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|---|---|---|
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Examining the use of federal funds for social services in their home state. | |
| And at 2.30 p.m. Eastern, the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Federal Courts will hold a hearing to discuss impeaching federal judges who rule against the Trump administration. | ||
| You can also find our live coverage on C-SPAN Now, our free mobile app, and online at c-span.org. | ||
| Coming up this morning on Washington Journal, along with your calls and comments live, Freshman GOP Representative Randy Fine of Florida discusses U.S. military action in Venezuela and role going forward. | ||
| Creighton University professor and international law expert Michael Kelly talks about the legality of the U.S. capture of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro. | ||
| Stephen Newcomb of Axios will discuss the congressional reaction to the Trump administration's actions in Venezuela amid briefings on Capitol Hill and a Senate vote on a war powers resolution this week. | ||
| Washington Examiner Congressional Reporter Lauren Green previews today's House oversight hearing on fraud allegations at multiple Minnesota child care centers. | ||
| Then, Florida International University's Eduardo Guimara on the history of American interventions in Latin America and the Caribbean. | ||
| Washington Journal is next. | ||
| Join in the conversation. | ||
| This is Washington Journal for today, Wednesday, January 7th. | ||
| Top Trump administration officials head to Capitol Hill today to brief House and Senate lawmakers on their plans in Venezuela. | ||
| This after President Trump touts the military mission there, and officials hint of more interventions possibly to come in the Western Hemisphere, especially in Greenland. | ||
| So this morning, we're asking you, are you confident the Trump administration will get it right in Venezuela in the aftermath of Nicolas Maduro's ouster? | ||
| And do you support the U.S. asserting its power with other countries in the hemisphere? | ||
| To join our conversation, Democrats, your line is 202-748-8000. | ||
| Republicans, your line is 202-748-8001. | ||
| Independents, your line is 202-748-8002. | ||
| You can also reach us by text message at 202-748-8003. | ||
| Include your first name, city, and state. | ||
| And you can reach us by Facebook on facebook.com forward slash C-SPAN or on X at C-SPANWJ. | ||
| We start this morning with foreign policy as questions still remain on the U.S.'s efforts in Venezuela. | ||
| The president has said that we will run Venezuela, and overnight he posted on True Social, quote, I am pleased to announce that the interim authorities in Venezuela will be turning over between 30 and 50 million barrels of high-quality sanctioned oil to the United States of America. | ||
| This oil will be sold at its market price, and that money will be controlled by me as President of the United States of America to ensure it is used to benefit the people of Venezuela and the United States. | ||
| Yesterday, President Trump addressed House Republicans at the Kennedy Senator talking about the mission in Venezuela. | ||
| Take a listen here. | ||
|
unidentified
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And it was an amazing military feat that took place yesterday. | |
| Think of it. | ||
| An amazing military. | ||
| people are saying well thank you you know people are saying it's it goes down with one of the most incredible it was so complex 152 airplanes, many, many. | ||
| Talk about boots on the ground. | ||
| We had a lot of boots on the ground. | ||
| But it was amazing. | ||
| And think of it. | ||
| Nobody was killed. | ||
| And on the other side, a lot of people were killed. | ||
| Unfortunately, I say that, the soldiers. | ||
| Cubans, mostly Cubans, but many, many killed. | ||
| And they knew we were coming, and they were protected, and our guys weren't. | ||
| You know, our guys are jumping out of helicopters, and you're not protected. | ||
| And they were, but it was so brilliant. | ||
| The electricity for almost the entire country was boom turned off. | ||
| That's when they knew there was a problem. | ||
| There was no electricity. | ||
| Caracas said, there's no electricity. | ||
| The only people with lights were the people that had candles. | ||
| It was just off. | ||
| So we sort of got him a little by surprise. | ||
| But it was a brilliant, it was brilliant tactically. | ||
| It was an incredible thing. | ||
| But I watched where Schumer, he's such a bad guy. | ||
| I mean, I've known the guy for a long time. | ||
| And he's such a bad guy. | ||
| You know, at some point they should say, you know, you did a great job. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| Congratulations. | ||
| Wouldn't it be good? | ||
| I would say that if they did a good job, their philosophies are so different. | ||
| But if they did a good job, I'd be happy for the country. | ||
| They've been after this guy for years and years and years. | ||
| And, you know, he's a violent guy. | ||
| He gets up there and he tries to imitate my dance a little bit. | ||
| But he's a violent guy. | ||
| That was President Trump yesterday at the Kennedy Center talking about the mission in Venezuela. | ||
| Now, Democrats have been resoundingly critical of what comes next, that major question on the efforts in Venezuela. | ||
| Here's Chuck Schumer from yesterday, House Minority Leader, talking about it. | ||
| Take a listen. | ||
| They think they can do step one, take out Madura, and they have no idea what steps two through 10 are going to be, which gives all of us a great deal of worry. | ||
| I asked four simple questions. | ||
| How many American troops are we going to send to Venezuela? | ||
| They don't know. | ||
| How long will we be running Venezuela? | ||
| Don't know. | ||
| Unknown. | ||
| How much is this going to cost? | ||
| We tried to pin them down. | ||
| No answer. | ||
| What country is next? | ||
| Unknown. | ||
| But I was very unsatisfied when I asked them, are they considering going into other countries? | ||
| It was really troubling. | ||
| And last night, when asked, Trump told Americans he's in charge of Venezuela. | ||
| When asked who's in charge of Venezuela, Trump said me. | ||
| One man, no idea, no plan. | ||
| Whatever pops into his head, it seems, from that briefing. | ||
| So let me ask a simple question. | ||
| How does spending potentially years and potentially billions of taxpayer dollars in Venezuela put America first? | ||
| How does this help families here at home pay the rent, pay the mortgage, pay for groceries, pay their energy bill, pay for their health care? | ||
| Because right now, millions of Americans are losing coverage. | ||
| Millions more are paying thousands, even tens of thousands more for health insurance. | ||
| And what are Trump and Republicans doing? | ||
| Nothing. | ||
| He's all focused on Venezuela and Latin America. | ||
| That was Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer talking about the administration's efforts in Venezuela. | ||
| Let's turn to your calls. | ||
| Arthur from Winter Garden, Florida, a Republican? | ||
| Your line is open. | ||
|
unidentified
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Yes, there are two things I have to say. | |
| One, we need to know what Mr. Trump is doing. | ||
| This way we will know whether we agree with him or whether we don't agree with him. | ||
| Secondly, something has got to be done about drugs. | ||
| I mean, I had one niece of mine who part of what helped kill her was drugs. | ||
| I didn't know about this until I passed away. | ||
| I mean, something has got to be done regarding drugs. | ||
| And we need to know what Mr. Trump, we need to know that Mr. Trump is doing something. | ||
| Arthur, do you feel that the administration is being transparent about what their goals are when it comes to their efforts in Venezuela or in the Western hemisphere? | ||
|
unidentified
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I would like to hope so, yes. | |
| Okay, but you want to know more. | ||
|
unidentified
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Well, yes, I would like to know more. | |
| I thought we all would. | ||
| Dan from Somerville, South Carolina, a Democrat. | ||
|
unidentified
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I'm a Trump. | |
| Your line is open? | ||
|
unidentified
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I'm Trump. | |
| I care about Islam, Venezuela. | ||
| Only thing is enriched in his pocket and his family. | ||
| And the Republicans kind of don't understand that. | ||
| He's making all this money attacking all these countries and getting all these money for himself. | ||
| You don't care about the American people. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| David from Riverside, California, Republican. | ||
| You're next. | ||
| David, your line's open. | ||
|
unidentified
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Oh, yes. | |
| Trump finally got the communist dictator Maduro out of Venezuela. | ||
| It's noteworthy that President Trump is much better in the second term than he was in the first. | ||
| America First now includes our Western Hemisphere, at least. | ||
| And hopefully Cuban communism will be next to fall. | ||
| And most importantly, Iran and their evil government as well. | ||
| We brought communist Madero to New York City to trial. | ||
| And the mayor himself is a communist. | ||
| Nevertheless, Venezuela will be much better off. | ||
| It was just about a week ago that Maduro was listening to the song Imagine. | ||
| He said, listen to the words, meaning communism. | ||
| Sadly, that song was written by our American resident John Lennon back in the 1970s. | ||
| America First is an impossible concept because we are not an island. | ||
| And I believe America is here to help the world. | ||
| America is 5% of the world's population, but we are the world leader in overthrowing evil communist or Islamic dictators. | ||
| David, you said that the Venezuelan people will be much better off. | ||
| I wonder what you make of the president obviously capturing Maduro, but then now obviously his vice president who was part of that similar regime, Delcy Rodriguez, is now interim president and all of his military generals, Maduro's military generals, I'll say, are still in their place in Venezuela. | ||
|
unidentified
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Well, it appears that Trump is doing some kind of pressure campaign because if this new person, Del C, does not work out, they're going to be thrown out just like Maduro. | |
| But the main thing is that people are celebrating the Oster Maduro and the world is much better off. | ||
| And I just think if Trump can keep going like this, get rid of the head of Cuba and move on to Iran and counter them. | ||
| And I think we can finally have peace in the world. | ||
| And really, things can get much, much better. | ||
| Praise God. | ||
| Carolyn from Alexandria, Virginia, Democrat, you're next. | ||
|
unidentified
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Hello. | |
| Good morning. | ||
| Can you hear me? | ||
| I sure can. | ||
|
unidentified
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Okay. | |
| My take on Van Zerzo, Trump going to send his son-in-law over there to run that country. | ||
| That's what we're going to say. | ||
| He's going to let that lady stay on there for a while. | ||
| But he's going to send his son-in-law over there who married to Vonka, his daughter-in-law, to run that country. | ||
| So when he gets out of office, he's going to go over there and run Venezuela because all over there, anywhere is money, that's what he wants to be. | ||
| He's going to go there and take over them people's country. | ||
| That's what he's going to do. | ||
| He ain't going to give them people nothing. | ||
| That's what he's going to do. | ||
| He ain't going to give them people nothing. | ||
| I want to ask y'all, why do white people always think they can go take care of somebody else's country and land? | ||
| They did it when the slaves took our land. | ||
| They always go to somebody else's country and taking their land like it's theirs. | ||
| They didn't work on it. | ||
| They didn't do anything, but they always think they're going to go take something from somebody. | ||
| Woody from Georgia, Republican, you're next. | ||
| Once I click that button, you're next. | ||
| Go ahead, Rudy. | ||
| Go ahead, Woody. | ||
|
unidentified
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Go ahead, Woody. | |
| Yeah, yeah, I just want to make a comment. | ||
| The United States, why we don't know more is because everybody always seeing in and everything. | ||
| That's when we got to the Gulf. | ||
| CNN was over there with cameras. | ||
| And whenever we try to do a military operation, they don't give President Trump credit for nothing. | ||
| But I mean, Venezuela and all the rest of them. | ||
| That's why I come to Miami and got so many Cubas and everything. | ||
| These countries are not being ran the way they should have been ran. | ||
| And I know going as well, they've been talking about Maduros saying they were talking about El Chapo. | ||
| Everybody upset now, but if they're so mad about him getting drug laws and getting them out, turn El Chapo and them loose. | ||
| Turn them back loose. | ||
| Let them go back to Mexico and do what they was doing. | ||
| We can't have it both ways. | ||
| The Dems want everything the same way, but it can't be like that. | ||
| They wanted all the drugs out of Mexico. | ||
| What they did, they lured El Chapo to the United States and arrested him. | ||
| They got him in now. | ||
| I was in the Marines when they went down and got Noriego. | ||
| I was in the Marines when we went to the 80s and got John Batron LST. | ||
| They've been doing this stuff forever. | ||
| But I was in the military when they went over there and killed Saddam Hussein and all these other places. | ||
| So they act like what we're doing is something new. | ||
| Our country is what it is. | ||
| Do you see similarities? | ||
| Since you said that you were in the Marines during this time, do you see similarities between the capture of Noriega versus now the capture of Maduro? | ||
|
unidentified
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The same situation. | |
| I ain't heard nothing from Noriego. | ||
| I retired in 2005. | ||
| I don't even know if the man living or dead, but I know they went to Panama and got him out. | ||
| And shortly after that, when they had the next elections, we went to giving away all the bases down there in Panama. | ||
| So I went back, you know, I know the Air Force pulled out, the army pulled out. | ||
| I don't think nobody died. | ||
| It might be a small Marine or a small nation. | ||
| As a former member of the military, Woody, would you be comfortable if the president did, in fact, put boots on the ground in Venezuela? | ||
|
unidentified
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No, I don't think we need boots on the ground nowhere within the United States because sooner or later it's going to come home now. | |
| Just like we go everywhere else, we're going to get another 9-11. | ||
| I already see it coming because we got too many people here now that we don't know who in here. | ||
| But any day now, I've been just waiting for the chips to fall. | ||
| Something got to happen. | ||
| Believe me, I'm telling you, it's just the way of war. | ||
| Something got to happen. | ||
| We're getting so comfortable, but our news people, they're so biased and they want everything. | ||
| They want to know everything to put it out in the paper. | ||
| You can't. | ||
| You can't run no military operations in the press. | ||
| You can't do that. | ||
| Harold from Tennessee, a Democrat. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes, ma'am. | |
| Thank you. | ||
| Thank you for taking my call. | ||
| I'm glad the dude over there is gone. | ||
| But now, if we don't watch it, we're fixed to have another Iraq here. | ||
| And people call in here. | ||
| Yeah, yeah, well, they do it. | ||
| Well, when they start bringing boys home in body bags, you start putting our troops over there, you're going to have that. | ||
| It's like you did in Iraq. | ||
| Remember the first few to come home from in a body bag from Iraq. | ||
| This is dangerous ground, and it's not our place to go take people's countries over. | ||
| You overthrow the dictator over there, let the country run itself. | ||
| But it's not our right to go over there and take it. | ||
| We got so many important things here at home. | ||
| I just watched an article on this, your health care. | ||
| Pitt is killing people, especially through the South here. | ||
| That's what I wish really wishing to do a show when they're going to have a hearing on their health care up there. | ||
| And you people have a good day. | ||
| You do a great job, but we do not need to be putting our troops over there in foreign land. | ||
| We've got them spread thin now. | ||
| And just stop and think back to Iraq when it all started. | ||
| Play clips of that. | ||
| You know, it's going to be rose petals throwing the streets, but it's not going to be rose petals staying in the streets. | ||
| So stop and think. | ||
| If somebody came over here taking United States over, every one of us would pick up our gun and go at her. | ||
| And that's what they were going to do, too. | ||
| But thank you very much, and just have a great day. | ||
| Jeff from North Carolina, Republican, you're next. | ||
|
unidentified
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Well, I think we can blame those racist white Republicans. | |
| It's all their fault for electing Trump. | ||
| We just need to find a way to get rid of all these racist white Republicans. | ||
| Everything bad with the world is racist white Republicans' fault. | ||
| They're just awful. | ||
| Dorian from Chicago, Illinois, a Democrat. | ||
| You're next. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes. | |
| I appreciate your upon that. | ||
| All I want to just state is: America first. | ||
| Make America great again. | ||
| Donald Trump's motto after being re-elected is out the back door. | ||
| I don't understand the concept of going and deploying military to foreign countries then not commit an atrocity crime in America. | ||
| All we need in America is stability, help us, the low-income individuals, health care, food, all means and ways. | ||
| Donald Trump should address the needs of the northern citizens before deciding what to do around the globe. | ||
| Thank you very much. | ||
| Dorian, good to Chicago. | ||
| Angela, California and Independent, you're next. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| I want to ask America a question. | ||
| I remember a movie called Land of the Giants, where these kids got a hold of this portion and it made them big. | ||
| They terrorized and bullied this town. | ||
| And when it wore off, they came back down to earth and the people ran them out of town. | ||
| So I want to ask America this: You're ready to send your kids off to die on foreign soil when China has over 251 of their kids that are military ready on your soil going to college. | ||
| They have over 33,000 illegal Chinese in California only. | ||
| I'm not even talking about the other 49 states. | ||
| So China got their military sitting here on this soil. | ||
| And like one of the callers say, one day the bubble's going to bust United States. | ||
| And are you ready for China to take this country over? | ||
| Because just like Donald Trump running around, want to be leader of the world, China might want to be it, and North Korea might want to be it too. | ||
| Mary from Fort Washington, Maryland, a Democrat, you're next. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning, C-SPAN. | |
| I just think this is just everything is illegal. | ||
| IQ 47 is illegal. | ||
| His administration is illegal. | ||
| They're not qualified. | ||
| They're dangerous. | ||
| And what he's doing, he's going to get us another 9-11. | ||
| The Venezuelan people are glad that Maduro is gone, but they don't want Boots on the ground or their country being run by anybody but them. | ||
| Like I said, impeach and remove him now. | ||
| John from Troy, New York, a Republican. | ||
| You're next. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning, John. | |
| Yeah, I just want to say the people of Venezuela will be much better off with Maduro gone, and we're not going to go in there and run the country. | ||
| The people from Venezuela will wind up running the country. | ||
| And it's ironic that the people protesting here are liberals and far-left people who, nobody wants to get involved in a foreign war. | ||
| And Trump is going to benefit Venezuelans with this oil. | ||
