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| 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. | ||
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| 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 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
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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 GSFPS? | ||
| 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 country. | ||
| 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 Thun 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 the SCIF 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 involved this. | ||
| Let's get to your calls. | ||
| We'll start with Dahlia in Miami on our line for Republicans. | ||
| Good morning, Dahlia. | ||
|
unidentified
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Good morning. | |
| In Miami, unlike other places, people are very happy that Maduro 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 Maluko 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 your 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 destroying 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 could 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 their 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 through Congress. | ||
| He's supposed to have congressional clarity to do something like this. | ||
| And he didn't. | ||
| He just went ahead 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
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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 that there would 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's going to be a lot of turmoil over this right here. | ||
| Donald Trump is a crook. | ||
| He's probably getting paid from the oil communists to go down there and take back this country because of it, war. | ||
| And the drug dealers that he's let out of prison, you know, 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, 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 and 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 just, 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 in 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, and so we go after the true countries, Mexico and 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 big in 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. | ||
| 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 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 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 nuts or 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 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 has about 800 and something thousand 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 this much money selling just chocolate-flavored 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 interest. | ||
| 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 comes 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 in 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. | ||
| If he was to get 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 as they hate America. | ||
| They want these drugs to come in. | ||
| These Democrats, just like at Prawl up in Minnesota, they're fraud. | ||
| They cheat America. | ||
| They steal from America. | ||
| And just like a lot of these radical left communists, that's what they are, or terrorist communists. | ||
| That's what they're calling in. | ||
| They hate America. | ||
| Just like them people up with 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 captured 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: here, 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. | ||
| Bonifaso, Mali, all those countries are mineral rich. | ||
| So watched out. | ||
| This man may come 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
|
How are 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 call. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes, it is. | |
| I muted. | ||
| Okay, yeah, I'm happy about what happened. | ||
| Maduro was nothing more than Manuel Nor Diego. | ||
| 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 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. | ||
| 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, he took out a criminal that was allowing our enemies were involved with him. | ||
| You know, 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. | ||
| Wesley 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 archo-terrorist, 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 weights. | ||
| The one next to it, Colombia, has even more. | ||
| Mexico and Colombia better get their minds right because he's tired of their gun trafficking into the country. | ||
| Education is our biggest problem. | ||
| These people have Hezbollah in their country, Iran, China, and Russia. | ||
| Just, I mean, 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 at 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 accuse 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 boys find 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 is 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. | ||
| It 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. | ||
| It 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 a bully. | ||
| He does things based on his gut. | ||
| He's reckless. | ||
| He has 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 CRINX 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 American companies 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 should 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 moment. | ||
| 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. | |
| 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, right? | ||
| 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, it's 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, right? | ||
| The illegal sale of cocaine. | ||
| This is the group in Venezuela that you're referring to, the FARC yesterday. | ||
| 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 cheek. | ||
| 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. |