Ezra Levant praises Donald Trump’s January 5th U.S. raid in Caracas, removing Nicolás Maduro—alleged drug cartel leader and communist dictator—after 26 years of repression, with 32 Cuban bodyguards killed and no American losses. The operation, framed as a security move rather than invasion, temporarily seizes Venezuela’s oil (now down to 1M barrels/day from Chávez’s 3M peak) to counter China, Russia, and Iran while reviving infrastructure via U.S. companies. Venezuelan exiles in Miami celebrate Maduro’s ouster despite skepticism over oil motives, citing his 800+ political prisoners and 8M refugees since 2014, dismissing critics like Zoran Mandani as out-of-touch. Trump’s assertive policy contrasts with Biden’s perceived weakness, with Cuban-American leaders like Durham Mayor Christie Fraga hoping Maduro’s fall weakens Cuba’s dictatorship, ending decades of Western adversarial influence. [Automatically generated summary]
Donald Trump and the U.S. military snatching the dictator of Nicolas Maduro right out of his presidential palace in Caracas, Venezuela.
Just amazing.
Even more amazing is what dominoes might fall next.
I'll take you through it.
And we send our reporter Alexa Lavois down to Miami to talk to real Venezuelan exiles.
Very interesting interviews.
I'd love for you to see that.
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Tonight, the Monroe Doctrine is back in the Americas.
It's January 5th, and this is the Ezra Levant Show.
shame on you you sensorious bug what a crazy weekend I tell you, it's only the fifth day of the new year, and already a year's worth of things has happened.
In the wee hours of Saturday, Donald Trump sent the U.S. military into Caracas, the capital city of Venezuela, a very fortified city in a fortified presidential palace where Nicolas Maduro, the dictator of Venezuela, was heavily guarded, including by dozens, actually, of Cuban shock troops.
Just stop for a second on that.
Why would a Venezuelan dictator have foreign bodyguards?
And I mean, dozens of them.
Cuba later said that 32 of their bodyguards were killed.
No American losses.
I can think of two reasons.
First of all, Maduro is so hated by his own Venezuelan people that he doesn't trust anyone.
And second of all, you can look at those men as bodyguards.
You can also think of them as a sort of prison guard.
They're not just there to protect Maduro.
They're there to ensure that Maduro does what Cuba wants it to do.
In fact, I saw a lot of Venezuelans over the last few days saying that Venezuela is not being colonized by America.
It has been colonized by Cuba, by Russia, by China, even by Iran and Hezbollah.
That's that weird quirk of having an all-foreign personal staff, isn't it?
Anyways, they went in in the wee hours, a grand total of two hours on the ground.
They extracted Nicolas Maduro and his wife and took them back to the United States.
He's, in fact, in New York right now, not as a political or a military move, but in service of an indictment.
He was indicted, as was his wife, as the head of a major drug cartel.
It's just an absolutely stunning thing.
The rest of the country remains unmolested, I should say, that the Americans, as they went in, blew up certain military establishments, and they did.
I guess they couldn't help themselves.
They blew up the mausoleum for Hugo Chavez, Maduro's dictator predecessor.
But they didn't invade the country.
There's no Americans there now.
They were in and out in two hours.
They went to arrest a man.
Now, that's shocking to us because of the concept of sovereign immunity.
We don't just go around arresting foreign leaders, but in this case, two things.
He is an indicted criminal in a variety of very serious criminal charges.
And he is not, in fact, the legitimate leader of Venezuela.
He is a narco-terrorist who refused to abide by the election in that country.
He is sitting in someone else's throne.
Just an absolutely amazing weekend.
And there's one more detail I've got to share with you.
Mere minutes before Maduro was seized by the Americans, he was welcoming a large Chinese delegation.
China, along with Iran, had sold a lot of military equipment to Maduro, and China was putting deeper ties there.
They were financing things.
China really is the world's largest colonizer now.
They've taken over half of Africa, and that's what their designs were in Venezuela.
So when I say the Monroe Doctrine is back, that's exactly what it is.
The Monroe Doctrine, about two centuries old, is an American doctrine that no large foreign powers get to put a toehold in the Americas.
I mean, this was violated by the Soviets during the Cuban Missile Crisis.
But since, I suppose, the last 10 or 20 years, it's just gone nuts with Cuba being supported by the Soviets and then Cuba supporting communists in South America.
Donald Trump is saying, get out.
He's saying this is our hemisphere.
And he's doing it in that Donald Trump way.
He's saying it's not the Monroe document.
It's the Donroe Doctrine now, which is sort of fun to see.
I find it terrifying and impressive and exhilarating how powerful and precise the U.S. military is.
I say that about the Israeli military sometimes, and it's certainly true even more so about the American military.
Imagine going in, 150 aircraft, all perfectly timed, completely evading any defensive measures by the Chinese and Russian and Iranian equipment on the ground, managing to kill 32 Cuban bodyguards without taking a single casualty and snatching him out.
It's almost impossible.
It reminds me in audacity of when Israel blew up all those Hezbollah terrorists with those pagers.
Donald Trump and Marco Rubio, the son of Cuban émigrés himself, who used to be the senator for Florida, who's now an outstanding Secretary of State for Trump, they're taking an interesting line.
Like I say, they went in saying this is an arrest, and they indeed are bringing the Maduros to a court in New York.
They're not putting him in a prisoner of war camp.
They're not killing him.
They're prosecuting him like they would a drug kingpin.
And interestingly, Trump and Rubio have not called for the winner of the last election, including the Nobel Prize, Peace Prize winner last year, to be installed as a leader.
They've said they don't have the strength and the respect to do so.
They're actually working with the remains of Maduro's government, basically saying they want peaceful regime change.
