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And it was a way to communicate a good message through books. | |
| So I just enjoyed the process. | ||
| Watch America's Book Club with Cal Ripken Jr. Sunday at 6 p.m. and 9 p.m. Eastern and Pacific. | ||
| Only on C-SPAM. | ||
| Democracy is always an unfinished creation. | ||
| Democracy is worth dying for. | ||
| Democracy belongs to us all. | ||
| We are here in the sanctuary of democracy. | ||
|
unidentified
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Great responsibilities fall once again to the great democracies. | |
| American democracy is bigger than any one person. | ||
| Freedom and democracy must be constantly guarded and protected. | ||
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unidentified
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We are still at our core a democracy. | |
| is also a massive victory for democracy and for freedom. | ||
| Welcome back. | ||
| Joining us to continue our conversation on Venezuela and what's facing the White House is Niall Stanage. | ||
| He's White House columnist for The Hill. | ||
| Welcome back to the program. | ||
| Good to be with you, Mimi. | ||
| So what is facing the Trump administration now as a result of those operations over the weekend? | ||
| I think an enormous number of questions, primarily. | ||
| I mean, there are obviously questions about the motivations in doing this in the first place. | ||
| But then there's this very clear uncertainty about what exactly the U.S. role is going to be. | ||
| President Trump, of course, said over the weekend they were going to run Venezuela. | ||
| Then Secretary of State Rubio said, well, it's not really running, it's running policy. | ||
| Then President Trump asked last night on Air Force One, who's in charge of Venezuela. | ||
| And he says, we're in charge. | ||
| What does that actually mean in practical terms? | ||
| How does that operate? | ||
| How does that manifest itself? | ||
| And what is the sort of short to medium term future in Venezuela? | ||
| 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. | ||
| Let's stop talking about Iraq. | ||
| This is completely different. | ||
| What is the administration saying about that? | ||
| 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 Donroe 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. | ||
| Now, President Trump obviously was in power before. | ||
| How has his thinking on foreign policy and foreign intervention changed from his first term to now this first year in office of his second term? | ||
| It's a great question. | ||
| 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. | ||
| And Nil Sandage of the Hill is our guest. | ||
| If you have a question for him, he will take your calls. | ||
| The lines are Democrats 202-748-8000, Republicans, 202-748-8001, and Independents 202-748-8002. | ||
| The lines are open. | ||
| You can start calling in now. | ||
| I don't even know what to call Maduro anymore. | ||
| President, former president, illegitimate leader. | ||
| Nicolas Maduro. | ||
| We'll just stick with Maduro. | ||
| He does appear in a Manhattan court today at about noon. | ||
| What is facing the Trump administration's Justice Department in prosecuting that case? | ||
| 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, mainly, 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? | ||
| Is that possible? | ||
| I mean, he has the right to defeat. | ||
| He has the right to defend himself, certainly. | ||
| He has the right to argue, for example, that he is the leader of Venezuela and therefore enjoys sovereign immunity. | ||
| That would not be an acquittal, but it would result in the dismissal of the case if he were able to persuade the court of that point. | ||
| He was a sitting head of state, that he could not be prosecuted. | ||
| Exactly. | ||
| Yes. | ||
| That's what sovereign immunity is. | ||
| 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. | ||
| Now, what significance do you think it was that the indictment does not mention fentanyl? | ||
| Well, I think it's very politically significant. | ||
| 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 Delsi 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. | ||
| And what do you make of that? | ||
| Do you see that as a conciliatory message? | ||
| 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 Del Codriguez, purportedly a socialist, socialist nationalist, formerly Marxist, being conciliatory to the United States in this way. | ||
| After first being not conciliatory. | ||
| Exactly. | ||
| And demanding the release of Maduro. | ||
| And calling this a barbarism or something to that effect. | ||
| There just seems to be, frankly, a lot of shadiness around this that I think we do need intrepid investigative reporters to dig into a bit more. | ||
