Transcriber: nvidia/parakeet-tdt-0.6b-v2, sat-12l-sm, and large-v3-turbo
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Participants
Main
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niall stanage
hill08:24
Appearances
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emily spence
02:54
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mimi geerges
cspan03:19
Clips
al green
rep/d00:04
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brad sherman
rep/d00:07
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michael mccaul
rep/r00:09
patty murray
sen/d00:08
sean duffy
admin00:06
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President Trump's Legacy00:15:01
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Now, there were a lot of similarities that people were bringing up with Iraq and how the United States took over running Iraq, essentially running the government, all the services there.
Secretary Rubio kept saying, not everything is Iraq.
Well, I mean, I think it is fair to say that not every single foreign intervention is Iraq, right?
I mean, that has its particular specifics, just as Venezuela has its particular specifics.
The administration's view, and I stress that I'm just stating their view, I'm not defending it or attacking it, their view is that the United States needs to dominate the Western hemisphere.
This is the quote-unquote Don Rue doctrine, President Trump's take on the Monroe document.
And it is a very muscular assertion that the United States must control the Western hemisphere and eliminate things that it considers threatening or adversarial or negative in some fashion in that way.
They are planting this intervention in Venezuela within that framework.
Maybe we should get Congresswoman Taylor Greene on to discuss her take on that.
I mean, Trump in the first term, and indeed through most of his political career thus far, has been ostensibly skeptical of intervention.
And that, I think, broadly speaking, held true in the first term.
It is much less true in the second term, not only in relation to Venezuela, but in, for example, the military strikes on Iran that we saw last year, and also in the president's willingness to sort of bang the war drums to some extent in relation to other nations, including Colombia and Cuba.
I'm not suggesting that he's planning to invade Cuba.
That's something that has a rather checkered history when American presidents have tried it, and he hasn't said that's what he's trying.
But this goes back to the element that we were just talking about, the wish to dominate the Western Hemisphere.
Well, they have obviously released or unsealed the indictment that names Nicolas Maduro and his wife and his son and a number of other senior people in the Venezuelan administration.
I think, Mimi, one thing we should be candid about is that there are still elements of this whole circumstance that we don't really know the answer to.
One fascinating question to me is, what happens if Nicolas Maduro is acquitted?
It's the widely accepted view that you cannot criminally prosecute the head of state of another nation.
Now, this, I mean, without getting into the legal intricacies of this, the counter-argument is that the United States administration does not recognize Maduro and did not recognize Maduro as the legitimate leader of Venezuela even before the events of the past 72 hours approximately.
Therefore, he wouldn't be entitled to that.
But these are some of the whole tightly knotted ball of questions that are around in all of this.
I think that, to be candid, President Trump has often sort of fudged the issue of what kind of drugs he's talking about when he talks about the dangers to the United States from drug trafficking from Venezuela.
Venezuela, according to virtually every expert, is not a significant source of fentanyl whatsoever.
The vast majority of fentanyl that enters the United States comes from Mexico and comes across the border in that way.
Venezuela is not even a very major importer or transit point for cocaine into the United States.
Some cocaine does go through there, most of it destined for Europe.
But the president has, I think, made the argument for this seizing of Maduro, partly on the basis that he's protecting Americans from being killed by drug overdoses.
He often implies that that means fentanyl.
That's just not borne out by the facts in Venezuela's case.
I want to talk about the current leader of Venezuela, which is Delsie Rodriguez.
She was Maduro's vice president.
She did put a post out 11 hours ago on Instagram.
It's a message from Venezuela to the world and the United States.
I'm going to read some of it and then have you comment.
It says, Venezuela reaffirms its commitment to peace and peaceful coexistence.
Our country aspires to live without external threats in an environment of respect, international cooperation.
We believe that global peace is built by first guaranteeing peace within each nation.
It says this later in her letter.
We invite the U.S. government to collaborate with us on an agenda of cooperation oriented towards shared development within the framework of international law to strengthen lasting community coexistence.
President Donald Trump, our peoples, and our region deserve peace and dialogue, not war.
This has always been President Maduro's message, and it is the message of all of Venezuela right now.
Well, it's an extremely conciliatory message directed at a nation that has just seized the man who she purports to believe is still the president of Venezuela.
Extremely conciliatory by those lights.
One thing I would say about this whole picture, Mimi, is I will preface this by saying I'm not a conspiracy theorist.
I'm not given to conspiracies, generally speaking, but I think there are a lot of suspicious elements to the way this situation has developed.
You have the United States seizing the president of Venezuela with fairly conspicuous ease in Caracas.
You have President Trump then hanging out to dry the main leader of the opposition, Maria Machado, saying that she doesn't really have the respect to lead the country.
And you have Delsi Rodriguez, purportedly a socialist, socialist nationalist, formerly Marxist, being conciliatory to the United States in this way.
