| Speaker | Time | Text |
|---|---|---|
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Cox is there to help. | |
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| Welcome to today's Washington Journal. | ||
| We're glad you're with us. | ||
| Let's start with the New York Times. | ||
| This is the headline seeming to pivot. | ||
| Rubio says U.S. will not run Venezuela. | ||
| Oil quarantine will keep grip on Caracas. | ||
| It says that Secretary of State Rubio on Sunday appeared to pivot away from President Trump's assertion a day earlier that the United States would, quote, run Venezuela, emphasizing instead that the administration would keep a military quarantine in place on the country's oil exports to exert leverage on the new leadership there. | ||
| When asked how the U.S. planned to govern Venezuela, Mr. Rubio did not lay out a plan for a U.S. occupation authority like the one that George W. Bush administration put in place in Baghdad during the Iraq War, but instead spoke of coercing a Venezuelan government run by allies of the jailed leader Nicolas Maduro to make policy changes. | ||
| And here is the front page of the Wall Street Journal with this headline, U.S. raid leaves Venezuela in confusion. | ||
| It says, after Maduro ouster, Trump keeps regime in place while issuing threats to successor. | ||
| It says that President Trump ticked off a list of reasons for his decision to capture and arrest Venezuelan President Maduro. | ||
| He talked about the Maduro regime sending illicit drugs and gangs to the U.S. and nationalizing American oil company assets. | ||
| One thing that wasn't mentioned, a desire to restore democracy in Venezuela. | ||
| It says, instead, Trump said after Saturday's raid, the U.S. would run the country indefinitely until a, quote, safe, proper, and judicious transition could be arranged. | ||
| He didn't raise the prospect of elections. | ||
| The president said, quote, it would be tough for the country's opposition leader, Maria Carina Machado, who won the Nobel Peace Prize last year, to play a major role, saying she lacked popularity. | ||
| Instead, he expressed a willingness to work with Delcey Rodriguez, Maduro's vice president, a hardline socialist and regime stalwart. | ||
| That is at the Wall Street Journal. | ||
| Continue to look at the news throughout the program, but first we'll talk to you. | ||
| Here's Helen, Long Beach, California, Republican. | ||
| Good morning, Helen. | ||
|
unidentified
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Good morning, Helen. | |
| Good morning. | ||
| First of all, it's a lie that Trump had to go into Venezuela to stop the narco-trafficking. | ||
| Second, it's false that he did it to capture Venezuela's oil and give it away to give it back to U.S. corporations. | ||
| I think what's really going on is Trump is going to occupy, militarily occupy Venezuela, and he'll probably push militarily occupy Colombia. | ||
| And the reason is, has to do with, and I'm kind of conjecturing, but from what I have read, it has to do with the new development bank, BRICS, which is an acronym which stands for Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa. | ||
| It's a new big player in the global economy. | ||
| And its two main players are China, which is the biggest one, and Russia. | ||
| This is a little bit of arm twisting with China and Russia in particular. | ||
| I think Trump wants to be a part of this new development bank. | ||
| It's growing in numbers and in wealth. | ||
| It's got a lot of influence. | ||
| It wants to supplant the U.S. dollar as a global economy, and it wants to insert itself as the currency for the global economy. | ||
| I think Trump wants to cut a deal with them. | ||
| He does have $800 million in cryptocurrency. | ||
| He may have given the wanted to have that bank incorporate his $800 million cryptocurrency, and they may have said no. | ||
| I think he's arm twisting right now. | ||
| And this is the immense power that the President of the United States has. | ||
| He can go in and capture countries to get his deal from a country on the other side of the world. | ||
| So, you know, I may be just conjecturing, but I think this is what's actually happening. | ||
| We got that, Helen. | ||
| And let's take a look at President Trump. | ||
| He was on Air Force One last night coming back from Mar-a-Lago to Washington, D.C., and he spoke to reporters. | ||
|
unidentified
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The next question is: who's in charge of Venezuela right now? | |
| Have you spoken to the newly sworn-in president there, Rodriguez? | ||
| And what are your thoughts on the entire situation? | ||
| You said the U.S. would run Venezuela. | ||
| We're dealing with the people. | ||
|
unidentified
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We're dealing with the people that just got sworn in. | |
| And don't ask me who's in charge because I'll give you an answer and it'll be very controversial. | ||
|
unidentified
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What does that mean? | |
| It means we're in charge. | ||
|
unidentified
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Have you spoken with her? | |
| We're in charge. | ||
|
unidentified
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Have you spoken with her? | |
| No, no, I haven't, but other people have. | ||
| Do you want to? | ||
| Yeah, at the right time, I will. | ||
|
unidentified
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Did the U.S. give Del C. Rodriguez any guarantees in exchange for cooperating with your administration? | |