| The people of Venezuela will be much better off with Maduro gone, and the sales from this oil will no longer benefit the Chinese and the Russians, so they can go fund their shenanigans. | ||
| But it will benefit the people of Venezuela, and the oil will enter on the market at a fair market price, and the people of Venezuela will benefit. | ||
| Now, the people protesting here are basically liberals and progressives who are protesting the invasion. | ||
| Well, if you see the people in Miami, New York City who are actual Venezuelans, they're celebrating. | ||
| They are happy to have this jerk gone. | ||
| By that, I mean Maduro. | ||
| So that's all I have to say. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| LaRuth from St. Louis, Maryland, or Missouri, excuse me, St. Louis, Missouri, a Democrat. | ||
| You're next. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hi. | |
| This is what I was talking about. | ||
| We don't need to be going to Venezuela or any other country. | ||
| We have enough problems here in America that need to be straightened out. | ||
| I think most people will be so glad when this president is out of office because he has done nothing but cause a bunch of chaos ever since he's been in office. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| Bye-bye. | ||
| Now, something that a previous caller talked about was oil, something that President Trump has been talking about increasingly over the course of the last few days. | ||
| Here is Senate Majority Leader Jonathun talking about whether or not Americans should be responsible for reimbursing oil companies that would invest in oil infrastructure in Venezuela. | ||
| Take a listen. | ||
| Well, first on Venezuela, my view is that the Venezuela energy industry, which is in cahoots with China and Russia, is now going to need to start working constructively with the United States, with energy companies here. | ||
| And what will happen if that actually takes place is that you will start seeing the people of Venezuela benefit from the energy industry instead of having the folks that they're in league with in China and Russia. | ||
| So my view is that, you know, it shouldn't, it's not going to be a cost to the American taxpayer. | ||
| This ought to be revenue coming into this country if we're working in a way with Venezuela and hopefully that an energy supply, a commodity that can benefit the Venezuelan people, which is something that I think they should derive some benefit from. | ||
| And right now, their leadership, because they are corrupt and in bed with narco-terrorists and in bed with China and Russia, the people in that country are now seeing the benefit of something that they got, an energy resource in this country that ought to be to their benefit. | ||
| That was Senate Majority Leader John Thune yesterday talking about who, in his view, should reimburse oil companies if they do invest in the market in Venezuela. | ||
| Edward from Rochester, New York, Republican, you're next. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes, hello. | |
| You know, first of all, I'm not a white Republican. | ||
| I am an African-American Republican, and they're just not white Republicans causing the problem. | ||
| A lot of ethnicity, Asian, Hispanic, black, Indian voted for Trump. | ||
| And here's the problem that I don't understand. | ||
| You know, Madero is indicted in New York. | ||
| International organizations said that he lost the election. | ||
| The opposition that ran against Maduro in Venezuela, she is the Nobel Peace Prize winner. | ||
| So we get these people here saying, let's keep this Marxist socialist radical in Venezuela. | ||
| There's over 200,000 Americans die a year from the narcotics that he's selling. | ||
| The UN had said the same thing, but here in the media that is far left in the radical Democratic Party says Trump is wrong. | ||
| Anything and everything Trump does is wrong. | ||
| So we're going to leave him in here. | ||
| For what reasons? | ||
| And now all companies that started in Venezuela that built these companies in Venezuela, he took over. | ||
| He took over the companies. | ||
| So it's okay if America has a company somewhere in another country that the government, Marxist socialists, could take over the company. | ||
| Liz from Middlebury, Connecticut, a Democrat, you're next. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes, good morning, everybody on C-SPAN. | |
| I just want to say I just don't agree with the policies and the argument that the Trump administration is having in reference to, you know, taking over Venezuela. | ||
| I mean, their first argument was, you know, it was because of drugs and the narco-traffickers. | ||
| And now we're taking over their oil. | ||
| And, you know, how does the Republicans justify this? | ||
| I mean, this is like Hitler all over again. | ||
| And, you know, and what justification do we have? | ||
| When Trump takes over Greenland, it's a NATO country. | ||
| How do we justify this to our neighboring countries and our allies? | ||
| Liz, can I ask you on Venezuela specifically? | ||
| Do you think that the president should have just let Maduro, who multiple entities have said did not win the election and yet stayed in power? | ||
| Should he have just let him remain in the country? | ||
| And what would you have rather saw in terms of action from the president? | ||
|
unidentified
|
I think the best way would have been if we worked with NATO or with multiple countries to remove Maduro because now it just seems like we just, you know, and I've heard Trump say this, you know, first it's the drugs. | |
| And by the way, he let go of the Honduras president. | ||
| He pardoned him, you know. | ||
| But what are we going to say? | ||
| You know, I mean, I understand Maduro was not the elected president. | ||
| He should have been removed. | ||
| He should have been removed a long time ago. | ||
| Do you think that former President Biden should have removed him? | ||
|
unidentified
|
No, I just think it could have been done better with, you know, for example, through the UN or, you know, something where there's multiple organizations and, you know, worldwide and they work for peace and fairness. | |
| Later on this morning on the Washington Journal, we'll dig into legal questions surrounding the capture and arrest of the Venezuelan president Maduro with international law expert Michael Kelly of Creighton University. | ||
| But first, after the break, a conversation about what's next in Venezuela with Republican Congressman Randy Fine of Florida, a member of the Foreign Affairs Committee. | ||
|
unidentified
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unidentified
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I don't know how anybody can say otherwise. | |
| You guys do the most important work for everyone in this country. | ||
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| Washington Journal continues. | ||
| Welcome back to Washington Journal. | ||
| Joining us this morning is Congressman Randy Fine of Florida, a member of the Foreign Affairs Committee to talk about Venezuela. | ||
| Congressman, thanks so much for joining us this morning. | ||
| Thanks for having me. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
| Well, this is your first time on the program, so let's just dive right in. | ||
| In a recent interview, Congressman, you said that capturing the Venezuelan former president Nicolas Maduro was an example of putting America first. | ||
| What did you mean by that? | ||
| Well, I think Venezuela was serving as a launch pad for the people who hate us. | ||
| They were allowing Hezbollah terrorists to operate there and raise hundreds of millions of dollars. | ||
| They were going to make it a launching pad for China and Russia in Iran. | ||
| And worse, they were using it as a narco-drug empire to send their drugs into the United States to kill our people. | ||
| So there's no more important duty of government than to protect Americans and America. | ||
| And I think going and taking Maduro did exactly that. | ||
| So I'm very proud of the president. | ||
| He did a great job. | ||
| And we all owe him and the soldiers who did the work a great deal of gratitude. | ||
| As a member of the Foreign Affairs Committee, I wonder, do you view taking Maduro, capturing him now, obviously bringing him to New York to face charges, but do you view that as an act of regime change? | ||
| And whether, and do you view that these actions are legal both in the U.S. and international law? | ||
| Well, I view it as seizing a drug dealer. | ||
| So the president doesn't need to check with us every time he wants to go and arrest a drug dealer. | ||
| Maduro was not the democratically elected president of Venezuela. | ||
| In fact, there was an election, and he lost, and he lost overwhelmingly, and he said, I don't care. | ||
| I'm not giving up power. | ||
| So he was a drug dealer. | ||
| And so the president had every right to go and get him. | ||
| That's not a violation. | ||
| Well, how else would you go and get a narco-derived president in a different country? | ||
| I understand, but the fact that he committed crimes in the United States doesn't get him off the hook. | ||
| And so I think what he did was absolutely justified. | ||
| And so I believe we put the interests of America first. | ||
| Making sure Americans aren't dying of fentanyl-laced cocaine is important. | ||
| Making sure Muslim terrorists can't operate with impunity in our hemisphere is in our interest. | ||
| And I think this is a big win. | ||
| The biggest win is for Venezuelans. | ||
| Look at how the Venezuelan diaspora is responding in Florida and around the country and the world. | ||
| Unbelievable, yeah, my home state, unbelievable celebration. | ||
| So the Venezuelans are happy with what we have done. | ||
| So we win, Venezuela wins, everybody wins, I guess except the drug dealers. | ||
| I wonder if you have any concerns of whether or not this action could lead to further military intervention in Venezuela. | ||
| Obviously, the president has said that they are prepared to do a second wave of strikes if this current Venezuela government, the former vice president, now interim president, doesn't basically acquiesce to the U.S.'s concerns or requests. | ||
| I wonder if you feel that there is a potential for boots on the ground. | ||
| Well, I'm not particularly worried. | ||
| It seems like they've gotten the message. | ||
| With Donald Trump in charge, America is back. | ||
| And if people don't do the right thing, there's going to be hell to pay. | ||
| I think, look, we saw the announcement yesterday that we're going to get 30 to 50 million gallons of barrels of oil to repay us for what we've done. | ||
| I think we won't have to do it. | ||
| I think as the American oil companies go back in and get the assets, keep in mind the Venezuelan government stole from them. | ||
| They will bring security to make sure things are safe as well. | ||
| I think this is a win for Venezuela. | ||
| It's a win for America. | ||
| Venezuela, what happens in every communist country? | ||
| They take control and everything falls apart. | ||
| They'll now be able to produce more oil. | ||
| That's good for their economy. | ||
| It's good for the world. | ||
| I just think this is a win for everybody, except, again, people who just want to complain. | ||
| I want to ask you more about oil in a second, but I want to bring up this Washington, I mean, excuse me, this Wall Street Journal report that says the headline is: CIA concluded regime loyalists were best placed to lead Venezuela after Maduro. | ||
| And it cites a recent classified U.S. intelligence assessment. | ||
| One, I want to know if you've read it. | ||
| But basically, it says that a recent classified U.S. intelligence assessment determined top members of Nicolas Maduro's regime, including Vice President Del C. Rodriguez, would be best positioned to lead a temporary government in Caracas and maintain near stability if the autocrat lost power. | ||
| People familiar with the matter said the president was briefed on this. | ||
| Other top officials were briefed on this. | ||
| And that is despite the fact that multiple people, potentially in the region, felt that Machado, the opposition leader, or others, would be put in place if the regime were to fall. | ||
| I wonder what's your response to that? | ||
| Did you have any knowledge of this assessment? | ||
| And from folks in Florida, were they surprised at the president's comments, basically saying that Machado did not have the ability to lead? | ||
| Well, I think if you look at it from the perspective of what's going to be the least disruptive, basically allowing that same government to continue to operate with the removal of the drug dealer is the easiest in the short term. | ||
| And the challenge in bringing in the group that lost the election a few years ago is they're not in a position to simply take over and stand up the government. | ||
| Many of the opposition figures left the country. | ||
| You can't blame them. | ||
| They were being killed and all sorts of other terrible things being done to them. | ||
| I think what we're talking about with the current government is temporary until they can have an election so that a legitimate government comes in and maybe Machado will win. | ||
| Maybe someone else will win. | ||
| But I think this is just to get us through that transition with the minimal disruption, the minimal amount of American military force and what's best for Venezuelans and what's best for America. | ||
| But President Rodriguez or acting President Rodriguez is still, you know, Maduro's number two. | ||
| A lot of their military generals are still in place. | ||
| I wonder, do you view them as a credible working partners despite the fact that they were handpicked by Maduro? | ||
| I think it's a short-term solution. | ||
| I think what they've seen is bad actions will yield consequences that they won't like. | ||
| You know, when you've got to discipline your kids and you say, if you don't do what you want, I'm going to take away the iPad for a few days. | ||
| Well, when the first time you take away the iPad for a few days, often they get the message and the behavior changes. | ||
| And I think that's what's happened here. | ||
| They've shown that we're willing to go after and get Maduro. | ||
| I think the people that are there are going to go, okay, I better act differently. | ||
| Maybe I shouldn't be putting on drugs on boats and driving them into the United States. | ||
| I think they know we are watching and we'll see how they behave. | ||
| The other thing is a fish rots from the head. | ||
| The head has been removed, aka Maduro, and we give folks a chance to see if they'll do the right thing. | ||
| What timeline do you think the administration should require Venezuela to have elections? | ||
| Obviously, Marco Rubio has said in the past few days that there is no immediate timeline. | ||
| I wonder from your perspective, particularly because you have a lot of folks from the Caribbean in your district in Florida, do you think that they should call for elections? | ||
| Well, I think we're talking about something that's sort of within months to a year. | ||
| And I don't know the exact timeframe. | ||
| Because remember, we want them to have an election, but if we say you have to have the election next week, you know, that's not enough time. | ||
| We also don't need to give them five years as well. | ||
| So we want there to be a robust election so people have a shot to come in. | ||
| And so whoever wins has the ability to go and take control. | ||
| I'm excited because I can see the enthusiasm among Venezuelans in Florida for this. | ||
| And I also want it set up so that the 700 to 800,000 Venezuelan refugees that are in the United States, they can go home. | ||
| And that will reduce the pressure on social services in the United States. | ||
| It will reduce what we're spending on welfare programs as these folks return to their home country. | ||
| So I want to make sure that we've set Venezuela up to allow those people to go home. | ||
| A few more questions here before we turn to our callers. | ||
| But Congressman, a classified briefing for the full House and Senate is expected to happen today with administration officials on their efforts in Venezuela. | ||
| What questions do you have? | ||
| Well, I don't have that many. | ||
| I'm there to listen. | ||
| Look, I trust the judgment of Donald Trump. | ||
| He has never let me down, and I don't expect him to do anytime soon. | ||
| I want to learn what happened. | ||
| I want to learn why they felt they needed to do this. | ||
| I want to learn how it went down. | ||
| I want to learn how we were able to so successfully go in, capture them in a few minutes, and how did none of our assets get taken? | ||
| None of our people get hurt. | ||
| I think this is a story that we need to learn. | ||
| We need to trumpet, and we need to send this message to the rest of the world that our military is by far the most prepared in the world. | ||
| So I'll be going to listen, but not to jockey like some of the Democrats will to just ask questions and cause trouble. | ||
| But obviously, the results speak for themselves. | ||
| One of the world's worst people was taken into custody, and now he'll be held accountable for that. | ||
| And last question here before we turn to calls. | ||
| An NBC article from an exclusive interview with the president, he said that Trump, the headline is, Trump says the U.S. government may reimburse oil companies for rebuilding Venezuela's infrastructure. | ||
| This has been a topic of conversation. | ||
| I wonder, do you support taxpayers reimbursing oil companies that would invest in Venezuela's oil infrastructure to rebuild over, you know, a unknown amount of time? | ||
| Well, he didn't say how. | ||
| And when you, I'm just going to read in between the lines. | ||
| When you're getting $50 million. | ||
| Well, you said, and then they'll get reimbursed by us. | ||
| But through revenue. | ||
| Reimbursed through what form of funding? | ||
| When we just learned yesterday we're getting up to 50 million gallons of barrels of oil. | ||
| That's going to be billions of dollars. | ||
| My assumption is that will be the vehicle to do that. | ||
| But isn't that, I talked to one expert from University of Houston yesterday who said that the U.S. produces about 50 million barrels of oil every four days. | ||
| And that was the top of the estimate that President Trump put in that to social. | ||
| So I wonder, isn't that kind of just a drop in the bucket, although significant for Venezuela? | ||
| I mean, when we're talking about whether or not the taxpayers are paying for some of this, I wonder if you have any concerns or you believe that that money should go to oil companies to reimburse them for their efforts. | ||
| Well, if it is only 50 million, and that could be a first drop in the bucket, to use an analogy, that would still be billions of dollars. | ||
| And I don't know how much money they actually need. | ||
| The point that the president is making, though, is that Venezuelan oil coming onto the market will help bring oil prices down in the United States. | ||
| That's good for our consumers. | ||
| It'll also make us more economically secure. | ||
| And it potentially takes away an asset that's going to feed our enemies in China and Russia. | ||
| So I think it's a win across the board. | ||
| And I think when the president's talking about reimbursement, I suspect it's from those 50 starting point. | ||
| I don't think that'll be the end of those 50 million guys. | ||
| So you don't believe it'll be with taxpayers? | ||
| No, I don't think we're going to, I doubt that we're going to take taxpayer money to do that. | ||
| I mean, I think, again, he's already starting with several billion dollars from that. | ||
| I don't even know how much money they need to be reimbursed, but I suspect that's what he's talking about. | ||
| Brian from Morrisville, Pennsylvania, an independent. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
| Good morning, Brian. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Thanks for taking my. | |
| Yes. | ||
| A couple of things. | ||
| With respect to Venezuela, no doubt Meduro was a brutal, evil dictator, not unlike Saddam Hussein, not unlike Gaddafi in Libya, and obviously many, many other examples throughout history. | ||
| That being said, you know, it's arguably a win to not have him in power for the Venezuelan people and sounding Caracas. | ||
| But at the same time, you know, look, we're rejecting the woman who actually fairly won a democratic election, which seems kind of bizarre. | ||
| We're then enshrining a woman who was the vice president of this brutal regime, also head-scratching. | ||
| The claims by your guest, Mr. Fine, Congressman Fine, that they're a huge narco supplier or exporter of drugs into the United States is largely untrue. | ||
| I mean, it's actually a drop in the bucket. | ||