| Shadiness as far as you think there might be back deals going on? | ||
| 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. | ||
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unidentified
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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. | ||
| All right, Mario. | ||
| 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. | ||
| The UN is meeting today. | ||
| The UN Security Council, I should say, is meeting today, 10 o'clock. | ||
| We will have live coverage of that here on C-SPAN right after this program. | ||
| But that was called by Colombia through Russia and China. | ||
| Of course, that meeting was called. | ||
| What message do you think that sends to other large powerful countries like Russia and China? | ||
| Well, I mean, this is the whole issue here. | ||
| Other powerful countries like Russia and China have no problem, of course, expanding their own dominion. | ||
| Russia, obviously, by the invasion of Ukraine and China in various other typically less militaristic, for the moment, ways. | ||
| Of course, the fate of Taiwan is its whole other issue. | ||
| I mean, the question you ask is a very big question, Mimi, but basically the point of an international rules-based order is to restrain major powers from simply going around the world seizing territory that they wish to seize. | ||
| And so I think this pushback that you're seeing here is part of an attempt to try to bind that rules-based order together in some fashion. | ||
| A caller earlier this morning said that this is the rule of the jungle. | ||
| The powerful take over the weak. | ||
| And there's nothing wrong with that. | ||
| That's who we are. | ||
| Well, I mean, this is sort of mind-blowing to me that we're having that as a debate, like, oh, maybe the strong just should seize the weak. | ||
| I would say that in general, I think this is part of a bigger picture with the current administration, where things that appeared to be settled or around which there appeared to be consensus are now increasingly called into question. | ||
| And, you know, we see that domestically on issues like diversity or the teaching of black history, and we see it internationally in terms of this willingness to very openly say, we're going into this country and we're going to take its oil. | ||
| I mean, that's not something that would have been stated openly, I don't think, by any president of either party in the past. | ||
| Let's talk to Kathy in Ohio, Line for Democrats. | ||
| Go ahead, Kathy. | ||
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unidentified
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Good morning. | |
| You know, briefly, I thought that it would be slow down the drug trafficking coming into the United States. | ||
| But then I got to researching, and since 2026, Trump has forgiven at least five great big drug cartel drug lords. | ||
| And I actually think this is a war for control of all the drugs. | ||
| And I think all of our leaders and very wealthy people are drug lords and we have no hope whatsoever. | ||
| Well, Kathy, I mean, I take your point, and particularly in relation to the former president of Honduras, Mr. Hernandez, who was, of course, as you allude to, pardoned by President Trump, having been convicted of drug conspiracy relating to cocaine. | ||
| So I think that is part of the picture that calls into question, to put it politely, the president's assertion that this is all about the drug trade or stopping the drug trade or protecting the United States from the importation of drugs. | ||
| And when the president was asked about that pardon, what is his response? | ||
| What does he say was the reason that he pardoned that former Honduran leader? | ||
| He doesn't really say that he was not a drug dealer. | ||
| No, that's right. | ||
| I mean, he basically says that he was unjustly prosecuted by the Biden administration. | ||
| That is my understanding of what Trump's position is on that topic. | ||
| Now, I don't frankly think he has provided a particularly precise rationalization, and you may have seen other explanations he's given for that, but that's the explanation that I recall him giving in that case. | ||
| Let's talk to Mike in Hudson, Florida, Independent Line. | ||
| You're on the air, Mike. | ||
|
unidentified
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Good morning. | |
| How are you today? | ||
| Good. | ||
|
unidentified
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I have a question for your guest. | |
| I'm a Vietnam veteran, first airborne ranger. | ||
| I spent 27 months in the country in Vietnam, South Vietnam, obviously. | ||
| And my question is, there was a lot of parody talk about North Korea versus Syria, North Vietnam versus South Vietnam. | ||