| No, but she's cooperating. | ||
|
unidentified
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Are you going to demand free and fair elections in the short term in Venezuela? | |
| Well, it depends. | ||
| You know, what you're talking. | ||
|
unidentified
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We have to do one thing in Venezuela, bring it back. | |
| It's a dead country right now. | ||
| It's a country that, frankly, we would have been if I had lost the election, we would have been a dead country. | ||
| We would have been Venezuela on steroids. | ||
| Venezuela right now is a dead country. | ||
| We have to bring it back. | ||
| And we're going to have to have big investments by the oil companies to bring back the infrastructure. | ||
| And the oil companies are ready to go. | ||
| They're going to go in. | ||
| They're going to rebuild the infrastructure. | ||
| You know, we built it to start off with many years ago. | ||
| They took it away. | ||
| You can't do that. | ||
| And you can't do that with me. | ||
|
unidentified
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They did it with other presidents. | |
| How soon do you think an election can take place in Venezuela? | ||
| How soon can an election take place? | ||
| Well, I think we're looking more at getting it fixed, getting it ready first, because it's a mess. | ||
| The country is a mess. | ||
| It's been horribly run. | ||
| And that was a little hard to hear because of the noise of the jet, but he did mention American oil companies. | ||
| And this is Axios with this headline, Trump's Big Bet on Venezuela's Oil and U.S. Companies. | ||
| It says that President Trump's vision of American oil companies rebuilding Venezuela's broken petro sector creates his biggest test yet of the industry's tolerance for risk. | ||
| Trump and other administration officials haven't been subtle about calling Venezuela's massive oil reserves a key reason for toppling President Maduro. | ||
| Quote, this is a quote from Secretary of State Marco Rubio on NBC: quote, you cannot continue to have the largest oil reserves in the world under the control of adversaries of the United States, but not benefiting the people of the country. | ||
| And President Trump told reporters, quote, we're in the business of having countries around us that are viable and successful and where the oil is allowed to freely come out. | ||
| It gets prices, it gets the prices down. | ||
| That's good for our country. | ||
| Wonder what you think about that. | ||
| Here's Rosalyn in Plateville, Wisconsin. | ||
| Democrat, go ahead, Rosalyn. | ||
|
unidentified
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Yes, it's Platteville, but yeah. | |
| Platteville. | ||
| I am against this. | ||
| And I think that the United States has forgotten about 1953 when Britain and the U.S. posed a coup in Iran because they only wanted a fair portion of the proceeds for their oil. | ||
| And what has happened, what did they do? | ||
| They put in, it was a democratic, a moving towards a democratic country, overturned a democratic country, put in a dictatorship, the shore of Iran, and kept him there with military might. | ||
| And in doing so, they sent the clear message not only to the countries in the Middle East, but also the countries in Latin America, that we, the United States, we are far from democracy when democracy benefits the United States. | ||
| And if the democracy does not benefit the United States, then we are not for it. | ||
| And that is the signal that we are sending right now. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| So, Rosalind, yes, that is in the 1950s. | ||
| Iran's popular prime minister, Mohammad Mossad, was overthrown in a 1953 CIA and MI6-backed coup due to his nationalization of the British-controlled Anglo-Iranian oil company, now VP, and efforts to gain greater Iranian control over oil revenues that threatened Western interests. | ||
| And the coup restored the Shah to greater power. | ||
| Here's Rod in Ohio, Republican line. | ||
|
unidentified
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Hi, Rod. | |
| Morning, Mimi. | ||
| Morning. | ||
|
unidentified
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Yes, I'm fully in support of it. | |
| And I think we ought to do it on a broader scale. | ||
| I mean, you know, I don't know how much the American people are going to see out of all these little maneuvers around the world, but still, I mean, these countries want to live by the sword. | ||
| And the big eagle can come in and kill them with the sword. | ||
| That's what I'm going to do. | ||
| So, Rod, when you say a broader scale, what do you think should be next, in your opinion? | ||
|
unidentified
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Anywhere around the world, this country was born in blood, taking what we wanted. | |
| People seem to forget that. | ||
| I mean, when did the United States ever get to the point where we weren't taking what we needed for the people? | ||
| Unfortunately, that's the way this country was built, and that's the way it is. | ||
| But we stopped somewhere along the line, worrying about our own people and worrying about everybody else. | ||
| So, Rod, do you think other strong countries, namely China and Russia, should take what they want? | ||
| In other words, Russia should be free to take Ukraine and other countries as long as it can defeat them militarily. | ||
| Should China take Taiwan? | ||
|
unidentified