| Mexico is obviously far, far more influential in that regard. | ||
| And obviously, it would be utterly insane for a variety of reasons to do anything to attack them. | ||
| You know, as far as what comes in in the vacuum within Venezuela, who knows? | ||
| And then with respect to oil, look, I mean, I think this is insane. | ||
| You have Senator Thoon, obviously the Republican leadership in both the House and Senate seemingly getting behind Trump in terms of using oil revenue to prop up the United States taxpayer and large multinational oil companies here. | ||
| This is imperialism. | ||
| This is a return to 19th century spheres of influence. | ||
| So, Brian, I wonder if you have a question for the congressman. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, I have a lot of questions for the congressman, frankly. | |
| Hi, Congressman. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
| You're a Harvard-educated man. | ||
| Your dad looks like was at MIT. | ||
| I mean, you must be a very, very smart individual, but you're so happy to say, well, I trust the president. | ||
| I have no questions at this briefing. | ||
| I'm just there to listen. | ||
| I wonder if you could respond to that. | ||
| Well, what I would say is this: I trust the president because I know the president and I've asked him a lot of questions. | ||
| I just heard him yesterday. | ||
| I was with him yesterday. | ||
| There was a lot there, but I think that while Machado did win the election a couple of years ago, taking someone who's effectively been held prisoner and saying, hey, you're in charge of a country, just go take over is a very disruptive thing to do. | ||
| Keeping the current infrastructure in place is what prevents us from having to send in the Marines to take over the whole country. | ||
| I'm not saying she won't be the leader. | ||
| I think they'll have another election. | ||
| The election didn't happen yesterday. | ||
| Are thinking about this through the lens of the United States, where the opposition could just show up and everyone would be okay with it. | ||
| It will be very disruptive. | ||
| And taking a few months, having a new election, whether she wins or someone else, I think is the right way to go. | ||
| As it relates to drugs, I was asked about that. | ||
| I mean, we blew up enough drug boats to make clear it was a little bit more than a drop in the bucket. | ||
| And anything we can do to bring the reduction in drugs to the United States, that's something that we ought to be doing. | ||
| So I'm very happy. | ||
| I am looking forward to the briefing to learn more, but I trust Donald Trump's judgment. | ||
| He's never let me down in all of the time that I've known him, and he didn't let me down when we went into Venezuela a few days ago. | ||
| John from New York, a Republican, you're next. | ||
|
unidentified
|
So I find that Mr. Fine is the representation of everything that's wrong with this country. | |
| He's a very proud Israel First Supporter. | ||
| And George Washington, our first president, said it was our true policy to stare clear a permanent alliance with any portion of the foreign world. | ||
| We spent an inflation-adjusted $8 trillion supporting Israel, which for whatever reason can't get on their own two feet. | ||
| And we have now the great noticing where people are realizing that there's no interest whatsoever in us having an alliance with Israel. | ||
| There's no benefit whatsoever. | ||
| And I find it troubling that he found the fact that Palestinian children were starving funny because it doesn't look like Mr. Fiennes ever missed a meal. | ||
| And Christians? | ||
| Yeah, we do not tolerate any attacks against our guests. | ||
| The congressman is here spending his time with us. | ||
| And so I would say just don't make those remarks. | ||
| Congressman, I wonder if you can just talk broadly about Israel. | ||
| Well, we're talking about Venezuela. | ||
| I don't mind talking about Israel. | ||
| Look, I take a lot of attacks. | ||
| I'm the first Congressman in the United States history to wear a kipah, which you can see on my head today. | ||
| And I'm very proud to be Jewish, and I'm very proud of the relationship we have with Israel. | ||
| I mean, Israel is a bulwark that fights the wars that we don't have to. | ||
| And anyone who doesn't think that supporting Israel doesn't support America hasn't been to Israel. | ||
| When I go with Christians to Israel and they want to visit the holiest sites in their religion, they're cared for by the state of Israel. | ||
| I can tell you, those sites that are not cared for by the Jews in Israel are not in as good a shape. | ||
| But looking at Iran, which Israel largely handled for us, Iran sought to build nuclear weapons and still does. | ||
| Nuclear weapons and intercontinental ballistic missiles that can hit the United States. | ||
| Their goal is not to build missiles to hit their neighbors. | ||
| Their goal is not to build missiles to hit Europe. | ||
| They're focused on building missiles that can make it all the way here. | ||
| So when George Washington was alive and obviously one of our greatest presidents, he didn't have to worry about intercontinental ballistic missiles flying over from across the ocean. | ||
| We do. | ||
| And standing with our allies like Israel protects the United States. | ||
| I wonder one question, though. | ||
| Do you believe that Israel should be allowing more aid to go into Gaza for some of these folks who are suffering from hunger? | ||
| Sure. | ||
| I think that Hamas needs to follow through on the peace deal and surrender. | ||
| The problem with putting the aid in is these aid organizations smuggled weapons and other things in with the aid. | ||
| The people who've hurt the Palestinians are the people who've been in charge of the Palestinians. | ||
| If Israel knew that every truck that went into Gaza only had flour and food and other things for people to eat, they'd say let it all in. | ||
| But what slows it down is the search for weapons and things that they use to kill people. | ||
| Think about all of the weapons that were used on October 7th and after. | ||
| Those all had to get there. | ||
| And the problem is they've continued. | ||
| Even the UN organizations allowed weapons and other devices that were used to hurt people in. | ||
| I think that's the biggest threat to people who live in the Gaza Strip is Hamas and the people that are in charge. | ||
| It's not the Israelis. | ||
| Marilyn from Illinois Democrat, you're next. | ||
|
unidentified
|
For Congressman, flying. | |
| First of all, I'm Jewish and I'm opposed totally to that dictator in Israel. | ||
| He's a dictator, just like, supposingly, the dictator of Venezuela. | ||
| Okay, we went into Venezuela because supposedly the head of it was a dictator. | ||
| Well, explain to me something. | ||
| Why don't we go into China? | ||
| He's a dictator. | ||
| Why didn't we form an alliance with Saudi Arabia? | ||
| They're dictators. | ||
| Or North Korea or Russia. | ||
| Congressman? | ||
| Well, great question. | ||
| I think what makes Venezuela different is two things. | ||
| Number one, we didn't go and get him because he was a dictator. | ||
| We went and got him because he was an indicted drug trafficker. | ||
| I mean, he has been indicted since 2020 in the United States. | ||
| He was indicted for the entirety of Joe Biden's term. | ||
| Democrats, until Donald Trump did it, thought that he should be gotten and deposed as well. | ||
| So we went and got a drug dealer. | ||
| That's the most important thing. | ||
| The second thing that makes it different is this is in our hemisphere. | ||
| And going all the way back to James Monroe and the Monroe Doctrine, we take a different view of what happens on our side of the world. | ||
| We believe that American interests should be predominant in the Western Hemisphere. | ||
| And to allow the northernmost country in South America to be the launching base for our enemies, whether they're Muslim terrorists in Hezbollah or China, is just not something that we can deal with. | ||
| And this goes all the way back to John F. Kennedy. | ||
| Look at the Cuban Missile Crisis. | ||
| Now, Cuba was closer to the United States, or is closer to the United States, than Venezuela is, but the same principle has been adopted by Democrat presidents as well. | ||
| If it's in our backyard, we need to make sure we are safe. | ||
| And that's different than Saudi Arabia or China, for example. | ||
| I wonder what you make of the latest response on Greenland from the administration. | ||
| They say that all options, including military, are open when it comes to acquiring Greenland. | ||
| Marco Rubio reportedly said that the president wants to buy Greenland. | ||
| I wonder how those comments mesh with Greenland, which, of course, is a NATO territory. | ||
| Sure. | ||
| Well, look, Greenland has incredible strategic importance to the United States. | ||
| If you look at a map where you're looking down at the North Pole as opposed to the traditional map that we look at, you can see how Greenland is basically what's in between Russian military forces and the United States. | ||
| And so us being able to have access to that to secure sea routes and to make sure we're safe when we build and erect the Golden Dome, I think it's very, very important. | ||
| And look, Denmark is a country that we have protected for decades through America funding NATO. | ||
| Hopefully we'll be able to come to a deal with them that allows us to keep it. | ||
| But what about Denmark's, you know, basically warning that if the U.S. were to try to move against or move towards Greenland against NATO, that that would be the end of NATO? | ||
| I think I'm very optimistic that President Trump will work things out. | ||
| He's a great negotiator. | ||
| He makes clear what we need. | ||
| And I think Greenland being part of the United States is in the United States' interest. | ||
| And frankly, I think it's in NATO's interest because Russia is a threat, not just to them, but it is to us. | ||
| And it is easier for Russia to get to the United States through Greenland than it is through Europe. | ||
| Again, we all think of the map that we learned in elementary school, but we don't ever look at the world by looking from the top down. | ||
| And if you do that, you see how important Greenland would be for the United States. | ||
| And I'm optimistic that Secretary Rubio, who, by the way, is a fellow Floridian, we are incredibly proud of, I think that he'll be able to get the job done there, like he has done everywhere else. | ||
| Doug from Danville, Illinois, Independent, you're next. | ||
| Doug, are you on the line? | ||
| Doug, one more time. | ||
| Richard from Louisville, Kentucky, a Republican, you're next. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| Yes. | ||
| Yes. | ||
| United States needs to do whatever it can to buy or take over agreement. | ||
| It's important to the national security of the United States, and I definitely agree with that. | ||
| But I called, there was a gentleman who called earlier, an independent, that wanted to know why Trump didn't put that lady that apparently won the election against Maduro, but Maduro overthrew her anyway. | ||
| And then she's been in hiding for quite a while. | ||
| Maduro's been in office for 15 years. | ||
| He has people everywhere. | ||
| He controlled all infrastructure. | ||
| He controlled the police, all their Secret Service. | ||
| And you take him out. | ||
| Trump was not going to put this lady in that situation. | ||
| She wouldn't have lived two days. | ||
| They would have killed her. | ||
| Time's going to come. | ||
| They're going to get everything straightened out. | ||
| And Donald Trump's going to force Venezuela to have free and fair elections. | ||
| And Mr. Fine, don't apologize to these people about being Jewish. | ||
| You're a good man. | ||
| You continue to work hard. | ||
| And I'm behind you 100%. | ||
| Thank you, sir. | ||
| Well, thank you for that. | ||
| I don't ever apologize for who I am, but I appreciate you saying that. | ||
| And I actually think you made the point very well. | ||
| People who think we could have just put her in charge are looking at the world through an American lens, where we would allow that sort of thing. | ||
| But we removed one person, but that entire regime is still there. | ||
| If we sent her in, she would have failed. | ||
| And so having taking a few months or a year or however long it takes to create the culture where there can be an election that everyone will buy into. | ||
| And more importantly, there will be a transition of power. | ||
| I think that is what is most important. | ||
| Sticking in a person who sits over the former regime, it wouldn't have worked. | ||
| And I think that's why they made the decision that they did. | ||
| Joanna from Germantown, Maryland, a Democrat, you're next. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hi there. | |
| I have two quick questions. | ||
| The first one is, can you assure us that neither Donald Trump or his family will monetarily profit from his actions in Venezuela and his plans? | ||
| And number two, can you assure us, because it's estimated it will take hundreds of billions of dollars to rebuild the oil industry and rebuild Venezuela, that no taxpayer money, no American taxpayer money will be spent in this effort. | ||
| Well, what I would say is this, is President Trump has lost an incredible part of his fortune dedicating his life to public service. | ||
| I mean, it's been unquestionably a challenging move. | ||
| The guy was shot at, shot once, shot at a second time. | ||
| They tried to put him in jail. | ||
| I mean, he's spent hundreds of millions of dollars on legal fees. | ||
| And unquestionably, it seems to me being president has not been a great financial move for him personally. | ||
| And that shows how committed he is to our country. | ||
| As it relates to American tax dollars, I think the amount of oil potential out of Venezuela makes it unnecessary for us to do that. | ||
| American oil companies are going to be willing to come in and do what is necessary. | ||
| And I think that whatever resources are needed to get the job done, I think President Trump proved by talking about that first tranche of 30 to 50 million barrels of oil, the money is going to be there to do it. | ||
| I think President Trump is not going to make the mistake that's been made in the past, and that is, you know, go and win a conflict and then not take any of the spoils from it. | ||
| We could see that yesterday. | ||
| Just a quick fact check here. | ||
| Forbes article from September 2009 to 2025 says that President Trump had the most lucrative year of his life, the president now worth a record $7.3 billion up from $4.3 billion in 2024. | ||
| Jake from Mississippi, you're a Republican. | ||
|
unidentified
|
You're next. | |
| Good morning. | ||
| Good morning, Congressman Fine. | ||
| I had a quick question on, I know Scott Besson, Secretary Scott Besson, was talking about needing a growth ratio of around 5% GDP in order to outgrow debt. | ||
| I was wondering if you had any thoughts on how this oil could be used to grow GDP beyond 5% so I think we'd actually start taking down our debt and also to finally utilize that growth to start regrowing the middle class in America. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| Well, that's a great question. | ||
| Look, I think the biggest existential threat facing the United States is not Venezuela. | ||
| It's not China or Iran. | ||
| The biggest existential threat facing the United States is our debt and our inability, whether it's Republican or Democrat, frankly, to spend within our means. | ||
| Now, I don't know that Venezuela is the solution to the debt problem. | ||
| I mean, I think it could help us grow the economy and growing the economy will help with it. | ||
| But what we're going to have to do as a country is stop spending as much as we do. | ||
| We have a fundamental problem. | ||
| This country went off the rails when we went from raising tax money for public goods, like parks and police and the army, to when we said we're going to take money from the public to give to other people. | ||
| And it went from public goods to private goods. | ||
| And so I've got a lot of bills that would deal with this. | ||
| I'll give you one example. | ||
| One would say that immigrants to the United States, not only illegal but legal, are not eligible for welfare. | ||
| We're spending billions of dollars giving money to foreigners who come to our country. | ||
| If you want to come for freedom and opportunity, we can have that debate. | ||
| But if you want to come for free stuff, you probably ought to stay home. | ||
| And so there's a lot that we have to do to cut spending because the caller is correct. | ||
| I mean, the debt is something that's what keeps me up at night. | ||
| You know, we're celebrating the 250th anniversary of the country this year. | ||
| We won't make it another 25 years if we don't deal with that problem. | ||
| And again, Republicans have contributed to it. | ||
| Democrats have contributed to it because no one wants to go through the pain that will be involved with cutting spending. | ||
| I'm prepared to do that because I fear the judgment of my children more than I fear the judgment of the voters. | ||
| My kids will forgive me for being away from them today if I solve this problem. | ||
| They won't forgive me if I don't. | ||
| And so the call is a good reminder of that's the problem that we really all need to be focused on. | ||
| A bit a different topic than the debt, but I wonder just quickly what your vote will be on the Affordable Care Act subsidies discharge petition that Hakeem Jeffrey says that he's bringing to the floor this week. | ||
| Well, that's easy. | ||
| That's a hard no. | ||
| It's a terrible idea. | ||
| It only affects 7% of Americans. | ||
| And what people should know is almost 50% of the people on these plans don't even know that they're on them. | ||
| So one of the things that happened with these plans is there are now Obamacare plans that you don't pay any premium. | ||
| And so there are companies out there that are signing people up for Obamacare, and the people don't even know that they're on it. | ||
| So Obamacare is riddled with problems. | ||
| And keep in mind, these subsidies, Obamacare was supposed to be called the Affordable Care Act. | ||
| If it's affordable, we should not need ever-increasing subsidies from the federal government to pay for it. | ||
| We need to make health care affordable again. | ||
| We don't need to keep subsidizing the Unaffordable Care Act. | ||
| Dave from Lynchburg, Virginia, Independent, your line is open. | ||
| And Dave, we've got about 30 seconds left. | ||
| So what's your question or comment for the Congressman? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Thanks for taking my call. | |
| Thank you for seeing Scranton. | ||
| I wonder if you attended the conference of Republican House members last night, Congressman, yesterday. | ||
| I did. | ||
| It was great. | ||
| It was all day. | ||
| Speaker Johnson did a policy forum. | ||
| I don't know how much of it was broadcast. | ||
| I know the president's speech was, but the rest of the time we talked about our agenda for this year and how we're going to focus on making America more affordable for Americans, whether it's energy prices, health care prices, food prices, so that we can continue to deliver for the American people. | ||
| It was a great day with my colleagues at the Trump Kennedy Center, and I'm ready to get over to the Capitol now and get to work implementing that agenda. | ||
| Are you confident that the Republicans will maintain the House in the midterm center? | ||
| I do, because I look at the crazy on the other side. | ||
| I mean, look, I know we're supposed to be somewhat nonpartisan here, but many of the policies that my colleagues on the other side of the aisle push are just insane. | ||
| And so, I mean, again, we're not talking about the warm collectivism of socialism in New York. | ||
| I don't think that's what Americans want. | ||
| And so I think we need to continue to focus on putting points on the board, delivering for the American people. | ||
| And I do think we're going to have a great win. | ||
| I think we'll expand the majority in November. | ||
| Congressman Randy Fine, thank you so much for joining me this morning. | ||
| Anytime, thanks for having me. | ||
| Later on this morning on the Washington Journal, we'll take a look at the history of U.S. intervention in Latin America with Eduardo Gamaro of Florida Atlantic University. | ||
| But before then, we have open forum. | ||
| Please start calling in. | ||
| Democrats, your line is 202-748-8000. | ||
| Republicans, your line is 202-748-8001. | ||
| Independence, your line is 202-748-8002. | ||
|
unidentified
|
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| Washington Journal continues. | ||
