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Nationalization and Regime Change
00:15:03
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unidentified
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| Welcome back. | ||
| Joining us this morning is Professor Eduardo Gamara at Florida International University, who focuses on politics and international relations. | ||
| Eduardo, good morning. | ||
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unidentified
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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. | ||
| 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? | ||
| 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? | ||
| 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 Roe 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, Guillermondara, 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 over 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 Doctor and the Don Roe 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? | ||
| 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. | ||
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unidentified
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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. | ||
| 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. | ||
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unidentified
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Okay. | |
| Any response to that? | ||
| 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. | ||
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Venezuelan Oil Dilemma?
00:07:43
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unidentified
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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. | ||
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unidentified
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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 and 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 then 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? | ||
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unidentified
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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 Hugo 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. | ||
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unidentified
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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, 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. | ||
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unidentified
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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? | ||
|
Strategic Approaches in Latin America
00:11:55
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| 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. | ||
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unidentified
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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 a 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. | ||
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unidentified
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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 am saying. | ||
| Pat from Keyport, New Jersey, Republican. | ||
| You're next. | ||
| 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? | ||
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unidentified
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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 it's 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, right, 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, an independent. | ||
| You're next. | ||
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unidentified
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Good morning. | |
| And thank you for C-SPAN. | ||
| Yes, it's been very enlightening hearing about the Monroe 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 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, right? | ||
| 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 the 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'd 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 Rowe Doctrine is going to prevent the presence of China, but we're trying to do so militarily, right? | ||
| The United States does not 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, 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? | ||
| 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. | ||
| Professor, we have to hop out. | ||
| We're going to turn to the House, but thank you so much for your time this morning. | ||
|
Ceasefire Friday
00:02:23
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| We appreciate it. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
|
unidentified
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Live Thursday on the C-SPAN Networks. | |
| The House gavels in at 10 a.m. Eastern as members consider legislation to extend expired Affordable Care Act subsidies. | ||
| Nine Republicans joined a Democratic-led discharge petition to advance the bill. | ||
| We'll have that on C-SPAN. | ||
| On C-SPAN 2 at 10 a.m., the Senate gavels in. | ||
| On the agenda, a vote on a war powers resolution to stop further military action in Venezuela without congressional approval after the recent U.S. strike and capture of its president. | ||
| A procedural vote will be held at 11. | ||
| On C-SPAN 3 at 1245 p.m., Treasury Secretary Scott Besant delivers remarks at a meeting of the Minnesota Economic Club. | ||
| And at 2, FCC Chair Brendan Carr will discuss technology policy at the Consumer Electronics Show. | ||
| You can also watch live coverage on C-SPAN Now, our free mobile app, and online at c-SPAN.org. | ||
| Friday on C-SPAN's ceasefire, at a time when finding common ground matters most in Washington. | ||
| Former Special Assistant to President George W. Bush, Scott Jennings, and former Biden White House Communications Director Kate Bettingfield come together for a conversation on the top domestic and foreign policy issues impacting the country, including next steps in Venezuela. | ||
| Join host Dasha Burns. | ||
| Bridging the Divide in American Politics. | ||
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Decisions Unfold
00:00:31
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unidentified
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