I'm sure an election is part of their plans, but for now, it's American interests.
Donald Trump gave a lengthy elocution over the weekend saying that U.S. interests will come first, and that includes oil, but also improved civil liberties will come.
Here's just an excerpt of Trump talking about some of his ideas for the future in Venezuela.
We are going to run the country until such time as we can do a safe, proper, and judicious transition.
And it has to be judicious because that's what we're all about.
We want peace, liberty, and justice for the great people of Venezuela.
And that includes many from Venezuela that are now living in the United States and want to go back to their country.
It's their homeland.
We can't take a chance if somebody else takes over Venezuela that doesn't have the good of the Venezuelan people in mind.
We've had decades of that.
We're not going to let that happen.
We're there now.
And what people don't understand, but they understand as I say this, we're there now, but we're going to stay until such time as the proper transition can take place.
So we're going to stay until such time as we're going to run it essentially until such time as a proper transition can take place.
As everyone knows, the oil business in Venezuela has been a bust, a total bust for a long period of time.
Running Policy in Venezuela00:14:26
They were pumping almost nothing by comparison to what they could have been pumping and what could have taken place.
We're going to have our very large United States oil companies, the biggest anywhere in the world, go in, spend billions of dollars, fix the badly broken infrastructure, the oil infrastructure, and start making money for the country.
So he's not arresting them all.
You'll recall that when the United States went into Iraq, they had playing cards, 52 playing cards with a picture of a terror leader on each one.
And of course, Saddam Hussein was the Ace of Spades.
They're not doing that in Venezuela.
They're not arresting the entire cabinet.
They're not arresting the head of secret police or the military.
They're saying to them, you work for me now.
I've never seen it before.
I don't know if it can work.
I think they've all been stunned by the removal of their totalitarian leader, and perhaps they don't know quite what to do.
But one thing they do know for sure is America can do whatever it wants and they just can't hide.
I think the whole world was riveted to the situation.
A lot of people on Twitter, which I think is the go-to social media platform for breaking events like this, a lot of what I call monitoring the situation.
I mean, that's what I call it when I just sit there looking at Twitter for hours.
Oh no, I can't take out the garbage right now.
I'm monitoring the situation.
It's a funny thing to say, but Zorhan Mamdani, the communist mayor of New York, who's only been in office for a few days himself, he issued a statement how this was an illegal and unconscionable act by the President of the United States.
But he's impotent.
I mean, he's the mayor of a city, and good for him.
But he is not involved with the foreign policy of the United States.
And it's a bit rich for him to condemn the United States arresting an indicted narco-terrorist and objecting to that when he himself has said he would arrest Israel's Benjamin Netanyahu if he could.
The European Union was particularly pitiful.
They're monitoring the situation.
They weren't consulted.
They weren't asked for their opinion, let alone their permission.
Keir Starmer, I think, is the lamest.
He's the Prime Minister of the UK.
He put out a statement saying, just so everyone knows, we weren't involved.
That was his way of saying, don't blame me.
I don't think anyone in the world thought that Keir Starmer was involved.
But he lacked the courage to either approve of or condemn Trump's actions, saying he wanted to monitor the situation a bit more.
Here's a video clip of him doing that.
Have you spoken to Donald Trump about what's happening in Venezuela?
No, I haven't.
And it's obviously a fast-moving situation.
And we need to establish all the facts.
What I can say is that the UK was not involved in any way in this operation.
And as you'll expect, we're focusing on British nationals in Venezuela and working very closely with our embassy.
And so we have a lot to talk to the president.
I will want to talk to allies.
But at the moment, I think we need to establish the facts.
I think President Trump is doing a press conference later.
So hopefully more information will come out there.
What is clear, though, which the White House has said, is that America carried out strikes on Venezuela and captured their leader, Maduro.
Some politicians in this country have already condemned that.
Well, I want to establish the facts first.
I want to speak to President Trump.
I want to speak to allies.
As I say, I can be absolutely clear that we were not involved in that.
And as you know, I always say and believe we should all uphold international law.
But I think at this stage, fast-moving situation, let's establish the facts and take it from there.
I mean, look, just pick a side and own it.
Saying, oh, I wasn't part of it, but I don't know if I support it.
And I'm going to wait for more information.
What a weak man.
Of course, his military is otherwise occupied, not so much the military, but the police hunting down mean tweets and comments on Facebook.
So, yeah, I don't know if they would do anything as dazzling as what the Americans did.
What are the things you're hearing from everyone from the Europeans to Zorhan Mamdani, to Canada?
Mark Carney made a passive, aggressive tweet saying he wants all parties to respect international law.
Well, of course, that's got nothing to do with Venezuela.
Venezuela is just sitting there.
It's obviously a passive, aggressive criticism of Donald Trump saying, hey, stop doing this, man.
It's even more pitiful than Kier Starmers.
So what is this international law?
And who is this international policeman?
And who is the international judge overseeing it?
The answer is there's no such thing.
The answer is not the United Nations.
Who's their police force?
They don't have a military of their own.
The only reason that Canadian law and Canadian police and Canadian judges work is that they have a monopoly of violence in society.
And if you don't go along when police arrest you, they'll, I guess, theoretically shoot you.
You will be sent to a prison by the judge using the law.
But there is no such analogy in the world of international affairs.
It's just strength and interests.
And I suppose some international treaties keep different countries in line.
And countries can all sign a UN document.
But like I say, that's just a piece of paper.
International law didn't save Ukraine from a Russian invasion.
It didn't save Tibet from a Chinese invasion.
International law is words.
And what we saw over the weekend was military hardware and highly trained soldiers.
That is the ultimate law in international relations.
And that may be hard to take, but that's how it is.