| Welcome to Washington Journal. | ||
| This is open forum where you can talk about any public policy or politics issue on your mind this morning. | ||
| Starting off, we will listen to President Donald Trump, who yesterday, when addressing House Republicans, talked about the anniversary of the attack at the Capitol, January 6th, which was yesterday. | ||
| Take a listen. | ||
|
unidentified
|
When they say, as an example, in my speech, peacefully and patriotically to the Capitol, peacefully and patriotically, do you know that the Unselect Committee didn't report it that I said those words? | |
| Do you know that the news never reported the words walk or march peacefully and patriotically to the Capitol? | ||
| Do you know they never reported a scandal? | ||
| The unselect committee never reported that. | ||
| They never reported that Nancy Pelosi was offered 10,000 soldiers, National Guard soldiers, whatever you want. | ||
| No, I don't want them. | ||
| And the mayor. | ||
| The mayors were in writing. | ||
| She was more honorable about it. | ||
| But Nancy got caught when her daughter did a documentary. | ||
| She's a documentary. | ||
| Yes. | ||
| And she has her mother saying, it's my fault. | ||
| I should have taken the soldiers or something. | ||
| I saw that in the documentary. | ||
| I said, whoa, this was a major story. | ||
| Has she spoken to her daughter since that? | ||
| But they just, you know, they are vicious people. | ||
| That was President Trump yesterday talking to House Republicans about the fifth anniversary of January 6th, the attack on the Capitol. | ||
| I point to a New York Times article in the paper this morning. | ||
| The headline is, Trump intensifies his assault on the facts of January 6th. | ||
| In the paper, I mean, in the article, it says, his revisionist history is taking on new significance ahead of this year's midterm elections and could carry more weight if Republicans lose control of Congress, which the president has said he believes may happen. | ||
| Offering a glimpse into his concerns about election loss in the midterms, Mr. Trump said Republicans need to retain control of the House because he expected to face a third impeachment trial if Democrats won. | ||
| He said he would not call for this year's election to be canceled because critics would accuse him of being a dictator. | ||
| Rhonda from Sacramento, California, an Independent. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Thank you for taking my call. | |
| It is so nice to see you. | ||
| We don't get to see you often. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| You're welcome. | ||
| My comment today is about Venezuela. | ||
| I'm looking at this in a positive, you know, a positive light here. | ||
| Their economy is a disaster. | ||
| They only get electricity, I think, four hours a day. | ||
| They don't have health care. | ||
| Many of their citizens are starving. | ||
| They're hungry. | ||
| From what I understand, they only have one meal a day per family. | ||
| So I'm looking at this in a positive light here. | ||
| If we go in there, we get those oil rigs to run, they're going to need workers to get those oils, the oil production going. | ||
| Also, hospitals, health care, so on and so forth. | ||
| If we go in there to get them back up on their feet economically, I think it will be positive for everyone all the way around. | ||
| If Shell and Sharon step in and help United States and other countries too to lift this South American country up on its feet, then I believe things will work out okay. | ||
| I'm not one to sit up here and call Trump names and this or that or what he is or what isn't. | ||
| I want to look at this positively so that we as a country can move forward. | ||
| Rhonda, can I ask, would you be comfortable if U.S. taxpayer dollars were to reimburse oil companies who invested in the infrastructure, the oil infrastructure in Venezuela? | ||
|
unidentified
|
And honestly, look at all the monies that we spent towards Ukraine. | |
| If we could do that, and they're losing the war, forgive me for my honesty in that, but I would want my tax dollars to go to something positive to lift them up, get them on their feet, because we'll get the payback in the long run. | ||
| I know. | ||
| You know, Trump, he's not going to do anything without getting something for it. | ||
| But I think it'd be a good thing. | ||
| Yeah, sure. | ||
| And just say, hey, you know, you're going to have to pass back some of this, some of this money because we've helped you get back on your feet. | ||
| Why not? | ||
| So that's my comment. | ||
| And I thank you for taking my call. | ||
| Happy New Year. | ||
| And I'm so happy to see you. | ||
| Happy New Year, Rhonda. | ||
| Well, I'll be once a week. | ||
| You'll have to see me then. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| Angela, California, a Democrat. | ||
| You're next. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Nope. | |
| Hi, good morning. | ||
| I was listening to the president's comments, and I'm just saying he's a walking contradiction. | ||
| As far as January 6th goes, I feel like what he did in Venezuela was what he tried to do here in America. | ||
| He tried to take the presidency, even though he didn't win. | ||
| And Maduro did something similar in Venezuela. | ||
| You know, it doesn't make sense to me. | ||
| And as far as Venezuela goes, we have no business in Venezuela. | ||
| You know, we're there for oil. | ||
| And I don't feel like we should be digging for oil. | ||
| Our earth is traumatized. | ||
| Our weather is messed up. | ||
| We are going through global warming. | ||
| Is anybody awake here? | ||
| If we go drilling for more oil in Venezuela, all we're going to do is ruin their rainforest and make our earth more polluted. | ||
| This is horrible. | ||
| This is horrible for us. | ||
| And we've already spent American tax dollars sending our troops over to Venezuela. | ||
| People died. | ||
| No one cares. | ||
| There's nothing positive about this to me. | ||
| And then what I wanted to say to that congressman is, do they listen or do they just march for Donald Trump? | ||
| Do they ever listen to the constituents and what we say? | ||
| Because I don't think that anybody wants our earth to be destroyed. | ||
| No one's thinking about that. | ||
| To be clear, no troops died in the military actions over the last week in Venezuela. | ||
| But take a listen here to Senator Tim Cain, a Democrat, who on the House, I mean, on the Senate floor yesterday urged his fellow lawmakers to block any further action in Venezuela. | ||
|
unidentified
|
The vote we'll have Thursday on our bipartisan resolution to say no to war in Venezuela without congressional authorization is actually a vote about many things. | |
| It's a short resolution, like page and a half. | ||
| But it's a vote about many things. | ||
| It's about Venezuela. | ||
| It's about war. | ||
| It's about the use of U.S. troops. | ||
| It's about our complicated history in the region. | ||
| It's about the example we set and our position in the world. | ||
| But it's also ultimately about what it is to be a United States Senator. | ||
| In recent months, this body has rejected my resolutions saying that the Senate should have a role if we go to war with Iran or Venezuela or launch strikes on unknown boats in international waters. | ||
| I've put those votes on the table and we've had votes on them. | ||
| And the Senate has opposed my resolutions. | ||
| The Senate has actually voted in favor of its own irrelevance, saying that it didn't need to be consulted about war. | ||
| We have the opportunity to change this with the opportunity to say forcefully, Mr. President, you are the Article II commander-in-chief of this country, and we want you to inhabit every square centimeter of power the Constitution gives you. | ||
| But we're the Article I branch, and the Constitution demands that you need to consult us before taking America to war. | ||
| So cast a vote that accords with the Constitution and honors the relevance of the United States Senate. | ||
| If you believe that a war to topple the Venezuelan government and seize its oil is justified, you should be willing to vote to support it. | ||
| You should be willing to introduce an authorization for use of military force, put on the floor and advocate for it. | ||
| And if you don't believe a war against Venezuela as a good idea, as I don't, you should be willing to vote against it. | ||
| But don't outsource this power, carefully vested in the Article I branch by our founders, to this president or to any president. | ||
| That was Democratic Senator Tim Kaine on the Senate floor yesterday, urging his colleagues to block the Trump administration from being able to do any further action in Venezuela. | ||
| I'll note that a procedural vote on Kaine's war powers resolution, which he was talking about in that clip, is scheduled to be held on Thursday. | ||
| Orlando from Georgia, a Republican, you're next. | ||
|
unidentified
|
No, good morning. | |
| Yeah, I like what Trump did in Venezuela because Venezuela is in America. | ||
| Yeah, 9 million people, 8 million people come over here and disrupt our economy. | ||
| I think it's about time a president went and disrupted Venezuela economy because they don't, you know, we got some citizens over here that don't, they want to see America fall. | ||
| They don't mind that the immigrants come over here and disrupt everything we got going on. | ||
| But it's about time President did. | ||
| I like what Trump is doing. | ||
| I don't understand everything he's doing, but I don't think he should consult with people that are trying to bring down the people in America and make us poor to make everybody else richer. | ||
| At least Trump is going for somebody else to bring money into this economy. | ||
| And the people that got a problem with it, I don't know why y'all got a problem with it. | ||
| It's helping us at the end of the day. | ||
| You know, you got to be a wolf to be the wolf. | ||
| This man doesn't sell cocaine or bringing cocaine into this country by the thousands of the tons and doing everything to see that we fall as a country. | ||
| And time we get a president that's willing to go after them, y'all want to lock him up and impeach him and do all this. | ||
| I think the Democrats are the criminals. | ||
| Angela from Virginia, Independent, you're next. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, good morning. | |
| Thank you for taking my call. | ||
| First, I would like to say that I don't believe anything that Trump says. | ||
| He lies just like he's lying about January 6th, trying to change what we all saw with our eyes. | ||
| And then, why did he pardon the guy from Honduras who was running Honduras for all the drugs for being The former Honduran president who was who was indicted and convicted of various narcotics. | ||
| Is that what you're talking about? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes, he was convicted for selling narcotics in the United States. | |
| But Trump pardons him. | ||
| So if it's about drugs in our country, that doesn't make sense. | ||
| I mean, I wouldn't mind president if he did things legally, but he illegally does what he wants to do however he wants to do it. | ||
| Why didn't he get Congress involved with what he was going to do, killing over 100 people in the water when they were not even heading to the United States? | ||
| The former Honduran president who was indicted and convicted of himself. | ||
| Tracy from Wisconsin, a Democrat? | ||
|
unidentified
|
You're next. | |
| Good morning. | ||
| I just want to know where we arrested Manduro for drugs. | ||
| Why didn't we attack the drug infrastructure when we went there to get him? | ||
| Where's all the evidence of this massive drug operation like labs and trucks and boats that were used to smuggle drugs? | ||
| And where were they smuggling them to in this country? | ||
| Did we attack the people who they were giving the drugs to in this country? | ||
| I mean, soon as he got in custody, all we've been talking about since then is oil. | ||
| And another thing, Republicans went on vacation knowing that tens of thousands of Americans were going to lose their health care ever since we caught Mandoro. | ||
| Nobody's talking about what those people are going to trying to keep their health care or whether they can still pay for it or whether they lose it altogether. | ||
| You know, this is like some kind of carnival shell game or something like that. | ||
| Since he's been in custody, has anyone heard anything else about drugs? | ||
| Did we leave the drug operations in Venezuela intact? | ||
| And if we did, why would we do that? | ||
| Because they didn't show us any evidence of once they got him what they did about the drug situation. | ||
| Is it still operational? | ||
| I mean, people got to wake up and think. | ||
| This is what most thinking people look like it is. | ||
| It's to most thinking people. | ||
| Y'all well, the Trump administration says that they will likely continue if they do see them striking those alleged drug boats in the Caribbean. | ||
| But of course, a number of questions remain on what comes next in Venezuela. | ||
| Here to talk about that with us, though, is Stephen Newcomb, a Axios congressional reporter and Hill Leaders newsletter co-author, Stephen. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
| Nice to see you again. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
| So you are covering Congress. | ||
| We know, as we heard from Congressman Randy Fine earlier in the program, that additional briefings for all members of the Senate and the House are expected today by administration officials. | ||
| Leadership and the big gang of eight have already been briefed. | ||
| What has been the reaction on Congress so far about the administration's actions in Venezuela? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, pretty split. | |
| I mean, sort of as you could imagine, I think that, you know, Republicans in general, you know, save one or two in the Senate and maybe a handful in the House are giving the president a lot of latitude in this operation and have given him a lot of latitude over the last year in terms of how he uses the military. | ||
| Obviously, you talked about the strikes against the alleged drug boats off the coast of Venezuela. | ||
| So, you know, they seem to be pretty fine with this operation. | ||
| And Democrats are not happy. | ||
| You said that Gang of Eight briefing that happened on Monday evening. | ||
| We talked to lawmakers leaving that. | ||
| And again, that's very senior lawmakers, you know, leadership and also intelligence members and members of foreign affairs committees. | ||
| And then the Democrats leaving that briefing were very disappointed, pretty tight-lipped, but saying that they didn't learn very much more about what the U.S. commitment to Venezuela is in terms of what it means for the U.S. to be running that country. | ||
| So I think that there are continued Democratic concerns about both the immediate aftermath and also the long-term goal there in Venezuela. | ||
| When talking to lawmakers, Stevens, what questions have they said that they have for the administration? | ||
| We spoke with Congressman Fine earlier who said that he didn't really have that many, but my colleague at Notice yesterday spoke with Josh Hawley, who said that he doesn't really know what's going on. | ||
| So I wonder what are lawmakers telling you about the questions that they have for administration officials today. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, I think, you know, a question about the legal basis of the operation in the first place, the way that it was handled, why lawmakers weren't notified until after the operation had started. | |
| One thing that I heard a number of lawmakers say, especially Democrats, had questions about for administration officials was the plan to do this in other countries and do this with other leaders that the U.S. may not support. | ||
| And Democrats told reporters yesterday that the administration didn't have a straight answer for them, that they couldn't take that off the table. | ||
| So again, like I said, the long-term concerns are there for Democrats in terms of what the Venezuela raid means for American foreign policy going forward in the Trump administration. | ||
| Obviously, Republicans are in control of both the House and the Senate, but I wonder, do you anticipate any oversight hearings on the Venezuela aftermath and the U.S.'s role? | ||
| And then additionally, on Congress's role? | ||
|
unidentified
|
We'll have to see. | |
| Maybe not in a Republican-controlled Congress, but we aren't too far away from the midterms. | ||
| And if you're sort of watching the horse race of it all, Democrats have a pretty good chance of at least flipping the House and maybe even the Senate. | ||
| So I wouldn't be surprised if in early 2027, this is something that we're still concerned about. | ||
| I mean, there's plenty of history that shows us that when the U.S. goes into nation states like this, that it's usually a pretty long process and not always clean and easy. | ||
| So I wouldn't be surprised if in 2027, if there's Democratic control of either part of Congress, that you would see some sort of oversight hearing on everything that's happened over the last really year, including the boat strikes. | ||
| Yeah, something that the president alluded to yesterday when speaking to House Republicans. | ||
| He said that Democrats can't win the House because they would likely impeach him. | ||
| I wonder, though, the Senate is expected to vote on a war powers resolution tomorrow. | ||
| We just heard Senator Tim Kaine, a Democrat, talking about that bill. | ||
| Explain exactly what it would do and whether or not you believe it has the chance to pass. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, those resolutions essentially enforce the Congress's power over war authorities. | |
| So they would restrict the president's ability to do strikes in places like Venezuela. | ||
| Senator Tim Kaine said that he is planning to sort of craft resolutions, not just for Venezuela, but for places like Greenland and other areas where the administration might be interested in trying to do something similar. | ||
| So, in terms of support, I mean, these resolutions have hit the floor over the last year a couple of times, led by Tim Kaine. | ||
| There's one Republican in the Senate, Rand Paul, that has pretty consistently been supportive of these Democratic efforts. | ||
| He's introducing the resolution with Kane that will get a vote this week. | ||
| But I just don't see at this point the sort of requisite Republican support that would be needed for that resolution to pass. | ||
| On the issue of Greenland, obviously the administration said yesterday that all options are still on the table when it comes to acquiring Greenland, including military options. | ||
| I wonder when you were talking to lawmakers yesterday, because that dropped around the afternoon, whether or not you heard any surprise from both Democrats and Republicans and whether or not Republicans really believe that the president would move forward with trying to acquire Greenland. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I think lawmakers are taking the Greenland thing a little bit more seriously than they did before the Maduro capture, especially Democrats. | |
| For example, I think that there are Republicans as well that are concerned. | ||
| There was a rare bipartisan statement that came out last night from Senator Gene Sheheen and Senator Tom Tillis, a Democrat and a Republican, who sit on a subcommittee that oversees the U.S. relationship with Denmark and other NATO allies. | ||
| And the statement, this rare bipartisan statement, said that the president in the U.S. needs to listen to Denmark when they say that Greenland is not for sale, it's not negotiable, and that they need to protect the integrity and the sovereignty of a U.S. ally like Denmark. | ||
| So, obviously, some concerns, and it's sort of surprising already to see some Republican members of Congress sort of publicly break with the administration on that. | ||
| Stephen Newcomb of Axios, thank you so much for your time this morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Thank you. | |
| And we will turn back to open forum briefly. | ||
| Dennis from Stone Mountain, Georgia, a Democrat. | ||
| You're next. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| Morning. | ||
| I'm C-SPAN. | ||
| And my question to the American people is: would it be okay for another country president to come to the United States and do the same thing to this current president for exporting guns that are killing people all over the world? | ||
| If we look at what the lie that was told, that fentanyl was being coming from Venezuela to the United States, and they were bombing boats coming. | ||