I mean, I think that there is at least a suspicion that there was some tacit agreement between Rodriguez or people close to Rodriguez and the U.S. Let's talk to callers.
Mario is in Fort Washington, Maryland, Independent Line.
You're on the air, Mario.
unidentified
Hi, good morning.
Go ahead.
Yes, I would like to add, well, I would like to add my point of view: as being Colombian and living in the United States for over 26 years, I believe the United States is my home, and I do approve the capture of Maduro, but the way it was done,
it's just not the proper way.
I mean, we need to have at least the approval from the Congress.
And I would love for the American people to understand that because of defending The American way doesn't give you guys the right to invade another country.
Colombia is next.
And I'm Colombian, and I'm afraid of what's going to happen.
I have family.
I got loved ones back there.
And we don't want any more bad stuff that happened.
I will appreciate if you guys please understand that there is no right to invade another country.
It's because nobody has the right to invade another country.
And to add to his comment, this is Anthony on X. Absent of any occurring or imminent attack on American soil and without authorization from Congress, there is no military combat rule for the president to employ that is legal under the Constitution.
I think that both your caller and Anthony on X and Mario on the phone raise important points here.
Look, I don't want to get C-SPAN on hot water.
I know we're talking about facts, not opinions here.
But I do think that it's important for those of us in the media to state facts where they plainly exist, even if some people from political positions don't want those facts to be acknowledged.
What the United States is involved here in Venezuela is clearly an imperialist or colonialist effort.
President Trump was asked on Air Force One last night, who's in charge of Venezuela.
He said we're in charge.
That means that the United States has used its military might to take control of a foreign country.
President Trump has been abundantly clear that extracting oil from Venezuela is a driving force in that effort.
You couldn't ask for a more textbook example of what colonialism or imperialism are.
The use by a larger country of force against a smaller country to take control of it, directly or indirectly, and to exploit its resources.
That's what's happening.
And, you know, we might end up having a debate in future days about whether imperialism is a good or a bad thing.
But we shouldn't flim flam as journalists about saying what it is.
That's what it is.
I saw you interviewed the other night.
I watched it about two o'clock in the morning.
There was a little thing called C-SPAN, which I don't know how many people were watching.
Don't worry, you were in prime time too, but they happen to have a little rerun.
There's a lot of things that Congress fights about, that they disagree on.
We can all watch that on C-SPAN.
unidentified
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Stories Of Identity, Service, And Community00:04:32
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c-span democracy unfiltered c-span is the official media partner of america 250 commemorating 250 years of american democracy America 250 is traveling the country to honor the voices that define our nation.
The Old North Church was built in 1723 as the second Church of England.
It is the oldest church building still standing here in Boston.
It's 302 years old.
And it was made famous for the role that it played in Paul Revere's ride.
We see it as launching the revolution with his one-ify land, two-ify-sea signal lanterns.
However, with three centuries of history, we have a lot more stories that we tell here.
My name is Emily Spence.
I'm from Boston, and I am the Director of Education here at the Old North Church.
There has been a really diverse community that has worshipped here over the years.
It has been home to wealthy merchants who own these pews, but also poor families, children, black and indigenous people, both free and enslaved.
Though this was a community that came together to worship and was united in their faith, you'll notice just even through the seating in this church, the box pews, the hierarchical seating with the balcony upstairs, that this was a space that was meant to separate people, separate them by how much money they had, the class that they occupied, but also by their skin color, their perceived race at the time.
I love being able to bring to life the stories of the Black and Indigenous people who sat in the North Gallery, whose stories for so long were left out and not considered important to the story of this church.
Over the years, it has been an intentionality in both the historic site and in the congregation to create a more open and welcoming space here at Old North.
When the church had to close during the revolution, these people lost their community.
And I think so many of us today can relate to that, having lived through the COVID-19 pandemic.
I look at the funeral and burial records, and there was so much death in these people's lives.
I think having a place to come together, to feel united and feel like there was at least a place to grapple with that uncertainty together with a community, that was a big draw for people.
We hope that today this church, which is seen as a symbol of freedom, people can come here and see their stories and also recognize how complicated and complex the story of this church is.
One of my favorite times to be at Old North is in the evening just after we've closed.
It's a really beautiful, peaceful time, and the lighting in the church really just makes this space glow.
That's when I can really feel the presence and the history that's here.
I think about all of the people who have been here in this space.
Some of them who I would love to meet, some of them who I know I would have some pretty heated debate with.
But I think about all of their stories and the way that they hopefully love this place the way I do.
And that's what makes me feel really lucky to have this role of helping to steward this place and their stories for the next generation.
My name is Emily Spence, and this is my American story.
unidentified
Coverage of America 250's Our American Story, presented by C-SPAN.
Up next, Florida Republican lawmakers discuss Saturday's U.S. military operation Venezuela, extracting that country's leader, Nicolas Maduro, and his wife, Celia Flores.