By the way, until Donald Trump became president again, most of the world agreed that Maduro was a criminal, not a sovereign leader of Venezuela.
In fact, a number of Democrats, you can dig up their old tweets, they're chiding Trump for not being tougher on Maduro.
Even Joe Biden, even the Democrats acknowledged that he stole the last election.
The full European Union position is he stole the election.
Just his close allies, China, Russia, Iran, think he's legit.
That just flipped now that Trump took him out.
I saw CTV actually called him a sovereign leader.
That's the kind of talk that Zorhan Mamdani would have.
Now, some people say, and I see this from journalists and I see this from politicians and pundits, some people are saying, well, Trump's unilateral action without going to the UN and without being polite, well, this is now a license to the bad guys in the world to do this same sort of unilateral thing where might makes right.
Suddenly, Russia and China are going to have no compunction about invading their enemies or snatching their dictators or their leaders.
Yeah, they've been doing that for a while now, with or without this international law.
Literally right now, China is having exercises or military exercises around the island of Taiwan, sort of practicing for invading that country.
They didn't wait for a rules-based international order and a motion of the United Nations.
If and when, God forbid, China takes Taiwan, it will be a military invasion.
It will not be through resolutions of the United Nations.
Same thing with Russia.
Russia has invaded Ukraine twice now in the last decade, and it's both times where they felt strong and thought the Americans were weak.
They didn't wait for some international law group to tell them to do it.
Only the West feels bound by these notions of international law and a rules-based international order, which is a very Canadian way of saying, hey, Americans, don't do things without our permission and consent.
There's also some colonizing talk going on.
America going back in to take the oil, and Trump did very much say that.
But yeah, the bad guys have already been colonizing Venezuela.
I mentioned before that the Cubans basically run the joint politically and militarily, and in return for that, they get 50,000 barrels of oil a day from Venezuela.
Trump's cutting that off, which means Cuba is going to be in trouble pretty soon.
Venezuela is important in the region.
It funds Cuba through subsidized oil.
Trump is seizing those oil ships.
That's going to put a lot of pressure on Cuba.
Venezuela is the doorway for the defeat of the Monroe Doctrine.
You bet that Trump's going to cut that off.
And I have to say, Marco Rubio has done a great job elocuting, articulating, explaining what America is doing and the thesis for it.
And he's not saying words like international law.
He's using other words like what's in the American interest or we have to protect ourselves.
Those are concepts that Canadians have forgotten about.
We have a luxury foreign policy based on press statements and feelings.
We don't actually do things.
I mean, we try and negotiate some trade deals, but on the hard stuff, on the military stuff, Canada's not there.
We were completely absent in the Middle East and in Israel.
I mean, first of all, Israel would not permit us to be part of a process.
We've basically said Palestine should emerge from Israel unilaterally without disarming, without acknowledging Israel's place in the world.
Like, it's shocking how out of the norm Canada's foreign policy is.
But even if we weren't pro-Palestine crazy, I don't think there's any Canadian peacekeepers deployed anywhere in the world right now.
I'd have to check for sure.
There's a few Canadian troops in the Baltics with a larger NATO force, but I don't think there's any Canadian peacekeepers in the world.
There's only so much diplomatic power you can have by just putting out tweets and press releases.
Canada is not part of real foreign affairs anymore.
All we're good for is putting out tweets that terrorist groups seem to like.
Marco Rubio explained it pretty well.
Here's some clips of him.
He was doing the rounds of TV yesterday.
I thought he was so articulate.
It's running policy, the policy with regards to this.
We want Venezuela to move in a certain direction because not only do we think it's good for the people of Venezuela, it's in our national interest.
It either touches on something that's a threat to our national security or touches on something that's either beneficial or harmful.
And are you involved in that transition?
So obviously I'm very involved in this.
Well, of course.
I mean, I think everyone knows I'm pretty involved on politics in this hemisphere.
Obviously, a Secretary of State, a national security advisor, very involved in all these elements.
The Department of War plays a very important role here, along with the Department of Justice, for example, because they're the ones that have to go to court.
So this is a team effort by the entire national security apparatus of our country, but it is running this policy.
And the goal of the policy is to see changes in Venezuela that are beneficial to the United States, first and foremost, because that's who we work for, but also, we believe, beneficial for the people of Venezuela, who have suffered tremendously.
We want a better future for Venezuela, and we think a better future for the people of Venezuela also is stabilizing for the region and makes the neighborhood we live in a much better and safer place.
Ultimately, legitimacy for their system of government will come about through a period of transition and real elections, which they have not had.
And by the way, it's the reason why Maduro is not just an indicted drug or an indicted drug trafficker.
He's illegitimate president.
He was not the head of state.
And I continue to see these media reports referring to him as President Maduro and the head of state.
He was not the head of state.
He was not the head of it.
And it's not just us saying it.
The Biden administration said it.
And so did 60-something countries around the world hold that position.
If the purpose of the operation was to capture Maduro and bring him to justice, why does the United States need to take over the Venezuelan oil industry?
Well, we don't need to.
First of all, let me go back up.
We don't need Venezuela's oil.
We have plenty of oil in the United States.
What we're not going to allow is for the oil industry in Venezuela to be controlled by adversaries of the United States.
You have to understand, why does China need their oil?
Why does Russia need their oil?
Why does Iran need their oil?
They're not even in this continent.
This is the Western Hemisphere.
This is where we live.
And we're not going to allow the Western Hemisphere to be a base of operation for adversaries, competitors, and rivals of the United States.
Have specific oil costs.
We also want to see that oil and the proceeds from it.
Hold on.
We want to see the oil proceeds of that country benefit the people of Venezuela.
Why have 8 million people left Venezuela?
