| Speaker | Time | Text |
|---|---|---|
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Venezuela's Oil and Democracy
00:05:49
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|
unidentified
|
Democracy. | |
| It isn't just an idea. | ||
| It's a process. | ||
| A process shaped by leaders elected to the highest offices and entrusted to a select few with guarding its basic principles. | ||
| It's where debates unfold, decisions are made, and the nation's course is charted. | ||
| Democracy in real time. | ||
| This is your government at work. | ||
| This is C-SPAN, giving you your democracy unfiltered. | ||
| Rhonda from Sacramento, California, and Independent. | ||
| Good afternoon. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
| 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 Stell and Chevron 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? | ||
| 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 pay us 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 on once a week. | ||
| You'll have to see me then. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| Angela, California, Democrat. | ||
| You're next. | ||
| Yep. | ||
| 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. | ||
| 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. | ||
| 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 a 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. | ||
|
Sorry We Kept You Busy
00:00:20
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||
| Hello, everybody. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
| Yes, come on up, everyone. | ||
| Lovely officials with me today. | ||
|
unidentified
|
All right. | |
| Dr. Carson, come on up. | ||
| Thank you so much. | ||
| Good morning, and happy new year, everybody. | ||
| It's great to see you. | ||
| It's great to be with a very packed room. | ||
| I'm sorry we kept you all very busy over the holiday break. | ||