kidnapped their children, and they're part of the UN. | ||
| The UN is a joke. | ||
| The only people that the UN tried to do anything against is us. | ||
| Okay? | ||
| So the UN's a joke. | ||
| And I'll just leave it there. | ||
| Well, the Democrats are a joke, too, because they're sticking up for all this. | ||
| And the American people do see it. | ||
| And you can give me all the statistics you want. | ||
| I do not believe them because you haven't been right in God knows how many years. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| George is in Benita, California on our line for independence. | ||
| Good morning, George. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes, hi. | |
| Thank you for having me. | ||
| My thing of this observation of all this is basically I'm noticing that you have, for example, a president who's our president, unfortunately, is a convicted felon, a criminal, taking on another criminal from Venezuela who he himself basically didn't respect the election. | ||
| And now that he's taken him out, okay, basically, he's already commented that the duly elected president of that country, which is in Venezuela, she's not going to be allowed to rule out. | ||
| He wants to take care of this. | ||
| Again, that goes for the oil industry. | ||
| Now, there's a lot of murky water in all this because, again, there's Russia, what they did to Ukraine. | ||
| I believe that's illegal. | ||
| How come he hasn't done anything about that? | ||
| And again, the China incidents here, hey, why not take on to Taiwan like everybody else is saying on this? | ||
| Again, there's a lot of president murky water on this. | ||
| Also, too, a previous conrad colleague says it's kind of a distraction here because I myself still want to see the yesing files. | ||
| I mean, there's so much things that are happening here and setting kind of a bad president on this particular action that, I mean, it's just horrendous. | ||
| Really, if it's a drug problem, okay, first of all, why is the United States has over 85% of the demand on drugs compared to all other countries? | ||
| Of all the drugs being made, it comes into the United States. | ||
| Why not take care of the problem here? | ||
| Get rid of those dealers here. | ||
| Again, get some rehash for the addicted ones and work on it here. | ||
| Because you can make the best chairs in the world. | ||
| If nobody buys them, guess what? | ||
| You're going to go broke right away. | ||
| So if we didn't have that demand here, you know what? | ||
| These people wouldn't be making any kind of money. | ||
| So there's a lot, again, murky water here. | ||
| And I used to be a Republican. | ||
| I'm independent now because I don't like how you can't, how can I say you can't break a law to correct another law? | ||
| You know, there's procedures for this. | ||
| That's all I want to say. | ||
| Thank you for having me. | ||
| George referenced the actual elected president of Venezuela that Maduro chose not to acknowledge. | ||
| President Trump was asked about working with the Venezuelan opposition yesterday during his press conference, and in particular, working with the opposition leader and Nobel Peace Prize winner, Maria Corina Mikado. | ||
| Let's listen. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Is the U.S. aware of the location of opposition leader Machado? | |
| And have you been in contact with her? | ||
| No, we haven't. | ||
|
unidentified
|
How many had a feeling about Machado on Monday? | |
| I think it would be very tough for her to be the leader. | ||
| She doesn't have the support within or the respect within the country. | ||
| She's a very nice woman, but she doesn't have the respect to the country. | ||
| Back to your calls on this topic. | ||
| Nathan is in Mississippi on our line for Democrats. | ||
| Good morning, Nathan. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| Good morning. | ||
| Yes. | ||
| You know, I've been watching this man for years. | ||
| Trump is a criminal from day one. | ||
| And plus, look, okay, but all the three boats in the sea there. | ||
| What, three, four boats? | ||
| Okay, where was the Coast Guard? | ||
| They ain't got no evidence showing that they found coach. | ||
| Only thing they got is he said they had drugs on the boat. | ||
| So if they had drugs on those boats, they had been wrapped in plastic or aluminum flawless or whatever. | ||
| You know what I'm saying? | ||
| You don't see none of that in the water. | ||
| Plastic don't go to the bottom. | ||
| It will float on the water. | ||
| So where all the plastic and drugs is coming from? | ||
| And another thing, this man claims he's so tough on drugs when he pardon this man brought 500 tons of drugs in this country. | ||
| I don't believe nothing like that. | ||
| And all these problems is that behind Trump, they just as crooked as he is. | ||
| This man is not nothing but a dictator. | ||
| I don't care what nobody say. | ||
| He's a dictator. | ||
| And plus, he can the White House up. | ||
| They will not say nothing to him. | ||
| Whatever he does, he does do more. | ||
| And I ain't never seen the president do the things that they do. | ||
| And they know it's not right. | ||
| Next up is Mike in Billings, Montana, who's a former military. | ||
| Good morning, Mike. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| I was just curious that, you know, we as a nation are so concerned about all these laws that people are breaking and not breaking. | ||
| I think we're forgetting that what made us such a great and blessed and powerful country was that we were built on four words. | ||
| In God we trust. | ||
| I'm wondering what happened to God's laws and why we as Americans think we can make up different things and not follow his basic 10 laws. | ||
| Like if I was to rank our presidents, I would have to say most fail because of three simple things. | ||
| One, thou shalt not lie. | ||
| Our presidents lie to us every day to divert attention from them. | ||
| Two, thou shalt not steal. | ||
| So far that I've seen, all of our presidents are thieves. | ||
| They steal and lie. | ||
| And the third one that's really concerning is other than Obama, thou shalt not commit adultery. | ||
| So Mike, how do you think this applies to the current situation with Venezuela? | ||
|
unidentified
|
So why should we, those that are believers, take any of these man laws. | |
| How do you think this applies to the situation in Venezuela? | ||
|
unidentified
|
We want to fix America. | |
| We need to start with honor. | ||
| Okay, let's hear from Gene in Lumberton, Texas on our line for Republicans. | ||
| Good morning, Gene. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes, I just want to say this. | |
| I sit here and I. Hello? | ||
| Yes, we can hear you. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Okay, I sit here and I listen to all this. | |
| And, you know, you didn't hear these Democrats say anything when Joe Biden, you know, who I call nursing home Joe, when he wasn't running the country and they were doing all the things they were doing. | ||
| You know, Democrats have a quick way of reading the Constitution when they want to. | ||
| This country is more divided than it's been since the American Civil War. | ||
| This will divide it even more simply because the Democrats see that they can use it. | ||
| The only solution to the problem of this country and all these things that come up, why don't we quit talking? | ||
| Let's do what they did 160 years ago. | ||
| Let's pick up our guns. | ||
| Let's start the shooting. | ||
| Let's start the killing. | ||
| That's not called for violence. | ||
| Let's hear from Kevin in Atlanta, Georgia, on our line for independence. | ||
| Good morning, Kevin. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes, hi. | |
| Thank you for taking my call. | ||
| And I like seeing everyone calling in and having, you know, such passion. | ||
| I do have a question about how U.S. will run Venezuela after capturing President Maduro. | ||
| My independent question is, what do we see U.S. oil prices or gas prices doing? | ||
| Like, what is the speculation there? | ||
| I don't have an answer to that, but we will have a guest coming up shortly who's going to be talking about what's next for the United States in terms of what it means to run Venezuela. | ||
| And also, President Trump was pressed on Saturday for details about exactly what the U.S. role in Venezuela was going to be and who exactly was going to be running the country. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Thank you. | |
| Are you saying that Secretary Hegseth and Rubio are going to be running Venezuela? | ||
| And will you be sending in U.S. military troops to provide that's working with the people of Venezuela to make sure that we have Venezuela right? | ||
| Because for us to just leave, who's going to take over? | ||
| I mean, there is nobody to take over. | ||
| You have a vice president who's been appointed by Maduro, and right now she's the vice president, and she's, I guess, the president. | ||
| She was sworn as president just a little while ago. | ||
| She had a long conversation with Marco, and she said, we'll do whatever you need. | ||
| I think she was quite gracious, but she really doesn't have a choice. | ||
| We're going to have this done right. | ||
| We're not going to just do this with Maduro, then leave like everybody else, leave and say, you know, let it go to hell. | ||