| So, in reverse, can we, right, as a country, live with some other country, say China, Russia, coming to the United States carrying out an illegal order to abduct your current president? | ||
| Franklin from California, a Republican, you're next. | ||
| Franklin, your line's open. | ||
| Are you on? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, sorry, I had the mute button on. | |
| Thanks for taking my call. | ||
| Yeah, I hope this isn't too, I hope this is of general interest for the listeners and not too technical. | ||
| I guess I'll know if I see you reaching for the cutoff button. | ||
| But basically, there's I hear people, including President Trump, speaking of oil as though it's some homogeneous substance. | ||
| It's not. | ||
| There's many different types of oil. | ||
| I mean, there's a super sweet in the Gowar field in Saudi Arabia that's considered the queen of oil. | ||
| I think they pump about 12 million barrels a day. | ||
| Then there's like the Texas crude and the oil off California. | ||
| If you ever walked along the beach on, you know, on Santa Barbara, you've probably gotten some on your feet. | ||
| And then there's like the super sweet, hyper volatile oil in the Bakken fields in the Dakotas, which needs special rail cars because, like I said, it's really volatile. | ||
| Okay, give me 30 seconds. | ||
| I will tie this all together. | ||
| Okay, so there's three different types of oil fields. | ||
| There's a greenfield, which is new oil field development. | ||
| There's a brownfield, which is maintaining operational capability of an existing field. | ||
| And then, and here's where I'm getting to the point, there's the black field. | ||
| And that's where, and I used to work for Shell Oil, and I know about Blackfields. | ||
| Blackfield is where you shut the whole field down, either through neglect or disuse, or you deliberately shut it down. | ||
| Now, restarting a Blackfield, very, very difficult, very tricky. | ||
| So you're saying that's what would happen in Venezuela? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Oh, yeah. | |
| Okay. | ||
| Yeah, those are blackfields. | ||
| And getting, and I'm sure there's some people with petroleum engineering skills listening to us right now who could call in and chime in. | ||
| But yeah, getting those fields restarted, that's very difficult. | ||
| Now, Conoco, Chevron, who was the other guy? | ||
| I forget who the I don't think it was Exxon. | ||
| Was it Exxon? | ||
| Okay, so they knew the risk. | ||
| Franklin, I'm going to give you 20 more seconds. | ||
| Wrap this up for me. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Okay. | |
| They built those special refineries just for the heavy sour crude in Venezuela. | ||
| It's the heaviest sour crude that there is. | ||
| I don't want to say it's bad oil, but it's the toughest oil to refine. | ||
| I think there's one refinery in Texas that can deal with that kind of crude. | ||
| Just, I don't know. | ||
| It's kind of wonky, but yeah, not all oil is the same. | ||
| I guess is my point. | ||
| Thanks for good context from Franklin there. | ||
| Later on this morning on the Washington Journal, we'll take a look at U.S. history. | ||
| We'll take a look at a history of U.S. intervention in Latin America with Eduardo Gamara of Florida Atlantic University. | ||
| But next, international law expert Michael Kelly of Creighton University joins us to dig into some of the legal questions surrounding the capture and arrest of Venezuela President Maduro. | ||
|
unidentified
|
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| You bring these divergent viewpoints and you present both sides of an issue and you allow people to make up their own minds. | ||
| I absolutely love C-SPAN. | ||
| I love to hear both sides. | ||
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| This is probably the only place that we can hear the honest opinion of Americans across the country. | ||
| You guys at C-SPAN are doing such a wonderful job of allowing free exchange of ideas without a lot of interruptions. | ||
| Thank you, C-SPAN, for being a light in the dark. | ||
| Washington Journal continues. | ||
| Welcome back to Washington Journal. | ||
| I want to welcome our next guest, Michael Kelly of Creighton University School of Law and professor who focuses on international law. | ||
| Michael, thanks so much for being with us this morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Thank you, Jasmine. | |
| Great to be here. | ||
| Now, we're talking about Venezuela. | ||
| Can you briefly tell us about your background and experience in international law? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Sure. | |
| Well, international law is a big field, and there's lots of subfields to it. | ||
| My particular subfields include things like international environmental law, climate change law, international criminal law, which of course implicates Mr. Maduro, and national security and foreign relations law. | ||
| Now, there are some disagreements among experts in this field whether or not the U.S.'s arrest of Maduro, obviously, which happened in his home country, violates international law. | ||
| Where do you stand? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, it clearly does. | |
| Everything about the whole Venezuela scenario violates international law in about a dozen different ways. | ||
| Not just with Maduro's capture, but backing up to blowing up boats in the Caribbean. | ||
| What we saw from the Trump administration is an interesting pivot. | ||
| During the period that we were targeting Venezuelan boats in the Caribbean, all you heard from the president and the Secretary of Defense, Pete Hegseth, was that we were at war against narco-terrorists. | ||
| By labeling them terrorists instead of criminals, they weren't obligated to capture them, arrest them, prosecute them, present evidence, right? | ||
| You can do targeted killing. | ||
| But when you back into a situation where you're calling it a war, then you're backing into the Geneva Conventions. | ||
| And when you back into the Geneva Conventions, you can't do things like blow up people who survived your first attack, right? | ||
| Then, when they decided they wanted to capture Mr. Maduro, suddenly Secretary Rubio appeared on the scene and said, no, this isn't war. | ||
| This is law enforcement. | ||
| So there was this pivot. | ||
| Now, you have to ask yourself, why was there this pivot? | ||
| Well, under the laws of war, if you're in an armed conflict, which we asserted that we were, then the commander-in-chief is a valid target. | ||
| So that would be Mr. Maduro, right? | ||
| Under Article 236 of the Venezuelan Constitution, the president is the commander-in-chief. | ||
| Well, they would be ipso facto admitting that he's the president, right? | ||
| So they had to move out of that war setting into a law enforcement setting so that at trial, he's not able to raise a sovereign immunity defense by being the president. | ||
| Now, Michael, before we continue, I want to invite our viewers to join in on this call. | ||
| Republicans, your line is 202-748-8001. | ||
| Democrats, your line is 202-748-8000. | ||
| Independents, your line is 202-748-8002. | ||
| Now, Michael, you just gave us that brief summary of whether or not you believe that it violates the law, this capture. | ||
| You said it does. | ||
| But I want to kind of go over some of these charges because Maduro has been charged with four counts. | ||
| Four counts, and that includes, that includes, sorry, narco-terrorism conspiracy, cocaine importation conspiracy, possession of machine guns and destructive devices, conspiracy to possess machine guns and destructive devices. | ||
| So four counts there. | ||
| Under the U.S. Constitution, the president can execute arrest warrants issued by the federal court when someone violates a federal charge. | ||
| Can the U.S. federal law supersede international law? | ||
| And does the president, does presidential immunity, which you just referenced, play a role in this case? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, so you've tied a really tight legal knot there. | |
| So let's untie it. | ||
| You're right. | ||
| There are two baskets of law, American constitutional law and international law, but they converge at a certain point because international law is part of our law when we sign treaties. | ||
| It becomes American law under the Constitution. | ||
| And so for instance, I'm sure that you've heard lots about Article 2.4 and the UN Charter, which says we can't do things like invade other countries. | ||
| It's a violation of their sovereignty. | ||
| Well, we ratified that treaty in the 1940s, and that became part of American law. | ||
| And it's supreme law of the land, just like a U.S. statute. | ||
| And the president is obligated to enforce American law, even if it's in the form of a treaty. | ||
| So, you know, we've got a violation of that right off the bat. | ||
| Then when we pivot from the international and constitutional components to the trial component, there's all these ways to look at the legal sphere of what's happening with Mr. Maduro. | ||
| He is going to raise the sovereign immunity defense just like Manuel Noriega did in 1989 when we brought him in to federal court in Miami from Panama. | ||
| But the federal judge found that he was not the elected leader of Panama. | ||
| He was just the de facto leader, and he didn't get to have the sovereign immunity defense. | ||
| Maduro is in a better position than Noriega was to make this argument. | ||
| He was the elected leader initially of Venezuela, but he lost the 2024 election. | ||
| He just remained in power. | ||
| And we don't recognize him as the president. | ||
| And 50 other countries don't recognize him as the president. | ||
| So I tend to think that a federal judge would go along with the president's assertion that he's not the president of Venezuela. | ||
| There's a case out there, the Zivatovsky case from a few years ago, where the Supreme Court said that the president is the one who has the sole recognition power under Article II of the Constitution. | ||
| And if we don't recognize him as the president, he's not the president for purposes of American law, not with respect to international law. | ||
| I mean, so is this why we saw reports yesterday or when Maduro was arraigned and he stood up and said, I'm Nicolas Maduro, the president of Venezuela. | ||
| Is it because a nod to the fact that they potentially will try to claim presidential immunity? | ||
|
unidentified
|
They absolutely will. | |
| And he's trying to put this back on the war footing that Pete Hegseth had us on, right? | ||
| Because if it's a war footing, he's a POW, even if he is the president. | ||
| You know, he's the commander-in-chief. | ||
| And what three questions can you ask a POW under the Geneva Conventions? | ||
| Name, rank, and serial number. | ||
| And that's it. | ||
| What's the role of the UN Security Council in this moment when it comes to both Maduro, but also generally just enforcing the law? | ||
| Obviously, Ambassador Mike Waltz was at the UN talking about their efforts in Venezuela. | ||
| I wonder where the UN comes in in all of this. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, I mean, the UN Security Council is a little bit stymied in the case of Venezuela for the same reason that it's a little bit stymied in the case of Ukraine. | |
| You've got permanent Security Council members that have veto power. | ||
| So Russia, you know, will veto anything that comes out of the Security Council on Ukraine. | ||
| We will veto anything that comes out of the Security Council on Venezuela. | ||
| Right now, two of the other permanent members, France and Britain, are walking a little bit of a tightrope with us on Venezuela. | ||
| They have not come out as robustly as some other countries, arguing that we violated international law by going in and capturing Mr. Maduro. | ||
| So I'm not sure exactly if there's going to be a whole lot for us to veto there, but we'll see how it shakes out. | ||
| Something that Ambassador Waltz did say when he addressed the Security Council meeting this week is that he cited Article 51 in defending the U.S.'s actions. | ||
| I wonder, can you remind our audience first what that is and whether or not he was correct to use that? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, so under international law, and this is the post-World War II settlement that we created when we literally drafted the UN Charter in San Francisco, it's a collective security arrangement. | |
| You can't go to war after 1945 unless A, you have permission from the UN Security Council, or B, you're acting in self-defense. | ||
| Article 51 is the self-defense provisions. | ||
| And so if you can't get permission from the Security Council, you've got to make a self-defense argument. | ||
| That's why we bent over backwards, if you recall, in 2003, when we went to Iraq, that we were acting in self-defense, right? | ||
| Because President Bush couldn't get permission to go to war from the Security Council. | ||
| And that was really a stretch. | ||
| Nobody really agreed with us that he was a threat. | ||
| So if you're the U.S. president to go to war after 1945, you have to have two pieces of paper, a permission slip from Congress and a permission slip from the UN Security Council, or you need to be acting in self-defense. | ||
| We've tried, it looks like Trump has tried to make this self-defense argument with respect to Maduro, but I don't know that it's credible. | ||
| Let's turn to our callers, Joe from Kentucky, a Democrat. | ||
| Your line is open. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| I got a couple of questions to ask. | ||
| The first one I'm going to do, I don't think we have a plan what we're going to do with Venezuela. | ||
| And then are we going to turn, is the White House going to turn into some private equity firm with the amount of oil that needs to be redone? | ||
| And I just don't know. | ||
| We're going to go to Colombia next, then Mexico and Cuba, I don't, and Greenland. | ||
| So I really don't know where we're going. | ||
| And I think we've lost our way. | ||
| That's all I have to say. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| Michael? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, Joe, I think if you step back, you're in the same boat everybody else is in. | |
| You can't see the bigger picture because we're focused exactly on this particular piece of a bigger puzzle. | ||
| If you step back and look at Venezuela in the context of the other rhetoric that we're seeing with respect to Greenland and what we're doing in Ukraine, these are pieces of a bigger puzzle that tends to fit together with what the Trump administration released three and a half months ago on American dominance in artificial intelligence. | ||
| Why do we want rare earth minerals out of places like Venezuela and Ukraine and Greenland? | ||
| Because we need to build semiconductor chips to have the data centers to do the AI dominance that the president is pursuing. | ||
| What do data centers need? | ||
| They need energy. | ||
| What do we suddenly have? | ||
| Oil, right? | ||
| And where are these refineries? | ||
| Texas. | ||
| And there are 400 data centers in Texas and 40 more are being built. | ||
| So this all kind of fits together into a much bigger picture when you look at the individual pieces of the puzzle. | ||
| It gets a little bit confusing. | ||
| Dave from Michigan, an independent, you're next. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes, thanks for taking my call. | |
| Mr. Kelly, I'd like you to try to talk about: is there anything on the books as far as you know, as far as influencing the laws of economic malfesis or whatever that's going on between the different countries? | ||
| Can they bring some kind of economic laws and so forth to change some of this and how much influence would they have? | ||
| I'd just like to ask about that question. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| Yeah, that's a great question. | ||
| You know, we are, since we are the United States and we are the biggest economy in the world, we're a little bit immune with respect to other countries laying sanctions against us for doing what we're doing, breaking international law in the pursuit of what I think everybody would argue is a good thing, right? | ||
| No one's going to say that it's a bad thing that Maduro is not in charge of Venezuela anymore. | ||
| I mean, he's run that country into the ground and all kinds of human rights abuses. | ||
| But that's a separate question from the legality of what happened. | ||
| The capture of Maduro, to use a Latin phrase in international law, was male captus bene detentas, right? | ||
| Bad capture, good detention. | ||
| We follow that, but not the rest of the world does. | ||
| The Alvarez Machane case from the U.S. Supreme Court, where we abducted a doctor from Mexico, the DEA did, and brought them back to the United States to stand trial. | ||
| Supreme Court said, we don't care how you got them, they're in front of us. | ||
| And so we have jurisdiction. | ||
| But that case, the Supreme Court limited that to only those underlying crimes. | ||
| And Jasmine read out the charges to us here that are crimes in both jurisdictions that could be extraditable between Mexico and the United States. | ||
| And so that was okay. | ||
| Here, what Maduro is charged with are not crimes in Venezuela. | ||
| So, arguably that case that allows Malay captus Bene Detentis to go forward doesn't apply. | ||
| So, the federal judge in the Southern District of New York is going to have to decide right off the bat from a jurisdictional standpoint, even before we get to the merits of the case, is he validly in detention before the court? | ||
| And that's a tripwire that the prosecution has to get over before we even get to impaneling a jury and presenting evidence. | ||
| And this case, Jasmine, is going to take years. | ||
| Cliff, Lady Lake, Florida, a Republican? | ||
| You're next. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes, hi. | |
| I'm looking at this trying to look through the lens of has this been done in the past? | ||
| And I believe it's been done and maybe not exactly in the same way, but I wondered what Michael's thoughts were on Anwar Alaki. | ||
| He was an American citizen and an al-Qaeda leader who was killed in the U.S. drone strike in Yemen in September of 2011 during an Obama administration. | ||
| And this gentleman, Anwar, was born in the United States in 1971, making him a U.S. citizen. | ||
| He became a prominent figure in al-Qaeda. | ||
| And his targeting, killing, without trial raised significant legal and constitutional questions regarding government authority and use of lethal force against our own citizens. | ||
| Apparently, not only was Anwar killed, but two other people, including his son, who was also a U.S. citizen, was killed. | ||
| I mean, Obama actually went and killed people without Congress approval. | ||
| I mean, at least, and why wouldn't he grab them, as Trump did, and bring them back to the country and have them serve trial? | ||
| Yeah, that's a great question. | ||
| And it's thank you for taking us back to the Al-Locky case because that's really what started this whole targeted killing process that presidents are allowed to do now. | ||
| The initial question, if you follow the flowchart for the president to authorize a targeted killing, is that the president has to be satisfied or the administration has to be satisfied that the person cannot be captured. | ||
| And so if they can't be captured, if it's a near certainty of identification that this is who it is, and now with AI technology and our drones, we're able to better ID people before the strike happens. | ||
| You go through this box of this, you tick off the boxes, and then you get to do a targeted killing. | ||
| What President Trump was doing with Venezuelan boats in the Caribbean was the same thing. | ||
| It was targeted killing of terrorists. | ||
| You have to take people kind of out of the box of being criminals, because if they're criminals, you're required to arrest them, detain them, and build your evidence and present it in court. | ||
| But if they're criminals, that's what you have to do. | ||
| You have to make them terrorists if you're going to qualify them for targeted killing. | ||
| That's what we were doing with these boats. | ||
| That's what President Obama did with Al-Alaki. | ||
| It doesn't matter whether we've got Democratic presidents or Republican presidents. | ||
| They're always going to use this power to their advantage. | ||
| And you can just, you can track compliance, presidential compliance with the War Powers Resolution, right? | ||
| From 1972. | ||
| Every president since Nixon, it doesn't matter whether they're Democrats or Republicans, has argued that the War Powers Resolution is unconstitutional. | ||