8 million, the single largest mass migration probably in modern history, left Venezuela since 2014, because all the wealth of that country was stolen to the benefit of Maduro and his cronies in the regime, but not to the benefit of people of Venezuela.
You know how destabilizing 8 million migrants is?
The number one fear that Brazil has, that Colombia has, that all these countries in the region have about what's happening in Venezuela and our involvement is they're afraid of another mass migration event.
That's what they fear.
This is deeply destabilizing stuff.
It's not going to continue to happen.
They are not going to come from outside of our hemisphere, destabilize our region in our own backyard, and us have to pay the price for it.
Not under President Trump.
Trump is feeling pretty good about things, obviously.
In fact, on his Air Force One the other day, just yesterday, in fact, he was actually giving amazing comments all weekend, including today.
He has said that even Colombia had better watch it.
Other countries that sell drugs into America had better watch it.
Their time might come too.
That's quite a thing to say here.
Listen to him say it.
Colombia is very sick, too, run by a sick man who likes making cocaine and selling it to the United States.
And he's not going to be doing it very long, let me tell you.
What does that mean?
He's not going to be doing it very long.
not doing it very long.
He has cocaine mills and cocaine factories.
He's not going to be doing it.
So there will be an operation by the U.S.
It sounds good to me.
Mr. President, so Colombian President Gustavo Petro, a couple weeks ago, he said he's got to watch his ass.
And today he said he's not concerned about anything happening to him in the aftermath of this operation.
So just what are your messages?
Well, he has cocaine mills.
He has factories where he makes cocaine.
And yeah, I think I stick by my first statement.
He's making cocaine.
They're sending it into the United States.
So he does have to watch his ass.
Why Credibility Matters00:04:08
You know, Donald Trump has been president for just under a year.
Remember, he was sworn in in January.
I think it was January 20th or 21st, 2025.
So it hasn't even been a year.
It's just over 11 months.
In those 11 months, the U.S. military has not dramatically increased in size.
It has not acquired dramatic new weapons in the last 11 months.
Its recruitment numbers are up, it's true, but that has not significantly changed the U.S. military.
What has changed is how that military is wielded.
Under Joe Biden, who had all these gadgets and gizmos, who had the most powerful military in the world, the symbol of how he expressed America's force around the world was the helter-skelter abandonment of Afghanistan, where you saw people literally trying to cling on to the outside of the airplanes as they scrambled out of the country.
It was like the last helicopter out of Vietnam.
Joe Biden was terrified of anyone and anything.
And most importantly, he was terrified of using American power.
He was on apology tours like Barack Obama.
He basically telegraphed to the world's enemies they could do whatever they wanted.
That is why Vladimir Putin invaded Ukraine.
Donald Trump is using the same military with the same people and the same equipment, but now it's with a purpose and a focus.
Biden could have done what Trump just did, but he lacked any will to do so.
It was against his ideology.
There's sort of an anti-Americanism in the Democrats.
The word credibility is what comes to mind.
Donald Trump is so credible right now.
When he says he'll do something, are you going to gamble that he won't?
When he says he could or would or should do something, you're a foreign leader.
You should take it seriously.
The other day, Donald Trump warned the Ayatollah in Iran, they better not shoot their own people protesting.
Well, they are shooting their own people protesting.
After what you saw Trump's military accomplished the other day, would you roll those dice?
And it all comes down to credibility.
That's from the Latin word for believing.
People believe Trump when he says he's going to stand up for America.
And if you don't believe it, well, I'll tell you one thing: Nicolas Maduro did.
I read in the newspapers today that one of the things that finally tipped Donald Trump over, he's been, of course, sparring verbally with Maduro for weeks now.
He's had the flotilla and the Armada off the coast of Venezuela.
He's been talking on the phone with Maduro.
And Maduro started to, well, to dance, to sing and dance as if to say to America, I'm carefree.
You're a joke.
I'm stress-free.
You're not serious.
I don't believe you.
They say that Trump's staff allegedly told the media, that's reported that they told the media, that it was this video of Maduro dancing like an idiot that made Trump pull the trigger.
a look why would that be Well, because Donald Trump is using harsh words and Maduro just wasn't listening.
He wasn't believing Trump because America had no credibility after four years of Biden.
Do you believe him now?
Do the Ayatollahs believe him now?
Do the Cuban communists believe him now?
Well, they should.
No one believed Biden.
Everyone believes Trump.
Anyways, that was going on in a very dangerous place called Caracas, which, by the way, is one of the highest murder rates in the world.
Caracas, Venezuela, terrible things are being done to it.
They're very poor.
The people are literally, the average Venezuelan has lost more than 20 pounds just from malnutrition.
How do you wreck a country with so much natural wealth?
Anyways, we didn't send any reporters down to Caracas.
That would be too dangerous.
Venezuela's Crisis: An Eyewitness Account00:14:43
But we sent Alexa Lavois and Efrain Monsanto down to Miami, where there's a large community of exiles, not just from Cuba, but also from Venezuela.
And Alexa and Efron are coming back today, but I asked them to put together a special video of what they've been doing.
Without further ado, look at what Alexa and Efron have been doing down in Miami.
Take a look.
Hello, Ezra.
Thank you for having me on your show.
So far, this trip has been incredible.
We actually traveled from Canada to be here on the ground because we wanted to give a voice to the Venezuelan people.
I don't know if our viewer know about it, but in Doral, it is the biggest exile Venezuelan community in the U.S.
And on the first day, as soon as the U.S. military did their strike in Venezuela, they all woke up around 5 a.m. to celebrate.
They celebrated all day.
Unfortunately, that day I was in Canada, so I arrived a little bit too late.