| I wonder if you see any similarities or parody to this Venezuela thing and how many countries from South America will join forces With the Venezuelan coalition, if you will? | ||
| It's a good question, Mike, and I wish we'd longer to discuss your own service in Vietnam. | ||
| I guess I don't see really a realistic possibility of other nations in Latin America joining Venezuela in some sort of military pushback against the United States, like a sort of regional war of that nature. | ||
| But I do think that, and you would know a lot more firsthand about Vietnam than I would, but I do think that there was an element of perhaps hubris in the American approach to Vietnam, which resulted in a lot of suffering for many people, including many U.S. personnel there, in the sense that, well, we're just going to go in, we're going to beat back this threat. | ||
| It is, I think, curious in terms of the Venezuelan thing and in terms of Latin America that President Trump seems to be very much focused on leaders of a leftist disposition. | ||
| The leader of Ecuador, to use an exception to that, is of the center-right. | ||
| Ecuador is perceived to be, frankly, a bigger transit point for drugs into the United States. | ||
| There's no suggestion of going in and toppling him. | ||
| So I think that's part of this picture. | ||
| Tillman says this on X about Maduro. | ||
| They should have sent him to Gitmo. | ||
| Well, that's certainly a view. | ||
| I mean, Maduro is not a good guy. | ||
| I mean, Maduro stole an election in 2024 in Venezuela. | ||
| He has been very abusive and repressive of various liberties, including the freedom of the press. | ||
| Now, whether the United States should go around the world seizing foreign leaders and detaining them in Gitmo, I think Tillman and I might have different views on that point. | ||
| Lena in Ohio, Independent Line, good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
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Good morning. | |
| My situation is I don't understand why the Chuck Schumer yelling screaming because Trump did something wrong. | ||
| I'm not talking for politica, but this guy, he was an evil guy who got a watch, and they should be proud what Trump did. | ||
| And they don't send a thing at the democratic because they don't get along. | ||
| They don't need somebody to speak before they do the work. | ||
| So, I mean, this is a real, really criminal thing to talk against Trump. | ||
| I don't think he did. | ||
| Do you think he did something wrong? | ||
| Do you think that Trump did something wrong? | ||
| Personally, yes, I do. | ||
| I think that he, I don't think that we should be in the business of empowering any president to simply go into foreign countries on a whim, seize the leader of that country, and announce that they are now in control of that foreign country. | ||
| I mean, that goes back to the point I was raising earlier about imperialism and colonialism. | ||
| I mean, it's also worth linking, I think, Lena's point to something we were talking about earlier, which is the idea of international rules and so forth. | ||
| So, Lena's view is clearly right, Maduro's a bad guy, we've the power to get him, let's go get him. | ||
| Okay, so when China says, oh, we don't like Taiwan, we believe Taiwan's part of our national territory, we'll then go in and seize it. | ||
| What is our moral objection? | ||
| If in some more unlikely hypothetical, some Arab or Persian nation said, we believe Benjamin Netanyahu is a war criminal, we're going to go into Israel and seize him, would Lena be fine with that? | ||
| Would President Trump be fine with that? | ||
| I would imagine the answer is no. | ||
| Let's talk about Congress. | ||
| They come back this week, the Senate today, the House tomorrow. | ||
| What is facing the White House in discussing this and explaining the rationale and the future of Venezuela? | ||
| Yeah, well, in relation to Congress, I mean, this does go to Lena's point. | ||
| She was arguing that essentially there was no need to inform Congress in advance. | ||
| There is an argument you can have there about whether the information would have leaked, whether that would have posed a risk to the operation and so forth. | ||
| But there is a debate going on, as you know, Mimi, about whether congressional authorization was required for this in the first place. | ||
| The argument from Democrats and from some Republicans, including Congressman Massey, is this is obviously military action, therefore it requires authorization from Congress, basically. | ||
| Marco Rubio's argument is it's not a military action, it's a law enforcement action, therefore it does not or did not require authorization from Congress. | ||