| But every president up until Trump's second administration has complied with the reporting requirements of the War Powers Resolution, while at the same time saying they don't have to as a matter of constitutional law. | ||
| This president now in his second term has decided not even to do that. | ||
| So he's not even going through the legal pirouette. | ||
| And a war powers vote will come up on the Senate this week, brought by Senator Tim Kaine. | ||
| We've played some of that audio before the show. | ||
| But I wonder, just moving a little bit away from Venezuela, obviously, when we're talking about maybe the lack of accountability or the Trump administration not going through the checks and balances that other presidents have, what impact could actions like Venezuela or this idea that nobody is going to test the U.S. militarily have on a potential for similar actions in a place like Greenland, something that obviously the president says that he wants to acquire. | ||
| And U.S. military options are still on the table. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Right. | |
| And you're kind of getting in, you're teasing a little bit here, Jasmine, into the ripple effect of Venezuela, the ripple effect of Maduro's capture. | ||
| And that's really kind of a geopolitical question. | ||
| Now that we've gone in and taken out the leader of a country and brought them back to stand trial, is that a green light for other countries to do the same thing? | ||
| How does this play in Moscow? | ||
| How does this play in Beijing? | ||
| Both of whom have condemned what we did, because that's the script, right? | ||
| You have to call it out and condemn it. | ||
| But is Putin going to redouble his efforts to capture Vladimir Zelensky now? | ||
| And that's okay because we just did the same thing with Maduro. | ||
| What about Cuba? | ||
| You better believe that Secretary of State Rubio has his eye on Cuba the whole time that this is going down. | ||
| I mean, as a member of the Cuban-American community in Florida, Secretary Rubio is very interested in taking out the regime in Havana for both personal and political and national security reasons. | ||
| And Cuba suddenly now is isolated. | ||
| They don't have the free oil that they were getting from Venezuela. | ||
| And you'll note that 30 Cuban security personnel, I think 32, were killed in this capture of Maduro. | ||
| They were on Maduro's security team. | ||
| Cuba actually provided security to keep the oil flowing to Cuba. | ||
| So they're in a tough spot now. | ||
| And these geopolitical ripple effects that you're talking about, including Greenland, are spreading. | ||
| Interestingly enough, if you look at the rhetoric that's coming out of the White House both before and in the wake of Maduro's capture, President Trump really seems to be reanimating and muscularizing the Monroe Doctrine in the Western Hemisphere. | ||
| Donna from Orlando, Florida, a Democrat, you're next. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes. | |
| Well, Jasmine kind of turned the conversation to where I was going. | ||
| So now I'll just have a simple question to ask you as a person of law, as a law professor. | ||
| Can you give us any hope that Trump will be stopped? | ||
| He has broken the laws in our country. | ||
| Now he's breaking international law. | ||
| I don't think the U.S. should go and take over another country using all kinds of excuses that aren't really true. | ||
| So we're just looking for a little hope out here, please. | ||
| What will hold him accountable? | ||
| How will he be held accountable? | ||
| So I'll take your answer. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| Well, Donna, I hope you're planning on voting in the midterm elections in November because that's where accountability comes in. | ||
| As long as the president controls both houses of Congress, I don't see that happening. | ||
| But yeah, it's a question of how far can they go and what can they get away with. | ||
| But there's an underlying question here in this first couple of years of the Trump second presidency, and that is how durable is what he's doing going to last. | ||
| Because if you get a Democratic House of Representatives and a Democratic Senate, then the last two years of his term, he's going to be mired down in investigations and hearings, not to mention possible impeachments. | ||
| And they won't really be able to pursue the agenda as aggressively as they're pursuing it right now. | ||
| Charlie from Massachusetts, a Republican. | ||
| You're next. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hello, Mr. Kelly. | |
| You sound like you're a fair professor speaking both sides and speaking a truth, absolute truths. | ||
| But I'd like to ask you, what do you see to all these Democrats with Trump derangement syndrome when President Biden had a $25 million hit out or a bond out to capture this guy? | ||
| And then on the other hand, where is Donald Trump going to send all these terrible people from Venezuela that he calls criminals from insane asylums and all these terrible people? | ||
| Where is he going to send them now? | ||
| I'd like to know. | ||
| Where's he going to send them to? | ||
| Michael. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, Charlie, that's an interesting question. | |
| And it implies that the president and the administration have really thought out what's going to happen now that they've caught the squirrel. | ||
| And I don't know that they have thought that out. | ||
| Again, you've got the question of detaining all of these people in the United States. | ||
| I don't think he wants to bring Venezuelans to the United States to stand trial. | ||
| Once we have people in the United States, and he's using ICE aggressively to arrest as many Venezuelan gang members as he can and ship them off to El Salvador, that's offshoring it. | ||
| An in-between sort of scenario is what President Bush used in the wake of the Afghanistan invasion, and that's Guantanamo Bay. | ||
| Is it here or is it not here? | ||
| Or is it in this kind of black nether region, this black hole that isn't one or the other? | ||
| There's really no good answers to that. | ||
| And Charlie, actually, it raises another question about what we're doing in Venezuela and are we going to be in Venezuela? | ||
| Right now, the posture of the government is that they want to use Maduro's vice president, Delsi Rodriguez, to basically run things under the direction of our administration. | ||
| He literally said, if she's going to play ball with us, then we will use her to run the country and get the oil out of the country. | ||
| And that kind of reveals what we're really there for. | ||
| Why Delsie Rodriguez and not Maria Machado, the opposition leader who, you know, her parties collectively won 67% of the vote in the 2024 election? | ||
| Well, because Delceie Rodriguez is the former oil minister and was an executive on the biggest oil company in Venezuela, and her brother runs the parliament. | ||
| So she's the key, right, to unlocking what we need or what we think we need. | ||
| But the question of bringing the American oil companies back into Venezuela and doing business with her is a little bit clouded now because the president himself in his press conference used the word coercion, right? | ||
| We're going to coerce her. | ||
| And every lawyer in the room probably should have put their hands up and said, oh, no, don't use that word. | ||
| Because if you get into a contract with somebody, this is basic first-year law school. | ||
| If you get into a contract with somebody and that other party has been coerced to get into the contract, then the contract's void. | ||
| It's invalid. | ||
| So right off the bat, we're, you know, kind of crippling ourselves in doing business in Venezuela with loose talk about how we're going to bully the other person to get into these economic arrangements with us. | ||
| Michael Kelly of Creighton University, thanks so much for your time. | ||
|
unidentified
|
You're welcome, Jasmine. | |
| Great to be with you. | ||
| Great to be with you. | ||
| Later on this morning on the Washington Journal, we'll take a look at the history of U.S. intervention in Latin America with Eduardo Gamara of Florida Atlantic University. | ||
| But after the break, it's open forum where you can call in on any public policy or political issue on your mind. | ||
| Start calling in now. | ||
| Democrats, your line is 202-748-8000. | ||
| Republicans, your line is 202-748-8001. | ||
| Independence, your line is 202-748-8002. | ||
|
unidentified
|
All in high school students, join C-SPAN as we celebrate America's 250th anniversary during our 2026 C-SPAN Student Cam Video Documentary Competition. | |
| This year's theme is exploring the American story through the Declaration of Independence. | ||
| We're asking students to create a five to six minute documentary that answers one of two questions. | ||
| What's the Declaration's influence on a key moment from America's 250-year history? | ||
| Or how have its values touched on a contemporary issue that's impacting you or your community? | ||
| We encourage all students to participate, regardless of prior filmmaking experience. | ||
| Consider interviewing topical experts and explore a variety of viewpoints around your chosen issue. | ||
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| Entries must be received before January 20th, 2026. | ||
| For competition rules, tips, or just how to get started, visit our website at studentcam.org. | ||
| As unbiased as you can get. | ||
| You are so fair. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I don't know how anybody can say otherwise. | |
| You guys do the most important work for everyone in this country. | ||
| I love C-SPAN because I get to hear all the voices. | ||
| You bring these divergent viewpoints and you present both sides of an issue and you allow people to make up their own minds. | ||
| I absolutely love C-SPAN. | ||
| I love to hear both sides. | ||
| I've watched C-SPAN every morning and it is unbiased and you bring in factual information for the callers to understand where they are in their comments. | ||
| This is probably the only place that we can hear honest opinion of Americans across the country. | ||
| You guys at C-SPAN are doing such a wonderful job of allowing free exchange of ideas without a lot of interruptions. | ||
| Thank you, C-SPAN, for being a light in the dark. | ||
| Washington Journal continues. | ||
| Welcome back. | ||
| We're in open forum this morning where you can talk about any public policy or political issue on your mind. | ||
| While you're dialing in, we'll be talking with Lauren Greene, a congressional reporter of the Washington Examiner. | ||
| Lauren, welcome to the table this morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Thank you for having me. | |
| All right, let's talk about Minnesota fraud. | ||
| Can you tell us about today's hearing on the issue? | ||
| There have obviously been a lot of allegations of fraud in the state. | ||
| What kinds of fraud are we talking about exactly? | ||
| And whether or not they, you know, basically extend to some of these welfare programs. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, I mean, a lot of the fraud and some of this case started with the Feeding Our Future case. | |
| It started in like 2019, 2020. | ||
| So it's been years at this point. | ||
| The hearing today is with three Republican representatives from Minnesota who kind of raised alarm bells. | ||
| I think that Chairman Comer wants to see when those alarm bells were raised, why they weren't investigated, if they were kind of brushed over, or if any whistleblowers were at all punished for kind of raising these concerns. | ||
| I think that they're looking at if there were any federal problems with identifying this fraud and they're just kind of trying to figure out the root of the cause, when people brought it up and why it wasn't investigated when it was brought forward. | ||
| Now some of the things that have been targeted inside of the state have been Medicaid programs, child assistance programs. | ||
| But on the hearing today, I wonder outside of those three Republican Minnesota lawmakers who have raised concerns, who else could be testifying? | ||
| We know that there could be, are there any more folks who could be testifying? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Today, there may be some Democratic witnesses that we hear. | |
| We know that we have Governor Tim Walz that is, they've called to come on February 10th. | ||
| We have Attorney General Keith Ellison, who they've also come, or called to come on February 10th. | ||
| There's going to be some state officials who do behind closed door transcribed interviews, which obviously those aren't open to the public, but after a lot of those interviews will conclude, the oversight will release some findings from those. | ||
| And so I just think that over the next few months, obviously this investigation launched early December. | ||
| And so I just think that there's a lot to come. | ||
| It's only been a month since the investigation launched, so I know that the committee, I'm sure, has a lot more hearings and testimonies that they want to hear from going forward. | ||
| And obviously a part of these concerns have been allegations that have included charges against fraud charges against individuals with ties to Somalia. | ||
| How do you think that that will play inside of the hearing today? | ||
|
unidentified
|
I think that there will be a lot of questions, especially from Republicans. | |
| We've seen a lot of Democratic pushback that this has brought some negative connotations amongst Somalis when it is a group of anywhere from like 80 to 100 people that have been involved in this where there are thousands of Somali people living in Minnesota. | ||
| They have the biggest Somali population of any state. | ||
| And so I think that Democrats' concerns is that all Somalis are going to be having this held against them, whereas Republicans are obviously going to use the pattern of people with Somali from Somalia in this fraud case. | ||
| I think that they'll use that a little bit in their questioning for sure. | ||
| Now, Republicans have obviously seized on this issue. | ||
| We know that YouTubers have gone in and tried to uncover what they believe are fraud. | ||
| How has the president and the administration highlighted this issue? | ||
| And that includes DHS and Department of Homeland Security efforts in the state. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I mean, since President Trump has posted on Truth Social, that was kind of what really caused this issue to really catch wind in the media. | |
| We see a lot of things that President Trump posts on Truth Social. | ||
| That's whenever it kind of catches wind. | ||
| We've seen DHS and ICE really targeting Somali areas in the state, and a lot of those immigrants are being targeted or Somali Americans being targeted by people, especially from the YouTube video that was posted by the conservative influencer and community journalists. | ||
| I know that he went to daycares and facilities and videoed them. | ||
| And I mean, that video went viral. | ||
| Like, it had a million plus views within a day. | ||
| And so I do think that that obviously has led to a lot of information being spread. | ||
| A lot of we've seen social media information spreads like wildfire. | ||
| I think that misinformation also spreads like wildfire. | ||
| And so I just think that it's a lot of hearsay as of right now. | ||
| Obviously, there are open federal investigations, there are open state investigations, and there aren't a ton of concrete answers yet. | ||
| And so I think that a lot of the information being spread on social media isn't the hard facts that have come out yet. | ||
| And to be clear, the state of Minnesota has indicted and convicted multiple people on this fraud issue. | ||
| But obviously the political blowback is happening in the state. | ||
| Minnesota's governor, Tim Walz, who was formerly on the ticket with Kamala Harris in 2024, announced that he will not run again. | ||
| Was that announcement tied to these allegations that the Minnesota government was not responding appropriately to the amount of fraud? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I mean, in his response and in his announcement, he pointed to the fact that he can't uncover this fraud and can't work for his state while also running a campaign. | |
| Obviously, running a campaign is extremely time consuming, but also being governor is extremely time consuming. | ||
| And so I think that he has a lot of work to do. | ||
| There's a lot of fraud to uncover. | ||
| There's a lot of missteps that happened to have this fraud happen. | ||
| And so I think that obviously running a campaign while doing this is going to be a tough job. | ||
| But then also this fraud happening in his state while he is governor is going to hurt him politically. | ||
| I'm not sure how long that will hurt him. | ||
| It could be a career thing, but also he said that he's looking to stay in politics after this run. | ||
| Now, something that we heard this week after Tim Waltz announced that he would not continue his campaign is Senator Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota. | ||
| She made an announcement. | ||
| What did she say? | ||
|
unidentified
|
I mean, she has pretty much said that she is looking at this run. | |
| There are other people in the race. | ||
| She hasn't made any official announcements yet, but obviously she is a pretty high-profile senator in the Senate. | ||
| And I think that that is definitely something she would take a look at running with an open seat and a seat that Democrats really do need to keep. | ||
| Obviously, Minnesota is a very blue state, and so they really do need to win that governor's race by a landslide to keep their foothold on these 2026 midterms. | ||
| Now, today's hearing with Oversight Chair James Comer will have those three Republicans. | ||
| I wonder, do you think that it's possible that Tim Waltz could come into Congress down the line, perhaps in that February hearing that you spoke of, to talk about his efforts? | ||
|
unidentified
|
I think that it's up in the air. | |
| Obviously, Governor Waltz has appeared before Congress before. | ||
| He's appeared at testimonies. | ||
| Just last year, I went to and covered one of the hearings he was in and got to chat with him a little bit. | ||
| And I think that he does have a willingness to appear before Congress and appear before hearings. | ||
| But I also do think that he's doing a lot of work in his state and he is talking about how much he's doing from the backgrounds and conducting an audit. | ||
| So I'm not sure if he's going to say that he has a lot of work to do in the state and if that February 10th hearing deadline as of right now is too soon, whenever his audits are supposed to come in late January, like he said. | ||
| But I do think that he does have a willingness to come before Congress and testify before a Republican-led hearing. | ||
| Lauren Greene of the Washington Examiner Congressional Reporter, thanks so much for joining us this morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Thank you for having me. | |
| And a programming note today at 10 a.m., that hearing of Minnesota government officials will testify, examining the use of federal funds for social services in their home state. | ||
| You can watch this House Oversight Committee hearing live here on C-SPAN 3. | ||
| And before we continue with Open Forum, I want to invite more of our callers to join in on the conversation. | ||
| Republicans, your line is 202-748-8001. | ||
| Democrats, your line is 202-748-8000. | ||
| Independents, your line is 202-748-8002. | ||
| And you can also send a message via text. | ||
| That number is 202-748-8003. | ||
| Include your first name, city, and state. | ||
| Vicki of Nebraska, a Democrat. | ||
| You're next. | ||
| This is Open Forum. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes, good morning, Jasmine. | |
| You and Mimi are my favorite. | ||
| You guys do an awesome job. | ||
| Thank you very much. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Oh, you're very welcome. | |
| I just want to say Happy New Year. | ||
| I'm just going to touch on something, and I'm going to talk as fast as I can because I don't want to get cut off. | ||
| It's very important to me. | ||
| 2025 was a very stressful struggle, but family-wise and political. | ||
| And I just talked to a lot of people, and I just want to thank these people that have got me through that. | ||
| C-SPAN, the only show I watch for my news, because I trust you guys completely. | ||
| Jasmine Crockett, I wish you were in Nebraska. | ||
| I love you. | ||
| I love you. | ||
| Please vote for her in Texas to win. | ||
| Jimmy Kimmel, man of the year. | ||
| You make me laugh when I've had a sad day. | ||
| I love you. | ||
| Molly, get him a sash. | ||
| Best singer in the world, Teddy Swims. | ||
| I work out to you two hours every morning. | ||
