Venezuela Has Become A CRIMINAL STATE, Military Intervention Will Not Work w/ Rep. Eric Burlison
Timcast's White House Correspondent, Elaad Eliahu, sits down with Congressman Eric Burlison to discuss a variety of today's most pressing issues. BUY CAST BREW COFFEE TO SUPPORT THE SHOW - https://castbrew.com/ Become A Member And Protect Our Work at http://www.timcast.com Host: Elaad @ElaadEliahu (X) Guest: Rep. Eric Burlison @RepEricBurlison (X) Producer: Serge @SergeDotCom (everywhere) My Second Channel - https://www.youtube.com/timcastnews Podcast Channel - https://www.youtube.com/TimcastIRL Venezuela Has Become A CRIMINAL STATE, Military Intervention Will Not Work w/ Rep. Eric Burlison
You have a country that is really kind of a foothold for China and Russia and they're doing a lot of illegal activity, a lot of criminal activity, and they've basically become a criminal state.
I am Alad Eliyahu, the White House correspondent for Timcast, but today we have a very special episode because we are in Congress and we are interviewing different Republican congressmen.
And today we have Eric Burleson from Missouri taking time to interview with us.
Thank you so much for taking the time.
I wanted to hop in quickly because I know we are short on time.
It's one of the most pressing issues that I believe the White House is dealing with and that is the, I don't know if to call it a conflict or drug, fighting drug smuggling outside of Venezuela.
I guess we'll start with what do you think so far of what the administration's actions outside of Venezuelan waters have been so far?
Yeah, I think that the priority should be not necessarily just regime change for the sake of regime change because we've seen that play out before, right?
The Taliban, for example, now control Afghanistan.
If you don't fix the core problems, then you're going to end up with maybe sometimes even a worse outcome.
That's why I think we should focus on cutting off the money supply chain for the cartels and trying to do whatever we can to cut off their political power and influence.
And then you'll see natural reform happen in countries like Venezuela.
You have a country that is really kind of a foothold for China and Russia.
And they're doing a lot of illegal activity, a lot of criminal activity, and they've basically become a criminal state.
And I get it.
We can't continue to let that sit and fester, but I don't necessarily think that we have to go in with boots on the ground or a military conflict because I do think regardless of what you do, you're not going to change the corruption that exists in Venezuela overnight.
So I think that addressing the fact that money is, that politics is being fueled by cartel money and drug money is something that we need to be working on in whatever way that we can, whether that's through sanctions, whether it's through cutting off their supply chain to the United States.
Whatever it is that we can do, I think we should be working on that.
You know, I would like to have a briefing to verify what form of intelligence that they have on each of these boats.
But I mean, let's be real.
These are not four Venezuela fishermen in half a million dollar speed boats, right?
They're clearly drug runners, but I'm sure that our intelligence community has much more information on how they know who's on the boat, what the activity of the boat is.
They probably know where the origin was, where it's going.
I'm sure that there's a lot of information that makes them have a high level of confidence that they truly are drug runners.
Some of their actions outside of Venezuelan waters have allegedly gotten them in some trouble.
So I'm referencing some recent Washington Post reporting about how a boat was struck and then it was no longer a threat and then struck again.
There are some Democrat senators who allege that this could potentially be a war crime, if true.
So I believe it was Senator Van Holland from Connecticut and Senator Mark Kelly from Arizona who implied that if the Washington Post reporting was true, that this could potentially be a war crime.
What do you think of that alleged reporting?
And if the reporting is true, do you think that constitutes a war crime?
And the fact that these fans are being flamed by people like Senator Kelly and then that video, that only really emboldens some of this terrorist activity to continue.
And I think that that has to end.
We need to be focused and our intelligence community needs to be focused on identifying, because they know who came over.
They weren't vetted, but they know a lot of them and who they are and where they are.
And I think that we need to have a thorough process and prioritize, if you're going to be deporting people, try prioritizing the terrorists who hate this country, who got here without being vetted.