| That debate has to play out. | ||
| I do think it will be interesting to see whether any significant body of Republican opinion in Congress comes to the kind of Thomas Massey Rand Paul kind of view. | ||
| Those figures, Paul and Massey, tend to be small minorities within the Republican Party. | ||
| They are avowedly libertarians. | ||
| They are extremely skeptical of what they consider overreach on the part of the executive, on the part of the president. | ||
| Will other Republicans sound any similar theme? | ||
| Right now, that seems unlikely to me, but I've been surprised before. | ||
| Let's talk to James in Owensboro, Kentucky. | ||
| Democrat, you're on the air, James. | ||
|
unidentified
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Yes. | |
| I was wanting to know about this was a holiday weekend and New Year's and this attack on Venezuela. | ||
| I don't believe it's over narcotics, but I think it's got to be over the oil. | ||
| But I just wanted to know why I want Trump to go on TV and explain to people what's going on because we really don't know what it's about. | ||
| And I'm hearing all these different theories and things flying around, and I have, and I don't know what this is about. | ||
| I'd just like to know. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| Yeah, I mean, I think James's point that the explanation or rationale for this is unclear. | ||
| I mean, you can certainly argue that. | ||
| I would say that Trump has been surprisingly open in some ways about talking about the fact that it's primarily about oil. | ||
| He was asked last night on Air Force One something to the effect of what he needs from Del C. Rodriguez, the now acting president of Venezuela, and he talked about access to the oil. | ||
| Now, it is true that he makes other arguments about narcotics and about the general sort of need to assert American influence, but I think that if he wishes to, if Trump wishes to explain it further, then obviously that's something that has to be watched with interest. | ||
| Mike in Tampa, Florida, Republican, you're on the air. | ||
|
unidentified
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All right. | |
| How are you doing? | ||
| I want to talk about the geopolitical aspects of this snatch in the middle of the night. | ||
| Hours before the Chinese sent their top envoy to go talk to Maduro to reassert their support behind him, Maduro also had all the best Chinese and Russian AAA equipment, missiles, sensors, and we defeated all that within three hours, snatch and grab, lost nobody. | ||
| This was a show to Russia, China, and anybody else that we are the top dog. | ||
| We can do anything we want when we want. | ||
| And frankly, this is 100% what I voted for. | ||
| I'm tired of Democrats, the legacy media, always trying to stand by these people that are killing our people. | ||
| I mean, follow the C-SPAN review. | ||
| Bye. | ||
| Go ahead, Niall. | ||
| Well, I mean, I think Mike got off the line there. | ||
| It's look, you can make the argument if you wish, as Mike has just done, that the United States has the power to do these things, therefore it should do it. | ||
| The counter-argument is you then set a precedent, as you and I were talking about earlier, Mimi. | ||
| You mentioned an earlier caller talking about the law of the jungle, the idea that the strong simply capture the weak. | ||
| That seems to me to have all kinds of dangers if you set that as a precedent. | ||
| You can make the argument that you should. | ||
| There is, of course, a separate argument about spheres of influence, and Mike seemed to be making an almost sort of a Cold War-era argument about Russian influence and Chinese influence on Venezuela. | ||
| I think the question is: are we saying as a nation that the antidote to Chinese or Russian influence in any particular foreign nation should be taken as justification for the United States to go in militarily and depose the leader of that nation? | ||
| Is that an argument that we're comfortable making? | ||
| What do you make of that Chinese envoy meeting with Maduro just a day or two before the strikes? | ||
| Yeah, I mean, I think it's certainly interesting. | ||
| I mean, we were talking earlier about the fact that there are so many questions around many aspects of this. | ||
| I do think it's interesting that that occurred. | ||
| I don't necessarily, I mean, I think people sometimes mention it as suggesting that that was the catalyst for American action. | ||
| I'm not really persuaded that that's the case because I think the American action takes significant planning. | ||
| There was also a $50 million reward for information leading to the arrest or capture of Maduro. | ||
| There's been reporting that there was a CIA asset that led American forces to Maduro and his whereabouts. | ||