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Whoever has the biggest sword, the biggest guns, that's the way it is. | |
| I mean, we're still animals. | ||
| Our brains outgrew our bodies. | ||
| We're still animals, our basic nature. | ||
| So that's the way it is. | ||
| We have to worry about our own people. | ||
| Hopefully, that'll come around and the people benefit. | ||
| Like closing the borders, you've got to close the borders. | ||
| Look, Rome, look, there's so many parallels between the United States and Rome. | ||
| And you just got to cut it. | ||
| Well, Rome did fall, Rod. | ||
| Say again? | ||
| Rome fell. | ||
| I mean, the Roman Empire is no longer here. | ||
|
unidentified
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Everything goes in cycles, everything. | |
| The United States is not going to last forever. | ||
| All right. | ||
| Got your point there. | ||
| Georgia in Gonzales, Louisiana, independent line. | ||
| You're on the air. | ||
|
unidentified
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Good morning, Amy. | |
| How are you doing? | ||
| Good. | ||
| I am opposed to this situation. | ||
| It do not make no sense to me that we cannot run our own country and support our own people, and yet we're going over there again for all in the beginning to stop three other countries. | ||
| We are not the police of the United States of America. | ||
| As far as a lady in California, it's called BRIC. | ||
| It's B-R-I-C. | ||
| It's not a bank. | ||
| They deal in cryptocurrency. | ||
| Period. | ||
| We are trying to get into the crypto business. | ||
| We want all the oil. | ||
| We want everything someone else has instead of protect our own people here. | ||
| Yes, I'm agree with closing the border. | ||
| But at the same time, we cannot run this country, and yet we're trying to run another country. | ||
| So I guess it's okay to invade somebody else and let them do whatever they want to do to us because what goes around comes around. | ||
| And we are going to fall very fast and very fast. | ||
| All right, Georgia. | ||
| And let's check in on Facebook. | ||
| Here's Joan, who is opposed to the administration's actions. | ||
| She says there are diplomatic channels that should be used. | ||
| Can you imagine the outrage if another country arbitrarily carried out the same acts against the U.S. Democrats for Liberty said, it's like we learned nothing from Iraq and Afghanistan. | ||
| And Tal said, it's what I voted for. | ||
| Bob says, absolutely support. | ||
| The people of Venezuela are celebrating in the streets. | ||
| Meanwhile, the Democrats are demonstrating against it in America. | ||
| Go figure. | ||
| And Scott says, I would have only approved if, number one, Congress pre-approved it, which could have been easily done in this case. | ||
| And two, the deposed Maria Corina Machado would be allowed to go back and take power. | ||
| Charlie Brown says, oppose. | ||
| War requires congressional approval. | ||
| And we have actually for you Secretary of State Marco Rubio from ABC's this week talking about the administration's plans for Venezuela. | ||
|
unidentified
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Take a look. | |
| But how does the United States intend to secure the oil fields? | ||
| Won't that take U.S. troops? | ||
| Well, ultimately, this is not about securing the oil fields. | ||
| This is about ensuring that no sanctioned oil can come in and out until they make changes to the governance of that entire industry. | ||
| Because right now, that industry is non-existent in the traditional way. | ||
| These oil fields basically are pirate operations. | ||
| People literally steal the oil from the ground. | ||
| A handful of, that's how they hold this regime together. | ||
| A handful of cronies benefit from this oil, specific oil wells. | ||
| They're producing at like 18% capacity because the equipment is all decrepit. | ||
| And they basically pocket the money to their benefit. | ||
| They sell the oil at a discount in global markets, you know, 40 cents on the dollar, 50 cents on the dollar, but all that money goes to them. | ||
| Those oil fields have not benefited the people of Venezuela in over a decade. | ||
| But they have made multi-millionaires, billionaires, out of just a handful of people, and that's what's held this regime together. | ||
| That's what needs to be addressed. | ||
| The way to address it to the benefit of the Venezuelan people is to get private companies that are not from Iran or somewhere else to go in, invest in the equipment that hasn't been invested in in 20 years because none of the profits that have been made from the oil have been reinvested. | ||
| It's all been stolen. | ||
| And that's going to take outside companies that come in and know how to do that. | ||
| The people who do this stuff will know how to do it. | ||
| But it all begins with dramatic changes on the way that the authorities that are in charge of that industry behave. | ||
| And until those changes happen, this quarantine will remain in place. | ||
|
unidentified
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Chevron is the only American company working in Venezuela. | |
| And that was Secretary Marco Rubio on yesterday's ABC program this week. | ||
| And we're hearing from you. | ||
| Charles, Forney, Texas, Democrat, you're on the air. | ||
|
unidentified
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Yeah, I oppose because we started off with about drugs. | |
| And that was President Trump instead of bombing them both and said it was about the drugs. | ||