| If we just left, it has zero chance of ever coming back. | ||
| We'll run it properly. | ||
| We'll run it professionally. | ||
| We'll have the greatest oil companies in the world going and invest billions and billions of dollars and take out money, use that money in Venezuela. | ||
| Back to your calls. | ||
| Larry is in Los Angeles, California on our line for independence and is also former military. | ||
| Good morning, Larry. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes, good morning. | |
| And I'd like to say Happy New Year to everybody. | ||
| Kimberly, I'm of the volition that we've kind of opened up Pandora's box, so to speak. | ||
| You know, we're kind of sprit thin as a military force as far as our naval fleet and the capacity to engage in, say, a number of conflicts at the same time. | ||
| Right now, we're in the Middle East. | ||
| We have a fleet there in the South American waters. | ||
| And we have China and Russia. | ||
| They're posed in their neck of the woods, so to speak. | ||
| And I just don't know if something were to jump off in Taiwan, how we would respond. | ||
| And I think right now, the biggest factor is who has the nukes, who has the most power. | ||
| And I think that's going to play a big role in how a lot of things shake out. | ||
| And I thank you for your programming and all the intelligent calls that are coming in. | ||
| And just have a blessed day. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| Violet is in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania on our line for Democrats. | ||
| Good morning, Violet. | ||
| Violet, go ahead. | ||
| Yes. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Thank you for taking my call. | |
| I am very upset over this. | ||
| I don't see how Trump can go into Venezuela and run that country when here, as Americans, we have no health care. | ||
| We have bad things going on. | ||
| We have higher prices because of his tariffs. | ||
| He does not know how to run a country. | ||
| And his administration, all the people in his administration are unqualified. | ||
| They give no accountability back. | ||
| Things are just done without the Congress, without the Republican Congress saying anything about anything. | ||
| It's a terrible, terrible situation. | ||
| The whole administration is corrupt in what they do. | ||
| We don't know what they're doing because there is no accountability. | ||
| Our money is probably streaming out of whatever money we had. | ||
| It's a horrible situation, and Americans are going to end up paying, paying for all this confusion and unaccountability and the lies that are being said. | ||
| The lies are terrible. | ||
| They just say anything they want to say. | ||
| They don't obey laws. | ||
| And that's what I have to say. | ||
| I'm sorry about that. | ||
| And thank you for taking my call. | ||
| Don is in Salinas, California on our line for Republicans. | ||
| Good morning, Don. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Oh, yeah. | |
| Me, I am sick and tired of hearing that just because Trump did something, it's automatically illegal and it's automatically against the Constitution and democracy's in danger. | ||
| Here's what I'm seeing out there: I'm seeing people dancing in the streets in Venezuela. | ||
| I'm seeing happy people. | ||
| I'm seeing Trump leaving the political infrastructure loosely in place so that down the road, very soon, they can have elections, fair elections, finally. | ||
| And this woman who got the peace prize, she can run for president again. | ||
| And if they want her, they will fairly elect her. | ||
| We're not installing any puppets. | ||
| We're not putting our own regime in place. | ||
| We're there holding their hands while we got rid of a monster. | ||
| And we not only got rid of a monster, but we kicked Cuba in the teeth. | ||
| We kicked China in the teeth. | ||
| We kicked Iran in the teeth. | ||
| We got back property that was stolen from American companies, private property that was stolen years ago. | ||
| And none of our great presidents in the past did diddly about it. | ||
| Trump is actually doing things. | ||
| And I think it was gutsy of him. | ||
| And I know it's illegal. | ||
| Otherwise, why would there even be an indictment? | ||
| Why is there an indictment if you can't serve this indictment? | ||
| They served an indictment on a drug lord criminal. | ||
| He just happened to be the president of Venezuela. | ||
| And all these Democrats and the media standing up and defending a monster against our president is the most ridiculous thing I've ever seen in my life. | ||
| Don't you fools see that you're burning yourselves up? | ||
| You're setting your own selves on fire. | ||
| This Maduro is a monster, and you're going to defend him. | ||
| All right. | ||
| Next up is Troy in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania on our line for Republicans, also former military. | ||
| Good morning, Troy. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning, C-SPAN. | |
| I was going to say it was a perfect mission. | ||
| And for the people I've been listening to saying that, well, Vietnam, we're back in Vietnam. | ||
| We have great relations with them. | ||
| Also, we're in Guam. | ||
| Venezuela is an OPEC nation. | ||
| Socialists came in there, stole property, and sent the country into poverty. | ||
| And now they've been selling drugs, cocaine, going to Puerto Rico or Cusau or any little nation that's close to it. | ||
| That's why you see those boats getting blown up because there's cocaine on them coming to the United States. | ||
| People don't know geography. | ||
| They don't know the history of that country. | ||
| It used to be very affluent. | ||
| So once it gets back on its feet again, it should be able to take care of itself. | ||
| And the taxpayers shouldn't have to pay anything because, like I said, it's an opic country. | ||
| Its currency may go back to one of their pesos will probably be worth three U.S. dollars. | ||
| So I don't think anything is going to be that America has to look back on. | ||
| It's not Afghanistan. | ||
| It's not Iraq. | ||
| And we are still in Iraq if people don't know already. | ||
| I've heard people call in that we're out of, no, we're not out of Iraq. | ||
| We have bases there with U.S. military people there. | ||
| And we are also trying to fight a war in Europe to save the people of Ukraine. | ||
| So it's going to be okay. | ||
| It was a perfect, we had some people get injured, but we didn't have any casualties. | ||
| So it looks like it's going to be okay. | ||
| And it looks like Afghanistan's going to be all right in the aftermath. | ||
| It's going to turn out okay. | ||
| Because there's plenty of people here that I know of Venezuelan descent that had to run from the country because of the socialists that will go back. | ||
| And they are capitalists and they are going to be affluent again. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| Good morning, C-SPAN, and have a great day. | ||
| Tyrone is in Columbus, Ohio on our line for Democrats. | ||
| Good morning, Tyrone. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes, how are you doing today? | |
| Good, thank you. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Okay, this is Tyrone Hurdins from Columbus. | |
| And first of all, Donald Trump got 32 70s, okay? | ||
| That's a first of all. | ||
| Another point, he ain't my president. | ||
| God is my president. | ||
| So get go because this man is wrong. | ||
| And you talk about he went over there and kidnapped them people over there. | ||
| It's a shame. | ||
| Of course, he probably had 70s and everything on him. | ||
| What about he's a bully? | ||
| What about China? | ||
| Okay. | ||
| What about Putin him? | ||
| Them the ones that are bringing all the drugs over there. | ||
| Can I ask Trump to go over there and kidnap Putin? | ||
| Can I ask him to do that? | ||
| If he got balls to do that, he went over there. | ||
| He bullied a little boy. | ||
| All right, let's hear from Rachel in Florida on our line for Republicans. | ||
| Good morning, Rachel. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hello. | |
| Yes, I have an observation. | ||
| I was just thinking that there's more forms of election denial than one. | ||
| We have Trump that protested, Biden getting in. | ||
| But then we have the Democrats who show their election denial by trying to defy everything Trump does and even going against ISIS, which is an illegal organization. | ||
| And they're just causing chaos and complete chaos. | ||
| And so this is a form of election denial. | ||
| My blood boiled when Biden let everybody across the border when I didn't vote on it or anybody else in the United States voted on it. | ||
| He let all these people in here. | ||
| My blood boiled. | ||
| You know, we didn't do like the Democrats, you know, demonstrating, having no King's Day, all this crap. | ||
| So I'm just saying, there's different forms of election denial. | ||
| And the Democrats are showing theirs. | ||
| It's pure election denial. | ||
| That's it. | ||
| Randy is in Fayetteville, North Carolina on our line for independence, also former military. | ||
| Good morning, Randy. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, I only want to make a few observations. | |
| The gentleman from Mississippi, I totally agree, and the gentleman from Montana. | ||