But we were able to catch the Segong celebration last night, and it was just powerful.
We spoke with so many people.
I let you hear, first of all, one of the women who actually recounted her own experience with the regime in Venezuela.
Listen to that.
What bring you out here today?
The love for my homeland, which is Venezuela.
I was born there.
Unfortunately, I had to come when I was eight because we have to flee the country because of the political issues.
But yeah, the love for the homeland.
What is your experience over there and your family experience?
Well, everybody's suffering over there.
There's barely anything for anyone over there.
So yeah, that's just the experience that the whole country is going through right now.
So what would you say to the people, the leftist people who are taking to the street to protest in favor of Nicolas Maduro?
So none of them that are protesting outside the country are actually Venezuelans or lived through it.
So they can't really speak unless they actually lived through it.
So they won't know what it is to not know whether you're going to get a dinner or what are you going to eat the next day.
Living off $2 a month because they don't have anything to.
Basing off on what your family could send you from other countries, your family working harder to send you money.
So it's easy to protest from outside.
It's easy to protest from your couch or what you see online, but actually living through it and know what it is, then they can't speak on it until they actually live it.
So you probably saw some Democrats, including the new mayor of New York, Johan Mandani, literally declare that what Trump did on Saturday morning was illegal.
What do you think of that?
Again, if people don't live through it, they won't know how desperate us Venezuelans are for a change.
I know they're talking about Trump only wanting the oil, but everybody is there for the oil.
Russia, Iran, everybody is there for the oil already, China.
So if Trump needs that oil to give us freedom, then that's a price we're willing to pay just so that we have our freedom and make a change.
In 26 years, nobody has done anything for our country except for Trump.
So if that's a price that we, he's the only one that has made an action on it.
And he's the only one that has delivered his promise.
So if that's the price we need to pay for it, then that's okay.
Venezuela has a lot of other resources, does not use oil.
We have minerals, we have so many other things that once our country is better, then we, as Maria Corina always say, we will be an amazing country.
We just need that change and somebody to help us for it.
What do you think is only Trump who did something regarding Maduro?
Well, he is a businessman, so he knows there's opportunities there.
But again, at this moment, Venezuela is willing to provide him with the opportunity to take over the oil, make a change out of it, or make a business out of it, just so that we could have our freedom back.
Again, 26 years suffering.
Then we spoke with another man, a man who actually faced persecution from the regime, the Chavez regime, because he was an IT in an oil patch.
I want you to hear his experience.
It's just frightening.
Actually, we were living pretty good in Venezuela many years ago.
We have been here, what, 20 years?
And we were doing good until Chavez came.
And then the army, particularly, I worked for the oil industry, and they came after me.
So I had to leave the country.
And after a couple of years, I had to remove all my family.
That's the reason.
Otherwise, I didn't have any other reason.
What was the main reason why they came after you?
I was a manager in one of the oil industry companies.
I was the IT manager.
And they wanted me to allow them to listen to all of the fun conversation.
And I said, no, you're not going to do that while I'm the manager.
I'm not going to allow you to do that.
And that brought a lot of problem to me.
And after a couple of years, I had to leave.
They came after me because I didn't allow them.
You know, just communists, they don't care.
I told them, you're not going to listen to the conversations.
The people that I know, I know the people here.
I know how honest they are.
I'm not going to allow you to listen to private conversations, but to find out, oh, you know, there's nothing here.
No, that's not going to happen.
You have to come to some other way, but not through me.
And that's why.
I mean, they went after everybody.
That's what they've been doing for the last 26 years.
What do you think only Donald Trump did something regarding Nicolas Madeira?
We all are very happy what happened.
With Venezuelans, we are very sure that Nicolas Maduro, he's a criminal.
And about narcotics, everybody knows that he's the leader of the cartel, the loser.
Everybody knows that.
And he's been killing people for many years, young guys, young people, taking people to jail, being innocent.
He deserves.
I don't know what's going to happen with him, but I deserve the worst for him.
And I believe a high percentage of Venezuelan people deserve the same.
They think the same that I'm telling you.
I'm very sure about.
You probably heard the Democrats as well as the new mayor of New York, Zohan Mandani, saying that what Trump did was illegal.
That was a violation of international law.
What do you think of that?
He's wrong because he's also a communist.
He is.
I mean, he doesn't have to be a member of a communist party.
But if you listen to anything that he says, he's a communist.
And he's going to be against anything that President Trump will do.
You see, so of course, what Trump did is just to go after a criminal.
It's not against the country.
It's not against Venezuela.
We are very sure about that.
So that guy in New York, you know, I hope he's also taken away from, I don't know how he got elected, but well, that happens.
You know, in democracy, in a country like this, that happens.
But he's absolutely wrong.
We also had the chance to speak with the city councillor for the Rome, Mr. Rafael Pinero.
He is born in Caracas, but he moved to U.S. at the age of 15 with his family.
And he recounted a little bit of his experience over there.
But I asked him the question about Democrats and the new mayor of New York, Zoran Mandani, about saying that what Trump did was a violation of international law.
Look at his answer.
Obviously, you probably saw some Democrats, including New York Mayor Zoran Mandani, have claimed that arresting Maduro is illegal and that Venezuelans in New York disagree with Trump.
I called the president and spoke with him directly to register my opposition to this act and to make clear that it was an opposition based on being opposed to a pursuit of regime change, to the violation of federal international law, and a desire to see that be consistent each and every day.
What do you say about that?
Shame on him.
Shame on him because he's representing a city where a lot of Venezuelans reside.
A lot of Venezuelans have left the country for the same reasons that my family and I.
We left the country 26 years ago.
So shame on him for making that comment.
He's just starting an administration.