| And now he gets on there. | ||
| They bombers and says they're about their oil. | ||
| He wants to take over oil. | ||
| I mean, and it's no one going to benefit. | ||
| No American is going to benefit about that oil. | ||
| He's going to get his millionaire and billionaire friends to come in there and they're going to all make money. | ||
| And Haspan is making money as it is. | ||
| Everywhere you go, they're there doing businesses. | ||
| And he got billions of dollars he done made. | ||
| And one white that wants something to get on TV telling her he don't take a salary. | ||
| Why should you take a salary when you make a $4,000 or $500,000 a year when you're getting $8 billion? | ||
| It's basically $4,8 billion and got businesses everywhere you go. | ||
| It's not about, and the bad part about it is this. | ||
| The young kids are going to be the ones that go there and have to fight sooner or later. | ||
| And they're going to be the one to get killed and main. | ||
| And while Trump and his corners sit back and relax and make money. | ||
| I mean, that's the bad part about it. | ||
| I worry about them young kids that join the service and going to want to be the one to go there and get killed. | ||
| And all you hear calling in there agreeing most of the time is the white males. | ||
| And white males are the reason why things happen like it is now. | ||
| All your shooting, mass shooting, white males. | ||
| A lot of your rates and stuff, white males. | ||
| All right, Charles. | ||
| Let's go to Dan, Santa Barbara, California, Independent Line. | ||
| What do you think, Dan, about Venezuela? | ||
| Do you support or oppose U.S. actions there? | ||
|
unidentified
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I lean more on the liberal side, but I'm actually okay with Maduro being ousted. | |
| I think a lot of Americans, unfortunately, come from a place of privilege and a lot of ignorance about the situation here. | ||
| They need to realize that Chavez and Maduro literally destroyed a once great nation. | ||
| They also fomented a refugee crisis where a third of the Venezuelan population, roughly, I think around 9 to 10 million, had to flee that country. | ||
| And also, this is an illegal presidency. | ||
| Maduro lost the election fair and square. | ||
| He got his butt whooped in the election. | ||
| So that guy needs to go. | ||
| So I do find it ironic that as Venezuelans around the diaspora right now are celebrating that Maduro's gone, I go onto social media and see the most cringe, unhinged takes from the leftists and just making all these false equivalencies and these horrible takes. | ||
| And I was like, dude, you guys are like simping for a dictator. | ||
| It's like so crazy. | ||
| So Dan, I want to ask you to respond to this. | ||
| We got this from Christian on Facebook. | ||
| He said this. | ||
| It's possible to be against what we did and still agree that Maduro wasn't a good guy. | ||
|
unidentified
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What do you think of that? | |
| Yeah, again, I don't understand why people are so against this because people are saying, oh, this is a war. | ||
| And this is the same as Iraq and Afghanistan or even the false equivalency with the Iran thing back in the day in the 50s. | ||
| None of that's true. | ||
| This was a very brief operation where Delta Force went onto a military base where Maduro and his wife lived and extracted them. | ||
| And we had no fatalities from U.S. troops, which is great. | ||
| But fatalities in Venezuela were all like Cuban soldiers. | ||
| Most of them were Cuban militants who were protecting Maduro. | ||
| So it was a pretty clean operation. | ||
| So I don't know why everyone's so up in arms about this. | ||
| Hopefully, we get Maria Machado back in there as the president, ideally. | ||
| So again, I think a lot of people are confused in America, and they come from a place of privilege, and they should really sit down and have a conversation with a Venezuelan who's been severely affected by this and had to flee and now lives in the diaspora. | ||
| And they can maybe learn a thing or two. | ||
| All right. | ||
| And if they're around, we definitely want to hear from you. | ||
| We are taking your calls this first segment on your thoughts on the U.S. actions in Venezuela. | ||
| You can give us a call on our phone lines. | ||
| They are Democrats 202-748-8000, Republicans 202-748-8001, and Independents 202-748-8002. | ||
| You can text us. | ||
| That line is 202-748-8002. | ||
| Meanwhile, let's hear from Representative, House Minority Leader, Representative Hakeem Jeffries. | ||
| He was on NBC's Meet the Press yesterday, and he refuted President Trump's reasons and justification for capturing Maduro. | ||
| Well, you just heard my conversation with Secretary Rubio. | ||
| I asked him about the administration's decision not to inform Congress ahead of this operation until President Maduro had been captured. | ||
| Secretary Rubio is saying this was not the kind of mission where they could have afforded to notify Congress. | ||
| There were concerns about leaks. | ||
| He made that point. | ||
| President Trump made that point. | ||
| Was the administration justified in this case in not briefing Congress? | ||
| Well, there's been no evidence that the administration has presented to justify the actions that were taken in terms of there being an imminent threat to the health, the safety, the well-being, the national security of the American people. | ||
| This was not simply a counter-narcotics operation. | ||