| My comment says this is straight out of the Russian KGB playbook. | ||
| People need to take time and sit down and read it. | ||
| Take power. | ||
| Once you're in power, stay in power. | ||
| Once you stay in power, pick a country. | ||
| I told my brother this a year ago. | ||
| Look where we at, a year later. | ||
| Pick on a weak country. | ||
| And he did. | ||
| Venezuela. | ||
| Go to Korea. | ||
| Get Russia. | ||
| Bunch of the fentanyl coming in our country. | ||
| It's coming from China. | ||
| And they know it. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| Sophia is in New York on our line for independence. | ||
| Good morning, Sophia. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning, Kimberly. | |
| It's very interesting what Mr. Trump and Senator Rubio did about Venezuela. | ||
| We complain about too many immigrants from other countries coming. | ||
| You know, they are happy, some of them. | ||
| Rubio is happy, being from Colombia, I believe he was. | ||
| They're going to pay, we're going to pay the price because it's going to be more immigrants coming. | ||
| I remember when Mr. Trump said only the white coming from South Africa, you see, now it's going to be more colored people. | ||
| So I feel so bad until today. | ||
| I voted for him in 2016. | ||
| I thought he was a street smart. | ||
| What he's doing, we're going to pay back, but God help us. | ||
| By the way, I had to say this, Kimberly. | ||
| The callers have been very respectful with you because you respect yourself, you are intelligent, and you are pretty. | ||
| Okay? | ||
| Happy New Year. | ||
| And also, please, please, for Alex, I hope his promotion has been good for him. | ||
| I miss talking to him when I call to see Spain. | ||
| Okay? | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| Thomas is in Baltimore, Maryland, on our line for Democrats and is also former military. | ||
| Good morning, Thomas. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| I was in the United States Submarine Service in the 1960s, and we kept the Russians away from our shores. | ||
| They had a 1,500-mile range on their missiles at that time. | ||
| We kept them 1,500 miles away. | ||
| We've raised the storms and the cold in North Atlanta to protect our country. | ||
| I don't think inventing Venezuela is protecting our country. | ||
| And furthermore, to that, if we stop all the drugs coming to our country, there'll be a point sometime where these people come out of their sedation, the drug people, and they're going to wake up and say, is this really a good country to live in? | ||
| And maybe we should make some changes. | ||
| So maybe I think that the drunk people, the fighting the drugs and all, there'll be like a hidden thing in some analysis, which is when people do come out of their sedation, then they start to question the government we have in our country. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| Homer is in Florence, Massachusetts, on our line for Republicans. | ||
| Good morning, Florin. | ||
| Homer. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes, I'm wondering why liberals and Democrats defend violent gang members like Kilmar Garcia and call them Maryland dads or Madura, an actual dictator is a world leader. | |
| Why do Dems defend failing institutions like socialism or the Department of Education or the Department of Health or the inspector generals that have all been fired that have allowed so much waste, fraud, and abuse for so many years, or illegal aliens who've raped, murdered, and molested Americans in Democrat-run states and they don't comply with ICE. | ||
| I just don't understand why they always want to defend these people when they don't really do anything for America. | ||
| They want to say that these drug boats didn't have drugs on them. | ||
| Or everybody wants to quote these polls that have like maybe a few thousand people out of 350 million Americans and how many other illegal immigrants that are here. | ||
| And they have a poll of 2,000 people and they want us to believe that that's the way the country is going and we need to believe this. | ||
| And oh my God, we should all be so worried when it could be worded anyway or put to a different part of the country and it'll get a different reaction every single time. | ||
| And you quote from the Washington Post or any of all these liberal and Democrat news stations and newspapers all the time and yet never quote from any of the Republican 1-1 unless they have something bad to say about President Trump. | ||
| So anyway, things are going well. | ||
| Thank God we got rid of that guy and thanked all the people that dictator out of there. | ||
| He's an actual dictator and we got him out. | ||
| And now you guys are mad. | ||
| That's why. | ||
| John is in Mount Laurel, New Jersey on our line for independence. | ||
| Good morning, John. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hello. | |
| How are you doing? | ||
| I just wanted to respond to some of the previous calls that I've been kind of hearing over the past 12 or so callers. | ||
| I don't know. | ||
| I mean, just sort of the amalgam of people and the way that they kind of process this information just kind of, you know, it throws me for a loop. | ||
| But one guy, we have one guy talking about how he doesn't believe in stats. | ||
| Another guy calling out for violence, crying about Joe Biden. | ||
| We're talking about Joe Biden. | ||
| Like, to stop. | ||
| Then we got another guy talking about people dancing Caracas. | ||
| Honestly, they're not dancing in Caracas right now. | ||
| They're scared to come out of the house because the previous administration is still in power. | ||
| Beyond that, the videos that you're seeing are actually in the United States and they're in Spain. | ||
| They're not in Caracas dancing. | ||
| So what are you talking about? | ||
| Then also, there's another lady who's talking about election denial. | ||
| Republicans literally said Obama wasn't born in America for eight years. | ||
| That's all they did. | ||
| They didn't have election denial. | ||
| They denied that the guy was even a citizen in the United States for eight years. | ||
| So what are you talking about? | ||
| All right. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| And now I have another thing to say just about Venezuela. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| Let's hear from Rick in Columbus, Ohio on our line for independence, also from our military. | ||
| Good morning, Rick. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| First, I'd like to say that I'm astounded at how many people do not have critical thinking skills. | ||
| Venezuela, let's just talk about that. | ||
| Yes, they nationalized the oil industry after years of exploitation from Americans. | ||
| And what is Trump doing? | ||
| He's putting back, and he said it, he's going to put oil companies back in charge. | ||
| Well, it's interesting that he fires all these head diplomats, brings them back from around the world so he can make this move. | ||
| This government under Trump is, he is a crook. | ||
| He is only about seeing how much money he can steal for him and his supporters. | ||
| If he is so anti-drug, then why did he let a convicted drug department the guy from Honduras? | ||
| I mean, I wonder how much money he gave the Trump administration to get that out. | ||
| But that being said, Trump is really going to put this country behind the eight ball where we are going to be exposed to many dangers that people don't even see yet. | ||
| And China is just waiting for their opportunity. | ||
| And when it comes, they're going to hand us a mail that we can't stomach. | ||
| And that'll be the beginning of the end for our country as a world leader. | ||
| To be a world leader, you have to be better than everybody else. | ||
| That means when you make a decision, if the decision is better for you than it is other people, that's the wrong decision as a leader. | ||
| Everything he does and this administration is doing is only for their benefit. | ||
| They have effectively, through propaganda, made oust price half our country saying Democrats are this, Democrats are that. | ||
| Well, no, Democrats are fellow Americans. | ||
| Republicans are fellow Americans. | ||
| We have a difference of opinion, but through compromise and through reasoning, we can come to a solution. | ||
| But he's not for that. | ||
| He's trying to destroy all types of social and economic strings that bind us and keep us together and keep us a productive country so that it becomes basically ruled by oligarchs. | ||
| And he's proven that by who he's allowed in his administration. | ||
| Look at Leon Musk and who does Trump admire? | ||
| Other dictators. | ||
| So for him to come out now and say this guy's ambitious, you know, yes, he's a criminal and yes, he should be dealt with. | ||
| And we should, why don't we deal with Latin America in a more realistic way, like bringing loans to the people that work the lands instead of feeding governments that are corrupt. | ||
| You know, there's all kinds of things we can do to help our hemisphere, but invading countries, destabilizing it, and stealing their natural resources is not the way we do it. | ||
| We've done it in the past, and look how well that turned out. | ||
| Next up is Ralph in New Jersey on our line for Democrats. | ||