| Are we going to be paying out a $50 million reward? | ||
| I don't know. | ||
| I mean, I imagine if that person had eyes on Maduro for that reason, they're going to want the 50 million. | ||
| But I mean, it'll be fascinating to watch that. | ||
| Are we actually going to pay out the reward? | ||
| Maybe we will. | ||
| I mean, I'm not saying that we won't, but someone would have to come forward and say, I'm John Doe, I'm the guy who... | ||
| Will that be public? | ||
| In other words, would we know about that? | ||
| That is $50 million coming out of the Treasury. | ||
| It is, yeah. | ||
| That's a great question to which, I'm going to be honest, I don't know the answer. | ||
| When those rewards are paid out, are they accounted for in some public fashion? | ||
| I don't know the answer. | ||
| Ali is in Lorton, Virginia, Independent Line. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
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Good morning. | |
| Just a couple of comments. | ||
| I voted for Biden and I regret it. | ||
| And I voted for President Trump and I regret it. | ||
| And I believe I'm done with voting. | ||
| It's like everyone take the office, go back to do the same thing. | ||
| I'm an immigrant from Iraq. | ||
| I worked with the U.S. Army in Iraq and earned my special immigrant visa to the U.S. 15 years ago. | ||
| I have experienced Iraq and what happened there. | ||
| I hope it's not the same case again, although there is different differences between the two countries, but what happened again is destabilizing another country without a plan. | ||
| And for Trump voters who don't like immigrants coming here, who don't like what happened in Europe and how Europe is deteriorating because the immigrants are from the Middle East, I hope you don't be bothered by millions of Venezuelans pouring to the United States or to neighboring country and destabilizing the region when that happened. | ||
| It's amazing how history repeats itself and I don't even believe it's history. | ||
| It's literally several years ago where we all saw and lived the suffering and the disasters that happened after Iraq, which President Trump agreed that Iraq was mistake. | ||
| The United States went there, based on a lie, destroyed the country, destabilized the region, created ISIS, and hundreds of thousands, if not millions, killed and tens of millions disappeared. | ||
| So, Ali, I just want to ask you a real quick question since you're Iraqi. | ||
| A lot has been said about how Venezuelans are celebrating the downfall of Maduro. | ||
| And I remember a lot of celebration in the downfall of Saddam Hussein. | ||
| Were you one of those Iraqis that was happy that the United States toppled Saddam Hussein? | ||
|
unidentified
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I was 20 years old, something. | |
| I don't believe I was one of those dancing, but if you can imagine, as a kid, I grew up in something similar, not as bad as North Korea right now, but it's similar. | ||
| So we didn't have a future under Saddam, and we were hoping, thinking that things will be handled by the United States in a different way. | ||
| But honestly, looking at the United States and what they did in Iraq afterward, how the country was handed over to Iran, and how U.S. companies couldn't do anything there, not building the country or bringing true experts to help that country and secure the oil there. | ||
| Nothing of that happened. | ||
| Let's hear from Nile Sanich. | ||
| I think Ali's account is really interesting there. | ||
| And I do think that the point that I think you were alluding to, Mimi, where we see now some celebrations, at least about Maduro's downfall, but then we saw celebrations about Saddam's downfall. | ||
| And in Iraq, you know, mission accomplished turned out to be mission not at all accomplished and there was enormous chaos and bloodshed. | ||
| As we were talking about earlier, there are clear differences between Iraq and Venezuela, but I think the idea of hubris is important. | ||
| I just wanted to raise one other point, Mimi, that Ali sort of alluded to there about migration. | ||
| A large number of Venezuelan migrants at one point comparatively recently had enjoyed legal status in this country under a temporary protected status. | ||
| The Trump administration then has decided that they are going to remove that temporary protected status. | ||
| And just over the weekend, I think it was Christine Ohm, though if I'm incorrect in that, your viewers can correct me, said that those people could apply for refugee status. | ||
| In fact, although that is technically true, the Trump administration has slashed to an enormous degree the number of people who are the cap on refugees in the U.S. | ||