| It was an act of war. | ||
| It involved, of course, the Delta Force, and we're thankful for the precision by which they executed the operation and thankful for the fact that no American lives were lost. | ||
| But this was a military action involving Delta Force, involving the Army, apparently involving thousands of troops, involving at least 150 military aircraft, perhaps involving dozens of ships off the coast of Venezuela and South America. | ||
| So, of course, this was the military action. | ||
| And pursuant to the Constitution, only Congress has the power to declare war, to authorize acts that take place in this regard. | ||
| And we've got to make sure when we return to Washington, D.C., that legislative action is taken to ensure that no further military steps occur absent explicit congressional approval. | ||
| That was House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries. | ||
| And what you're seeing now on your screen is the arrival of Venezuela's leader, deposed leader, Maduro. | ||
| He is there in the middle, handcuffed. | ||
| He is being taken and transported for his first court appearance. | ||
| That's scheduled for noon today in Manhattan. | ||
| You can see here he's going to be getting into that helicopter and transported to the courthouse in Manhattan. | ||
| Meanwhile, we will continue taking your calls. | ||
| Here's Al in Connecticut on the line for Democrats. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
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Good morning. | |
| He cannot do something. | ||
| This has got to go to the United Nations and the Congress. | ||
| Who does he think he is? | ||
| The president should be removed from the White House immediately for all of the corruption he's done so far. | ||
| He has never done anything in his entire life that was not for him. | ||
| He does not help anybody, including the United States. | ||
| He is always there for him and his cronies for the money. | ||
| And he's already put billions and taken stolen bold billions of dollars from the American people, and he's still doing it. | ||
| Who does he think he is? | ||
| All right, Al. | ||
| Who does he think he is? | ||
| And Al mentioned the United Nations. | ||
| The UN Security Council will be meeting today. | ||
| It's right after this program at 10 a.m. Eastern. | ||
| We will take you there immediately after this program. | ||
| So definitely stay with us for that. | ||
| It was Colombia backed by Russia and China requesting that meeting of the 15-member council. | ||
| We have live coverage of that again at 10 a.m. Eastern. | ||
| Lawrence in Minnesota, Independent Line, you're next. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| Speaking to what Representative Jeffrey spoke to and the previous caller, just clarification on the War Powers Act or War Powers Resolution, I think is a formal name. | ||
| So this is a military action, and the War Powers Resolution requires, I'm sorry, does not require congressional approval for the president to act. | ||
| But the president is required to respond within 48 hours. | ||
| So yes, to declare war does require congressional approval. | ||
| However, use of military as commander-in-chief, according to the War Powers Act, does not require congressional approval. | ||
| And I think it's disingenuous that many people are getting on their bully pulpits and demanding that President Trump should have first gone to Congress. | ||
| And Lawrence. | ||
| And Lawrence, you are in support then, I take it, of the administration's actions. | ||
|
unidentified
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A guy a couple of callers ago talked about looking at it from the citizens of Venezuela and how their company has been ripped apart principally due to their last two leaders. | |
| And the removal of the president, which I believe the indictment was under the previous administration, probably eventually needed to happen one way or the other. | ||
| So thanks for the time. | ||
| All right, Lawrence. | ||
| And this is from Bloomberg, and it says this, Trump's Venezuela oil revival plan is a $100 billion gamble. | ||
| It says that realizing President Trump's plan for a U.S.-led revival of Venezuela's beleaguered oil industry could be a years-long and challenging process, costing upwards of $100 billion. | ||
| Years of corruption, underinvestment, fires, and thefts have left the nation's crude infrastructure in tatters. | ||
| Rebuilding it enough to lift Venezuela's output back to its peak levels of the 1970s would require companies that could include Chevron, ExxonMobil, and ConocoPhillips to invest about $10 billion per year over the next decade. | ||
| That's according to an energy policy expert at Rice University. | ||
| Quote, a faster recovery would require even more investment. | ||
| That's at Bloomberg if you'd like to read that. | ||
| And this is Ron in Lawrenceville, Georgia, Republican line. | ||
| Good morning, Ron. | ||
|
unidentified
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Good morning. | |
| I'm for the action. | ||
| I think this was not a we're not at war with Venezuela. | ||
| This is simply a law enforcement action. | ||
| And Trump was following his duties under the Constitution of making sure the laws are enforced. | ||
| So, Ron, tell me about what you think is going to happen after this. | ||
| So Maduro goes to court, but what happens in Venezuela? | ||
|
unidentified
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What do you think? | |