| Good morning, Ralph. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes, hello, Kimmy. | |
| How are you today? | ||
| Fine, thank you. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes, my name is Ralph. | |
| I do a tremendous amount of research on this stuff. | ||
| And based on what some of the callers have been saying, I'd like to say one thing specifically. | ||
| Donald Trump went into Venezuela when Congress and the Senate was on recess. | ||
| That is the exact same thing he did in Northern Syria. | ||
| He waited till Congress and the Senate went on to recess before he went into and pulled out of Northern Syria in the dead of night. | ||
| Okay? | ||
| The UN had told Erdogan that he could not have that northern Syria property. | ||
| He, Erdogan, and Putin got together and they coordinated the fact that they could pull out of northern Syria when Congress and Senate went on recess on October 19, 2019. | ||
| And Ralph, did you start talking about Venezuela with this Venezuela thing because he did not want anyone to question what he was doing? | ||
| He did not want to get authorization from Congress or the Senate before he made this move. | ||
| This is what Donald Trump does. | ||
| This is what he does. | ||
| And everything he does is for the benefit of billionaires and millionaires. | ||
| It is not for the benefit of the United States people. | ||
| The money that we spend going into these other countries, we could be using for healthcare subsidies. | ||
| We could be using for possible daycare for average Americans. | ||
| This is what we could be using that money for. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| All right. | ||
| There's a comment from Steve Wallazer on Facebook. | ||
| Venezuela will be prosperous again. | ||
| At one time, it was the envy of the world. | ||
| Then socialism took hold in 1999, thanks to Donald J. Trump and our military. | ||
| Wanda is in California on our line for Republicans. | ||
| Good morning, Wanda. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, guess what, world? | |
| The nation of Iran has fallen. | ||
| The government is gone. | ||
| The king is back. | ||
| Where are you getting this? | ||
|
unidentified
|
We're dancing, Wanda. | |
| About Iran. | ||
| All right, let's go to Gary in San Antonio, Texas on our line for independence. | ||
| Good morning, Gary. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Thank you. | |
| I am so glad. | ||
| And I really appreciate your monitoring of this program. | ||
| I really admire you. | ||
| I want to say, thank God for such a godly president that we have now. | ||
| The one who needs classes. | ||
| He needs classes in holding the Bible and even try to sell them. | ||
| One caller said people are dancing in the streets in Venezuela. | ||
| Oh, yes. | ||
| Many times I people see people dancing in the streets. | ||
| But what happens after that? | ||
| What happens after that? | ||
| Just remember, how many of them are still dancing? | ||
| We have monsters here that we can't get rid of. | ||
| So we go to other countries and get rid of their monsters. | ||
| People are going to retaliate. | ||
| How many countries right now, especially the poor ones, who have to keep muted, they cannot say their mind because the little support they get from the United States will be taken away. | ||
| Haven't you seen that? | ||
| They can't speak their mind. | ||
| Well, I would say, I go overseas and I see or people talk bad about this president and they ate the United States people, even me. | ||
| My advice is that the president, the wonderful president, go into every dysfunctional home and take out these people that are causing trouble and we'll have the best country under the sun. | ||
| My parents are Cuban and we're closely related to the Venezuelans. | ||
| And the Venezuelan people are dancing, but many are hungry. | ||
| You only see the ones that are dancing. | ||
| So, Gary, since you mentioned that your family is from Cuba, there's been quite a bit of analysis that this action in Venezuela, particularly with the United States potentially having some control over the government, will have a major economic impact on Cuba. | ||
| And also, the president even said that Cuba might be sort of on the radar for further action. | ||
| What are your thoughts on that? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, ma'am, I'm going to sorry, respectfully, I would tell the president, because I can't know what he does when he wakes up in the morning. | |
| Take the Bible and read it holding up the right way. | ||
| If he holds the Bible in the correct direction, he will understand something. | ||
| Don't read it upside down, okay? | ||
| And don't sell anymore. | ||
| Keep them in his house. | ||
| Read all of them and he'll be happy. | ||
| All right, next up is Alvin in Denver on our line for independence and also former military. | ||
| Good morning, Alvin. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning, Kimberly. | |
| I was in Panama when the invasion took place. | ||
| Now, the day I arrived in Panama, I think, was the day that a Panamanian official testified in Congress that Nori Ager was involved in drug trafficking. | ||
| That triggered about a year and a half worth of tensions between the Panamanian government and our government. | ||
| And there was low-level harassment, military members, civilians being harassed by the Panamanian defense forces. | ||
| However, and he was indicted. | ||
| But what triggered our invasion of Panama was a Navy lieutenant was shot during some kind of confrontation at a checkpoint. | ||
| A couple days later, I watched as the activity on the airfield grew and grew, and ultimately we invaded. | ||
| The invasion was messy. | ||
| We had military members that lost their lives. | ||
| We had Panamanian civilians and Panamanian defense forces who lost their lives, who were injured. | ||
| A lot of stuff was destroyed. | ||
| A lot of things were broken. | ||
| So what lessons do you think we can take from your experience there to what's happening now? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, what your guest said earlier, I think this was the model. | |
| As soon as I heard about it, I started reflecting on my time there. | ||
| And the Panamanian people wanted Noriega out. | ||
| He was very unpopular. | ||
| So after we invaded, after we got Noriega out, there was a transition. | ||
| I think the transition was assisted by the fact that the Panamanian culture and American culture was very much linked. | ||
| Democratic values were kind of already in place, even though Panama had been led by a dictator, Torijos, who was benevolent. | ||
| Do you think that, given the way that you saw that play out, that this extraction of Maduro to arrest him was a good idea or a bad idea? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, the extraction was perfect. | |
| I think our military did that perfectly. | ||
| The motives in doing this are a lot more murky. | ||
| The invasion in Panama, the motives, I think, were clear. | ||
| Bush Sr., I think, was willing to wait things out with the drug indictment. | ||
| But the moment that Navy lieutenant was shot, I think that crossed the line as far as Bush was concerned. | ||
| All right, I want to get in one more caller before we have to finish up this segment. | ||
| This is Bianvindo, excuse me, in Miami, Florida, on our line for Republicans. | ||
| And apologies if I mispronounced your name, but good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| Yes, I'd like to inform you how a government is taken over by, you know, on the left or, you know, to a dictatorship. | ||
| Starting with Cuba and all the other countries that have gone to the left, usually the way they operate is that they retire everybody in the judicial system and they put their own judges in there like they did in Venezuela. | ||
| And recently, they've done it in Mexico where they lost 30% of investors because you don't have constitutional guarantees with a judicial system that is controlled by the party. | ||
| So in Venezuela, if you overthrow the government of Venezuela right now as they did, they can't leave. | ||
| It is a big mistake because nothing's going to change. | ||
| There are five to six different persons that are ready to take over, and the form of government will not change. | ||
| From the one who was assigned the vice president really was not elected, Delce Rodriguez. | ||
| So she and her brother, which in the end, they were interested in taking over just as well. | ||
| And there's such complicity within the government of Venezuela that you wouldn't have been able to change anything unless you took over and reformed the judicial system to put people that really respected the Constitution and be able to respect property. | ||
| All right. | ||
| Well, we're about out of time. | ||
| I want to read one more quick comment from Laura on Facebook. | ||
| I'm thrilled for the Venezuelan people who are now free from the enslavement of socialism. | ||
| God bless all your new endeavors in freedom. | ||
| Compliments of the USA. | ||
| Consider yourselves hugged by America too. | ||
| Up next, we're going to have a conversation about what's next for the United States and Venezuela with Ryan Berg, Director of the Americas Program and Head of the Future of Venezuela Initiative at CSIS. | ||
| We'll be right back. | ||
|
unidentified
|
July 4th, 2026 marks the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence. | |