This Afghani American was allegedly actually a collaborator with American intelligence against the Taliban and that I guess we felt like we owed them something and brought them over as a refugee.
Do we have any obligation to collaborators who work with Americans and help make American service members' lives easier when we're fighting our wars abroad?
I mean look, these people, the CIA works with some very unsavorable people, some really nefarious people that we wouldn't necessarily want into our country.
And so, now, what's not being said as well is, you know, should we help them?
We're paying these people, right?
Often, these people are being paid by the intelligence, by the CIA, for the information and for the help.
We, in no way, shape, or form owe them the right to be in this country.
Or maybe even the right to move to a different country, but maybe not necessarily bring them over here.
But I did want to also get your reaction to what the president's response to this was, and it was generally to clamp down on immigration from so-called third world countries.
And I think he said he wanted to pause all visas from Afghanistan in particular.
In a Truth Social post, he said, I will permanently pause migration from all third world countries to allow the U.S. system to fully recover.
Only reverse migration can fully cure this situation.
It seems as though many Americans, particularly in the MAGA base, are particularly concerned about immigration.
And not even just illegal immigration.
Legal immigration, it seems as though, is frustrating many within the MAGA base.
I also understand there's something like 700,000 H-1B visa holders here who are here legally, but that Americans still believe undercut American workers and are still taking place here.
Yeah, I think at the end of the day, I don't want to cut off all immigration.
I think people that want to come to this country that can provide value and truly adopt our society, we need to have that process.
It should not be wide open.
The doors should not be completely wide open.
And we don't want to let our culture change rapidly.
So we need to do it in a thorough, slow, and a slow process.
So I would be for reducing the number of people that are coming here legally and certainly eliminating and zeroing out the people that are coming here illegally.
And I was glad to see that the president gave a directive that, you know, when people are throwing bricks and rocks and assaulting our ICE agents or Homeland Security, arrest these people, right?
We need to return to kind of a form of civility.
And the fact that they're really willing to take arms and fight against law enforcement officials over this, protecting people that are here illegally, it's absurd.
I want to shift gears and quickly hit on one last topic, and it's a little bit of congressional politics.
So one of the most important things in the one big beautiful bill that barely passed here was that they tripled, I believe, the funding towards ICE.
But there was one Republican who postured against it.
Representative Thomas Massey, who the president was very upset with.
There's also recently, I believe, a handful of Republicans who forced the vote on the so-called Jeffrey Epstein files, including Marjorie Taylor Greene and Thomas Massey.
They've drawn the ire of the president as a result of their actions here.
What do you think about how all of that stuff played out?
And how should we think of these Republicans when you guys do have such a slim majority?
I have a lot of respect for Thomas Massey and Marjorie Taylor Greene, and I think that our party can't afford to be acting in a way where we're expelling people from the party.
And they have a place, they have a highly intelligent position that most of the time I agree with.
I mean, I'm mostly, I'm very close ideologically with Thomas Massey, and I was a co-sponsor of the bill to release the Epstein files.
I wasn't going to sign the discharge petition until, unless I saw that in the oversight process, which I'm on, the oversight committee, I saw if the administration was blocking information deliberately from the subpoenas that we were issuing, then to me that would be the last step is to do the discharge petition.
But I mean, I support the release of all the Epstein information so long as it doesn't harm a victim.
Well, ultimately, nearly every person voted for it when it came to the vote.
And whenever I had opportunities in oversight to vote to subpoena the files, subpoena the Epstein estate, I voted for those and have been a part of that process.
And so I think most all Republicans were supportive of releasing the files.
And a lot of us were really kind of puzzled with some of Trump's rhetoric.
The only explanation I've been given that makes sense is that Trump has gone down this road with disclosure of other things like the JFK files, the RFK files, and really has discovered that it's one thing to say it and another thing to deliver it when you have an intelligence community that's fighting you tooth and nail, right?
And so you can say, if you're Trump, you know, I can try to release the files, but at the end of the day, the American people, there's always going to be more that needs to be released, and the American people will always suspect something.