| I think they're going to put pressure on them to stop sending drugs to the United States. | ||
| And do you think that the, I mean, Venezuela will then become a democracy? | ||
| Do you think that they're going to have their oil industry come back online? | ||
| I mean, what do you think? | ||
|
unidentified
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I suspect that Donald Trump's not going to go in there and remove the entire government. | |
| I think that this is probably going to be the end of it right here. | ||
| And he's going to try to get them to cooperate with the United States, and I think they will. | ||
| So the Wall Street Journal has an editorial, and it says this: because the vice president now of, which is a Maduro ally, is currently in power. | ||
| It says, don't settle for Maduro 2.0. | ||
| As Sunday dawned in Caracas and Washington, a new reality was also apparent a day after the U.S. snatched dictator Maduro. | ||
| The dictator's cronies are still running Venezuela, and they don't seem ready to give it up. | ||
| Is President Trump willing to settle for Maduro 2.0? | ||
| It says Delce Rodriguez, former vice president, is now acting president. | ||
| Like Maduro, she's been sanctioned by the U.S. and European Union. | ||
| After Maduro's capture Saturday, she issued defiant public remarks. | ||
| She's a hardline socialist, well known for her close ties to Cuban intelligence. | ||
| That's at the Wall Street Journal. | ||
| What do you think of that, Ron? | ||
| Are you still on the line with me? | ||
|
unidentified
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Yeah, I am. | |
| And I suspect that they're going to change their tune. | ||
| What matters is not the rhetoric. | ||
| What matters is what they actually do. | ||
| And I think that how much time and effort and money did we spend going after Saddam Hussein? | ||
| This operation took our military. | ||
| I think the Delta Force was on the ground for maybe 32 minutes. | ||
| They can go in again if they have to. | ||
| And I don't think they want that to happen. | ||
| All right. | ||
| Let's see what Vivian thinks in Virginia line for Democrats. | ||
| Go ahead, Vivian. | ||
|
unidentified
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Good morning. | |
| Well, here we go again. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| I mean, you know, reading is fundamental. | ||
| Remember Donald Russell's shotgun and mission occupies? | ||
| This is going to be the same thing. | ||
| People don't want to be their country being taken over. | ||
| What do these people think if China and Russia and North Korea decide that they don't like Trump and they decide to bomb us? | ||
| You know, this is Project 2025. | ||
| Next goal: bringing back the draft. | ||
| See, people don't read. | ||
| You know, a mine is a terrible thing to waste. | ||
| Yeah, because they already talk about going into Cuba and Greenland. | ||
| You know, and Trump's going to take those oil companies and put his name on it because he wants to be a trillionaire, the first one, if he lives long enough. | ||
| But the devil is a liar, and he has a lot of minions. | ||
| All right, Vivian. | ||
| And what you're seeing there, that helicopter is carrying Nicolas Maduro en route to Manhattan Courthouse. | ||
| His appearance is scheduled for 12 noon today. | ||
| Godwell in Artesia, California, Republican, you're on the air. | ||
|
unidentified
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Thank you for taking my call. | |
| I work with a Venezuelan, and for years now, he's been literally crying about the suffering in Venezuela and all the way back to what's the former leader's name before Maduro. | ||
| Chavez. | ||
|
unidentified
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Chavez, Hugo Chavez. | |
| Yes, from Hugo Chavez to Maduro. | ||
| And he told me every day we worked together, how people were going from living normal lives to just barely getting by, trying to get food from trash dumps and just untold suffering that Venezuelans have been going through. | ||
| And the guy that called a few calls a go about false equivalencies is so true. | ||
| You know, people, how are Venezuelans celebrating in the streets? | ||
| These are the real people that have been affected by the evil that these regimes have been perpetrating on their lives. | ||
| How are they celebrating? | ||
| And we're out of the comforts of our environments here, you know, condemning a president that finally did something. | ||
| If you have anyone who's been lost, you know, to drug use and just over supply of drugs and availability of drugs on our streets, you know, you'd appreciate that somebody is not just talking about we've had this war on drugs for decades now with very little to show for it, with the death toll of American youth, you know, rising. | ||
| Okay, so finally, that number is beginning to drop. | ||
| Why? | ||
| Because somebody in the White House in authority is finally doing something about solving the problems. | ||
| So let's look beyond our noses for a minute and consider the plight of people whose lives have been devastated by narco trafficking, by the people in Venezuela living just pathetic lives. | ||
| A country that used to be very, very, very wealthy and well-to-do. | ||
| And what you're seeing on your screen there is Nicolas Maduro entering a truck. | ||
| He has arrived on the island of Manhattan. | ||
| Behind him, there is his wife, the former First Lady of Venezuela. | ||
| They are both in handcuffs, and they are en route to their first court appearance in a Manhattan courtroom that's scheduled for noon today. | ||