| And The View, I love you guys. | ||
| Michelle and Barack Obama, you rock. | ||
| I love these people because they speak the truth. | ||
| And thank you, C-SPAN. | ||
| I hope your day is glorious. | ||
| And everyone pray for 2026. | ||
| God bless you. | ||
| I would argue the best singer in the world is Beyonce, but neither here nor there. | ||
| Sean from Florida, an independent, your line is open. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Grand Rise and all my brown and copper people of a land that they call America. | |
| I just find it odd the things that we as people get outraged about. | ||
| There's so much outrage about what President Trump has done. | ||
| And President Trump, I got to give him credit. | ||
| I've said this since 2016. | ||
| This man is the world's greatest used car salesman. | ||
| And he has convinced everybody. | ||
| He took that snitch all the way to the White House, which is something that nobody has ever done. | ||
| And what I mean by the way, he always does things for the look. | ||
| Not necessarily the actual substance, but everything he does is for to get the reaction to make like a used car salesman. | ||
| Ooh, look at the wheels. | ||
| You know, like they arrested this guy for being a drug dealer. | ||
| The most expensive drug bus in history. | ||
| I can imagine he said 120-something jets and all kinds of stuff. | ||
| And so my question is: where are the drugs? | ||
| I'm from Florida. | ||
| We have lots of drug bus. | ||
| And there's always that picture with the police standing in front of all the cocaine and the guns and all this stuff. | ||
| So where's the United States picture with all the machine guns and all the cocaine and all the stuff that they charged him with? | ||
| There's no picture because they didn't go over there for that. | ||
| Look at the wheels. | ||
| You know what I'm saying? | ||
| It's all about Donald Trump. | ||
| And I'm not a hater of Trump because I'm an independent. | ||
| I equally hate the Republicans and the Democrats. | ||
| I feel like they play both sides. | ||
| I honestly don't even feel like it's any separate political parties. | ||
| I feel like they play off each other to get their agenda across. | ||
| And no matter what that agenda is, and people fall for it, hook line and single. | ||
| So if there's anything that I would tell people in 2026 is watch how people play you. | ||
| Watch what you give your energy to because these people are energy vampires and they sucking us up dry. | ||
| Richard from California, Democrat. | ||
| You're next. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hi, it's me. | |
| I love that line the gentleman from Florida just laid out. | ||
| Energy's empires. | ||
| That's great. | ||
| So I was going to say a similar kind of a thing right now. | ||
| You know, there was a famous author back in the day. | ||
| He wrote a story called 1984. | ||
| And I think it might have been a fellow named George Orwell. | ||
| So in 1984 was the takeover of the United States and the world and so on. | ||
| A fellow named Can't think of what they call him right now, but I don't think we're going to have Uncle Sam much longer. | ||
| If Trump keeps going, we're going to have Uncle Donald. | ||
| And this is real bad news. | ||
| His business, especially from Greenland, you know, Maduro was a bad guy, there's no doubt. | ||
| Somebody's going to paint the Finnish leader as a bad person. | ||
| And the United Nations had a great hearing recently, very concerned about the takeover in Venezuela. | ||
| You can't go around doing this kind of stuff when you have so many problems here at home already. | ||
| And like the gentleman said from Florida just now, where's the pictures of all the drugs and stuff? | ||
| You know, first he's harping about the drugs. | ||
| Suddenly, it's the oil. | ||
| He flips and he flops like a fish out of water, and people suck it up. | ||
| There's an election coming up, and I heard him whine just yesterday about how, oh, you got to be careful and don't vote for the wrong people because I need to win the next election, and they're going to impeach me if I don't. | ||
| So if you don't have Republicans win, well, they need to vote against the Republican Congress coming up because if Donald keeps in power, who knows what could happen here? | ||
| It could be 1984. | ||
| I mean, it's going to be 2025. | ||
| Kristen from Maryland, a Republican? | ||
| Or Christine, tell me if I pronounce it wrong. | ||
| Your lines open. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hi, thanks for taking my call. | |
| Yeah, so I'm a Republican, but most of my life I've been a Democrat just because of the area I was raised in and my family. | ||
| I switched just because I felt like the Democratic Party became very extreme. | ||
| And though they claim to be the party of acceptance and love, the minute you maybe even raise a question like, oh, I don't know if I agree with this. | ||
| You're instantly a Nazi. | ||
| You're instantly a terrible person. | ||
| That is not accepting. | ||
| And that alienates people. | ||
| And I don't think they want to admit that. | ||
| I will say, however, that at this point, I think, I mean, the government is lying to us about everything. | ||
| Like, whatever they say, this person shot this person, this happened this time. | ||
| I don't believe it. | ||
| It's all like, they're rarely telling us the truth. | ||
| Republicans lie, Democrats lie. | ||
| Everyone's lying. | ||
| They have their own agendas. | ||
| So at this point, given everything that's happened, I don't even know if I want to call myself Republican anymore. | ||
| Christine, may I ask when you switched your party affiliation? | ||
| Was it for a specific election or was this? | ||
|
unidentified
|
So I, in 2020, I voted for Biden, even though I didn't like him just because I felt like I was pressured to. | |
| But since then, and probably a few years before, I was definitely starting to stray away from the Democratic agenda. | ||
| I did vote for Trump in this most recent election, which was kind of a difficult decision because I am pro-Palestine. | ||
| I'm very against what Israel is doing to the Palestinian people. | ||
| So I wasn't sure if I should vote for my majority issue or for a single issue. | ||
| Then again, I'm in Maryland, so my vote doesn't necessarily have a huge impact. | ||
| I do also just want to say a previous caller who was praising Jasmine Crockett. | ||
| Let's not support stupid politicians just because they have your Democratic name. | ||
| And also, Jimmy Kimmel did blackface, so let's not forget that. | ||
| Thank you so much. | ||
| Steve from Indiana and Independent. | ||
| You're next. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hi. | |
| Yes, thanks for taking my call. | ||
| I was just curious about the Sitco sale that has recently transpired. | ||
| It's not getting a lot of mainstream coverage, and I just kind of wonder why, since it's such a huge deal. | ||
| You said the SICCO sale? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Sitco. | |
| Sitco, C-I-T-G-O. | ||
| Oh, the Sitco sale. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Correct. | |
| It's the crown jewel of the Venezuelan oil company. | ||
| Are you still there? | ||
| Yep, I'm still here. | ||
| I'm Googling what you're saying. | ||
|
unidentified
|
So the crown jewel of the Venezuelan oil companies. | |
| A company called Amber Energy or Elliott Investments had just recently got a bid on that for just shy of $6 billion. | ||
| And there isn't an oil company in the United States operating with that kind of infrastructure that has a valuation of less than $50 billion. | ||
| It seems kind of a disproportionate bid that they got awarded there. | ||
| Excuse me, but you know, the ball on this got rolling back in 2019 when Trump's initial sanctions on Venezuela started. | ||
| I'm just curious why it's not getting the coverage and the attention that, I mean, it's a complex issue, but the American people aren't going to benefit from this sale. | ||
| I mean, Amber Energy Elliott investments are going to benefit hugely from this sale. | ||
| Hugely. | ||
| It's just an understatement, but okay. | ||
| To Steve's point, I pull up a Wall Street Journal article from January 5th, 2026. | ||
| The headline is: Sitgo is a crown jewel of Venezuela's oil industry. | ||
| Elliott is set to reap the benefits. | ||
| The hedge fund could soon close its proposed takeover of the refiner and profit from any bump in oil production from the Latin America company. | ||
| If I scroll down, it says for activist hedge fund Elliott Investment Management, Nicolas Maduro Swift Exit comes at an auspicious time. | ||
| A judge to the caller's point in November backed a roughly $6 billion bid for Elliott for Sitco Petroleum, the refining firm owned by Venezuela's state-run company Petroleas de Venezuela, in a forced sale to satisfy creditors. | ||
| Citco, based in Houston, owns a U.S. network of refinery pipelines and terminals that some analysts say could be worth between $11 billion and $13 billion. | ||
| The deal was controversial in Venezuela. | ||
| Maduro's government denounced the proposed sale as fraudulent. | ||
| The board, recognized by the U.S. government as a legitimate overseer of the overseas oil assets, voted to keep Citco under Venezuelan control. | ||
| And so this is an article in the Wall Street Journal. | ||
| I'll also point you to an article in the New York Times Business section this morning. | ||
| The headline is, Chevron sent to real and big rewards in Venezuela. | ||
| The company was the last major U.S. oil company still producing oil in the South American country many years after others like ExxonMobil and Conuco Phillips had left. | ||
| For years, Chevron muddled along under short-term exemptions from the U.S. sanctions policy. | ||
| Then in late February, President Trump said he would effectively block the company from producing in Venezuela. | ||
| Ten months later, the situation could not look more different. | ||
| Mr. Trump reversed course over the summer, allowing Chevron to continue operating in Venezuela. | ||
| Now the company is in prime position to benefit after U.S. forces captured President Nicolas Maduro over the weekend in Caracas. | ||
| So, two companies that could benefit a lot from these actions in Venezuela. | ||
| I point you to the New York Times and Wall Street Journal. | ||
| JD from New Orleans, Louisiana, a Democrat, or excuse me, Joe from New Orleans, Louisiana, Democrat. | ||
| Your line is open. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning, and Happy New Year to you. | |
| My concern is coming up. | ||
| The topic of my concern is coming up, and that's Black History Month, which is in February. | ||
| And from the various years that I have listened to the program regarding the history of blacks in America, everything has been very negative and controversial. | ||
| My suggestion, and I hope those that are dealing with that particular program, I hope you haven't succumbed to DEI regarding that, is that you have a program that will educate the general public on the accomplishments and things that African Americans have done that benefits all Americans, | ||
| as opposed to always having something that's controversial. | ||
| Talk about how the negative connotation of blacks got developed. | ||
| Talk about the invention. | ||
| Did you know that a black person got the patent on the traffic light? | ||
| Do you know that a black person developed the concept of a gas mask? | ||
| There are many things that we have done that most blacks don't know because it's not in our textbooks. | ||
| It's not talked about. | ||
| And here we have a president who's taking down facts and memorials dealing with African American soldiers. | ||
| So the powers that be in this development of this segment of your program for next month, please go in a different direction than you have done in the past. | ||
| Talk about the accomplishments, what all Americans have benefited from that African Americans had something to do with. | ||
| Carlos from San Antonio, Texas, an Independent. | ||
|
unidentified
|
You're next. | |
| Thank you. | ||
| Thank you for taking my call. | ||
| I'm just amazed at my Republican friends and my Republican relatives that cannot see that everything that Trump has said has been lies from the time that he said, well, the ballroom will not even come close to the White House. | ||
| Well, and then later on he changes it. | ||
| Well, it'd be a few inches. | ||
| And everything that he says, and the problem with Democrats is that they don't use common sense. | ||
| They want to win this next midterms. | ||
| They need to use common sense and then we'll be able to take it over. | ||
| But without common sense, it just started to work. | ||
| So I'm just deploying with Trump. | ||
| Up next this morning on Washington Journal, Eduardo Gamara of Florida Atlantic University joins us to take a look at the complex history of U.S. intervention in Latin America. | ||
| We'll be right back. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Watch America's Book Club, C-SPAN's bold original series. | |
| Sunday, with our guest Hall of Fame baseball player and best-selling author Cal Ripken Jr., who has authored and co-authored more than a dozen books, including The Only Way I Know, Get in the Game, and a series of children's books. | ||
| He joins our host, civic leader, best-selling author, and owner of the Baltimore Orioles, David Rubinstein. | ||
| I thought writing kids' books were a good way to broach certain subjects that might have been tough when you're kids or whatever else in the backdrop of a travel team, travel baseball team, because we all worry about things as kids, 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-SPAN. | ||
| On this episode of Book Notes Plus with our host, Brian Lamb. | ||
| After 15 books on revolutionary America, John Ferling still has more to say about the early period in the life of the United States. | ||
| Ferling is Professor Emeritus of History at the University of West Georgia. | ||
| In the preface of his current book, Shots Heard Round the World, Professor Ferling opens with this: Now that America will be commemorating the 250th anniversary of its War of Independence, what pops into your mind as you hear or witness references to that conflict? | ||
| Professor Ferling gives his answer in a 500-page book focusing on America, Britain, and Europe in the Revolutionary War era. | ||
|
unidentified
|
A new interview with author John Ferling about his book, Shots Heard Round the World: America, Britain, and Europe in the Revolutionary War. | |
| Book Notes Plus with our host Brian Lamb is available wherever you get your podcasts and on the C-SPAN Now app. | ||
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| Donate today at c-span.org forward slash donate. | ||
| Together, we keep democracy in view. | ||
| Washington Journal continues. | ||
| Welcome back. | ||
| Joining us this morning is Professor Eduardo Gamara at Florida International University, who focuses on politics and international relations. | ||
| Eduardo, good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| Thanks for having me. | ||
| Thanks for joining us. | ||
| So I want to dive right in. | ||
| Give us your reaction to the last events, last few days' events in Venezuela, specifically as an expert in the region. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, obviously, everybody is aware that the U.S. took some unprecedented actions in Venezuela on Saturday morning, January the 3rd, removing Nicolas Maluro, somebody who the U.S. had classified as a narco-trafficking terrorist, and not recognizing him as the president of Venezuela. | |
| That is an unprecedented action that has, of course, stirred an awful lot of controversy, both on the side of those who assume that this is a violation of both domestic and international law, and those who defend it as basically a law enforcement action. | ||
| That, of course, has also been very controversial in terms of the justifications that came after, particularly after President Trump provided this press conference where he basically said two things. | ||
| One, the main reason was to protect oil, and secondly, that the U.S. was now running Venezuela. | ||
| And I would add to all of that that perhaps of great surprise to many was the non-recognition of the main leader of the opposition, Maria Corina Machado, the Nobel Prize winner, and the recognition, in fact, of the entire structure of the Maduro regime, which largely remains intact and is now co-governing Venezuela with the United States. | ||
| So my next question would be, would you, just understanding the history of interventions, would you classify this as a regime change? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, in a very strict definition, no. | |
| We have removed the dictator, but we are essentially working with the dictatorship. | ||
| There has been no regime change whatsoever. | ||
| I mean, a regime change involves the replacement of the entire elite structure of governance. | ||
| It involves, to a certain extent, removing the authoritarian system. | ||
| And many, of course, including Venezuelans outside of exiles in particular, assumed that regime change would mean taking away the authoritarian structure and replacing it with those who had won the elections a year ago and which in fact Mauro refused to recognize. | ||
| So in a very strict definitional sense, there has been no regime change in Venezuela. | ||
| And to that point, perhaps the Trump administration was telling us the truth all along, right? | ||
| That they weren't into regime change, but they simply wanted to get rid of Maduro. | ||
| How would you place this in the history of interventions, particularly the past U.S. interventions in Latin America? | ||
| Where does this fall? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, you know, we've had a long history of intervening in the region. | |
| And perhaps it's important to kind of start out by setting up this new, how should I put it, framework that President Trump has set out. | ||
| He's calling it, of course, the Trump corollary to the Monroe Doctrine. | ||
| He's now, you know, sort of accepted the title of the Don Rowe Doctrine, which the Financial Times, by the way, coined that term about a year ago. | ||
| But what does that mean? | ||
| If we go back to the Monroe Doctrine, it essentially has meant over the last two centuries the strategic denial the presence of non-American powers in the region. | ||
| Initially, of course, it was an attempt to prevent Europeans from maintaining control of American colonies. | ||
| Subsequently, during the Cold War, it became about maintaining the Russians, the Soviets at the time, away from Latin America. | ||
| And today, in this more contemporary sense, I guess it means keeping the Chinese out of the Americas. | ||
| But there's more to it than that when you think about how the U.S., for example, during the Roosevelt corollary to the Monroe Doctrine, the U.S. actually invaded countries, remained in those countries for a long period of time, Nicaragua, Haiti, Dominican Republic, to name a few, but then stepped out and left behind really authoritarian structures. | ||
| The case of Nicaragua, Somosa, the Somosa family, which governed that country for over 30 years, in the Dominican Republic, Rafael Oni d'Astrujillo, and so on and so forth. | ||
| So in a sense, what we have today, right, is a different kind of intervention, although this is really one of the most interesting peculiarities of this. | ||
| A lot of people compare this to Panama, for example, to the Panama invasion of 1989, where we went in, took out the sitting president, Manuel Antonio Noriega, and immediately recognized the individual, Guillermuendara, who had won the elections and who was being prevented from assuming power. | ||
| But in a sense, the U.S. has had a very active presence in Panama, supporting civilian governments. | ||
| In this instance, what we have done is we've taken out the dictator, but we're working with the regime. | ||
| And we've established a pattern, right, really a timeline that is an indefinite one. | ||
| We will be there for one year, two years, working with this regime until, as President Trump has put it, until Venezuela is ready for elections. | ||
| So we have this indefinite timeline. | ||
| We've removed the dictator overnight, but we haven't done away with the regime. | ||
| Now, before we continue this conversation, I want to invite our audience to join in. | ||
| Republicans, your line is 202-748-8001. | ||
| Democrats, your line is 202-748-8000. | ||
| Independents, your line is 202-748-8002. | ||
| Now, Professor, I wonder, you know, we talked about the Trump corollary to the Monroe Doctrine, the Don Rowe Doctrine, as some have coined it. | ||
| Obviously, the Trump administration put out in December what they viewed as basically American preeminence in the Western Hemisphere was kind of their guiding ideology in terms of their national security plan. | ||