He should know better what has been taking place in Venezuela for 26 years.
So how are you not going to be in support of something that has created all this chaos and disaster across nations?
How are you going to support the fact that you have captured, that the U.S. have captured a person that has been involved in the killing of a lot of people, that have been involved in the kidnapping of a lot of people, that has, again, over 800 political prisoners still in Venezuela, that has been involved in a lot of criminal activities when it comes to narco-traffic.
And again, he's a narco-terrorist.
So how are you going to be in favor of the capture of someone that is not even a legit president of any nation?
So I think that comments like that, we don't have to pay attention to those comments.
We just have to keep working hard and making sure, again, that Venezuela once again becomes the country that they deserve to be.
You said it was a violation of federal and international law.
Do you plan to use any of the city's resources to interfere with the prosecution or anything like that?
This is a federal action on a federal timeline, and I owe it to New Yorkers to deliver for them across the five boroughs and also to be honest and straightforward about my own thoughts on this.
I also asked him another question, and this time I asked him about our mainstream media from home.
Probably some people saw or maybe not, but in Quebec, Radio Canada, that is the French CBC outlet, literally said that Maduro was the man of the people.
Listen to his answer.
So in the mainstream media in Canada, and especially in Quebec, there were headlines saying that Maduro is the man of the people.
And I want to have your reaction to that.
Well, he might be the man of a few 10 or 20 people, but he's not.
I mean, he's just a criminal.
He's someone that from the first time, he didn't deserve to be there.
He just got there because of Chavez took power in 1999.
And Maduro has been, you know, just another criminal as part of that group.
He has been involved in all this.
He's a drug dealer.
He has been involved in all these narco deals that has been taking place around nations, especially in Latin America.
He's not the person that he was portraying to be.
But let me tell you, there are worse people than him.
The ones that still in Venezuela, they're worse than him.
Del C Rodriguez, Diosado Cabello, they're worse than Nicolás Maduro.
So that's why we still have a lot of work to do.
But Nicolas Maduro is going to pay the price of, again, killing people, kidnapping people, political prisoners, creating, creating Venezuela, making Venezuela one of the more poorest countries in the world.
So how we're going to be, how are you going to say that he's the main of the people?
Last night we also had the chance to have an exclusive interview with the mayor of Durham.
Her name is Christie Fraga.
She is Cuban, but she's born in the U.S.
So her family escaped Cuba for a better life and to escape the regime in place.
We actually discussed also what would be next.
Is it Cuba?
Listen.
First of all, when you heard about the action that Donald Trump led in Venezuela, how your community and yourself reacted to it?
I was happy about it.
I mean, I come from a Cuban family.
For years, we flee oppression in Cuba and the illegitimate government of Venezuela was the one feeding Cuba.
So we feel that with this change, there will be change in Cuba too and hopefully Nicaragua.
I know many may not be in agreement with what happened, but I think it was very necessary for the safety and security of even the United States.
You know, this definitely put in jeopardy the security of the United States.
So things were happening in our backyard that affected Americans.
And so I did not see anything wrong with it other than they needed to go in there and rip out a dictator that was causing a lot of harm to not just the people in his own country, but allowing for terrorist cells to grow that none of these people like the United States of America.
And allowing them to be in our backyard without any control, I think, was a, you know, was a threat to our national security.
Celebrating Freedom in Venezuela00:11:56
Why do you think only Trump dared to do something against Maduro?
That's just in a country that's on the other side of the world.
This isn't a country like we have to travel 24 hours in an airplane.
This is Venezuela.
It's in our area, the Don Road Doctor.
Well, there's been many presidents before that have said they're going to do something and there's been many legislators that have said that they've fought against it, but no one's actually taken the action to bring down this regime.
What he did brought down the regime or is in the process of and there will be an opportunity for the Venezuelan people to choose a rightful leader in a democratic process and have rights restored to them that were taken away a long time ago.
People lost everything.
They've lost family members.
There's absolutely no respect to human rights, no access to medicine, the basic needs.
And so many have said that they would or would negotiate, but they were all just talk.
I think the action was necessary and I'm very proud of our president for doing that and our Secretary of State for having the political pants to go in there and do what needed to be done to protect the Western Hemisphere.
And we saw Democrats as well as the new mayor of New York, Doran Mandani, who literally say that Trump's action was violating the international law.
What do you think of that?
I think that's an ignorant statement.
I think history has shown that this is not an illegal act and there's much precedent to be able to take these actions in the name of national security.
So I disagree wholeheartedly with them and I think that those who make those statements don't have an understanding of not only our history as a nation, but also the president's executive powers to be able to make these decisions.
How do you explain the phenomenon across the Western nations where we see people taking to the street to protest not in favor of Venezuelans, but in favor of the dictator Nicolas Maduro?
How do you explain that?
I mean to me it's shocking.
I don't understand it at all and what I would ask them is why don't they ask themselves a question that why are the people in Venezuela out celebrating that this happened?
I mean, this tells you these people were captive.
You know, they talk about a kidnapper that the United States is kidnapping the president.
No, this person who was not a legitimate president recognized as a president had kidnapped this country many years ago.
So if anything, we have the United States has liberated them and is giving them an opportunity to actually choose through a democratic process their rightful leader, which they should have the right to do.
That's going to give them the opportunity to have resources and opportunity, which is all they want.
Safety, opportunity, and freedom.
We take for granted so many times the freedoms we have in this country.
And I know I can understand how some may talk about it that don't have never had to live oppression and a dictatorship.
But talk to someone who has.
Talk to my family who left Cuba, who left everything behind with just the clothes on their backs to come here and rebuild all over again.
They didn't want to do that.
They had no choice because they were suffering.
They were literally going to go hungry if they didn't stay there.