| And tonight, on C-SPAN's Q ⁇ A, we're joined by former U.S. Treasurer and the chair of the America 250 Commission, Rosie Rios. | ||
| She'll talk about several of the events that will occur over the next year, including the U.S. Army's 250th anniversary parade back in June and other initiatives that the public can participate in leading up to the anniversary. | ||
| The movement and the moments. | ||
| And let me just say, there's a couple of moments that are unprecedented, that have never happened before in this country, that are being planned as we speak. | ||
| That is so unreal. | ||
| If I showed you the screenshot of what we're planning, your first reaction, as it was for our commission, was, you've got to be kidding, it's happening. | ||
| And it is happening. | ||
| So stay tuned. | ||
| Much more to come. | ||
| But again, what I'm most excited about is continuing our programming long after 2026. | ||
|
unidentified
|
America 250 Commission Chair Rosie Rios tonight at 8 p.m. Eastern on C-SPAN's Q ⁇ A. You can listen to Q&A and all of our podcasts on our free C-SPAN Now app. | |
| America marks 250 years, and C-SPAN is there to commemorate every moment, from the signing of the Declaration of Independence to the voices shaping our nation's future. | ||
| We bring you unprecedented all-platform coverage, exploring the stories, sights, and spirit that make up America. | ||
| Join us for remarkable coast-to-coast coverage, celebrating our nation's journey like no other network can. | ||
| America 250, over a year of historic moments. | ||
| C-SPAN, official media partner of America 250. | ||
| Washington Journal continues. | ||
| Welcome back to talk about the geopolitical impact of what's been happening between the United States and Venezuela. | ||
| We're joined now by Ryan Berg, who is the Americas Program Director at the Sten Center for Strategic and International Studies. | ||
| Welcome back to Washington Journal. | ||
| Thanks for having me on. | ||
| Let's get a little bit of a background here about Nicolas Maduro, how he came to power in Venezuela, and how he ruled the country. | ||
| So Maduro was Chavez's handpicked successor. | ||
| Prior to that, he performed a number of roles, I think most prominently foreign minister of Venezuela. | ||
| And Maduro is Cuban-trained. | ||
| It's something that I think is important to point out because the Cuban regime has held on for so long. | ||
| It understands power. | ||
| It understands repression. | ||
| It understands brute force. | ||
| And I think Maduro learned all of those things by being Cuban-trained. | ||
| And he ran the country in much the same way. | ||
| with, in many cases, an iron fist. | ||
| A number of stolen elections, a number of theatrical negotiations with foreign powers, most prominently the United States. | ||
| But ultimately, at the end of the day, it was about extending his rule in Venezuela. | ||
| And he is a pretty wily character. | ||
| Over the course of his career, the U.S. in particular had underestimated him numerous times. | ||
| And Maduro had played a number of administrations. | ||
| It seems like yesterday, in the wee hours of the morning, his luck ran out. | ||
| And the U.S. performed this extraordinary operation to abduct him from what the president says was essentially a fortress where he was staying and bring him to justice to face the indictment in the Southern District Court of New York. | ||
| That indictment refers to him as the de facto president. | ||
| Is that accurate and does that language matter? | ||
| The language matters a lot because there's a lot of conversation right now about the legality of this action. | ||
| It matters because we don't recognize him as the de jure president, the legal president of Venezuela, and not just going back to the July 2024 elections, which were very clearly stolen, but going back actually to the first Trump administration where there were fraudulent elections and a question about what to do regarding the Venezuelan government, whom to recognize. | ||
| So this is a language that has been used by the first Trump administration, by the Biden administration, and now by the second Trump administration. | ||
| And I think it provides some of the legal foundations for what was done yesterday in the operation. | ||
| What do we know so far about how Venezuelans are reacting to what's happened? | ||
| Well, I think there's the Venezuelan diaspora outside of Venezuela, I think, which is very happy to see Maduro flown to the United States and to eventually hopefully serve justice in this indictment in the Southern District Court of New York. | ||
| And then there are Venezuelans who are still in the country, who I think are apprehensive. | ||
| They're asking some of the same questions that we're asking, which is what comes next? | ||
| What do things look like, not just in the coming weeks and months, but also in the coming years? | ||
| Is this the foundation for a democratic transition? | ||
| Or is this the continuation of this regime, but with a different face, with a different figure? | ||
| There's so many questions to unpack here. | ||
| Yesterday was kind of the moment where we figured out exactly what happened. | ||
| And today I think we're starting to ask the right questions, which is what comes next? | ||
| And what is the plan, if there is one, for ruling Venezuela moving forward? | ||
| President Trump was pressed on this at the press conference yesterday with many reporters trying to get details from him on what actually comes next in the country. | ||
| What's your assessment based on what little we know so far? | ||
| Well, the press conference was full of information, I must say that. | ||
| But it also left observers like me with more questions than it did answers. | ||
| And perhaps that's just the nature of where we're at in the unfolding of this very complex situation. | ||
| There were so many questions to answer yesterday that perhaps it was impossible for one press conference to answer all of it. | ||
| But again, I have a lot of questions, and I think many others do as well, coming out of that press conference. | ||
| The president referred to something that sounds to me like a provisional government for Venezuela. | ||
| There will be a U.S. role for this. | ||
| He says he will designate certain individuals. | ||
| He pointed to Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Defense Secretary Hegseth, potentially General Kaine, if security becomes an issue around certain assets that the United States feels is necessary to get the economy moving again in Venezuela, but that there will also be Venezuelans involved in this. | ||
| And he pointed out that the vice president, again, de facto, not dejure, vice president of the regime, Delsi Rodriguez, had been sworn in as president. | ||
| He also said at various other points of the press conference that anyone linked to Maduro would not be allowed to run the country long term and would not be favorable for Venezuela actually recovering any kind of economic path here. | ||
| And Delsi Rodriguez is clearly a protégé of Nicolas Maduro. | ||
| She was picked, hand-picked by him to be the vice president. | ||
| So there are a lot of questions here when it seems to come to some of these inconsistencies. | ||
| But the one thing that really surprised me, Kimberly, is that the president took ownership of this issue in a way that I think surprised many and surprised many in his base who are very clearly preoccupied or concerned about some of these long-term commitments that might be involved in sticking with a rebuilding of Venezuela. | ||
| He said, we're not going to do this in vain, and we're going to make sure that Venezuela has the best chance of becoming a successful country again. | ||
| That seems to me to imply a long-term commitment to Venezuela to try to rebuild of the kind that many of us doubted the president would support given where some of his base is on this. | ||
| Given what he campaigned on. | ||
| That's correct. | ||
| That's correct. | ||
| And we often talk about the pottery barn principle, right? | ||
| You break it, you own it. | ||
| This coming out of the Iraq War and the Afghanistan invasion, the president seemed to take ownership of it yesterday by saying the United States will be very much involved in the rebuilding of Venezuela. | ||
| So that shocked many and surprised me too. | ||
| You mentioned former vice president, I guess now interim president de facto of Venezuela, Del Codriguez. | ||
| She gave a statement saying, we had already warned that an aggression was underway under false excuses and false pretenses and that the masks had fallen off, revealing only one objective, regime change in Venezuela. | ||
| This regime change would also allow for the seizure of our energy, mineral, and natural resources. | ||
| This is the true objective, and the world and the international community must know it. | ||
| We demand the immediate liberation of President Nicolas Maduro and his wife Celia Flores. | ||
| The only president of Venezuela, President Nicolas Maduro, we are determined to be free. | ||
| What is being done to Venezuela is a barbarity. | ||
| This is a very different tone than President Trump implied from the press conference yesterday where he said that Secretary of State Rubio had spoken to her and that she was planning to... | ||