| So this question of what happens to Venezuelan migrants in the United States is a very salient one at a time when all of this turmoil is taking place in their homeland. | ||
| And we do have an immigration expert coming on next, and we will definitely talk about that for Venezuelan refugees and immigrants in the United States. | ||
| Here's Jose Grant Florida Independent Line. | ||
| Jose, I understand you are a Venezuelan-American immigrant. | ||
|
unidentified
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Yes, I am. | |
| Would you mind telling us your immigration status? | ||
| Are you an American citizen now? | ||
|
unidentified
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I am an American citizen. | |
| I have been living here in the country over 40 years, but I was born and grew up in Venezuela. | ||
| So I still have a lot of connection with Venezuela and I stay in contact and well informed what's going on in Venezuela. | ||
| And the reason I'm calling, I mean, I have multiple points, but I just want to address one point only because the lack of time is that this mission just started, taking Maduro out, but they left the rest of his strong followers. | ||
| My concern for our nation, United States, and for Venezuela, is it reminds me a little bit about the bag of pigs when the United States tried to help get rid of Castro, but then didn't finish the job. | ||
| After that, what happened? | ||
| The missile crisis. | ||
| Of course, the Cubans learned very quick we better have nuclear missiles here in order to protect ourselves from a second invasion. | ||
| Now, the Venezuelan government, I don't think they're going to be so stupid to not do nothing. | ||
| I think they're going to try to get the most help they can in order to protect themselves for a second third or whatever invasion they may happen in the future. | ||
| And that's a concern that I have right now. | ||
| That if this, whatever you started, because this is something that in the middle of the river, you cannot change horses at this time. | ||
| You have to now to finish it. | ||
| We got involved in something that had to be completed now. | ||
| And that's my concern. | ||
| I'd like to hear your guest, his opinion is what will happen, what we think the Maduro regime will do if we don't finish the job. | ||
| I don't think they're going to, well, I think I say all about that point only. | ||
| And I'm going to stay to that point to give a chance. | ||
| All right, Jose. | ||
| Appreciate that. | ||
| Thanks, Jose. | ||
| So in relation to this idea about will the Venezuelan government leadership now seek more muscular protection, I think that's possible. | ||
| And it's part of this picture where a lot of the rhetoric preceding the U.S. strike was about the regime in Venezuela. | ||
| What has in fact happened is Nicolas Maduro has been removed, but the regime has not at all. | ||
| And in fact, President Trump has been, I would say, ambivalent at best about the idea if there have been elections anytime soon in Venezuela. | ||
| And as we were discussing earlier on, has notably failed to back the main opposition leader. | ||
| So that obviously does raise the question of whether the current Venezuelan regime accommodates itself to Trump's wishes or otherwise. | ||
| Very quickly, in relation to Jose's statement about finishing the job, one of the complexities here is: A, what would finishing the job look like? | ||
| But B, I mean, there's a very long history of the United States backing opposition figures in foreign nations that then become seen, perhaps understandably, as patsys of the United States and thus lose legitimacy among their own people. | ||
| So all of those dynamics are part of this Pandora's box that we've just opened. | ||
| Let's talk to Diana in Livingston, New Jersey, Democrat. | ||
| Hi, Diana. | ||
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unidentified
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Hi, good morning. | |
| I'm thinking about when they keep on saying spheres of influence and how we're leaving the international rules-based order. | ||
| Do we agree with that? | ||
| Like, have the American people know that Trump's agenda is to establish these zones where he's in charge, where he's transactional, where he's going to go in with the tech billionaires' support and the oil companies and go in and take over these countries that are rich in resources and establish, like, in fact, there is already with the Honduras connection. | ||
| I'm surprised, like, the journalists don't bring this out, that the Peter Thiel and some Venezuelan investor, they have established these cities, Prospera in Honduras, where it's subject to its own laws, its own jurisdiction, and they can come and go. | ||
| And he's been buying up the land there. | ||