So I would ask those people to turn and look at the people in Venezuela that are being killed for going out and celebrating this because they have been held kidnapped for so long.
So I don't understand it.
To me, it's unjustifiable.
And that's, you know, I would tell them to do a little more research before they go out and make ignorant comments and statements.
And what is the next for Cuba?
Because there's so many Cubans that went out in the streets has hope.
Do you think Cuba is next?
I do.
I think that, first of all, we're living vicariously through the Venezuelan people because we wanted this for our country for so long.
And it's been 70 years of oppression in Cuba.
I was actually born here.
I'm a first generation American from my family.
But I've heard the stories that my grandparents have told for years.
They left, you know, 65 years ago and have never been able to go back.
You know, they lost family members they never got to say goodbye to.
It's very sad to think about those things.
I do believe Cuba could be next in a very different way.
I don't think there's going to be military action or anything like that, but I think that the restructuring of Venezuela is going to dry up the economic resources that were being fed to Cuba by the Venezuelan government.
And that is going to make that last leg fall.
And I think it will allow pressures to be put for a real change and for a real democratic election so that the people of Cuba can also have an opportunity to rebuild.
This is the weakest the Cuban government has ever been and it's because the Venezuelan resources have dried up to give to Venice to Cuba.
So we do have to take advantage of this moment and Trump made it very clear that this was the opportunity to do that as well and they weren't going to stay behind.
I don't think many dictators are going to be able to continue through the last three years of Trump in those situations.
And again, I think that especially in the Western Hemisphere that has been ignored for so long, the priority has been shifted because it does affect our national security.
They've allowed new players to come into this region that are not friends of the United States.
And I think that the president and our Secretary of State who understands this issue very, very well, have their eyes on them.
Secretary Rubio mentioned Cuba yesterday in his remarks.
Does the U.S. have a plan to do so?
Well, Cuba will always survive because of Venezuela.
Now they won't have that money coming in.
They won't have the income coming in.
Knowing of what is happening in Venezuela, we know that there is terrorists over there, gangs.
Yes.
Do you think you would need a civil strike?
I'm sorry, Seywa.
Do you think you would need another operation?
Look, I'm not going to pretend to have any understanding of the military actions that need to take place or the strategies that are being considered by the president or our military personnel.
But they did say yesterday they were not opposed to that and that they needed to take those actions.
I think the president has taken a decisive step and there's no turning back.
People are so happy with what we've done.
You know, you go down to Miami, you go down to a lot of places and they're all dancing in the streets of this country.
Now, he was a rough man.
He killed millions of people.
He killed millions and millions of people.
In your own opinion, what would be the best person to govern Venezuela?
Look, I followed Maria Corina Machado closely.
Actually, in 2014, I gave her a proclamation here that she came when she was still able to travel.
I think she has the respect of the people.
I think that people love her.
She's extremely charismatic.
I understand the president's comments yesterday on the strategy.
You know, right now, it'd be very difficult for her party to take over in this transition because they need the military support still.
There's still a lot of moving pieces to this process that I think it would be hard to just plug in play.
A lot of her party and her support had to leave the country because they had to flee because of their safety.
So I've listened to Marco Rubio very closely.
I've listened to the president.
I don't think that they have said in any moment that she's not capable of running the country and that she doesn't have the support of the people.
I think that's very clear.
She has the support of the people.
They won the election in 2024 by 80% and possibly more.
So I think you need to listen when they're speaking.
No one has said that the people of Venezuela will not be able to choose their rightful president through a democratic process.
Whether they engage in a new election and monitor that and are able to enforce the outcome of that election, I am pretty certain Maria Correa Machado will be the next president of Venezuela.
Truthfully, she wasn't even going to be the president with the last elections.
It would have been in Mundo because Maduro prohibited her from being the candidate for the party.
So truthfully, those elections already were rigged from the moment they started.
So if I was a citizen of that country, I would want a new election so that I could choose Maria Correa Machado, who has fought for the democratic process and the liberation of Venezuela.
And I would hope that she does get the opportunity to be their president.
And I am certain that if she's given that opportunity to be on a ballot, she will win.
Do you think the Netfront qualified for the Nobel Peace Prize?
I think that he is definitely on the road to getting that.
And he wants it because he is fighting for peace.
I think he does deserve to be recognized as a president for peace.
Thank you so much.
We have our full report with a lot of testimony from Venezuelans themselves who fled their country not in search of job opportunity but to save their life.
So if you want, you can go to VenezuelaisFree.com to watch our previous reports.
And I invite everybody who is watching at the moment to go and watch.
And if you agree with us, just go and chip in a couple of bucks because it's because of you that we are able to show you the truth.
Because the mainstream media and legacy media are just trying, literally trying to portray Major as like a good person and Trump as the bad one.
But the reality on the ground is different.
Venezuelans are happy, they are celebrating, and you know, the mainstream media don't want you to see that.
So this is my whole recap of our trip.
I was with Efran Macento and I gave him a shout out because he worked hard the whole entire time.
So our reports, you will see, it's really raw emotion.
You will hear in Spanish and in English what the people have to say.
And I hope like you enjoy my small recap of our time here in Miami.
I'm so glad they went down there to capture that joy and the love of freedom.
There's something very special in my mind about, you know, Cuban exiles, Venezuelan exiles, and the people from other parts of the world who have fled communism too, from Eastern Europe, from Vietnam.
Some of the best immigrants to America, by the way, are people who fled communism genuinely and who love freedom and came to America with enormous gratitude.
It's a very different kind of immigrant than the types we see sometimes from other places.
Anyway, I'm really excited that Alexa went down there and I think she had perfect timing too.
Hey, stay with us.