| She's willing to do what's necessary to make Venezuela great again, I think was the quote. | ||
| What is your assessment of, well, first of all, tell us a bit about Del Codriguez, what we need to know about her, and why you think she may have reacted this way compared to what the president said. | ||
| Well, as I mentioned, she is a hand-picked Maduro loyalist. | ||
| She and her brother have played an important role in this regime for a long time. | ||
| Her brother is a trained psychiatrist and the head of the National Assembly. | ||
| He's also been the point person for Maduro for many years on negotiations with the United States. | ||
| So the two of them are steeped in the politics of this regime. | ||
| They're steeped in the politics of how to hang on to power, how power works, and how they can maneuver to stay in power. | ||
| So it's clear to me that long term this is going to have a lot of challenges and probably won't work out in terms of a provisional government somehow with Del Codriguez. | ||
| But I think that quote that you gave gets to a contradiction or a major challenge that she has on her hands internally, which is that she has to simultaneously satisfy a Chavista base which is extremely upset about an abduction operation that was allowed to happen without really any Venezuelan pushback. | ||
| It seems that the United States Air Force had air supremacy. | ||
| The United States had a complete surprise, the element of surprise. | ||
| suppression of the electricity and cyber grids. | ||
| So she's simultaneously trying to satisfy that faction of the party while at the same time potentially filling this role that the United States sees for her. | ||
| It's going to be a very difficult balance. | ||
| And right now I think it's probably safe to say that if she does intend to play this role, she needs to consolidate power internally. | ||
| It should be known that she does not have control of the armed forces. | ||
| She didn't have necessarily a large well spring of support within the armed forces, naturally. | ||
| That was Maduro. | ||
| That was Josado Cabello, another important figure in the regime. | ||
| That was Vladimir Padrina-Lopez, the defense minister. | ||
| So the way that this regime works is that you have various factions with different elements of control over different institutions. | ||
| And she had elements of control over the elements of the secret police and the counterintelligence apparatus, but not necessarily the armed forces. | ||
| So she's in a pretty difficult position. | ||
| She's got to consolidate support domestically, and that means appearing to be outraged. | ||
| And also, keep in mind, she may have played a role in the abduction of Nicolas Maduro. | ||
| There may have been a deal struck here. | ||
| And so in order to consolidate control, she can't be seen as having played a part in this operation that seemingly got Maduro in the dead of night, while at the same time trying to play this role for the United States and a provisional government. | ||
| That seems to me a very difficult bridge to be able to span for Delsi Rodriguez. | ||
| So the last point I'll make is that the only way that this makes sense to me is if she is a sort of figurehead for the moment, but if eventually the long-term plan is still to try to transition away from this regime and towards the democratic government that the people of Venezuela elected in July of 2024. | ||
| What did you make of the president speaking pretty openly about part of the reasoning behind this, or at least the consequences of it, being more direct U.S. involvement in Venezuela's oil industry? | ||
| Yeah, that's been a lot of the focus this morning, and a lot of the commentary is simply about the U.S. being able to get possession of Venezuelan oil. | ||
| Oil is obviously an important part of any of the strategy towards Venezuela. | ||
| 303 billion barrels of known reserves in Venezuela. | ||
| It's the largest on earth. | ||
| So you can't separate Venezuela from oil. | ||
| The two are nearly synonymous. | ||
| However, I would argue that the United States has a Treasury Department license in place for U.S. companies, especially Chevron, to operate in Venezuela. | ||
| So we're already getting Venezuelan oil right now. | ||
| I don't think the President would have to put American troops in harm's way if this was just about oil and not at all about geopolitics or any of the other strategy decisions that went into this operation. | ||
| That said, I think the president focused a lot on oil in the press conference because I think he understands that for Venezuela to grow again, for Venezuela to have any chance at having economic recovery, the oil industry is going to be an incredibly important part of that operation. | ||
| It's undeniable and it's unavoidable that Venezuela is going to have to grow in the oil sector before it grows in other sectors in order to have any kind of economic recovery. | ||
| And I think that's why you see such a focus right now, if the goal is indeed to rebuild Venezuela on Venezuelan oil. | ||
| President Trump also spoke yesterday about what he called the Donroe Doctrine, obviously a play on the Monroe Doctrine. | ||
| I want to play a little bit of that clip and then get your response. | ||
| Under the now deposed dictator Maduro, Venezuela was increasingly hosting foreign adversaries in our region and acquiring menacing offensive weapons that could threaten U.S. interests and lives. | ||
| And they used those weapons last night. | ||
| They used those weapons last night, potentially in league with the cartels operating along our border. | ||
| All of these actions were in gross violation of the core principles of American foreign policy, dating back more than two centuries, and not anymore. | ||
| All the way back, it dated to the Monroe doctrines. | ||
| And the Monroe Doctrine is a big deal, but we've superseded it by a lot, by a real lot. | ||
| They now call it the Donro Document. | ||
| I don't know. | ||
| It's Monroe Doctrine. | ||
| We sort of forgot about it. | ||
| It was very important, but we forgot about it. | ||
| We don't forget about it anymore. | ||
| Under our new national security strategy, American dominance in the Western Hemisphere will never be questioned again. | ||
| The President there referred to the National Security Strategy, and I know that you've written about an element of that strategy, the Trump Corollary, as it's called, which really does kind of encapsulate what the President is talking about here as the Donroe Doctrine. | ||
| Can you explain a bit more about it? | ||
| Yeah, I prefer to call it the Trump Corollary. | ||
| That's the official term that the administration has given to it, and I think it's very important. | ||
| I wrote from the very beginning of this administration that I think it's going to be a Latin America-first administration that's going to be highly focused on Latin America, not just because there are a number of individuals such as Secretary of State Marco Rubio who are Latin Americanists in important positions of power, but also because the Trump agenda intersects with the region in so many important ways, drugs, migration, and the geopolitics. | ||
| So it was no surprise to me that the recently released National Security Strategy document of the United States actually led with the Western Hemisphere. | ||
| As an analyst of the region who's been looking at this for a long time, it's the first time I've seen Latin America get more than one page treatment in national sections. | ||
| Four to four. | ||
| And that section didn't just lead the regional sections, but it also led with this idea of the Trump corollary. | ||
| And the Trump corollary basically says that the U.S. wants to restore U.S. preeminence in the Western Hemisphere, and it's incredibly focused on foreign control of vital strategic assets, things like ports, airports, roads, things that could be militarized in a potential conflict, as well as the geopolitics of the region. | ||
| And I think it's really important to note here that the last individual that Maduro met with before he was abducted from Venezuela was the special envoy from China. | ||
| He had a very important meeting that day, Friday in the afternoon, with the Chinese special envoy. | ||
| It's my understanding that the Chinese were not even able to get out of the country before the operation began. | ||
| Trump said yesterday he didn't know anything about that, but I'm certain that somebody most likely told him that before he gave the green light to the operation. | ||
| And that's certainly a signal. | ||
| If nothing else, it's a strong signal to the Chinese that we are not just interested in the Western Hemisphere again, but interested once again in being the top player in the hemisphere. | ||
| And to make one more point, to kind of step back and give you a macro perspective, I think the first Trump administration and the second, sorry, the first Trump administration and the Biden administration basically set us on a path of competition with adversaries like China. | ||
| Now, what I think we're entering is what I would call a consolidation phase, where both countries, the U.S. and China, are looking to their immediate neighborhoods, in the U.S. case, the Western Hemisphere, in China's case, very aggressive actions in the South China Sea, to shore up their immediate neighborhoods and get ready for a long-term competition that could span decades. | ||