| Regarding what Godwin was just saying, this is a commentary on the Washington Times by Jeffrey Scott Shapiro with the headline, Trump's arrest of Maduro is a victory over corruption, communism, and isolationism. | ||
| It's time to secure the Western hemisphere and let the criminal communist dominoes fall. | ||
| It says this, it says, in addition, securing the Western hemisphere of Mr. Maduro's drug trafficking, Mr. Trump has offered hope to millions of Venezuelans who have reached a breaking point from the abuse they have suffered under Mr. Maduro's yoke. | ||
| The communist ruler engaged in arbitrary arrest and detention, unfair trials and torture, including beating, suffocation, electric shocks and threats, and sexual violence against women, according to a 2024 Amnesty International report. | ||
| Mr. Maduro also weaponized starvation. | ||
| In 2018, Venezuela's inflation rate hit 13,000 percent. | ||
| With empty stores, leaving people sifting through garbage for scraps, the hunger rate was so devastating that it quickly became known as the, quote, Maduro diet. | ||
| In a shameless, ruthless move, Mr. Maduro used his power over ration cards to gain votes. | ||
| That's in the Washington Times. | ||
| And this is Steve, who's calling us from Greenwich, New Jersey, Independent Line. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
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Yes, good morning. | |
| I'd just like to applaud the previous caller. | ||
| He laid it out very well, and I'd like to expand on that a little bit. | ||
| And just start off with one statistic. | ||
| In 1955, Venezuela was the fourth wealthiest country in the world. | ||
| And once the communists took over, as the previous caller stated, everything fell apart. | ||
| People were starving. | ||
| In addition to that, Maduro and his regime, they killed something like 20,000 people during their reign. | ||
| And if that weren't bad enough, and the killing of Americans with drugs wasn't bad enough, the Chinese had operations in Venezuela. | ||
| The Russians have operations in Venezuela. | ||
| Hezbollah and Hamas have training grounds in Venezuela. | ||
| Why we would tolerate a murderous dictator who is starving his people and giving safe harbor right outside our back door, I don't know. | ||
| And why any Democrat in the world would protest that, noting that the Venezuelan people are in the streets celebrating, I can't even comprehend. | ||
| All right. | ||
| And this is Pierre in Washington, D.C., Democrat. | ||
| Go ahead, Pierre. | ||
|
unidentified
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Hey, how are you doing? | |
| Well, first off, Donald Trump is a criminal. | ||
| So saying he's going to go and root out corruption in Venezuela, that doesn't make sense to me because he's endorsing it here in the United States. | ||
| He's making money off the presidency here in the United States. | ||
| One thing is for certain about Donald Trump. | ||
| He likes to make money. | ||
| And he's using our armed forces to go into Venezuela to make himself some money. | ||
| He doesn't want to destroy the drug trade. | ||
| He wants to control the drug trade and make some money off of it. | ||
| He wants the oil from Venezuela for himself. | ||
| He'll bake the Trump Lady Vivian for a couple callers. | ||
| She is on to something. | ||
| He does want to control the oil of Venezuela for himself, not for the Venezuelan people, not for the United States, for himself. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| Have a great day. | ||
| Y'all have a wonderful one out there. | ||
| John and Virginia online for Republicans. | ||
| You're on the air. | ||
|
unidentified
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Hey, good morning. | |
| It's just really hard listening to these Democrats this morning with their Trump arrangement syndrome. | ||
| It's really, really hard. | ||
| I think we just need to take a deep breath and take a step back and look at this objectively. | ||
| Number one, we liberated a country, a country that had a dictator that massacred his own people. | ||
| He was not the legitimate president. | ||
| I hope that you don't call him the president and that other person that he's married to is the first lady because they're not recognized leaders. | ||
| So I wouldn't even call them that and give them that respect. | ||
| Second, is that this is socialism. | ||
| This is what socialism does. | ||
| 1992, Venezuela is the third richest country in the hemisphere. | ||
| In 2019, they're killing their own people. | ||
| So how does that work out with the way things look on the global scene? | ||
| And then, Steve, and your caller before Steve, they nailed it out of the park. | ||
| I mean, look, they had ties with China. | ||
| They had ties with Russia. | ||
| They had ties with Iran. | ||
| They were a threat to the United States, the national security to the United States. | ||
| So when Chris Van Hollen and when Chris Murphy get on and spew their propaganda, all they're doing is basically stroking the propaganda machine and all the evil that they just want to talk about with Trump. | ||
| I mean, look, listen to the administration. | ||
| Listen to Rubio yesterday. | ||
| Listen to all of the folks in the cabinet. | ||
| They are there. | ||
| They know what's going on. | ||
| They're getting briefs. | ||
| Congress is on vacation right now. | ||
| Hakeem Jeffries is on vacation right now. | ||
| They can't even handle a medical or insurance for our country. | ||