| But how have the motivations for U.S. involvement in Latin America changed over time? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, you know, for the better part of the last 30 years, the United States had as its central core interest in the region the promotion of democracy, the promotion in particular, of course, of representative democracy. | |
| And we sort of, you know, based our presence in the region on the basis of recognizing civilian elected regimes. | ||
| Now, this, of course, had a few obstacles, in particular, the coming to power of individuals like Hugo Chavez and subsequently Nicolas Maduro in Venezuela and others along the line. | ||
| But in particular, under this administration, while we assumed that, and perhaps there's a grave tension in this administration, or there has been in this second administration of the Trump period, between those who were largely pushing for economic interests in Venezuela, in particular, the oil interests, right, and those who, like Secretary of State Rubio, | ||
| were traditionally associated with the promotion of democracy and, in particular, support for individuals like Maria Corina Machado. | ||
| That tension has been the one that's really characterized the tension within this administration. | ||
| And it looks like there was some kind of a solomonic solution, as I've been calling it. | ||
| In other words, Rubio got Maduro and he is in jail, right? | ||
| But the core of U.S. policy now is really control over the oil resources in Venezuela, something which had really always been denied by this administration. | ||
| In other words, we were about restoring democracy in Venezuela. | ||
| We weren't really there to take anybody's oil. | ||
| But this has become now front and center. | ||
| And we now know it because it's an unapologetic policy that all of the administration spokespersons continue to, including Secretary of State Rubio. | ||
| So we are now there to protect oil, right, to reclaim it as American. | ||
| And we're okay with working with a dictatorship that is essentially intact. | ||
| In fact, when you look at the actions of the regime under Del C Rodriguez over the last few days, repression has continued. | ||
| There has been no liberation of political prisoners. | ||
| And in large measure, right, it appears as though we're okay with the status quo on the ground as long as the United States is allowed access to oil. | ||
| So you believe that oil is the U.S.'s main motivation in this effort right now? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, I don't believe it. | |
| The administration has stated it straight out. | ||
| This is no longer something that we can speculate about. | ||
| Tim from Tennessee, an independent, you're next. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes, I would like to say that I agree with the fact that the United States went down and if you want to say it was over oil, that's fine. | |
| The American companies went down and built the refineries. | ||
| They built the oil fields, the loading docks. | ||
| And then Venezuela, they're doing business with Russia and with China, and they're going to turn these facilities that was built by American companies over to who's going to let them stay in power or who's going to give them the most profit. | ||
| Just like with Panama, the United States had to go down and intervene with Panama because they were going to allow China too much influence with the Panama Canal. | ||
| So the United States had to do something that was built by the United States. | ||
| And that's all I've got to say. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| Any response to that? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, your caller is correct on one thing. | |
| I mean, yes, it was American companies that discovered oil in Venezuela and that invested heavily in Venezuela over the last century. | ||
| In the 1970s, then President Carlos Andres Perez nationalized the industry and Established a new investment regime and compensated those American firms that were nationalized. | ||
| And that's part and parcel of nationalization. | ||
| It usually goes to arbitration. | ||
| There's usually American companies that have a right to say, my investment is worth this much in the country that nationalized it, of course, has the ability to negotiate and then finally work out a price. | ||
| That was sort of the characteristic of the 1970s. | ||
| But when Chavez came into office, he also nationalized, but established a regime whereby companies that wanted to remain in Venezuela, as was the case of Chevron, | ||
| had to essentially enter into a joint venture with the state oil company, Pedevesa, in an agreement where basically the Venezuelans got the bulk of the revenue coming from the exploitation of oil. | ||
| A couple of companies of American companies, however, refused those terms, went to arbitration, and then essentially arbitration was never finalized. | ||
| And so now you have an awful lot of money there on the table, so to speak, that was never finalized because these American companies and others did not accept those terms. | ||
| So in that sense, the caller is correct, right? | ||
| That there is this unresolved issue there. | ||
| But let's also keep in mind that Chevron has been in Venezuela uninterruptedly over the course of the last 20 years and is still there and is the one that, in fact, is producing the oil that's leaving Venezuela today. | ||
| David from Auburn, New York, a Republican, you're next. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, good morning. | |
| I got a quick question here or two. | ||
| The professor mentioned the fact that we took Maduro out without a step number two. | ||
| Okay, and that's the incrementalism of it all. | ||
| It is built on that. | ||
| Most plants go that way. | ||
| But I would say if they can redevelop the oil system down there and turn those profits back to that country, supervised, as I've been led to believe by American administrations, and win the hearts in the minds of those Venezuelans, then things will go well. | ||
| But as it stands now, it's still up in the air. | ||
| This is just so new. | ||
| I don't know if maybe they do have another step too. | ||
| Maybe they're going to hold up and see how much leverage they can apply to the administration down there. | ||
| And if that works out, then it's a win. | ||
| And last thing I'd like to mention, too, I'm not really up to date on what happened before it was Maduro and before there was Chavez. | ||
| And how did we ever get to having Hugo Chavez running the show down there for all those corrupt years and Maduro living now on just a pittance of what that oil is worth just for the elites in that administration down there? | ||
| I'll leave it there. | ||
| That should be enough. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| There's two sides to your question. | ||
| The first, I'll address the last part of your question more. | ||
| Venezuela was a country governed democratically from 1959 until Ugo Chavez came into office in the late 1990s. | ||
| However, that democratic period was also characterized by extreme levels of corruption of political parties. | ||
| Eventually, the American, pardon me, the Venezuelan electorate Tired of the extreme levels of corruption. | ||
| And Hugo Chavez emerged as a political option following a coup he launched against democracy in 1992 and was sent to prison, pardoned, created a movement that won the elections in the late 1990s, and then, of course, constructed the regime that we've been talking about. | ||
| The paradox is that he ran against the corrupt democracy, right? | ||
| That he, at least that's the way he framed it, and that was sort of the central reason why he won, but then constructed an even more corrupt system, largely because of the centralization of the riches of the oil industry. | ||
| So that sort of the background that you're looking for in a very, very, very quick nutshell. | ||
| The second part of your question, though, or the first part of your question is more complex. | ||
| I mean, the administration is leading us to believe that we can, in fact, work with the dictatorship, right, in this transition period. | ||
| And this is largely built on this interesting trust that we've developed with Del C Rodriguez, the current president, and largely because of her relationship with the oil industry. | ||
| And we're placing a lot of trust in her ability to steer, not just toward a transition, but in her ability to control the military, the paramilitary groups that they've created over the years to repress Venezuelans, the corrupt structures, including narco-trafficking structures, gangs. | ||
| And really, one of the most difficult things that she's going to have to face is how to control the military. | ||
| If she does this, and if there is a smooth transition, as you said, supervised by the United States, the bet is then that in a year, in two years, in three years, we don't know, this very regime will then open it up to free and fair elections. | ||
| That's quite a mouthful to accept. | ||
| Jack from Utah and Independent, you're next. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hello. | |
| I have a few comments. | ||
| You said a little earlier that Chevron has been one of the main companies running oil in Venezuela. | ||
| And if that is true, which I don't doubt, wouldn't it be against the Monroe doctrines for Venezuela to be running oil and selling oil to sanctioned countries like Russia, Iran, and China? | ||
| Also, if Chevron isn't the only company, like you said, the state company, I can't remember the name, but that state oil company, how is Chevron the only American, or I mean, they're not the only company, but how are they not the only company running oil from Venezuela? | ||
| Because Chevron may be an American company, but clearly they weren't the only oil company running out of Venezuela. | ||
| So now it might be beneficial for Venezuela to get rid of the state operating socialist refineries and having new refineries coming in. | ||
| Maybe not Chevron, but who knows? | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| Okay, two parts to your question. | ||
| First, when you look at how Venezuelan oil exploitation has been structured, at least since 2009, it has been through this joint venture with Chevron, right? | ||
| Chevron is the only American company that accepted that joint venture. | ||
| There are others, right? | ||
| But the American companies, of the American companies, it has been the main one. | ||
| Now, one of the arguments, and you're correct in observing, right, if we're pushing the Monroe Doctrine or the Donroe Doctrine, however you want to call it, one of the main fears was that a lot of the Venezuelan oil was in fact being used to pay off a debt that Venezuela has with China. | ||
| Venezuela owes China over $60 billion, and it was in fact paying China in oil. | ||
| And so this is one of the reasons why a lot of people, particularly on the Republican side, were arguing that in essence, we were using Venezuela was allowing China and Russia. | ||
| Russia had also invested heavily in oil over the last two decades. | ||
| And so the argument for protecting the oil industry is that, again, look at the logic of the Monroe Doctrine, right? | ||
| It was to prevent Russia and China from going into this strategic industry that is of key national security interest to the United States. | ||
| Now, in the current context, of course, what will have to occur is that the rules of investment, the investment laws, particularly in the oil industry, | ||
| are going to have to be changed to allow, in fact, for other American corporations to come in and not only search for oil, but invest heavily in restructuring the entire oil industry. | ||
| Lita from New Mexico, a Republican, you're next. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, good morning. | |
| I tried to get on earlier with your previous speaker. | ||
| I wanted to tell him that I am much prouder of Harvard now. | ||
| Anyhow, just wanted to say Happy New Year and thank you, C-SPAN, for providing the forum and continue the wonderful work. | ||
| And thank you so much. | ||
| My brother-in-law of my half-sister worked on the Panama Canal. | ||
| My brother and many of my family are military. | ||
| And I'm so proud of my military. | ||
| Thank you all. | ||
| God bless you. | ||
| And happy 2026. | ||
| Kent from Wisconsin, an independent, you're next. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, Trump is a sociopath. | |
| He has no regard for the common good. | ||
| He's just working to get his corporations set so they can contribute to his campaign. | ||
| He's just obsessed with power. | ||
| And that's all I have to say. | ||
| Pat from Keyport, New Jersey, a Republican. | ||
| You're next. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hello. | |
| If I could go back in time a little, I'd like to see if you can address some interventions that we have had which were non-military in nature. | ||
| And one I'm really interested in is what happened in Chile when, I think his name is Salvador Allende, was elected, and what role did the U.S. play in getting rid of him? | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| Okay, good question. | ||
| And it sort of allows me to clarify. | ||
| One of your previous callers made a comment about Panama. | ||
| And it's important to clarify that the invasion in Panama was in 1989, right? | ||
| That was well in advance of the canal being turned over to the United States. | ||
| So his assumption that we intervened to protect the canal from China is not correct. | ||
| China was not in the picture in running the canal in 1989. | ||
| But that said, your current caller wants really to look at the kinds of interventions that the United States had during the Cold War mainly. | ||
| And this is a very interesting question because there was a time in which the United States intervened in the region covertly, right? | ||
| In other words, the CIA had a very important role. | ||
| But in fact, one of the old jokes in Central America was, you know, why are there no coups in Washington? | ||
| And the answer was, because there's no U.S. Embassy in Washington, right? | ||
| So we were engaged in, let us call it, promoting the United States, but primarily in a covert way, working with sectors that supported us. | ||
| And for many, many years, the United States worked and supported military regimes, often regimes that violated human rights, such as the Pinocher regime in Chile, the Argentine military, the Bolivian military, the Brazilian military, et cetera, and certainly also militaries in Central America. | ||
| But most of our actions at the time were covert, right? | ||
| We are now in a new stage where the president is proud of saying that the CIA is active in undermining a particular government in a particular region. | ||
| And also, the interesting contrast is, of course, we did work with authoritarian regimes. | ||
| We worked with military regimes, violators of human rights, as I noted. | ||
| And that was part of the way in which we structured American foreign policy for decades. | ||
| And then came the transition to democracy in the late 1970s. | ||
| And Latin America has been democratic, at least in form, since the late 1970s. | ||
| And as I said, we shifted our focus away from supporting military regimes that promoted American interests to promoting, basically, democratically elected governments, some of which were not lined up with the United States, but we still were able to work with them. | ||
| John from Yucca Valley, California, Independent. | ||
| You're next. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| And thank you for C-SPAN. | ||
| Yes, it's been very enlightening hearing about the Monroe-DART doctrine and that there's an authoritarian regime kept in place so that we can get this oil. | ||
| I just am thinking about the Cuban Missile Crisis where Kennedy didn't intervene militarily and how that, but Russia had an interest in it. | ||
| And, you know, we don't see so much through the media of these visits from China and Russia into South America. | ||
| All you see is that they came and they talked, then they went home and all of that. | ||
| And apparently there's been a lot of back and forth except that they have not moved in to take control of oil and whatnot. | ||
| Now, I'd like to draw kind of a line to Greenland where he's talking about taking that over. | ||
| And there is no oil there except to be explored and that sort of thing. | ||
| And the interest. | ||
| And how was that different the way Kennedy handled it to the way that Trump is handling it today? | ||
| And just sort of it's complicated, but how else could this happen? | ||
| And with the threat of Mexico and Colombia and other South American countries, I don't think there's much oil over there. | ||
| But these are some different approaches to different areas of concern over there. | ||
| Yeah, let me just address a couple of things that you've mentioned. | ||
| Number one, look, in the course of the 21st century, right, the United States really did not pay much attention to Latin America, except for a very significant amount of interest given to Colombia, because Colombia was and continues to be the main source of cocaine coming into the United States. | ||
| But by and large, the U.S., and I'm not just talking about the American state, but I'm talking also about private interests, right? | ||
| We didn't really pay attention to Latin America. | ||
| That created an enormous vacuum there and a space for the Chinese to come in. | ||
| And the Chinese have done so in a very strategic way. | ||
| They've developed long-term strategic plans. | ||
| They don't have the problems that the Americans have of having to pay attention to electoral cycles, for example. | ||
| They don't have the problems of having to pay attention to the media or concerns even from academics. | ||
| And so they were able to craft the presence in the region, a long-term presence, and they have done so, by the way, in a very pragmatic way. | ||
| They have no concerns about the specific ideology of a particular country. | ||
| So they've worked fairly well, for example, with President Bukele in El Salvador, somebody who is a very well-known ally of President Trump. | ||
| They've worked well in Argentina now with another right-wing president who pledged not to work with a Chinese, President Millay. | ||
| They have very, very close ties to Brazil, systemic ties and economic ties. | ||
| And so China has established a real presence in Latin America. | ||
| They built an enormous port in Peru, the port of Chiang Kai, which is, again, really serving the long-term strategic interests of China, which invests in infrastructure, and it also uses soft power. | ||
| Now, and by soft power, I mean the presence, for example, of institutes called the Confucius Institute, which are there to promote Chinese culture. | ||
| In that sense, they had learned from the Americans, who used to use soft power to promote American culture and so on as part of American foreign policy. | ||
| Where we are today, however, right, the way we're approaching the Chinese is we're assuming that the Monroe Doctrine or the Don Roe Doctrine is going to prevent the presence of China, but we're trying to do so militarily, right? | ||
| The United States has not really projected Its economic muscle in Latin America the way it should have to counteract Chinese presence. | ||
| And then, secondly, we have now, and especially under this administration, dismantled all of the soft power capability that we had. | ||
| USAID had an enormous presence in Latin America, right? | ||
| Primarily promoting American interests and promoting American culture and so on and so forth. | ||
| All of that is gone. | ||
| My concern is that we're not going to be able to counteract that enormous Chinese strategic presence without a long-term plan of our own that involves that combination of hard and soft power that the Chinese are using. | ||
| Quick question for you, Professor. | ||
| We've got about 30 seconds left, but do you expect additional actions in Cuba, Mexico, and Colombia, as the president or other administration officials have said could happen? | ||
|
unidentified
|
No, I don't think so. | |
| I think in the case of Colombia, the president has been perhaps too vocal on saying that Maluto, pardon me, that President Petro would be next, but he has six months left in office, and I think it's probably unreasonable to expect any American action there. | ||
| Okay, Professor, we have to hop out. | ||
| We're going to turn to the House, but thank you so much for your time this morning. | ||
| We appreciate it. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| And that's all for today's program. | ||
| Washington General comes your way tomorrow morning at 7 a.m. |