| So I think that's why you're seeing so much focus on the Western Hemisphere. | ||
| A lot of folks saying, wait a second, we've been absent from this neighborhood for a long time and things have gone a little bit sideways. | ||
| We need to pay attention once again to our immediate abroad in order to have that taken care of if we're going to actually be effective long-term against China in a decades-long strategic competition. | ||
| All right, we're going to be taking your questions for CSIS's Ryan Berg about Venezuela and the geopolitical implications of the U.S. recent actions there. | ||
| Our phone line for Democrats is 202-748-8000. | ||
| For Republicans, 202-748-8001. | ||
| For Independents, 202-748-8002. | ||
| And once again, we have a line for folks who are active or former military, 202-748-8003. | ||
| Let's start with Dorothy in Baltimore on our line for Democrats. | ||
| Good morning, Dorothy. | ||
|
unidentified
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Good morning, everyone. | |
| I'm going to put out one little line of advice for Americans, and then I want to give my opinion and ask him a question. | ||
| My advice to Americans is get your water and your non-perishable foods together. | ||
| Now, I'm going to lead into why I'm saying that. | ||
| Now, Trump has or is alienating our allies. | ||
| That's what he's doing. | ||
| China is trying to combine his allies. | ||
| What Trump is setting up for us, because of the way he's talking about taking over Greenland, Panama, Cuba, you name Canada, you name it. | ||
| Now, I've heard or read somewhere that some of our allies don't even want to share classified information or intelligence with us because they don't trust Trump. | ||
| This is where we're going to fall in trouble. | ||
| Maduro probably was a horrible man and should have been gone. | ||
| Republicans can't understand. | ||
| We're not saying that this man was good, shouldn't be gone. | ||
| We're saying the strategy that Trump is using is dangerous for the USA. | ||
| I see a Goliath and David scenario coming. | ||
| We may be attacked, but not the way they think it. | ||
| It could be biological. | ||
| We're getting medicine from China. | ||
| We're getting stuff from India. | ||
| The people that we are competing against and doing all kinds of crazy stuff now, well, they need to not have no more food or medicine or anything coming from these countries. | ||
| And Dorothy, I believe they're going to attack us. | ||
| And Dorothy, what was your question? | ||
|
unidentified
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Oh, and my question would be: what is the plan for the U.S. to be safe, being that Trump is setting us up for what I just said? | |
| What is his plan for us to be safe? | ||
| Go to what I just said. | ||
| All right. | ||
|
unidentified
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Great. | |
| Well, I can give you an answer as to how I interpret the same document we were just talking about, which is the National Security Strategy document. | ||
| As you said, Kimberly, it featured four pages on the Western Hemisphere. | ||
| And after that section about the Trump corollary, there were multiple passages where it stated that the United States wanted to build secure supply chains that could not be interfered with by China using Western Hemisphere countries as places to build economic security. | ||
| I think that starts first and foremost with a country like Mexico, where labor is cheaper than in the United States and can, of course, compete with a number of countries in Asia on costs, but where proximity to the United States and free trade agreements makes it such that it's a lot easier to build that level of economic security. | ||
| The other comment I would make is that with Venezuela specifically, about 80% of the oil that Venezuela produced before a quarantine imposed by the president was actually going to China. | ||
| So China was benefiting from Venezuelan oil until such time as the president several weeks ago implemented what he called a blockade, but I think in actuality it's more of a quarantine, right? | ||
| And actions against sanctioned tankers of the world ghost, the global ghost fleet that were taking Venezuelan oil and moving that sanctioned oil to countries like China. | ||
| So there are two actions right there that I think will make the United States safer and kind of tie into the caller's question. | ||
| You mentioned 80% of Venezuela's oil going to China, but a decent amount also went to Cuba. | ||
| And there's some sort of knock-on effects for Cuba's especially economy from this. | ||
| Can you talk about that? | ||
| For a long time, Venezuela was a provider of discounted or free oil to Cuba. | ||
| That was part of the trade, essentially, that existed between Venezuela and Cuba. | ||
| The Cubans gave Venezuela intelligence heft. | ||
| They beefed up that intelligence apparatus. | ||
| And the president himself said multiple Cuban bodyguards were killed in the early morning raid on his compound. | ||
| So it's clear who was protecting him and who he trusted in terms of loyalty. | ||
| And the exchange was very basic. | ||
| We provide you security and counterintelligence against any kinds of coups from the armed forces, and you send us free or heavily discounted barrels of oil. | ||
| Sometimes they would use that internally in Cuba to satisfy domestic energy demands. | ||
| Sometimes they would take some of the excess and sell it onward on the international market. | ||
| Now it's clear that that link, that nexus, has been severed. | ||
| And Cuba is already from several years before, living some of its worst days since the so-called special period in the 1990s. | ||
| So Cuba, as well, on the brink of economic collapse, it came up yesterday in the press conference. | ||
| Secretary of State Rubio stepped back up to the podium and commented on the failed economic model in Cuba. | ||
| And then the president said, look, Cuba is sort of on the watch list at the moment. | ||
| And so you have a lot of speculation right now about whether Cuba could be next, not necessarily in terms of a military operation, that's not what I'm saying, but in terms of some kind of transition to new leadership as a fallout from what has happened in Venezuela and the severing or the sundering of that link on the oil front. | ||
| Jeff is in Port Angeles, Washington on our line for independence. | ||
| Good morning, Jeff. | ||
|
unidentified
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Hey, good morning. | |
| So it looks to me like the Venezuelan military stood down and allowed, effectively allowed us to go in there and take him. | ||
| So what is their role? | ||
| I mean, these are the same people who have been supporting Maduro all these years. | ||
| So what, they're just going to be left in place to, what, take over? | ||
| I like your opinion. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| Great. | ||
| Thanks so much, Jeff. | ||
| It's a critical question. | ||
| It's something I've been harping on for the last 24, 48 hours, and even in many interviews before. | ||
| The military here, the armed forces, is really the deciding factor in whether a democratic transition happens in Venezuela. | ||
| We've said it before the military operation, and we'll say it again after. | ||
| Right now, it doesn't look as though they are loyal to the regime. | ||
| They haven't stood by the side of the regime necessarily, but they also haven't stood on the side of a democratic transition. | ||
| I think what's happened is that they've simply retreated, as the caller said, as Jeff said. | ||
| They allowed the attack to proceed. | ||
| There was some resistance, but not much, and the U.S. really had operational control, and this was swift, decisive, lethal, and as far as we know, no one killed on the U.S. side. | ||
| That said, it's going to be key in the coming days to actually look at what they do. | ||
| Do they step back forward and show loyalty to Del Codriguez, the de facto vice president, who may well be the Venezuelan leader moving forward, at least under this provisional government idea, or do they remain kind of in the background, ready to take whichever side seems to be the most decisive? | ||
| If they take the side of the democratic opposition and they say, we stand on the side of a democratic opposition, in authoritarian regimes, that's usually the decisive moment. | ||
| When the institutional armed forces stand on the side of an opposition movement, that usually means the end for an authoritarian regime. | ||
| And so I think it's key to look at them and to watch them very closely. | ||
| The last point I would make, and this goes directly to one of the callers' comments, is you have plenty of support within the armed forces for the opposition. | ||
| Comment that I've made a lot recently is you don't get to 70% support in an already unfree and unfair election, which the opposition proved that it won in July of 2024, if you don't have a lot of support within the armed forces. | ||
| So when people go into the privacy of the ballot box voting for the opposition and expressing their will, I think that was decisive on the evening of the operation, as the caller said. | ||
| Lots of support within the armed forces for the opposition. | ||
| Kirk is in Owaso, Oklahoma, on our line for Democrats. | ||