After the break, your letters to me.
Hey, welcome back.
Your letters to me.
Island Girl says, great job, Alexa in Rebel News.
Of course, the mainstream media embraces the communist dictator because they must disagree with Trump on every point.
President Trump is changing the world for the better and the globalists can't stand it.
Most Venezuelans are overjoyed, but the MSM must somehow twist it to fit their woke narrative.
Oh, yeah, I just couldn't believe this craziness I was watching on CTV.
I really think that talking to real Venez Horanos is so important just to see the joy.
I mean, the word milagro, I think, means miracle.
I mean, they thought this was a miracle from God, that the tyrant who has ruled over their country for so long is gone.
I really got swept up in some of the interviews that Alexa did.
You can see them all, by the way, at VenezuelaisFree.com.
Write Jail Away00:05:42
They're all there.
Gordon Welcher says, write to jail right away.
He probably undercooks rich and overcooks chicken.
I know the joke you're referring to.
There's a comedian, Fred Armison, that had a little cameo on the comedy Parks and Wreck, and he was playing some Latin American dictators, sort of like Maduro.
And I mean, it was really funny, but it's based on the terrifying reality.
Here he is talking about you go right to jail for anything.
Take a look at this clip.
I thought it was funny.
This is outrageous.
Where are the armed men who come in to take the protesters away?
Where are they?
This kind of behavior is never tolerating in Barakua.
You shout like that, they put you in jail right away.
No trial, no nothing.
Journalists, we have a special jail for journalists.
You're stealing, write to jail.
You're playing music too loud, write to jail right away.
You're driving too fast, jail.
Slow, jail.
You're charging too high prices for sweaters, glasses.
You write to jail.
You undercook fish, believe it or not, jail.
You overcook chicken, also jail.
Under cocovaco.
You make an appointment with a dentist and you don't show up, believe it or not, jail right away.
We have the best patients in the world because of jail.
That's a very funny clip for us in North America to laugh at.
And Fred Armiston is a comic genius.
But it's based on the horrific truth that in Venezuela, hundreds of people were murdered or imprisoned because they did something that offended the tyrant.
So it is, I get your joke, and that's a funny clip that I love.
But imagine the reality of that.
Robert Dau says Trump is basically doing the job that the UN is unwilling to do.
How is the UN going to help any country since they've allowed China and Russia to be part of the UN Security Council?
Well, see, you've nailed it right there because China and Russia are on the Security Council of the UN.
It used to, you know, the countries were slightly different.
It was the Soviet Union originally.
The whole point of the UN was to be a talk shop.
You wanted the bad guys there because you have to talk to them.
Maybe by talking to them, you can fix problems.
The UN was supposed to be a meeting place, a diplomatic place.
It was not a government of itself.
It doesn't have an army of itself.
It's not, you know, I said earlier, where's this international law?
Where's this international police?
Where's this international judge?
That's not what the UN is meant to do.
The UN is supposed to have the bad guys there because you have to talk to the bad guys sometimes, but it's not meant to be a government.
It's not meant to have an executive or to have a military of its own.
I don't think the United States should be globo-cop, but it should promote its interests.
And by the way, thank goodness, America's interests are largely Canadian interests.
There's some problems right now with our trade, but we benefit from their military deterrent, don't we?
Last letter, Jojo Pickett says, I didn't watch mainstream media.
I watched conservative geopolitics, who also all agree that this is USA's thirst for oil and not a liberation campaign.
We will see in six months to a year who is as to who benefited.
Well, so far, nothing's changed other than Maduro was snatched out of the country.
Now, Trump did say he wants oil, but he referred to the fact that there were large U.S. companies, Exxon, Chevron, ConocoPhillips, if I remember them by name, who were all operating in Venezuela and then who were expropriated, nationalized by Hugo Chavez.
So they had billions of dollars taken from them.
And you might say, oh, so that enriched the Venezuelans.
No, it didn't.
Venezuela used to pump 3 million barrels of oil a day.
Now it pumps 1 million.
Funny thing is, if you punish and drive away the people who actually know how to work an oil rig, it's like it's killing the goose that laid the golden egg.
So Trump wants to get the oil fields going again.
And yeah, he wants those American companies to profit, but no one would profit more than the Venezuelans themselves.
A generation ago, Venezuela had a very high standard of living, not now.
So, I mean, and I'm going to dispute one more thing.
You say, Trump has not brought in, like, there's not a single American in Venezuela today.
There's not one soldier there.
They were there for two hours to grab the boss.
They're going to try to steer the country, I don't know if towards freedom, but I hope so, towards democracy and yeah, to prosperity and to take it out of the orbit of Russia, China, Iran.
I don't think that America could or should or should even try to colonize Venezuela.
They're not doing what America did in Afghanistan or Iraq, trying to try.
You cannot civilize Afghanistan into a modern, liberal, safe, pluralistic democracy.
You can't do it.
And it's foolish to try.
Venezuela is more Western-oriented.
It's a Catholic nation.
It's more part of the Americas.
But it's not America's job to socially engineer it.
What Trump is trying to do is align Venezuela to the West without deep social engineering.
He wants to get rid of the foreign actors with the Monroe Doctrine.
He wants to stop the drugs.
And yeah, he wants the oil.
No less so, and no more so than the Chinese and the Russians did, except for he'll actually build it and benefit some of the locals.
Well, we'll keep watching, and I think that we still have a few more videos to come that Alexa and Efron filmed down in Miami.
So keep your eyes feel for that.
Thanks for watching, as you always do, and thanks for your support.
I was really excited that Efron and Alex went down there.
I sort of wish I did because it's so snowy here in Toronto and it looks so nice in Miami, but they were working the whole time they were there.