| And do they get together and decide, you know, Musk and Peter Thiel and all these weird guys with all this weird philosophy, right? | ||
| They're the ones prompting Trump, who has become rich since he's gotten in with them with the crypto and the blockchain and the AI. | ||
| They're just becoming immensely rich. | ||
| And it's made them so powerful that they can go into these small little South American countries and buy them up and then do what they want and take advantage of the people. | ||
| The people even in South America or Venezuela won't profit from it. | ||
| It's these tech billionaires and oil companies and investors that will profit. | ||
| Can the guests elaborate on any of that? | ||
| Sure, Diana. | ||
| The part that I can't elaborate on, because you're just bringing it to my attention, is the Peter Peel villages in Honduras. | ||
| I know literally nothing about that, and I'll certainly look into it. | ||
| So thanks for bringing it up. | ||
| In relation to Honduras, I mean, I mentioned before Trump's pardoning of the former president there who'd been convicted on drug charges. | ||
| Now, in relation to the broader point you make about corporations benefiting from this, I think that is a very valid and salient point. | ||
| President Trump has said repeatedly that he wants U.S. companies to go in and get the oil. | ||
| Now, will the people of Venezuela really see any benefit from that? | ||
| I'm personally skeptical. | ||
| It seems like this is avowedly an effort that is intended to enrich American corporations. | ||
| And I think this gets to the point, you know, I used the word imperialism earlier on. | ||
| Someone in the Washington Post in the past 24 hours was using the phrase petro-imperialism, the idea that it is controlling countries to extract purely their oil or gas. | ||
| That obviously is, I think, a relevant concern for people like Diana and more widely. | ||
| Niall, I know you're not an energy expert, but I wanted to ask what you thought the impact to the global oil markets would be given that we now have a quarantine on Venezuela's oil. | ||
| So the question, so there are two parts to that question. | ||
| First of all, the last time I checked about an hour ago, the share stock prices of oil companies had risen largely, but the price of oil itself less so. | ||
| So there seems to be, if you want to describe it as corporate optimism, I guess, that the Exxons and, well, share funds already in Venezuela, the oil companies can go in and profit from this in the medium term. | ||
| There seems to be optimism about that. | ||
| There is not currently an oil shortage, of course, so bringing more oil capacity on could presumably actually plateau or decrease the price of oil overall. | ||
| People who know more than I do about the mechanics of it in Venezuela say it would take a fairly significant period of time and a very significant amount of money to bring the infrastructure up to the level where Venezuela is suddenly pumping huge amounts of oil again. | ||
| Bloomberg says $100 billion over 10 years. | ||
| Yeah, I mean, that's sizable, sizable money by anyone's standards, I think. | ||
| One more call for you. | ||
| Robin, Old Forge, Pennsylvania, Republican, you're on the air. | ||
|
unidentified
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Yeah, I just wanted to call and say that what the President of the United States did, Donald Trump, was wonderful. | |
| He did it. | ||
| It was perfect. | ||
| Everything went well. | ||
| And the American people, well, the Democrats need to calm down because I believe this is going to be amazing. | ||
| I think he's going to make Venezuela rich again. | ||
| And he's not in it for us to take their oil and make us rich. | ||
| It's to help the Venezuelan people. | ||
| And to see them celebrating all over the place is wonderful. | ||
| Can't you Democrats stop worrying about going after Trump and help other people be happy again in Venezuela? | ||
| What is the matter with you people? | ||
| Last word, Niall. | ||
| I mean, I'm not here to speak for the Democratic Party. | ||
| I mean, Robin is entitled to her opinion, of course. | ||
| I mean, there are some people celebrating, other people protesting. | ||
| The idea, I think, that Donald Trump is doing this to enrich the people of Venezuela is an idea that a lot of people, including me, are enormously skeptical of because he himself has been so clear about the desire to get Venezuela's oil and for it being American companies who will get that oil. | ||
| The administration has talked about Venezuela previously stealing the United States' oil whenever that oil is in the soil of Venezuela. | ||
| So I think that's why people are so skeptical of this idea that Trump is doing this for the betterment of the people of Venezuela. |