| Good morning, Kirk. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| Coming from the Caribbean, I need to thought something about it's not only Cuba was getting oil from Venezuela, another Petro-Carib, most Caribbean islands, from Jamaica, Trinidad, Barbados. | ||
| So it's not about that. | ||
| So my question is, one of my questions is how this whole thing would affect other Caribbean. | ||
| And moreover, how does this whole Western hemisphere, which is nothing new for us in the Caribbean, we know what happened from the defense skirmishes in Cuba, in Haiti, and all of that. | ||
| And we want to know all of that. | ||
| Those are two really interesting points about the oil relationships with the rest of the Caribbean nations and also that the United States does have a history of interventions and regime change in the Western Hemisphere. | ||
| Yeah, first on the oil point, the caller is exactly right. | ||
| It's not just Cuba, although Cumo was a very prominent case. | ||
| Higo Chavez, Maduro's predecessor, built a very vast program called Petro Caribe, as the caller very correctly said, to build political support within the Caribbean community. | ||
| And that support extended to international institutions like the United Nations, kept some of the pressure on the anti-democratic maneuvers at home off in some of these multilateral organizations. | ||
| It was a very pun intended crude exchange of sort of political support for material goods. | ||
| With Venezuela producing much less than it did at the apex of its production under Hugo Chavez, the 3.5 million barrels of oil per day apex has now slid down to about 850 to 900,000 barrels of oil per day at its best. | ||
| Venezuela simply doesn't have as much production to spread around the Caribbean community. | ||
| There's a major question to the caller's point about what happens with Venezuelan oil, which the President has clearly indicated he wants to pump more of. | ||
| He wants to see as a key driver of Venezuela's economic revitalization, whether those relationships with Caribbean nations that need that oil and have surprisingly not moved along as quickly as many had hoped in terms of any kind of energy transition and are still very much reliant on fossil fuels, | ||
| natural gas for a lot of their energy, whether they will be able to tap into some of that increased production if increased production happens at all in Venezuela is a key question moving forward. | ||
| To the point about interventions, I'll just go back to the National Security Strategy document question, the Trump corollary question. | ||
| I think the President has outlined a very muscular approach to the region because of where I think they believe we are in this long-term competition with China, and we may well see more of these kinds of decisive actions in the region in the years to come. | ||
| We've had a debate within Washington about whether the administration is isolationist, is retrenching. | ||
| I think those debates are quite stale. | ||
| I think the president has outlined in a number of documents and in his actions that he will take decisive military action when he feels it's in the U.S. interest, and that he sees U.S. power as a tool to try to reshape elements of geopolitics in the U.S. favor. | ||
| So I think the region should get ready for more potential actions just like this. | ||
| Bob is in Abington, Pennsylvania, on our line for Republicans. | ||
| Good morning, Bob. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning, C-SPAN. | |
| Thank you for taking my call. | ||
| Good morning, Mr. Burke. | ||
| I just wanted to ask if you could enlighten us a little more on how some of this kind of ties in with some of the recent elections, and I'm thinking of Argentina with Malay, | ||
| recently in Chile and some other places, and how this kind of all ties in with a more democratic representation of governments in that area in South America and Central America. | ||
| And also how this kind of ties in vis-a-vis China's Belt and Road Initiative and how this is a way to blunt it. | ||
| So perhaps you can enlighten myself and the other callers and viewers on that, please. | ||
| It was a terrific set of questions, Bob. | ||
| Thanks so much. | ||
| The caller is absolutely right that the region is experiencing a shift to the right in terms of a lot of the elections that have happened recently. | ||
| And we've now entered 2026 when there are going to be other elections in the region, Colombia, Brazil, Peru, just to name a few, where the right-wing candidates or the center-right in those countries has the upper hand on the issues that will matter in those elections. | ||
| And so what the Trump administration has on its hands is a scenario or a region that is shifting to a more pro-Washington stance and may shift even further throughout 2026 to a more pro-Washington stance. | ||
| That gives them the opportunity to strengthen ties to even more governments in the region. | ||
| It gives them an opportunity to further their agenda on drugs, migration, and China in the region even further. | ||
| I would argue, Bob, however, that the transition in Venezuela is not yet over. | ||
| To paraphrase Winston Churchill, this is not the beginning of the end, but rather the end of the beginning, most likely, given that, as I said at the outset of this conversation, I just don't see how this can work long term with Del Codriguez being so tied to Maduro as a key partner of the United States, long term at least. | ||
| She may make sense as a short-term solution to eventually get to a democratic transition and a more U.S.-aligned government in Venezuela, but that's over the longer term. | ||
| And so I would argue from the Venezuelan perspective, that shift towards a more pro-Washington government has not occurred yet just because we have Nicolas Maduro in custody. | ||
| Long term on China, just one thing here. | ||
| As I see the administration's plans taking shape for Latin America, the one thing that I think remains slightly underdeveloped is the long-term economic strategy when it comes to competing with the Chinese in the region militarily and in other elements of geopolitics. | ||
| The administration seems to have that answer. | ||
| But this battle with China, this long-term strategic competition with China, is also highly economic in nature. | ||
| And without further trade agreements or frameworks that we can use to trade more deeply with countries, to invest in critical infrastructure, to look at things like ports, airports, roads, things that could be critical in any kind of conflict type of scenario. | ||
| The Panama Canal has been something that's been mentioned by the administration a lot. | ||
| Without a plan for those types of strategic assets and a way to compete with China, we are not going to be effective long term in any kind of counter-BRI scenario. | ||
| All right, let's get one more caller in. | ||
| Ronald is in Romulus, Michigan, on our line for Democrats and is former military. | ||
| Good morning, Ronald. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I'd like to ask Mr. Verge, when you're talking about us running Venezuela, is it going to be the same way that after the Bay of Pigs that we tried to influence Cuba for the last 70 years? | |
| We've had an embargo and we can't get along with a country 90 miles away. | ||
| How can we get along with a country 2,000 miles away? | ||
| Well, Ronald is asking key questions that I think need to be answered today, and I think key administration officials will be out on the morning shows trying to give some more meat to the president's idea that we're going to help in this kind of provisional government with Venezuela. | ||
| The only thing that I can say at the moment is that the president has outlined several designees, such as Secretary of State, Marco Rubio, to be able to help run this. | ||
| But I think it remains to be seen, as I've said throughout the program, whether Del Codriguez, the de facto vice president who is now seen by the U.S. as running the country, will actually play ball. | ||
| The president has put multiple threats on the table, like there could be a second strike if she doesn't do what's in the U.S. interest. | ||
| But I think that that all remains to be seen, and there are more questions at this point than there are answers. | ||
| What does the framework look like? | ||
| Who makes the decisions? | ||
| How are the decisions made? | ||
| Over what do we want decisions made? | ||
| I think this is far more than just an economic quarantine or a set of sanctions that will be enforced. | ||
| But there are a lot of questions that remain to be answered. | ||
| And it's very difficult to speculate without more meat from the administration on what this agreement is going to look like. | ||
| Hopefully, when we have more information, we can have you back for more analysis. | ||
| Thank you very much, Ryan Berg at the Center for International and Strategic Studies. | ||
| Really appreciate your time. | ||
| Thank you very much for having me. | ||
| And thanks to everyone who called in today on Washington Journal sharing your thoughts. | ||
| We're going to be back with another edition of the show starting at 7 a.m. Eastern tomorrow. | ||
| We hope you'll join us and have a great day. | ||
|
unidentified
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Why are you doing this? | |
| This is outrageous. | ||
| This is a kangaroo root court. | ||
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