| And they're coming in and chiming. | ||
| It's a power grab. | ||
| And John, just so you know, the House does come back into session tomorrow, and the Senate comes back later today. | ||
| But regarding Iran, you mentioned Iran. | ||
| This is Haaretz, which is an Israeli publication. | ||
| It has this. | ||
| It says, Israel welcomes Trump's attack on Venezuela as a blow to the Iranian access. | ||
| The Venezuelan regime, which severed ties with Jerusalem in 2009, long served as a key Iranian ally and a suspected hub for Hezbollah. | ||
| Israeli officials hope Trump's attack will dismantle Tehran's influence and solidify South America's rightward turn. | ||
| That's at Haaretz, if you'd like to read that article. | ||
| And Eric Kennewick, Washington, Independent Line, good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| First of all, the camera is showing the kidnapped leader of another country is against the Geneva Convention. | ||
| The second thing is Benjamin Netanyahu also has warrants out for his arrest. | ||
| If I see him go in front of a trial, then I don't mind seeing Maduro going in front. | ||
| Now, when you say Eric, when you say kidnapped leader of another country, so the argument is that he was never a legitimate leader of the country. | ||
| So you shouldn't even call him president of Venezuela. | ||
|
unidentified
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Well, the United Nations. | |
| There's people around the other sides of the world that do. | ||
| Netanyahu has Maduro pills in comparison compared to Netanyahu. | ||
| And Netanyahu's running stall three, he snipes children for target practice. | ||
| His military. | ||
| He's starving the people of Gaza. | ||
| Right. | ||
| So, Eric, let's stay with Venezuela for the purposes of this segment. | ||
| I take it you're against the administration's actions. | ||
|
unidentified
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Eric? | |
| Put in place. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| The person they want to put in place came out with a statement praising Israel and saying that they're going to be gung-ho for Israel. | ||
| So I think that Israel is tied into all of this decision-making of kidnapping the leader of another country. | ||
| And Donna in Kingsport, Tennessee, Line for Democrats. | ||
| Hello, Donna. | ||
|
unidentified
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Hi, good morning. | |
| Thank you for taking my call. | ||
| Go right ahead. | ||
| We're listening. | ||
|
unidentified
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Oh, okay. | |
| Thank you. | ||
| Well, I just feel like we shouldn't have stepped foot directly into another country and captured him and brought him back as he just actually let another huge drug trafficker go. | ||
| And I don't know exactly what the tactics are getting out of this. | ||
| I mean, these people say people have the Trump derangement syndrome. | ||
| Well, the bottom line is I feel vaguely familiar that all of a sudden millions and millions of documents are coming out once again with Epstein. | ||
| And every time the heat gets heavy as far as what he's done in Venezuela versus what he has not done for the American citizens here, the insurance coming up, the Epstein, the corruption of the Epstein, that's getting ready to blow out of the water. | ||
| And I think it's all about a diversion tactic. | ||
| He's not helping the Americans. | ||
| America should come first. | ||
| That's what he ran on. | ||
| So now he's concerned with other presidents and the bureaucracy of them being dictators. | ||
| That's what he's trying to do. | ||
| And probably clear martial art law to get the Supreme Court in, as they are definitely on his side. | ||
| Now, Donna, the argument, respond to this argument, which is this is helping Americans by decreasing the amount of drugs coming into the country, by increasing oil revenues. | ||
| We're going to have cheaper oil. | ||
| We'll have a safer years is that going to take? | ||
|
unidentified
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Nobody's jumping right on that. | |
| So this is going to cost American citizens, once again, we're going to be in the deficit billions of dollars until all these oil people get on. | ||
| And who's in charge of the country? | ||
| Yes, I don't believe in people getting hurt in these horrible, horrific conditions that they're in, but our U.S. American citizens are in horrific conditions right now. | ||
| And once again, it's a diversion tactic. | ||
| He doesn't want Epstein to come out. | ||
| I understand. | ||
| This is why it's blasted all over the news. | ||
| It's nothing but diversion. | ||
| And I will always feel that way. | ||
| He'll never be held accountable for it. | ||
| He wants to be a hero and have his name everywhere. | ||
| That's his permanent fixture. | ||
| Maybe he'll make some money to correct the East Wing that he tore down. | ||
| I don't agree with it. | ||
| I think that until I can see the oil come down and my gas cheaper, that's no different than a loaf of bread. | ||
| That's not. | ||
| Let's talk to John in Tumball, Texas, Republican. | ||
| Go ahead, John. | ||
| John, you there? | ||
| Texas. | ||
|
unidentified
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We're going to leave this here and take you live to New York City, where Mayor Zoram Namdani is joined for remarks by the state's governor, Kathy Hope. | |
| This is live coverage on C-STAN. | ||
| We're winning this battle one year into it. |